Perception requires shared substance between perceiver and perceived.

Evidence

For him, this was the perfect way of making sense of the connection between consciousness and world. Each clasps the other, as if by criss-crossed, knitted links. Thus, I can see things in the world, but I can also be seen, because I am made of the world’s own stuff. When I touch something with my hand, that thing touches my hand too. If this were not the case, I could neither see nor touch anything at all. I never peer into the world from a safe place outside it, like a cat looking into a fish tank. I encounter things because I am encounterable to others. He wrote: ‘It is as though our vision were formed in the heart of the visible, or as though there were between it and us an intimacy as close as between the sea and the strand.’ — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 743

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces Merleau-Ponty’s mutual-encroachment account of perception, the basis for his ‘flesh’ concept.
• CANDY: The cat-looking-into-a-fish-tank image is a vivid, shareable way to explain why we’re not detached observers.
• XREF: connects to: Perception apprehends objects through the ekstatic unity of past and present; Flesh names the shared substance linking perceiver and perceived world. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 744; Sensation requires an object other than the sense acting on it (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Flesh names the shared substance linking perceiver and perceived world. #expands (0.95) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 744