Perceptual differentiation retroactively presents objects as having always been in the prior undifferentiated ground.

Evidence

When we are gradually approaching a landscape which was given in great masses, we see objects appear which are given as having been there already, as elements in a discontinuous collection of “thises”; in the same way, in the experiments of the Gestalt school, the continuous background suddenly when apprehended as figure bursts into a multiplicity of discontinuous elements. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 589

Categorization

• XREF: Sartre’s appeal to Gestalt figure-ground experiments connects to the reader’s own knowledge bank on ground/field/figure mapping in The Soundscape. — connects to: Perception apprehends objects through the ekstatic unity of past and present; Representation makes the new appear predetermined and therefore old; Differentiation produces the evidence that retroactively justifies itself — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 834
• DEFINE: Concretizes the phenomenological definition of the ‘this’ through a worked perceptual example.
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Perception apprehends objects through the ekstatic unity of past and present; Representation makes the new appear predetermined and therefore old; Differentiation produces the evidence that retroactively justifies itself — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 834

Broader Connections

• Perception apprehends objects through the ekstatic unity of past and present #expands (0.80)
• Representation makes the new appear predetermined and therefore old #corroborates (0.75)