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In the previous chapter Merleau-Ponty pointed out the problems encountered by those who invoke the notion of sensation in analysing perception. Even the simplest sensory given, as we have seen, must have a figure-background structure, and such a structure is irreducible to that absolute coincidence of the perceiver with an impression or quality which defines sensation in its classical sense. In order to be perceived as a figure, that which is perceived must stand out from a background, it must have a contour, an outline. If that outline were merely another sensation, it could not be an outline. We are then tempted to think that it must be a collection of atomic sensations viewed simultaneously. Thus we conceive the outline as a line, and the latter as the sum of indivisible points having no intrinsic connection themselves. But what makes the sensations arrange themselves in this way before us, and why do we say that we are seeing a red patch? The standard answer is that we recognize this particular distribution of sensations because we have seen similar distributions in the past and have learned to use the words "red patch" with reference to them. This response, however, is itself open to the same question; hence, it has merely served to defer the problem rather than to resolve it.

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-19761-3_2

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