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Perception and Context: a Contextual Theory of Perception Based Upon Husserl's Theory of Horizons and James's Theory of Fringes

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Perception and Context: a Contextual Theory of Perception Based Upon Husserl's Theory of Horizons and James's Theory of Fringes Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 1997 Perception and Context: A Contextual Theory of Perception Based upon Husserl's Theory of Horizons and James's Theory of Fringes Christopher John Broniak Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Broniak, Christopher John, "Perception and Context: A Contextual Theory of Perception Based upon Husserl's Theory of Horizons and James's Theory of Fringes" (1997). Dissertations. 3658. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/3658 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 1997 Christopher John Broniak LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CIDCAGO PERCEPTION AND CONTEXT: A CONTEXTUAL TIIEORY OF PERCEPTION BASED UPON HUSSERL'S TIIEORY OF HORIZONS AND JAMES'S THEORY OF FRINGES A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO TIIE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PmLOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY BY CHRISTOPHERJOHNBRONIAK CIDCAGO, ILLINOIS JANUARY 1997 '°Copyright by Christopher John Broniak All rights reserved. 11 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank my dissertation director, Dr. Suzanne Cunningham, and my dissertation readers, Dr. Hans Seigfried and Dr. Alfred Gini, for their comments and suggestions in helping bring this work to its present form. Their encouragement and support also guided me through the anxieties and uncertainties that attend a person's first sustained effort to produce a work that contributes to the scholarship of the field of inquiry. They helped to tum a daunting task into a manageable and ultimately satisfying learning experience. Second, I wish to thank Loyola University Chicago and its Philosophy Department for all of its financial support and the opportunities for philosophical conversations it has provided me during my fourteen years of graduate study. In that time I received three years of income as a research assistant, two years of a prestigious and abundant teaching fellowship, a summer fellowship to develop a computer software program to aid in the instruction of philosophical terminology, and six years of part-time teaching the inquiring minds of Loyola students. Without the university's financial generosity, I would not have been able to pursue an advanced degree to do what I love to do: read, write, and discuss philosophy with others. I am most grateful for their financial support. iii Most importantly, I want to thank my sisters and brothers, their husbands, wives, and children, and my friends for all of their love and emotional support. The best reason for finishing one's graduate degree "in a timely fashion" is that one's parents will live to see it happen. While my parents have passed on from this life, my sisters and brothers have taken up the social duties that help candidates finish. For praising my small accomplishments, for cajoling me through my lazy and less lovable times, and for taking me under your roof when I would come home to visit: for all this and much more, I give you thanks. I hope I have returned at least some measure of the love and joy you have been in my life. lV In loving memory of my parents Esther Kallas Broniak (December 29, 1924--July 3, 1987) and Leonard Robert Broniak (July 1, 1923--March 20, 1992) TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . iii LIST OF IlLUSTRATIO NS . viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS . ix INTRODUCTION . 1 Chapter I. SO-CALLED "PERCEPTUAL ERRORS": ILLUSIONS . 5 illusions of Ambiguity . 7 illusions of Organization . 12 illusions of Motion . 17 illusions of Constancy . 18 illusions and an Adequate Theory of Perception . 25 II. CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES OF PERCEPTION . 29 Common Sense Realism and Descartes's Dream Argument . 30 Representational Realism: Primary and Secondary Qualities . 34 From Idealism to Skepticism: Berkeley and Hume . 40 Sense Data Theories of Perception . 51 Perception: Like Sensation, Only Different . 63 ill. HUSSERL'S THEORY OF HORIZONS . 71 An Exposition of Husserl's Theory of Horizons . 73 Horizons and the Generation of Perceptual Meaning . 89 Summary ..................................... 95 vi IV. JAMES'S THEORY OF FRINGES . 97 James's Approach to Perceptual Experience . 98 Fringes Within the Context of James's Stream of Thought ........ 113 Fringes and Perception ............................. 124 V. A CONTEXTUAL THEORY OF PERCEPTION ............... 143 Perceptual Meaning and Theories of Perception . 148 Broniak' s Contextual Theory of Perception . 154 Satisfying the Four Criteria of an Adequate Theory of Perception ... 169 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................... 178 VITA .............................................. 186 Vll LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure Page 1. Miiller-Lyer Illusion . 8 2. Face/vase Illusion . 9 3. Boring's Old/Young Woman . 10 4. Ambiguous Trident . 12 5. Transparency Display . 13 6. illusory Contours . 15 7. Fragmented Figure . 16 8. Perspective and Context . 19 9. James's Diagram of Thought ............................ 135 10. Single Continuum of Actual Events ........................ 136 11. Second Dimension of Atemporality . 138 12. The "Development" of Experience . 156 13. Experience as Transposed Contextual Frames of Reference ......... 159 14. Flowchart Diagram of the Perceiver's Role in the Perceptual Process ... 162 Vlll LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Works of Edmund Husserl Works of William James CM Cartesian Meditations BC Psychology: Briefer Course ID Experience and Judgment EPH Essays in Philoso_phy FfL Formal arul Transcendental EPS Essays in Psychology ~ ERE Essays in Radical Empiricism Ideas I ~Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and .tQ a Phe- MT The Meaning of Truth: A nomenological Philosophy Sequel to "Pragmatism." LI Logical Investigations Prag Pragmatism: A New Name fQr Some Old Ways of Think- Pi' Phenomenological Psychology ing Crisis The Crisis of European Sci- pp The Principles of Psychology ~ and Transcendental Phenomenology PU A Pluralistic Universe SPP Some Problems of Philosophy: A Beginning of an Introduc- tion to Philosophy TT Talks to Teachers on Psycho!- .on and .tQ Students on Some of Life's Ideals WB The Will .tQ Believe arul Other Essays in Popular Philosophy ix INTRODUCTION The aim of this dissertation is to sketch a framework for developing an adequate philosophical theory of perception. In order to accomplish this aim, I have chosen the following four criteria: 1. A suitable philosophical perceptual theory can account for the occurrence of perceptual errors, illusions, and hallucinations. 2. It will show that perception is inextricably connected with other structures of consciousness, such as memory, imagination, emotion, and volition. 3. It will explicate the relationship between perception and activity. 4. It will include current research from the physiology and psychology of perception to support its philosophical claims. I have selected these four criteria for a dual purpose. On the one hand, it seems to me that most philosophical theories of perception deal with one or the other of these four conditions quite admirably. In their own way, each has contributed to the development of a more satisfactory philosophical theory. On the other hand, it seems to me that the failure of most philosophical theories of perception lies in the narrowness of each of the particular intuitions that have guided their theoretical formation. Some of the mistakes these theories make arise from the theorists' desire to satisfy one of the above criteria as exhaustively as possible to the neglect of the others. Each of the criteria, in and of itself, is a legitimate necessary condition for an adequate theory of perception. But I think it is more important to evaluate the adequacy of a philosophical theory of 2 perception according to the degree to which it meets all four of these criteria. The true strength of these criteria lie in philosophers treating them as a group. Their power lies in the criteria's ability to counterbalance the headstrong intuitions motivated by the others and get those intuitions to join forces rather than exclude one another. The dissertation is divided into five chapters. Chapter One introduces the reader to the complexity of perception as a philosophical issue. It does this by presenting a variety of types of visual illusions which continue to provoke philosophical inquiry and discussion. The point of the first chapter is to show why something like the first criterion is a necessary condition for an adequate theory of perception. Chapter Two surveys the extent to which some classical modem philosophers satisfy the first criterion with their theories of perception. Each in his own way makes a positive contribution to the development of perceptual theory. Invariably, however, these theories fail to grasp the significance of the function of contexts in explaining the occurrence of perceptual illusions. And to the extent that perceptual illusions are perceptual objects, these theories maintain that the exclusive awareness of the object independent of its relationships to its surroundings is all that a theory of perception need explain. Clearly, an adequate theory of perception requires more than this. In addition to its "environment," at least
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