The Phenomenology Of Perception By Maurice Merleau Ponty Essay

In Meditation Two of René Descartes’ Meditation on First Philosophy, he notes the sight of “men crossing the square.” This observation is important as Descartes states, “But what do I see aside from hats and clothes, which could easily hide automata? Yet I judge them to be men.” This is an important realization as Descartes argues that instead of purely noticing the men through sight, it is actually “solely with the faculty of judgement,” the mind, that perceives and concludes that the thing wearing a hat and clothes are men. I argue that this view of the outside world by Descartes is incomplete as his idea of “I” is faulty, as well as having a misunderstanding on the importance of the senses.

Despite this problem, we believe it is the same piece of wax we see, touch, or imagine. But it is not our feelings or imagination that gives us the idea. If we had evaluated these abilities, and if the wax is distorted, we would not be able to agree that it is the same wax. This study enables us to recognize that the imagination, just like sensation, does not convey the true nature of wax; rather, this difficulty indicates that only understanding, exercising its powers of conception and judgment, performs the unifying function that constitutes the self-identity of the piece of wax: “our perception of the wax is neither a seeing, nor a touching, nor an imagining… but the mind alone” (68). Although the changing characteristics of the body has been transported through our senses and imagination, the identity of the matter is provided by the understanding of the wax itself. This analysis confirms Descartes’ view that “what we thought we had seen with our eyes, we actually grasped solely with the faculty of judgment, which is in our mind” (68). Therefore, any sense of the body is actually an introspection of our mind, not an external inspection.

The issue of the origins of consciousness has been a problem that has philosophers and scientists alike, puzzled for years. Is it a matter of science? Can it be explained through neurobiological processes or is it just something that simply cannot be reduced to words? Rene Descartes had struggled to explain this problem through his idea of substance dualism. This idea states that the mind and body are of two separate worlds, the physical world and the mental world. He then goes on by describing himself as a “thinking thing” and questions the existence with the mind and body thus bringing the questions of the material and the immaterial. From this sprouts the mind-body problem, the connection between mental phenomena and the physical world on which the mind depends. In this philosophical essay, I will question whether the mind and body coexist or if they are two separate entities that make us who we are.

Methods and Meditations on First Philosophy is a discourse by Rene Descartes, which largely focuses on the nature of humanity and divinity. This essay is a discussion of this discourse, and will summarize, explain and object to various parts of his work. The majority of this essay focuses on Descartes Sixth Meditation, which includes his argument that corporeal things do exist.

Martin Heidegger stated, criticizing the “wrong” path that western philosophy deviated to, that people understood “being” only in the superficial sense. The advancements in mathematics and natural sciences along the millennia always pre-assumed that being was a known phenomenon and never bothered to explore its true nature; bypassing the herculean task, we never delved into what “Ontos” really

The terms in the title refer to the two primary constituents of reality: being, which is non-conscious, and the negation of being, which is the way Sartre conceives of consciousness. This consciousness of being is examined by a method called phenomenological, which suggests that no pretension is being made to uncover the ultimate nature of reality in a "metaphysics," but that Sartre intends to describe as accurately as possible the structures of reality as it appears.

With this controversy of trying to figure out reality and the universe comes the understanding of our own consciousness. Alan Wallace takes a look into becoming consciously aware of your own self and consciousness in his book, “Embracing Mind: The Common Ground of Science and Spirituality.” However, this idea of metaphysical materialism and naturalism can challenge this notion of conscious awareness because it involves this idea that our mind can persuade our body, whereas metaphysical materialism/ naturalism believes that the body persuades the mind. Therefore, Wallace’s look at conscious awareness is challenging the notion of metaphysical materialism and naturalism.

The author’s metaphysical format brings together philosophical and religious issues, which are brought out by the use of paradoxes and conceits. For instance, death is compared to as a “slave” that brings the “soul’s

Perception is defined as how you look at others and the world around you. Being able to select, organize and intercept information starts the perceptual process. Perception affects the way people communicate with others. An individual’s pattern of thinking can affect their perception of others. Most people communicate best with people of similar cultures.

There are four different sources of knowledge: perception, introspection, reason and memory. All our knowledge roots from our perception. Perception is the way humans sense the world outside the body. We perceive through our five senses: see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. Humans gain knowledge through experiences and experience through perception. Usually we can trust our senses to perceive our surroundings effectively but there are times we misperceive. Illusions, hallucinations or impediments of the accurate flow of information to our senses are examples of misperceptions. For example if someone hits their head causing their vision to blur or impedes them from effectively processing what occurring around them, then they shouldn’t trust their senses. Another example would be an anxiety attack causing a signal of threat to the brain also preventing the person from correctly processing their surroundings. If nothing can prove we are misperceiving then we have good reason to be believe our senses.

The Mind-Body problem arises to Philosophy when we wonder what is the relationship between the mental states, like beliefs and thoughts, and the physical states, like water, human bodies and tables. For the purpose of this paper I will consider physical states as human bodies because we are thinking beings, while the other material things have no mental processes. The question whether mind and body are the same thing, somehow related, or two distinct things not related, has been asked throughout the history of Philosophy, so some philosophers tried to elaborate arrangements and arguments about it, in order to solve the problem and give a satisfactory answer to the question. This paper will argue that the Mind-Body Dualism, a view in

In the stages leading up to self-consciousness, consciousness placed the locus of truth into that which it took to be other than itself. The particular and immediate being of the

It is human nature to interpret and reinterpret life and find meaning of one’s place in the world. Without such knowledge, or belief for that matter, any possibility of humanity is lost. Hence, humans are plagued with the necessity to interpret themselves and their connections to their surroundings—both human and physical. Because one’s connections and contexts for interpretation are endless in some sense, humans are inherently a divided self—the culmination of all given interpretations they make for themselves and interpretations from others. In addition, this totality of interpretations through the lens selves as being what is around you, it follows that poetic-rhetorical language is necessary in discussion of the divided self.