xi Perception is not a science of the world, it is not even an act, a deliberate
taking up of a position; it is the background from which all acts stand out, and is presupposed by them.
xviii To seek the essence of perception is to declare that
perception is, not presumed true, but defined as access to truth.
xx Whether we are concerned with a thing perceived, a historical event
or a doctrine, to 'understand' is to take in the total intention
p.4 The perceptual 'something' is always in the middle of something else,
it always forms part of a 'field'.
p.8 Behaviour is thus hidden by the reflex, the elaboration and
patterning of stimuli, by a longitudinal theory of nervous functioning, which establishes a theoretical correspondence between
each element of the situation and an element of the reaction.
p.8 As in the case of the reflex arc theory, physiology of perception begins
by recognizing an anatomical path leading from a receiver through a definite transmitter to a recording station, equally specialized.
p.33 Empiricism cannot see that we need to know what we are looking for,
otherwise we would not be looking for it, and intellectualism fails to see that we need to be ignorant of what we are looking
for, or equally again we should not be searching. They are in agreement in that neither can grasp consciousness in the act
of learning, and that neither attaches due importance to that circumscribed ignorance, that still empty but already determinate
intention which is attention itself.
p.34 The first operation of attention is, then, to create for itself
a field, either perceptual or mental, which can be 'surveyed'... in which movements
of the exploratory organ or elaborations of thought are possible, but in which consciousness does not correspondingly
lose what it has gained and, moreover, lose itself in the changes it brings about.
p.57 One phenomenon releases another... by the meaning
which it holds out - there is a raison d'etre [JLJ - reason for being] for a thing which guides the flow of phenomena
without being explicitly laid down in any one of them, a sort of operative reason.
p.91 In fact the reflexes themselves are never blind processes:
they adjust themselves to a 'direction' of the situation, and express our orientation towards a 'behavioural setting'...
They trace out from a distance the structure of the object without waiting for its point by point stimulation. It is this
global presence of the situation which gives a meaning to the partial stimuli and causes them to acquire importance, value
or existence for the organism.
p.92 It [The reflex] causes them [objective stimuli] to exist as a situation,
it stands in a 'cognitive' relation to them, which means that it shows them up as that which it is destined to confront. The
reflex, in so far as it opens itself to the meaning of a situation, and perception; in so far as
it does not first of all posit an object of knowledge and is an intention of our whole being, are modalities of a
pre-objective view which is what we call being-in-the-world.
p.92 Prior to stimuli and sensory contents, we must recognize a
kind of inner diaphragm which determines, infinitely more than they do, what our reflexes and perceptions
will be able to aim at in the world, the area of our possible operations, the scope of our life.
p.100 From our point of view, a sensori-motor circuit is, within
our comprehensive being in the world, a relatively autonomous current of existence. Not that it always brings to
our total being a separable contribution, but because under certain circumstances it is possible to bring to light
constant responses to stimuli which are themselves constant... as we have shown elsewhere, sensori-motor circuits
are all the more clearly marked as one is concerned with more integrated existences
p.107 the originality of the movements which I perform with my body: they
directly anticipate the final situation, for my intention initiates a movement through space merely to attain the objective
initially given at the starting point; there is as it were a germ of movement which only secondarily develops into an objective
movement.
p.129 all these operations require the same ability to mark out boundaries
and directions in the given world, to establish lines of force, to keep perspectives in view, in a world, to organize
the given world in accordance with the projects of the present moment, to build into the geographical setting
a behavioural one, a system of meanings outwardly expressive of the subject’s internal activity...
for the normal person his projects... [bring] magically to view a host of signs which guide action, as notices in a museum
guide the visitor.
p.151 in the normal person the subject's intentions are immediately
reflected in the perceptual field, polarizing it, or placing their seal upon it, or setting up in it, effortlessly,
a wave of significance.
p.157 Let us therefore say rather, borrowing a term from other works, that
the life of consciousness - cognitive life, the life of desire or perceptual life - is
subtended by an 'intentional arc' which projects round about us our past, our future, our human setting, our physical, ideological
and moral situation, or rather which results in our being situated in all these respects. It is this intentional
arc which brings about the unity of the senses, of intelligence, of sensibility and motility.
p.191 At every moment some intention springs afresh from me,
if it is only towards the things round about me which catch my eye, or towards the instants, which are thrown up, and which
thrust back into the past what I have just lived through.
p.291 What counts for the orientation of the spectacle is
not my body as it in fact is, as a thing in objective space, but as a system of possible actions,
a virtual body with its phenomenal 'place' defined by its task and situation. My body is wherever there is something to be
done.
p.471 There is vision only through anticipation and intention
