Perceiving and Thinking

The act of perception always begins with selection from within a given context of what is sensed by
our faculties, and from a given orientation. That which becomes sensed is termed a sensum (plural:
sensa). The act of selection imaginatively interprets the sensum according to past experiences and
understanding, rounding out its representation and recognition in three dimensions, and in terms of
associated meanings. Through the categorizing activity of attention, the sensum becomes a percept,
or recognizable something. By categories and categorizing activity I mean the disclosure of meanings
in the world, and the fact that this occurs as we are already situated in the world, and with meanings.
For even when we don’t know what a thing is, we nevertheless recognize that it is, that it is some
thing, and that it is something for something, by virtue of being-in-the-world.1 This will gradually
become more clear.

Meanings result from the gathering apart, or selection, of sensa from a common background, and
the gathering together, or collection, of sensa, based upon the similarities of what has been gathered,
while maintaining the differentiation from the background.2 Stated simply, the sensa are categorized
as percepts through the process of selection and collection. The word ‘concept’ is similarly derived
as the words ‘selection’ and ‘collection’, for a concept is a ‘seizing together’, or ‘taking hold of a
manifold’.3 Concepts are developed through the categorizing process of selection and collection.

One type of meaning, denotation, seeks to limit or contain the meanings of the percept so that the
meaning stands for, or corresponds to, the object which is taken to actually exist in the world.
Whether this correspondence can be perfect in every respect is another matter.

Yet it is also true that a meaning does not have to refer to something actual in order to be
meaningful. The word “jackalope” designates a meaning (a cross between a jackrabbit and an
antelope), but it does not point to (denote) something which actually exists in the world. We may say
that “jackalopes” have only a “quasi-existence” in our imagination. We may also speak of meanings
that cannot be visualized in the imagination, due to the fact that the meaning is contradictory. Taken
literally, it is not possible to imagine a “square circle”, yet the idea of “squaring the circle” is an
ancient mathematical problem with symbolic significance. We shall return later to the meaning of
the word ‘symbol’, and differentiate between sign and symbol.

Before doing so, let us clarify what was said about designation, which is a modification of basic
mental advertence. Mental advertence is attentiveness as a ‘turning toward’. By basic mental
advertence we mean attentiveness as a turning toward something that is sensed in the actual world,
and which corresponds to a meaning. By designation we mean a modification of this turning toward
where we become attentive to the meaning in itself, rather than being attentive to something actual
in the world corresponding to a meaning. This is the experience of introspection, where we are not
completely attentive to the world around us. It allows us greater attention to the details of our
thoughts by temporarily diminishing the awareness of our surroundings. Oriented by our existence
as a body with sensory apparatus, our basic mental advertence is a being-in-the-world, and
designation is a secondary modification of advertence.

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Meanings may be organized by the use of signs. There are two elements of a sign, the signifier and
the signified. For example, the word ‘apple’ (spoken or written) is a signifier for the meaning which
is signified. That which is signified (the meaning), consists of an association of attributes (such as
the attributes which describe an apple). So the word and the meaning together constitute a sign. To
signify is simply to show something by signs.

In this particular example, the signifier (word) not only designates something signified (the meaning
of ‘apple’), but it also denotes (points to) any actual apple in the world. That which a sign denotes
(points to, refers to) is called a designatum. The signifier, and therefore the sign (as the signifier plus
the meaning signified), is said to stand for, refer to, point to, and represent the thing itself. In this
case, what is referred to is any example of an apple, therefore any actual apple would be a
designatum.

The other basic type of meaning, connotation, is an association of meanings or things which shows
comparative similarities, but does not involve simple correspondences. For instance, when we say
that someone is a “pig”, we are making associations without intending an exact correspondence. We
don’t literally mean that the person is a pig, which taken strictly would be in contradiction with being
a person, but rather that the person reminds us of a pig in at least one sense, but certainly not in every
respect. Being freer in searching out associations, connotation is more sensitive to what is
contributed by context, which it tends to broaden in order to facilitate making associations.

Connotation still makes use of signs, composed of signifier and signified, and can also possess a
designatum (something referred to), but the purpose of connotation is not to achieve precise, literal
correspondence, but rather a greater range of comparisons.

In the acts of selection and collection, objects denoted are compared as to their similarities and
differences. Apples, for instance, may be discriminated from a background of leaves and branches
by their attribute of roundness, and as they ripen, by their red colour in contrast to the green of the
leaves and brown of the branches, depending upon such circumstances as species of apple tree. (Not
all apples ripen to red.) Other senses contribute to discrimination also, yet all discrimination leads
to more general terms being brought into focus. For example, the designation ‘apple’ in contrast to
‘peach’ or ‘pear’, hence the designation ‘fruit’; the designations ‘red’, ‘green’, ‘brown’, and hence
‘colour’; or ‘round’, ‘long’, and hence ‘shape’, and so forth.

Both denotation and connotation involve intent, however implicit or explicit it is, and this intent
orients us toward different modes of perceiving. Our naturalistic orientation is a perceiving and
relating to the world wherein each thing refers to other things in a context of utility, extending from
the most basic needs (such as thirst, hunger, pain avoidance, etc.) to the making and use of tools
(technology in the broadest sense). As mentioned, something is always something for something.
The thing is perceived and understood in terms of its context of usefulness. This is what Heidegger
terms the zuhandenheit, or ‘readiness-at-hand’, of things.4 Our naturalistic orientation directly
involves us in the world, or a particular context within the world (such as a home, carpentry shop,
traffic system, hockey game, etc.), and any other type of intending orientation is a modification of

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our being already situated in, and already being involved with, the world.

Furthermore, as social animals, we are oriented to being alongside others who are like ourselves,
irrespective of whether or not circumstance has isolated us. Other persons are not encountered
primarily as things, but as others like us, and our existence as persons is innately a being-with-
others.5 This is reflected in our tendency to speak aloud when we are not actively suppressing
speech, such as during states of stress, narrow focus of attention with diminished general awareness,
intoxication, and mental breakdown. In fact, it was not until the early centuries of the common era
that people began to read silently. Our natural tendency is to think and speak together, and it is
through education that we have learned to separate thinking and speaking, which is now so habitual
that we are generally unaware of doing it.

In speaking of being-with-others, it is interesting that people of ancient tribal cultures commonly

perceived all living creatures as persons. Aboriginal people of British Columbia traditionally speak
of “the salmon people”, and of our obligation to give thanks to them for providing us with
sustenance. There are some cultures where inanimate objects are perceived as persons in some sense
of the word. But these examples bring us to the realm of myth and symbol, which shall be addressed
shortly.

Education and experience (a form of self-education) may extend and refine our perception of the
readiness-at-hand of things. A seasoned hunter in the far north would not simply perceive snow, but
many different kinds of snow, and have different words for each of them. The survival of that hunter
could depend upon an ability to perceive these very different things (for example, perceiving the
conditions for an avalanche). Therefore, perception is not a passive but rather an intentional act. Its
categorizing is as much mental as sensory, and the process of selection and collection can generate
new percepts (hence new categories of percepts) indefinitely in this open-ended, creative process.6

In following through with the categorizing process, we discover other aspects of thinking besides
denotation, connotation and designation, or which build upon them. One of these is theoretical
perception. Instead of habitually and automatically utilizing a door handle or a light switch, where
the emphasis is on the context and the purpose which the context serves, we might actually pause
to observe the object in itself. This is very different from our ordinary awareness, wherein the
readiness-at-hand (zuhandenheit) of things turns our attention from what is at hand toward its context
of utility. We are often barely aware of the existence of such things, except as so much “stuff” for
our use (equipment or tools in the broadest sense). When encountering things as merely present-at-
hand, however, we detach things (and ourselves) from the familiar context, and centre our attention
on becoming acutely aware of what they are and that they are. This is what Heidegger refers to as
vorhandenheit, the pure ‘presence-at-hand’ of things, the objectification of things, where things are
seen primarily as objects existing independently of their use. This is the perception of the bare
thingness of things, where their ‘whatness’ and ‘thatness’ are made explicit and can be defined, thus
becoming theoretical perception. In so doing, we strive for disinterested objectivity, attempting to
“free” ourselves from all subjectivity so that we may reveal the pure thing-in-itself as something
independent of our representations of the thing.

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Even when we are familiar with the objects in our environment through knowing how to use them,
it gives us pause to be asked to define them in any precise sense. It is therefore important to note that
the encountering of things as pure presence-at-hand is secondary and derivative from the more
familiar mode of encountering things as ready-at-hand.7

When carrying through with selection and collection in the mode of perception of things present-at-
hand, we proceed in the manner of mathematics, science, logic and most (but not all) philosophy,
in an attempt to fix clear and distinct ideas, with greater and greater precision, supported by reason
and evidence. Naturally, this exacting approach tends to favour denotation over connotation, and we
shall return to this theme when touching upon some of the major stages in the development of
theoretical thinking.

With the clarification achieved to this point, I would like to return to what was said earlier about
signs, and make an important distinction between sign and symbol.

We have already noted that signs can sometimes designate a meaning without denoting an object.
In both cases, however, whether a sign designates a specific meaning without denoting a specific
object, or whether it designates a specific meaning and denotes a specific object, a sign can be
explained in words, and the explanation always belongs to a particular context of meanings. For
example, a red light means ‘stop’ in the context of a traffic system. Its meaning within the system
is clear, definable and unequivocal. Otherwise, as a sign, it would be useless.8

The meaning of a symbol is more comparable to connotation than denotation, and yet the meaning
of a symbol is more than connotation. By way of contrast with signs, a symbol has meaning that
cannot be explained in words, and has meaning that is independent of any contextual system.
Symbols cannot denote any object, they can embrace contradictory ideas, and symbols always point
beyond any particular meanings, summoning us to generate new meanings as creative insights. This
last point is referred to as symbolic pregnance.9

To give a few examples using the colour red as a symbol, it may include (without being limited by)
such meanings as passion, violence, the blood of the Saviour washing away the sins of the world,
the annual flooding of the Orontes River (carrying reddish soil), the astrological planet Mars, Mother
Prajñâpâramitâ (“Mother of the Buddhas”), alchemical sulphur, the element of fire, the rituals of
ripened corn (with reference to the reddish tassels), and so on.

And still there is more. Aside from symbols being metaphorical in the sense of the simultaneous
equating and negating of ideas or objects (similar in this regard to connotation), they are also
metaphorical in the more literal sense of ‘a carrying over’, moving us and carrying us along the
spiritual journey to the “other shore”, as the metaphor goes. Unlike any sign (with or without
connotations), symbols possess a tremendous numinous energy to transform consciousness, igniting
what had seemed to be fragmented elements of the personality into a harmonious integration of
thinking, feeling and action. In a word, we are talking about inspiration.10

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 These metaphors are meant to effect transformations in our experience of existence.
In contrast to the truths recognized by positivism, the truths of these metaphors are
neither ready-made nor the function of some state of affairs, some condition, that
precedes them, that already exists in the world. Instead, these metaphors make
themselves true by changing us. They are true only to the extent that they succeed in
soliciting our reflective awareness and bring about a transformation in our
experience. Therefore, they are not constantives; that is, they are not true in the way
that statements or assertions are true, mirroring, or corresponding to, some already
existing state of reality. Rhetorically considered, they are performative utterances,
making themselves true, rather, in the ways, and to the extent that, they can engage
us, can stimulate and motivate us, to work with them in exploring the dimensions of
our experience. Such metaphors assume that our experience is a living process, not
a state.11

The most direct manner of examining the implications in what has been stated thus far is to revisit
some of the key problems and turning points in the history of philosophy. Many of these
developments will centre upon the issues of objectivity and subjectivity, and their relation to truth.

Endnotes

1 Martin Heidegger, Being And Time (Harper & Row, Publishers, 1962), John Macquarrie &
Edward Robinson, trans., esp. sections 12-18.

2 David Bohm and F. David Peat, Science, Order, and Creativity (London and New York:
Routledge, 2000, 2nd edition), pp.112-113. Also, Ernest Klein, Klein’s Comprehensive
Etymological Dictionary Of The English Language (Amsterdam: Elsevier Scientific
Publishing Company, 1977): se + legere, ‘a gathering apart’; com + legere, ‘a gathering
together’.

3 Klein, ibid., the etymology of the word ‘concept’: -cept fr. L. capere, captus, ‘catch, seize,
take hold’ + prefix con-, ‘with, together’.

4 Heidegger, ibid., sections 15-16.

5 Ibid., section 26. “By ‘Others’ we do not mean everyone else but me – those over against
whom the “I” stands out. They are rather those from whom, for the most part, one does not
distinguish oneself – those among whom one is too.” (Ibid., section 26, p. 154.)

6 Bohm & Peat, ibid., pp. 63-64, 112-114.

7 Heidegger, ibid., sections 15 -16.

8 William D. Gairdner, The Book of Absolutes, A Critique of Relativism and a Defence of

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 Universals (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009), pp. 223-224. Gairdner includes a very
readable summary of the work of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), the founder of modern
“structural” linguistics.

9 Marie-Louise von Franz, Number And Time, Reflections Leading Toward A Unification Of
Depth Psychology And Physics (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1979), Andrea
Dykes, trans., p. 73. Seymour W. Itzkoff, Ernst Cassirer, Philosopher Of Culture (Boston:
Twayne Publishers, G.K. Hall & Co., 1977), Arthur W. Brown & Thomas S. Knight, eds.,
pp. 135-137, citing Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, trans. Ralph
Manheim (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953-1957), vol. III, pp. 202-203.

10 Klein, ibid., for the etymology of the word ‘metaphor’. Cf. Bohm & Peat, ibid. p. 38: “What
is essential here is that the act of creative perception in the form of a metaphor is basically
similar in all these fields, in that it involves an extremely perceptive state of intense passion
and high energy that dissolves the excessively rigidly held assumptions in the tacit
infrastructure of commonly accepted knowledge.”

11 David Michael Levin, Foreword, in Herbert V. Guenther, Wholeness Lost and Wholeness
Regained, Forgotten Tales of Individuation From Ancient Tibet (Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1994), Matthew Kapstein, ed. (SUNY Series in Buddhist Studies), pp.
xiii-xiv.

© 2010 Thomas William La Porte

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