An Ecological and Phenomenological Perspective on Consciousness and Perception: Contact with the World at the Very Heart of the Being of Consciousness

Abstract

Owing to the intentional nature of consciousness, people possess a special kind of contact with the real world. They apprehend part of it in a qualitative and cognitive manner at the ontological level suitably described as corresponding to the psychological. At the core of the visual system's molar activities, a stream of visual awareness flows and is the very form wherein direct visual reference to the world is accomplished. Also a function of the visual system, when it is operating in the mode called “viewing” or “reflective seeing,” is one's immediate apprehension of visual perceptual experience per se. Using an approach that draws on both ecological and phenomenological thought, the author seeks to make progress toward a conceptual structure for consciousness.