On the Reality of Percepts: Husserl and Gibson

Abstract

Although the theoretical background of Edmund Husserl and James Gibson respectively could be hardly more distant, their accounts of perception show high compatibility. This compatibility does not extend to the ontological status of percepts. We propose here a short contrastive analysis of Gibson’s and Husserl’s theses on the relation between perception and reality. We dwell on three restrictions formulated by Gibson with regard respectively to the nature of memory, imagination and the biological meaning of affordances. These restrictions, which are functional to Gibson’s direct realism, are then criticised in the light of relevant Husserlian analyses. Finally, we suggest a phenomenological line of inquiry able to address and resettle the ordinary notion of perceptual reality.