TY - JOUR AU - Chojnacka, Marta Agata PY - 2020/06/13 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Sartre and Merleau-Ponty’s Theories of Perception as Cognition in the Context of Phenomenological Thought in Cognitive Sciences JF - Diametros JA - Diametros VL - 18 IS - 67 SE - Articles DO - 10.33392/diam.1197 UR - https://diametros.uj.edu.pl/diametros/article/view/1197 SP - 21-37 AB - <p>Husserl’s phenomenology was particularly influential for a number of French philosophers&nbsp;and their theories. Two of the most prominent French thinkers, Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, turned to the instruments offered by phenomenology in their attempts to understand&nbsp;the notions of the body, consciousness, imagination, human being, world and many others. Both&nbsp;philosophers also provided their definitions of perception, but they understood this notion in very&nbsp;different ways. The paper describes selected aspects of Husserl’s phenomenology that were adopted&nbsp;by Sartre and Merleau-Ponty and depicts the presumptions of their respective theories of perception,&nbsp;as well as the differences between them. The main thesis presented here is that theories as different&nbsp;as those proposed by Sartre and Merleau-Ponty may, and indeed do, lead to the same conclusion,&nbsp;i.e. that perception represents a different form of cognition. Despite the differences between these&nbsp;theories, they can both be placed in the contemporary context of phenomenological research carried&nbsp;out by cognitive philosophers Dan Zahavi and Shaun Gallagher, as well as by the proponent of the&nbsp;enactive theory of perception, Alva Noë.</p> ER -