childhood & philosophy
a journal of the international council of
philosophical inquiry with children
Contra Deficient
Child Perception: A Husserlian analysis
Daniel Shepherd
Abstract:
In
this paper we use Husserl’s theory of perception to explore how child and adult
perception works through the same mechanisms. First, we explore Husserl’s
description of sensory perception, showing that the child, like the adult, will
be able to enrich the total perception of the object through access to successive
appearances of an object. Next, we explore how the child’s ability to perceive
objects can be enriched in complex ways, showing that an adult or a child will
both be able to access a greater ‘enduring entity’ of the object. Finally, we
consider the child’s ability to remember their perceptions through memory,
showing how the child and the adult use the ego’s intentionality, rather than
active remembering, as a component of the memory of a perception.
Key Words: Husserl, perception, children,
phenomenology, Abschattung, memory
The adult attitude toward a
child is often impacted by their negative biases concerning children. One
example of a negative bias is the impression that children have delinquent
perceptions of the world. Because their perceptions seem raw, naive,
impractical, and underdeveloped, the child, as compared to an adult, are thus
viewed as having delinquent perceptions. However, an analysis of Husserl’s theory
of perception shows that children do not have any more difference than adults
in their abilities to perceive.
In
this paper we use Husserl’s theory of perception to explore how child and adult
perception works through the same mechanisms. First, we explore Husserl’s
description of sensory perception, showing that the child, like the adult, will
be able to enrich the total perception of the object through access to
successive appearances of an object. Next, we explore how the child’s ability
to perceive objects can be enriched in complex ways, showing that an adult or a
child will both be able to access a greater ‘enduring entity’ of the object.
Finally, we consider the child’s ability to remember their perceptions through
memory, showing how the child and the adult use the ego’s intentionality,
rather than active remembering, as a component of the memory of a perception.
In conclusion, when
considering Husserl’s theory of perception and its relation to child and adult
perception, we find several reasons to support the similarity between the
perceptions of children and adults. We will show why the work one accomplishes
with children must reflect this similarity. Consequently, we will posit some of
the ways this similarity can lead to the alteration of the child’s classroom
experience.
The adult attitude
toward a child is often impacted negatively by the adult’s biases concerning
children. One example of an adult bias toward children is the impression that
children have deficient perceptions of the world. Children’s perceptions are
viewed as deficient because, in contrast to adult perception, they seem raw,
naive, impractical, and underdeveloped. According to this bias of perception,
then, the child’s deficiencies are contrasted with the adult’s adequateness. An
adult has adequate perception because their perceptions are informed,
pragmatic, and well-developed. An adult has had the time to learn from their
misperceptions. The child is still forming their ability, or skill, to
perceive- an ability which has already been perfected by the adult’s relative
skill level. The bias, in short, promulgates the myth that the adult retains an
advantage over the child in the range of perception.
However, if we
consider perception from a Husserlian standpoint, using phenomenology, we
should not discount child perception as being deficient. Similarly, we should
not laude adult perception as being adequate. Rather, an analysis of Husserl’s
theory of perception shows that, phenomenologically, children do not have any more
difference in their perceptions than do adults. Each perceives the world in a
similar manner. If we consider these similarities more carefully, we will find
that the child does not retain any perceptual deficiencies.
When we incorporate
a Husserlian-phenomenological approach to our questions concerning these biases
against the child, the biases do not stand. In this paper we shall present
these biases more explicitly and submit them, systematically, to the Husserlian
approach to perception. Consequently, we shall show that when one incorporates
the phenomenological aspect of Husserl’s theory of perception into their
considerations, the biases against child perception cannot be retained.
Instead, the child and adult similarity in perception must be maintained.
1. The Child’s Sensory Perception.
Since it is through
our senses that objects are initially presented, the role of the senses
provides a strong starting point for considering a theory of perception. To
this we add a question which is derived from our thesis: perhaps a difference
exists for children and adults in the way they perceive objects with their
senses. For instance, infants are often fooled to think an object has
disappeared when it moves beyond their field of vision. An adult knows that the
object has just moved beyond the range of their senses. They understand that
humans have a specific range of perception beyond which the world does not
disappear. A child, however, may think the object disappears because they do
not understand that the world extends beyond their sensory perspective.
Husserl considers
the way objects pass through our field of vision.[i]
He finds that the senses denote a limit or a field of perspective. He considers
an object- we will imagine a red ball- moving through the field of our
perspective; the red ball starts from our forehead and then moves away into the
distance. “The series of the object has (1) a distance limit, beyond which the
object no longer appears . . . and (2) a near limit, the limit of optimal
clarity and distinctness.”[ii]
By considering the
movement of the red ball to be a series, beginning at the near limit and
proceeding toward the distant limit, Husserl indicates important information
about the object we perceive. Each successive appearance of the object in the
series is preceded by a memory of the appearance directly before it. The
initial memory of the appearance of the red ball as it enters the near limit
precedes the second, successive appearance of the red ball in the series. Each
preceding memory of an appearance informs the perception of the successive
appearance as the red ball is viewed.
Thus, even as the
red ball moves away toward the distance limit away from the viewer, the
viewer’s perception of the ball is enriched by each new memory of the preceding
appearance. As Husserl writes, “each appearance of the object as further away
is not only an appearance of the object, but also an appearance of the
appearance of the object as nearer.”[iii]
Because our vision may be interpreted in this series of appearances, our
perception of an object is always becoming enriched as the series
continues.
Husserl thought that
both the child and the adult’s vision may be interpreted as a successive series
of appearances and that this common experience is a part of normal sensory
perception. As for a child who witnesses the red ball’s movement, whether or
not they understand the ball to disappear when it leaves their visual field,
the child still perceived the successive series of appearances through which
their perception of the object is enriched. It would be wrong for an adult to
discount the child’s sensory perception since each successive appearance in a
series enriches the perception and no successive appearance in a series makes
the perception deficient. This judgment is appropriately Husserlian because the
enriching potential of perception focuses precisely on the perceiver and the
perceived.[iv]
2. The Child’s Perception of Complexly
Constituted Objects.
Perhaps if the child
and the adult have similar sensory perceptions the information each derives
from those sensory perceptions will be different. Even if the successive appearances
of an object in a series enrich the perception of the object as constituted,
the complexity of these appearances would become greater as more appearances
become available. For some adults the resulting complexity may account for a
deficiency in a child’s perception because children are considered by some
adults to possess less of an ability to understand the complexly constituted
object.
Husserl does not
believe the child’s ability to understand perceived information, specifically
the complexly constituted object, to be lacking. He understands the complexly
constituted object to become part of a larger hyletic flow which creates a
‘material side’ within the visual field. When we consider the successive
appearances of the object, like the red ball, the continual constitution
creates a ‘simultaneous’ hyletic flow from which we are given the understanding
of an ‘enduring entity’.[v]
That is, the
enduring entity of our perception of the red ball is formed by the hyletic flow
of data from each successive appearance.[vi]
Both the child and the adult access an enduring entity through the hyletic flow
of visual or tactile data from the successive appearances of an object.
However, how can we be sure that the adult’s ‘enduring entity’ is no more
complex than the child’s ‘enduring entity’?
Husserl answers this
objection with an explanation of the term Abschattung.
The hyletic flow which forms an enduring entity can be understood in its
entirety as an Abschattung
(adumbration) of an enduring being.
Husserl refers to
the potential of the Abschattung as a
“further element which is the basis for taking as an appearance of an object
which actually appears in it but might appear in other appearances.”[vii]
The Abschattung allows the complex
constitution of perceptions of objects like the red ball to be given as an
enduring being; through the Abschattung
we perceive future or potential appearances of the ball.
Therefore, the Abschattung represents a givenness which
allows the object to become perceived more deeply. It increases the richness of
the hyletic flow and creates a connection between the body and the red ball.
Husserl understands the Abschattung
as giving “the basis for grasping space as the continuum of loci my body can
occupy, and then as the loci of other things with reference to my body.”[viii]
The Abschattung aids in our
experience of the red ball because through it we are able to understand the
relationship of our body to the space wherein the perceived ball exists.
The ability given
through the Abschattung to grasp every
potential appearance of the red ball as well as its relationship to the body in
space is important. The Abschattung
is a further perception which allows access to the enduring being of the object
in every potential complexity or special quality. The continuum given by the Abschattung may be accessed through the
enduring entity of a child’s perceptions or an adult’s perceptions. It assures
that even if there are complex constitutions of the enduring entity, the object
is equally accessible to everyone. Therefore the child’s perceptions are not
deficient next to the adult’s perceptions.
3. The Child’s Memory of Perception.
Even if a child or
adult always has access to an Abschattung
through the enduring entity created by the hyletic flow, perhaps we may
question the ability for the child to remember the perception as well as the
adult can. This is an adequate objection to the thesis, because even if
everyone experiences the object through similar perceptions, empirical evidence
would seem to suggest that not everyone will recall the perception with the
same clarity. A young child, after all, simple does not have the same amount of
experiences in the world as an adult. Many times we take this to be the reason
children take several attempts to learn something. Perhaps the child has simply
not matured in their ability to recall the original perception of the object
and is, therefore, deficient in memory.
From the original
perception of an object to the reconstruction of the perception, the
progression of a perceptual memory is a concern for Husserl. He indicates that
many different objects exist within our horizon without being focused upon, in
his words, ‘passively’. When we pick any object, a red ball, out of the horizon
we attend to it ‘actively’.[ix]
Husserl writes that when one actively attends to objects in the present, one
becomes “aware of them . . . as having been ‘there’ before [the] attending.”[x]
This begins a very complex set of temporally referenced moments of awareness in
which the continual active attendance of the red ball requires an active
remembering of the red ball as having been there before each present
attending.
Active remembering
takes place when we recall an already past active perception that is realized
as a new active moment. Husserl refers to this active remembering as being
“conditioned as a Weckung (awakening)
that goes from a present Interesse (interest)
out toward a past similar object, already passively associated.”[xi]
This continues in a specific chain of retentions in which the active
remembering forms a self-identity that is adumbrated (Abschattung) in successive retentions and retentions of
retentions. This adumbration is given in
a hyletic flow in which the ego’s intentionality, the intentional expression of
the memory by the ego, gives appearances of the red ball in all successive
retentions
According to
Husserl, the ego’s intentionality, rather than its active remembering, is the
necessary component of the memory of a perception.[xii]
In this respect, we may say that even for the most complex string of recalling,
it is not the string or the memory itself that should be considered, but the
adumbration given in the hyletic flow through which the ego’s intentionality
becomes manifest. The child’s memory of a perception, no matter how difficult
it is to recall, is always accessible through the ego’s intentionality. Husserl
finds that it is not merely the ability to actively remember, but the ability
to recall with intentionality which is critical. Therefore, the child’s memory of
a perception, when compared with the adult’s memory of a perception, is not
deficient as long as the ego’s intentionality remains.
4. Final Thoughts.
When considering
Husserl’s theory of perception and its relation to children and adult’s
perceptions, we find several reasons to support the similarity between the
perceptions of children and the perceptions of adults. A bias against
children’s perceptions, that they are raw, naive, impractical, and
underdeveloped, does not stand when we examine children’s sensory perceptions,
their perception of complexly constituted objects, and their memory of
perception through a Husserlian analysis. Husserl’s theory of perception
indicates that children are able to perceive just as adequately as adults
perceive.
If perception is
similar in children and adults, the work we do with children must reflect this
fact. Understanding the similarity between the child’s perception and the
adult’s perception is not only useful in combating the biases we have toward
children, it is also useful in understanding the manner in which our actions
reflect this bias.
Philosophically, an
assumption that children are less adequate or underdeveloped will lead to
problems with teaching and respecting children. In order to positively
introduce the world to children as a teacher, it is critical not to undervalue
the child’s own contributions, insights, and problems. If children’s
perceptions about the world are understood to be just as adequate as an adult’s
perceptions, we will be able to learn from them in the classroom. In
understanding that children and adult’s have equally valid perceptions the
classroom experience can be radically altered. By learning with children the need for frequent evaluation can be unstressed
while the need for common dialogue and narrative can be stressed.
[i]
[ii] Conversations 72
[iii] Conversations 72
[iv] Husserl, Edmund. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to
a Phenomenological Philosophy; General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology.
Translated by F. Kersten. Edited by Bernet. 1998 ed. VII vols. Vol. II, Edmund
Husserl; Collected Works.
[v] Conversations 64; Husserl himself alludes to the prospect that both children and adults have similar perceptions. Before he is recorded saying, “The whole psychic life is determined by a tendency to evoke or constitute the enduring . . .” Husserl says, “The infant, like the adult, is impelled to evoke actively those kinaesthetic sequences which show themselves to bring about the endurance or recurrence of something valued . . . ” Both groups seek to bring about the enduring and the whole physical life is determined to evoke enduring. For Husserl this enduring is critical in perception.
[vi] Conversations 78; As Husserl writes, “We find that this perception
has a ‘material’ side, the constitution in immanent time of a certain
homogeneous flow within the wider flow of the ‘visual field’. This hyletic flow
is of momentary data that are quantitatively alike and, in so far as
simultaneous, ‘outside’ of each other. But as hyletic flow, it is not a unity
but the basis for the constitution of an enduring entity”
[vii] Conversations 79
[viii] Conversations 79
[ix] Conversations 53; the difference between activity and passivity is present on the level of perception. I am affected by certain things, they stimulate me, and I answer them with active attention. That which stays within the background, or those objects given as on the border (horizonmassig) of the active perception, make up the passive field.
[x] Conversations 53
[xi] Conversations 54
[xii] Conversations 54; this is
an insight gained from