Chapter 4 develops Merleau-Ponty’s perspectival account of experience. It shows how Merleau-Ponty’s claim that perception has a different structure to what he calls ‘objective thought’ can be derived from his interpretation of Kant’s paradox of symmetrical objects. It looks at how this difference in structure leads to Merleau-Ponty’s distinctive accounts of perspectival depth and orientation in space, before returning to Kant to show how Merleau-Ponty’s account of perception as having a figure-background structure leads to substantial divergences from Kant’s account of the constitution of the object (in doing so, it reconstructs a sustained argument against Kant’s transcendental deduction from fragmentary comments throughout Merleau-Ponty’s work). It also shows that the model of determination developed by Merleau-Ponty, while relying on context, differs significantly from Hegel’s account of determination, and supplements deficiencies in Sartre’s account.

Festinger, Schachter, and Back’s Social Pressures in Informal Groups (henceforward FSB’s SPIG) was one of the most exciting and theoretically generative works in what we now think of as the field of social networks, emerging from one of the focal arenas of Gestalt-psychology-inspired research. It established the importance of functional distance for relationship formation, and demonstrated that there were effects of variations on the scale of feet, not miles. It also used a clever research design to attempt to see if information spread along social networks. The clarity of FSB’s structuralist vision was to some degree clouded by the then-common reification of groups, and a tendency to focus on normative and functional goals to the exclusion of all else. Yet here were many of the seeds of the structural approach to social networks.

New ideas seldom appear completely out of the blue, says Mrs. Gribbin when introducing the sixth chapter. She explains that long before their appearance, there are usually hints that new ideas are coming. So it was with cognitivism. This chapter looks at three distinct theoretical approaches that reflect the behavioristic notions that preceded them while foreshadowing the more mentalistic, cognitive positions that followed. Hebb’s speculation about the neurological basis of higher mental processes in the form of cell assemblies and phase sequences is based on behaviorist theory but opens the door to speculation about thinking. Tolman’s argument that even the behavior of the lowly rat, usually explained using conditioning principles, is nevertheless purposeful reflects a clearly cognitive orientation. And the Gestalt notion that learning is not so much a matter of reinforced trials and errors but more a question of insight in the struggle to perceive whole, meaningful, and satisfying patterns also reveals a cognitive inclination. The chapter illustrates how the machine-like metaphors of behaviorism reflected the conviction that explanations should be tied to observable events. The metaphors of cognitivism are less literal: They are metaphors invented for structures that cannot so easily be observed and described.

This essay contextualises Wittgenstein’s remarks on aspect-seeing in connection with his reading of Wolfgang Köhler, and thereby within a wider discussion of seeing. Most commentators devote little attention to the use of ‘see’ with which aspect-seeing is contrasted. It tends to be interpreted in the literature in two contrasting ways which, the author suggests, could be lined up with Köhler’s distinction between ‘analytic’ and ‘normal’ modes of perception, corresponding to a distinction between ‘seeing shapes and colours’ and ‘seeing things’. It is argued that Wittgenstein’s ‘aspect-seeing’ use of ‘see’ contrasts differently with each of these. Moreover, it is argued that these three uses of ‘see’ work differently in the context of looking at pictures and looking at the world. Finally, it is suggested that understanding Wittgenstein’s claim that seeing an aspect is ‘seeing a meaning’ is an invitation to contemplate what would be missing from the life of the aspect-blind; and it is suggested that seeing a thingis likewise ‘seeing a meaning’.

Psychology became an independent subject during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Competing approaches to psychology, called schools, arose during this period. Each school had different views concerning the proper subject matter and research methods for psychology. Introspectionism analyzed subjective experience using experimental methods. Behaviorism rejected the study of subjective experience and insisted on objective methods. Functionalism was inspired by Darwin’s evolutionary theory and was open to the use of a variety of methods. Gestalt psychology studied subjective experience but took a holistic approach rather than the analytic approach of introspectionism. Psychoanalysis was a theory of development and personality based largely on clinical experience. The differences between the schools were never completely resolved, and psychologists wondered if there would ever be a paradigm that provided a unified approach to the subject. Cognitive psychology, which appropriated information-theoretic and computational approaches, appeared to some to provide such a paradigm. However, no single approach to psychology emerged triumphant. Indeed, many psychologists are flexible enough to tailor their approach to the problem on which they are working rather than use the same approach regardless of the nature of the problem.