The Structure of Behavior Quotes

“It is the function which permits us to understand the organism. Thus, when they are inborn, anatomical structures should be considered as topographical conditions of the original functional development, modifiable by the function itself and thus comparable to the electrode which governs the phenomenon of electrolysis but is altered by it in return; when they are acquired, they should be considered the result of the most habitual functioning; thus anatomy should be considered as a stage in the development of physiology. Finally, if it were established that the nerve processes in each situation always tend to re-establish certain states of preferred equilibrium, these latter would represent the objective values of the organism and one would have the right to classify behavior as ordered or disordered, significant or insignificant, with respect to them. These denominations, far from being extrinsic and anthropomorphic, would belong in the living being as such.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“Perspective does not appear to me to be a subjective deformation of things but, on the contrary, to be one of their properties, perhaps their essential property. It is precisely because of it that the perceived possesses in itself a hidden and inexhaustible richness, that it is a 'thing'...Far from introducing a coefficient of subjectivity into perception, it provides us with the assurance of communicating with a world which is richer than what we know of it, that is, of communicating with a real world...The perceived is grasped in an indivisible manner as an 'in-itself,' that is, as gifted with an interior which I will never have finished exploring; and as 'for-me,' that is, as given 'in person' through its momentary aspects. Neither this metallic spot which moves while I glance toward it, nor even the geometric and shiny mass which emerges from it when I look at it, nor finally, the ensemble of perspectival images which I have been able to have of it are the ashtray; they do not exhaust the meaning of the 'this' by which I designate it; and, nevertheless, it is the ashtray which appears in all of them...Thus, to do justice to our direct experience of things it would be necessary to maintain at the same time, against empiricism, that they are beyond their sensible manifestations and, against intellectualism, that they are not unities in the order of judgment, that they are embodied in their apparitions. The 'things' in naive experience are evident as perspectival beings ...I grasp in a perspectival appearance, which I know is only one of its possible aspects, the thing itself which transcends it. A transcendence which is nevertheless open to my knowledge--this is the very definition of a thing as it is intended by naive consciousness.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“In our image of the physical world, we are obliged to introduce partial totalities without which there would be no laws and which partial totalities are precisely what we understood above by form. The combined interplay of laws could withdraw existence from structures which had become stable and bring about the appearance of other structures, the properties of which are not predictable. Thus there is a flow of things which supports the laws and which
cannot be definitively resolved into them. To treat the physical world as if it were an intersecting of linear causal series in which each keeps its individuality, as if it were a world in which there
is no duration, is an illegitimate extrapolation; science must be linked to a history of the universe in which the development is discontinuous. We cannot even pretend to possess genuine "causal series," models of linear causality, in our established science. The notion of causal series can be considered a constitutive principle of the physical universe only if the law is separated from the process of verification which gives it objective value. The physical experiment is never the revelation of an isolated causal series: one verifies that the observed effect indeed obeys the presumed law by taking into account a series of conditions, such as temperature, atmospheric pressure, altitude, in brief, that is, a
certain number of laws which are independent of those which constitute the proper object of the
experiment.

Properly speaking, therefore, what one verifies is never a law but a system of complementary laws. There could be no question of supposing a point-for-point correspondence between the experiment and the physical laws; the truth of physics is not found in the laws taken one by one, but in their combinations.
Since the law cannot be detached from concrete events where it intersects with other laws and receives a truth value along with them, one cannot
speak of a linear causal action which would distinguish an effect from its cause; for in nature it is impossible to circumscribe the author, the one responsible as it were, of a given effect. Since we
nevertheless succeed in formulating laws, clearly all the parts of nature must not contribute equally in producing the observed effect. The only valid formulation of the principle of causality will be that which affirms, along with the solidarity of phenomena in the universe, a sort of lessening—proportional to the distance—of the influences exercised on a given phenomenon by prior and simultaneous phenomena. Thus laws and the linear relation of consequence to conditions refer us back to events in interaction, to "forms" from which they should not be abstracted.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“The notion of form which was imposed upon us by the facts was defined like that of a physical system, that is, as an ensemble of forces in a state of equilibrium or of constant change such that no law is formulable for each part taken separately and such that each vector is determined in size and direction by all the others. Thus, each local change in a form will be translated by a redistribution of forces which assures the constancy of their relation; it is this internal circulation which is the system as a physical reality. And it is no more composed of parts which can be distinguished in it than a melody (always transposable) is made of the particular notes which are its momentary expression. Possessing internal unity inscribed in a segment of space and resisting deformation from external influences by its circular causality, the physical form is an individual. It can happen that, submitted to external forces which
increase and decrease in a continuous manner, the system, beyond a certain threshold, redistributes its own forces in a qualitatively different order which is nevertheless only another expression of its
immanent law. Thus, with form, a principle of discontinuity is introduced and the conditions for a development by leaps or crises, for an event or for a history, are given. Let us say in other words that each form constitutes a field of forces characterized by a lawwhich has no meaning outside the limits of the dynamic structure considered, and which on the other hand assigns its properties to each internal point so much so that they will never be absolute properties, properties of this point. Taken in this sense, the notion of form seems scarcely assimilable for classical physics.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“The natural 'thing,' the organism, the behavior of others and my own behavior exist only by their meaning; but this meaning which springs forth in them is not yet a Kantian object; the intentional life which constitutes them is not yet a representation; and the 'comprehension' which gives access to them is not yet an intellection.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“Just as I can be mistaken concerning myself and grasp only the apparent or ideal signification of my conduct, so I can be mistaken concerning another and know only the envelope of his behavior. The perception which I have of him is never, in the case of suffering or mourning, for example, the equivalent of the perception which he has of himself unless I am sufficiently close to him that our feelings constitute together a single 'form' and that our lives cease to flow separately. It is by this rare and difficult consent that I can be truly united with him, just as I can grasp my natural movements and know myself sincerely only by the decision to belong to myself. Thus I do not know myself because of my special position, but neither do I have the innate power of truly knowing another. I communicate with him by the signification of his conduct; but it is a question of attaining its structure, that is of attaining, beyond his words or even his actions, the region where they are prepared.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“It has been said that what is called unconsciousness is only an inapperceived signification: it may happen that we ourselves do not grasp the true meaning of our life, not because an unconscious personality is deep within us and governs our actions, but because we understand our lived states only through an idea which is not adequate for them. But, even unknown to us, the efficacious law of our life is constituted by its true signification. Everything happens as if this signification directed the flux of mental events. Thus it will be necessary to distinguish their ideal signification, which can be true or false, and their immanent signification, or--to employ a clearer language which we will use from now on--their ideal signification and their actual structure ...We are not reducible to the ideal consciousness which we have of ourselves any more than the existent thing is reducible to the signification by which we express it.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“Physical laws do not furnish an explanation of the structures, they represent an explanation within the structures. They express the least integrated structures, those in which the simple relations of function to variable can be established. They are already becoming inadequate in the 'acausal' domain of modern physics.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“What is required by the facts which Freud describes under the name of repression, complex, regression or resistance is only the possibility of a fragmented life of consciousness which does not possess a unique significance at all times.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“What defines man us not hp the capacity to create a second nature--economic, social or cultural--beyond biological nature; it is rather the capacity of going beyond created structures in order to create others...These acts of the human dialectic all reveal the same essence: the capacity of orienting oneself in relation to the possible, to the mediate, and not in relation to a limited milieu...Thus, the human dialectic is ambiguous: it is first manifested by the social or cultural structures, the appearance of which it brings about and in which it inspires itself. But it's use - objects and its cultural objects would not be what they are if the activity which brings about their appearance did not also have as its meaning to reject them and to surpass them.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“The possession of a representation or the exercise of a judgment is not coextensive with the life of consciousness. Rather, consciousness is a network of signification intentions which are sometimes clear to themselves and sometimes, on the contrary, lived rather than known.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“The form is a visible or sonorous configuration (or even a configuration which is prior to the distinction of the senses) in which the sensory value of each element is determined by its function in the whole and varies with it...This same notion of form will permit us to describe the mode of existence of the primitive objects of perception. They are lived as realities, we have said, rather than known as true objects.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“Everything which we know of infantile perception and its lacunae permits us to think that the meaning of a word is not determined in the mind of the child by the comparison of objects which it designates in turn but by the cross-checking of logical contexts of which it is a part. It is not because two objects resemble each other that they are designated by the same word; on the contrary, it is because they are designated by the same word and thus participate in the same verbal and affective category that they are perceived as similar. Thus, even when it is addressed to natural objects, nascent perception is still related to them through certain artifacts, the words; and nature is perhaps grasped initially only as that minimum of stage setting which is necessary for the performance of a human drama--a remark which is not new, if it is not taken in a strict sense. People have long spoken of infantile 'animism'; but the expression seems improper to the extent that it evokes an interpretation in which the child would confer a signification on the qualitative givens which is distinct from them, which would construct souls to explain things. The truth is that there are no things, only physiognomies--just as in adults a mescaline intoxication can give animal appearances to objects and make an owl out of a clock without any hallucinatory image whatsoever.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“It It is possible to perceive a smile, or even a sentiment in this smile, without the colors and the lines which 'compose' the face, as one says, being present to consciousness or given in an unconscious. Thus, the frequently noted fact that we can know a physiognomy perfectly well without knowing the color of the eyes or the hair, the form of the mouth or of the face should be taken quite literally...The human signification is given before the alleged sensible signs. A face is a center of human expression, the transparent envelope of the attitudes and desires of others, the place of manifestation, the barely material support for a multitude of intentions. This is why it seems impossible to treat a face or a body, even a dead body, like a thing. They are sacred entities, not the 'givens of sight.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“The world, in those of its sectors which realize a structure, is comparable to a symphony.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“In a soap bubble as in an organism, what happens at each point is determined by what happens at all the others.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“The structure of behavior is neither thing nor consciousness, and it is this which renders it opaque to the mind.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“The coordinated elements are not only coupled with each other, they constitute together, by their very union, a whole which has its proper law and which manifests it as soon as the first elements of excitation are given, just as the first notes of a melody assign a certain mode of resolution to the whole. While the notes taken separately have an equivocal signification, being capable of entering into an infinity of possible ensembles, in the melody each one is demanded by the context and contributes its part by expressing something which is not contained in any one of them and which binds them together internally. The same notes in two different melodies are not recognized as such. Inversely, the same melody can be played two times without the two versions having a single common element if it has been transposed. Coordination is now the creation of a unity of meaning which is expressed in the juxtaposed parts, the creation of certain relations, the creation of certain relations which owe nothing to the materiality of the terms which they unite.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“To learn never consists in being made capable of repeating the same gesture, but of providing an adapted response to the situation by different means. Nor is the response acquired with regard to an individual situation. It is rather a question of a new aptitude for resolving a series of problems of the same form. It is known that, in children, the acquisition of differential behavior with respect to colors is slow and difficult. When the child has succeeded in distinguishing red and green and naming them comcretely, what is acquired is not properly speaking the discrimination of these two qualities as such; it is a general power of comparing and distinguishing colors: all pairs of colors benefit from the distinction of red and green and differential behavior progresses not from one to the other but by a finer and finer discrimination with regard to all of them.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“Each point of the concrete expanse currently seen must possess not only a present localization but also a series of virtual localizations which will situate it with respect to my body when my body moves, in such a way, for example, that I thrust my left arm without hesitation into the sleeve which was on my right when the coat was placed in front of me...Each perceived position has a meaning only as integrated into a framework of space which includes not only a sensible sector, actually perceived, but also a 'virtual space' of which the sensible sector is only a momentary aspect.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“The living physiology of the nervous system can only be understood by starting from phenomenal givens.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“I do not perceive simply "things" but also use-objects: an article of clothing, for example...Nerve functioning distributes not only spatial and chromatic values but also symbolic values.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“The genesis of the whole by composition of the parts is fictitious. It arbitrarily breaks the chain of reciprocal determinations,..Each chronaxie is but one aspect of the total process; it is by abstraction that it is treated as a local event. In the nervous system there are only global events.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“It is not a question of risking one hypothesis among others, but of introducing a new category, the category of "form," which, having its application in the inorganic as well as the organic domain, would permit bringing to light the "transverse functions" in the nervous system of which Wertheimer speaks and whose existence is confirmed by experience without a vitalist hypothesis. For the "forms," and in particular the physical systems, are defined as total processes whose properties are not the sum of those which the isolated parts would possess. More precisely they are defined as total processes which may be indiscernable from each other while their "parts," compared to each other, differ in absolute size; in other words the systems are defined as transposable wholes. We will say that there is form whenever the properties of a system are modified by every change brought about in a single one of its parts and, on the contrary, are conserved when they all change while maintaining the same relationship among themselves.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“The object of biology is to grasp that which makes a living being a living being, that is, not--according to the realist postulate common to both mechanism and vitalism--the superposition of elementary reflexes or the intervention of a 'vital force,' but an indecomposable structure of behavior. It is by means of ordered reactions that we can understand the automatic reactions as degradations. Just as anatomy refers back to physiology, physiology refers back to biology.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“Laboratory reflexes resemble the movements of a man who walks in the dark and whose tactile organs, feet and legs function in isolation, as it were. This functioning by separated parts represents a late acquisition in animal ontogenesis. Reflexes properly so called are found only in the adult salamander; the embryo executes the movements of the ensemble, global and undifferentiated movements of swimming. It may even be that pure reflexes will be most easily found in man because man is perhaps alone in being able to abandon this or that part of his body separately to the influences of the milieu...Thus the reflex--effect of pathological disassociation characteristic not of the fundamental activity of the living being but of the experimental apparatus which we use for studying it, or a luxury activity developing later in ontogenesis as well as phylogenesis--cannot be considered as a constituent element of animal behavior except by an anthropomorphic illusion. But neither is the reflex an abstraction, and in this respect Sherrington is mistaken: the reflex exists; it represents a very special case of behavior, observable under certain determined conditions. But it is not the principal object of physiology; it is not by means of it that the remainder can be understood.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“The reflex as it is defined in the classical conception does not represent the normal activity of the animal, but the reaction obtained from an organism when it is subjected to working as it were by means of detached parts, to responding not to complex situations but to isolated stimuli. Which is to say that it corresponds to the behavior of a sick organism--the primary effect of lesions being to break up the functional continuity of nerve tissues--and to "laboratory behavior" where the animal is placed in an anthropomorphic situation since, instead of having to deal with those natural unities which events or baits are, it is restricted to certain discriminations; it must react to certain physical and chemical agents which have a separate existence only in human science. Every organic reaction supposes a global elaboration of the excitations which confers properties on each one of them that it would not have singly. It is not surprising that, even in the laboratory, so few pure reflexes are found.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“The sensorium and the motorium function as parts of a single order...The eye always places itself in such a way that it receives the richest possible stimulations from the object looked at. Everything takes place as if a law of the maximum regulated the movements of our eyes, as if at each moment these movements were what they should be in order to realize certain situations of preferred equilibrium toward which the forces which are at work in the sensible sector tend. If, in the dark, a luminous spot appears in a marginal zone, everything takes place as if the equilibrium of the sensory-motor system were broken up; from this results a state of tension resolved by the fixation movement which brings the luminous spot to the functional center of the retina. Thus the motor devices appear as the means of re-establishing an equilibrium, the conditions of which are given in the sensory sector of the nervous system; and the movements appear as the external expression of this reorganization of the field of excitations comparable to the settling of objects in a receptacle under the action of weight.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“The same partial stimulus can give rise to variable effects and the same nerve element can function in a qualitatively different manner according to what is prescribed by the constellation of stimuli and by the elaboration to which it gives rise beyond the discontinuous sensory terminations.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior

“The adequate stimulus cannot be defined in itself and independently of the organism; it is not a physical reality, it is a physiological or biological reality. That which necessarily releases a certain reflex response is not a physico-chemical agent; it is a certain form of excitation of which the physico-chemical agent is the occasion rather than the cause. It is for this reason that physiologists do not succeed in eliminating terms from their definition of stimulus which already designate a response of the organism, as when they speak of painful stimuli. For the excitation itself is already a response, not an effect imported from outside the organism; it is the first act of its proper functioning.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior