Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception comprises two main levels of analysis: the description of the general foundation upon which all human perception occurs and that of the lived, situated aspects of perception, as experienced by individuals. These ‘structural’ and ‘situated’ accounts of perception assume, respectively, the existence of a pre-personal body, which all human beings possess in principle, and of a historical body, which is the product of an individual’s ‘synchronization’ with the world. A comprehensive and faithful description of human perceptual (...) experience must contain, simultaneously, the general, structural, individual, and situational elements involved in perception. It has also to show the ways in which these elements impact each other, leading to distinct outcomes. I propose, here, a situated account of perception that fulfills these requisites while confirming Merleau-Ponty’s insights and descriptions empirically, through cases of perceptual skill and learning in a large industrial plant near the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. (shrink)

This paper elaborates on the link between different types and degrees of experience that can be gone through within a form of life or collectivity—the so-called levels of immersion—and the development of distinct types of tacit knowledge and expertise. The framework is then probed empirically and theoretically. In the first case, its ‘predictions’ are compared with the accounts of novices who have gone through different ‘learning opportunities’ during a pre-operational training programme for running a huge nickel industrial plant in Brazil. (...) These are also analysed vis-à-vis the experience of an expert who has designed and experienced the outcomes of two pre-operational training sessions in the nickel industry before developing and managing the one discussed here. Theoretically, the framework is used to pinpoint exactly what interactional experts who have developed their expertise through linguistic socialisation alone are able to do as well as to analyse the case of technical connoisseurs. The results indicate that the proposed framework is useful. It supports the design and improvement of training programmes for the development of tacit knowledge while at the same time bringing about a refined analysis of claims concerning the abilities of types of experts and expertise. (shrink)