On the Active Nature of the Visual Perception of an Object

With all the variety of perspectives on the nature of perception, there exist two basic theoretical lines in investigation of this (as well as other) psychological issues. One, known as the phenom-enalistic line, departs from subjective experiences as initially given, ignoring the subject's material activity with respect to the object, the activity in the process of which these experiences emerge. The other line proceeds from objective conditions of the subject's material activity and consists in studying the way the adequate reflection of surrounding reality—necessary for a successful adaptation to it and for its expedient change—is formed in the process of this activity. [.. .] Human activity can be broken down into an executive part, the system of executive actions, which leads directly to a certain practical result, and an orienting part, which presents the system of orienting actions. To the simplest kinds of the latter belong, for example, the orienting motions of a groping hand or of an eye examining an object. The function of orienting actions lies in the