Merleau-Ponty and Sensation

On Merleau-Ponty's description, Sensation is experienced as an unmediated anonymous absorption in an external object. Now, it is not explicitly clear how he might accommodate a traditional counter-example--cases of color color-blindness demonstrate that Sensation must be only in a subject, since one and the same external object cannot be both, e. g. red and green. Most likely, though, he would argue that such a positing of an identical object on scientific grounds only supervenes on, but does not pre-empt, lived experience, i. e. that experientially, there are, in fact two objects, e. g. one red, one greeen, for two different subjects. However, such a response does not seem to accommodate as easily a variation on the traditional counter-example that has been previously proposed here. In the familiar case of the same water being experienced as hot by a hand that had previously been exposed to cold conditions, but as lukewarm by one that had been gloved, the plain explanation for the variation is that a determining factor in each sensation is the differing prior conditions of the hands. In other words, Sensation is the experience in the subject, of a transition from a previous condition, effected by an outer object. Thus, Sensation is not unmediated contact with an outer object, but mediated, by an external object, intra-subjective experience. This conclusion is not a scientific supervention on lived experience, but a pre-emption of Merleau-Ponty's account of it, on the basis of taking into account other phenomena.