We have considered perception and its variants, but all the variants we have examined belong to our “internal” life: memory, imagination, and anticipation. This internal reenactment of our experiences is not the only domain in which changes in intentionality occur. Perception puts us in touch with things in the world, and variations can take place in how we directly interpret the objects that the world offers us.

Sometimes we just accept the object that is given to us (a tree, a cat). We are then engaged in simple perception. But sometimes we modify the way we take the thing being presented: we have some sounds or marks given to us, but we take them not just as sounds or marks, but as words; we have a panel of wood given to us, and we take it as a picture; we have a small pile of stones given to us, and we take it as a trail marker. In these cases we add to and hence modify the perception that remains as the base for such intentionalities. We introduce new intentionalities founded upon perceptions. We continue to perceive the marks, the wood, and the stones, but besides just perceiving them we intend them in a new way. These higher intentionalities, of course, are quite different from those at work in memory, imagination, and anticipation, which are internal reenactments of perception, not intentions built upon it.