The point is not to deny that there are differences in what these terms refer to, but to suggest that the limited number of ways in which a certain phenomenon appears to us can be found, for instance, regardless whether they are embedded in immediate experience of the phenomenon or in reflected thought about the same phenomenon. The different ways in which a phenomenon can be experienced, perceived, apprehended, understood, conceptualised etc., according to our way of describing them, are thus independent of the differences between experience, perception, apprehension, understanding, conceptualisation etc. This point can be illustrated by an example taken from a piece of phenomenographic research. It is not a mental representation or a cognitive structure. It is a way of being aware of something.
Awareness is a relation between subject and object.
Furthermore, when something is the object of attention it is always seen, or thought about or whatever, in some way, by somebody. We simply cannot deal with an object without experiencing or conceptualising it in some way. Subject and object are what they are in relation to each other. Following from this, a way of experiencing or understanding a phenomenon says as much about the experienced, understood phenomenon as it says about the experiencing, understanding subject. The delimitation from and relating to a context is the external horizon of the phenomenon.