Abstract
Phenomenology of the body and the third generation of cognitive science, both of which attribute a central role in human cognition to the body rather than to the Cartesian notion of representation, face the criticism that higher-level cognition cannot be fully grasped by those studies. The problem here is how explicit representations, consciousness, and thoughts issue from perception and the body, and how they cooperate in human cognition. In order to address this problem, we propose a research program, a cognitive phenomenology of the body, which is basically motivated by the perspective of Merleau-Ponty. We find a substantial clue in developmental psychological studies on the body and language.
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Notes
Robotics here means research that is particularly in accord with James J. Gibson’s ecological psychology and engages in development of a humanoid robot.
A personal conversation with Prof. Dreyfus.
“Descartes’ critique of resemblance in the Rules is accompanied by the elaboration of a new definition of knowledge based on what he calls universal mathematics” (Judovitz 1988: p. 71).
See, for example, Patricia S. Churchland, 1995, chap. 9.
See Preface to the second edition (1979) of Dreyfus (1972), pp. 13f.
The fact that Merleau-Ponty distinguished between “the phenomenal body” and “the objective body” in Phenomenology of Perception does not mean that he was committed to some kind of ontological dualism. In fact, his earlier writings generally lack ontological considerations. They only come into the picture in the later works, such as The Visible and the Invisible, in which he embraces a somewhat esoteric ontology of flesh (see, for example, Barbaras 2004). It suffices, however, to say that, for the present purpose of explicating the relationship between cognition and representation, there is no need to dwell on ontological problems, much less the necessity of adopting Merleau-Ponty’s peculiar stance on that matter.
Gibsonian affordance theory also strongly supports this model. See Gibson (1978).
Dreyfus (2004) focuses on the argument, which the earlier Merleau-Ponty advanced, that the basic sort of intelligent behavior, or skillful coping, can be understood without recourse to representation. He then argues that simulated neural networks provide a theoretical model which allows us to understand how this is possible. Obviously, the task he addresses is very important when trying to give an account of the way our cognition works. However, such studies should be complemented with the investigations dealing, firstly, with more advanced behavior which invariably involves mental representations, and secondly with the way how cognition without representation joins up with cognition of representation-hunger level. The latter problem—“by what miracle a created generality, a culture, a knowledge come to add to and recapture and rectify the natural generality of my body and the world” (Merleau-Ponty 1968, p. 152)—forms one of central themes in Merleau-Ponty’s later works.
The epithet “phenomenology without a head” would be unjustified if given to his thought as a whole, for he was well aware of that problem and thus went on to think about the linkage between perception and language in his later years, recognizing that thought and language could not be reduced to embodiment.
Developmental psychology deeply informed Merleau-Ponty’s writings when he addressed problems about perception, body, representation and language, and also inspires the work of researchers of the third generation of cognitive science like Clark and Brooks.
More specifically, when we have joint attention or read others’ intentions without linguistic communication, perceptions come to assume a quasi-public character, which will provide a requisite for the emergence of language.
Tomasello does not refer to embodiment when he considers the relationship between young children’s ability to comprehend adult intentions and their language acquisition. Nevertheless, he puts forward valuable suggestions for approaching the challenge that confronts the phenomenological studies of the body and the third generation of cognitive science, that is, the task of explicating the linkage between higher- and lower-level cognitions.
Merleau-Ponty also astutely observed that the “origin of language” problem matters for the conception of language as an extension of the body. See Merleau-Ponty (1964a), p. 186.
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Nagataki, S., Hirose, S. Phenomenology and the Third Generation of Cognitive Science: Towards a Cognitive Phenomenology of the Body. Hum Stud 30, 219–232 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-007-9060-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-007-9060-y