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Guest editor’s introduction

The recorporealization of cognition in phenomenology and cognitive science

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Notes

  1. Husserl (2001, p. 198). Husserl also refers to this affective awakening as a “drive intentionality” (Triebintentionalität).

  2. Steinbock (2001, p. xlix).

  3. Varela and Depraz (2005).

  4. See Waldenfels’ contribution to this special issue: “The Role of the Lived-Body in Feeling.”

  5. Max Scheler appears to be the first to have taken this position in direct contrast to Heidegger. See Stikkers’ account (1997) of this contrast. Other phenomenological investigations that attempt to uncover the primacy of affectivity over temporality can be found in Henry (1973); and in the work of Sheets-Johnstone (1990, 1999, 2000). For a recent defense of this position in relation to contemporary cognitive science, see Varela and Depraz (2005).

  6. Husserl (2001, p. 196).

  7. Ibid., p. 210.

  8. The well-known concept of “intentional arc” derives from Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of perception, where it plays a central role in his non-representationalist account of learning and the skillful comportment specific to the habitual body. See Merleau-Ponty (2002). For a discussion of Merleau-Ponty’s account in relation to feed-forward neural networks in contemporary cognitive science, see Dreyfus (2008), http://socrates.berkeley.edu/%7Ehdreyfus/html/papers.html (accessed 3/13/08).

  9. On the difference between static and genetic methods in phenomenology, see, for example, Larrabee (1976); Steinbock (1995); and Welton (2000).

  10. Varela et al. (1991, p. 13).

  11. Examples are cited throughout this special issue, but an introductory list might include Gallagher (2005); Gallagher and Varela (2001); Petitot et al. (1999); Thompson (2007).

  12. Cognitive scientist Ray Jackendoff discusses this disjunction between the computational mind and the phenomenological mind, which he calls the “mind-mind problem,” that complicates cognitivist theories of mind. See Jackendoff (1987). Philosopher David Chalmers has more recently described this disjunction between accounts of cognitive function and accounts of experience as the “explanatory gap” or “hard problem” for cognitive science and philosophy of mind. See Chalmers (1995, 1996).

  13. Variants of the cognitivist position can be found, for example, in the philosophy of Jerry Fodor, in the Artificial Intelligence research that philosopher John Haugeland designated as “Good Old Fashioned Artificial Intelligence (GOFAI)”, such as the “physical symbol system hypothesis” of Alan Newell and Herbert Simon, as well as in the “generative linguistics” theory developed by Noam Chomsky. See Chomsky (1957/2002); Fodor (1981, 1985), Haugeland (1985), and Newell and Simon (1972).

  14. Indeed, alongside representationalism and the computer model of mind, Howard Gardner cites the “de-emphasis on affect, context, culture, and history” as one of the key features of cognitive science. See Gardner (1985, Chap. 3).

  15. See Dewey (1922, Part III) and Ryle (1949, Chap. II).

  16. The principle of connectivity is in part inspired by the idea, initially suggested by neuropsychologist Donald Hebb (1949) that learning is based on the strengthening of connections between neurons. What became known as “Hebb’s Law” is often paraphrased as “Neurons that fire together, wire together.”

  17. The foundational discussion of connectionist models is Rumelhart et al. (1986). Various philosophical formulations of connectionism can be found in the works of, for example, Andy Clark, Daniel Dennett, Terry Horgan and John Tienson. For a connectionist approach to the problem of the “explanatory gap,” see O’Brien and Opie (1999).

  18. Variations of enactivism in cognitive science and philosophy of mind can be found in, for example, Gallagher (2005), Hurley (1998), Noë (2004), Thompson (2007), and Varela et al. (1991).

  19. See van Gelder (1999).

  20. “My body has its world, or understands its world, without having to make use of my ‘symbolic’ or ‘objectifying function’” (Merleau-Ponty [2002, p. 162]). In addition to Merleau-Ponty’s work, Husserl’s later genetic investigations and Heidegger’s phenomenology of skilled coping have had a great influence on enactivist cognitive science. Hubert Dreyfus has remained at the forefront in bringing some of these phenomenological insights to bear on the cognitive sciences. See, for example, Dreyfus (1992, 2002, 2005); and Wrathall and Malpas (2000).

  21. The theory of autopoiesis was first formulated by Chilean neurobiologists and phenomenologists Maturana and Varela (1980, 1987). The theory of autopoiesis is taken up in explicit relation to phenomenology and cognitive science by Thompson (2007), and Varela et al. (1991).

  22. Given that mental states qua representations are disclosed within this framework as being ontologically founded modes of being-in-the-world, the Cartesian vocabulary of “mind” versus extended matter proves most inadequate.

  23. Diverse proposals have been made about how this relation between phenomenological and empirical approaches might be structured. Some of the most prominent include Gallagher (2003), Hurley and Noë (2003), Thompson (2007), and Varela (1996). See also the co-authored contribution to the present issue by Brady Heiner and Kyle Whyte.

  24. Husserl (1989, §18 and §§35–42).

  25. Merleau-Ponty (2002, 2006).

  26. Straus (1952).

  27. Todes (2001).

  28. Casey (1993, Part II).

  29. Canguilhem (1991, p. 126).

  30. Steinbock engages in a related discussion of phenomenological epoché as “an active remaining open while stepping back,” a “dis-position of the self” carried out in order to “dispose ourselves to be struck in which ever way the phenomena give themselves.” See Steinbock (2004).

  31. In another work, Behnke describes this affective epoché as a “dilated” or “expanded” mode of awareness “that can include both my own lived bodily comportment, as the means whereby I am relationally engaged in a certain situation, and the dynamics of the situation itself […] a way of bringing my own participation in the situation to lucid awareness, yet without losing contact with the situation.” See Behnke (2007).

  32. Merleau-Ponty (1964).

  33. See, for example, Piaget (1953).

  34. See, for example, Varela et al. (1991).

  35. For examples of “neurophenomenology,” see Varela (1996), and Varela and Depraz (2005).

  36. See, for example, Chalmers (1995, 1996).

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, 11794, USA

    Brady Thomas Heiner

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Heiner, B.T. Guest editor’s introduction. Cont Philos Rev 41, 115–126 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-008-9076-7

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