Discursive and Somatic Intentionality: Merleau-Ponty Contra 'McDowell or Sellars'
International Journal of Philosophical Studies 22 (2):199-227 (2014)
Abstract
Here I show that Sellars’ radicalization of the Kantian distinction between concepts and intuitions is vulnerable to a challenge grounded in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of embodiment. Sellars argues that Kant’s concept of ‘intuition’ is ambiguous between singular demonstrative phrases and sense-impressions. In light of the critique of the Myth of the Given, Sellars argues, in the ‘Myth of Jones’, that sense-impression are theoretical posits. I argue that Merleau-Ponty offers a way of understanding perceptual activity which successfully avoids both the Myth of the Given and the Myth of Jones. I also argue that Merleau-Ponty’s approach provides an alternative to McDowell’s critique of Sellars. Merleau-Ponty shows, first, that perceptual activity can be characterized as having a unity and structure of its own which is importantly different from that of concepts; secondly, that the unity and structure of perception can be revealed phenomenologically rather than as a theoretical posit.Author's Profile
DOI
10.1080/09672559.2013.861002
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Citations of this work
Somatic Intentionality Bifurcated: A Sellarsian Response to Sachs’s Merleau-Pontyan Account of Intentionality.Dionysis Christias - 2015 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 23 (4):539-561.
Response to ‘Somatic Intentionality Bifurcated: A Sellarisan Response to Sachs’s Merleau-Pontyan Account of Intentionality.Carl B. Sachs - 2015 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 23 (4):562-565.
Untangling the Knot of Intentionality: Between Directedness, Reference, and Content.Pierre Steiner - 2019 - Studia Semiotyczne 33 (1):83-104.
References found in this work
Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment.Robert Brandom - 1994 - Harvard University Press.
The Concept of Mind.Gilbert Ryle - 1949 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 141:125-126.