Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Merleau-Ponty by Komarine Romdenh-Romluc

Contents
Introduction 3
Chapter 1 Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology 3
Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. 4
Merleau-Ponty’s strategy 5
Conclusion 6
Chapter 2 Traditional prejudices and a return to phenomena 7
Sensation 7
Empiricism 9
Intellectualism 9
Chapter 3 The Body 10
The case of Schneider 10
Schneider and objective thoughts 10
Absorbed coping 11
Motor skills as practical knowledge 11
The power to reckon with the possible 12
Conclusion 12
Chapter 4 The world and its relation to consciousness 13
The structure of the phenomenal field 13
The nature of the experienced world 13
The subject and the world that precedes perception 15
Chapter 5 Other selves and the human world 15
Cultural objects 15
The problem of the other 15
Symmetrical experience 16
The problem of self-consciousness 16
Chapter Six The mind 1 Perception, Action and emotion 16
Motor intentionality 17
Perception 17
Action 17
Emotion 17
Chapter 7 The Mind2 Thought 19
Thoughts and their expression 19
Meaning and Expression 19
Thinking 20
Self-knowledge and the tacit ego 20
Chapter 8 Temporality 20
Objective thought and time 20
Objective Thought and the experience of time 21
Merleau-Ponty’s account of temporal experience 21
The temporal nature of subjectivity 22
Merleau-Ponty’s account of time 22

Introduction

Aims to show nature of consciousness, the world and its relation. Current conceptions are flawed.

Two current conceptions

1.       Cartesian/Kant transcendental idealism

a.       Mind and body are different and not connected

b.      Mind defines the world

2.       Empiricist/Science

a.       Consciousness explainable by causal laws, mind is the brain.

b.      World exists independently of  consciousness and rationality can bridge the gap

His position is that consciousness is constituted by bodily engagements with the world. This is what we can call bodily subjectivity. The body is not a pure physical form but rather the body is a form of consciousness.  Because consciousness comes out of our bodily engagements with the world it is not in the body but rather embedded in the world.

Chapter 1 Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology

Based his phenomenology on Husserl.

Husserl two definitions of phenomenology.

1.       Cartesian Meditations

a.       Science bases itself on the idea that the world actually exists and follows the laws of nature (logic, causality), and observation can reveal that. Therefore philosophy’s task is to prove the world exists, to enable a rigorous science. His phenomenological enquiry is transcendental in that it doesn’t follow natural laws, it can, as it needs objective validity and not presuppose anything. Transcendental phenomenology aims to provide the foundation for the world’s existence and laws of nature.

b.      There can be no presuppositions, we can only use description not theory and there must be absolute certainty. Person’s experiences is what is investigated. You can only describe not explain as explanation goes beyond what is experienced, therefore is presupposed. We bracket our natural attitude, to get to the things themselves, the phenomena.

c.       Consciousness is conceived of as the transcendental ego that isn’t part of the causal order. The external world isn’t considered independent but rather the structure of experience. The structure of consciousness contains intentionality, it is about something, temporality: there is an ordering of events in time.

d.      He holds that the transcendental ego outside of causal laws constitutes the external world, therefore he is a transcendental idealist. The world exists through our experience of it.

e.      How can he explain other minds, as the world I experience appears experienceable to others? Via the body, his body he has immediate experience of, and it express him immediately, for instance emotions and desire. The body therefore is quite different to an object in the world. It is the source of your perspectival perception. Therefore he concludes that the body is not a separate object but a living subject. Other minds are embodied beings. So for Husserl at this stage then we are embodied subjects with a transcendental ego, which constitutes are experience.

2.       Crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology

a.       Husserl sees human knowledge in crisis

                                                               i.      The Galilean principles of science is that if it can be measured it isn’t real but values and ethical choices are most important to us. But if the Galilean principle is the rational form then we can’t investigate rationally what is most important to us.

                                                             ii.      Husserl therefore wants to show that Galilean approaches are not the only ones, indeed the lived experience that is the basis of his phenomenology is the source for Galilean approaches. Because we think the Galilean attitude is the rational method we ignore aspects of our experience which don’t conform to this. So when I perceive someone kicking their dog I immediately perceive it as morally reprehensible. I don’t judge it as wrong, I experience it as wrong. Indeed on the other side we do not experience the properties that the Galilean approach thinks the Lebenswelt should have, e.g. straight lines. Galilean thought is therefore idealised and therefore should not be the only way to define the rational.

Merleau-Ponty sees Husserl as moving from a Cartesian to a historically embodied approach. In CM Husserl aims for universal indubitability, Lebenswelt investigates are intersubjectively defined culturally relative phenomenon.

Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology.

MP sees our current conceptual framework to be flawed.  He refers to this as Objective Thought. Objective thoughts says the world is populated by identifiable objects which can be independently described and known. Objects causally interact with each other. Objects have all of their properties in the open and they can be totally known as can all of their potential causal interactions.  Subjects can understand the world in itself, without its perception affecting what it sees. Objects relate to each other externally to me. Objects are causally determined and determinate.  Objective thought focuses on objects rather than experience of them. For instance our perception is of determinate objects at the centre of perception to indeterminate ones at the edge. But we ignore that perception and draw a theory of the world on the basis of the determinate objects in the middle of the perceptual field. Objective thought uses Galileo thinking that the real is the same as the determinate and the measurable.

MP sees that perception is an ongoing process of exploration and discovery. The world doesn’t present itself all at once. In perception you get phenomena, phenomena are vague something or others that can invite further investigation.  I am first presented with something vague at the edge of my perception, the tree in the distance. Phenomena forge themselves and point to the thing we perceive. I have a vague perception of a tree, but I am more interested in the tree than my vague perception.  Perception starts off ambiguous and indeterminate and the becomes more determinate.

Objective thought gives rise to empiricism (scientific realism) and intellectualism (transcendental idealism of Kant). Both agree there is an external world but disagree on its metaphysical status.

Empiricist position

1.       There world has determinate entities that are causally related to each other

2.       The world is the world in itself

3.       We can know the world in itself

4.       Consciousness is just another thing in the world so obeys its laws

MP denies that consciousness is causally determined

Intellectualist position

1.       There world has determinate entities that are causally related to each other

2.       It is our consciousness that creates the world

3.       We can never know the world in itself

4.       Consciousness lies outside the world and is wholly different from it

MP doesn’t believe you can ever do a complete Husserlian reduction. MP’s phenomenology suspends the Objective thought belief. When MP does this the world is presented as the phenomenal field. MP holds that the perceived world and the perceiving subject are mutually constituting and perception is the process of constitution. Perception goes through various stages whose end result is the Lebenswelt which is an intersubjective world that contains determinate things.

It is very difficult to bracket objective thought as we are so used to thinking in its terms we no longer realise we use is prejudice.

Merleau-Ponty’s strategy

In PiP makes use of now obsolete case studies. Although some argue that the case studies merely shocked the familiar to unfamiliar, so that you can see it in a different light. When the familiar is made unfamiliar then you can look at it afresh.

The world and consciousness are mutually dependent parts of one whole. The knowledge of science is built from direct subject experience from a certain perspective.

Scientific process, perceive, theorise, test theory via prediction, if successful keep theory. However there are a number of different theories that you could have about the perception. The theory that is chosen is one that is consistent with other theories and simple.

Science observers analyses then theorises which enable predictions. If predictions work theory is kept otherwise it’s altered. However when you observe you use theory. When you observe you could create a number of theories, there is no definitive one. The theory produce depends on coherence with the other theories of science and simplicity.

Empiricism is a strong example of objective thought.

Empiricism

1.       The world is composed of determinate entities that stand in external relation to one another

2.       The world is the world in itself

3.       We can come to know the world in itself

4.       Consciousness is just another thing in the world so obeys causal laws.

However these empiricist axioms are unproven theories.  Indeed they are derived from the act of subjective perception. If something is presented as indeterminate to an empiricists then they say we have an indeterminate experience not the world is indeterminate. Empiricists see consciousness as causal, so we must be determined then which denies our experience of our selves. 

The empiricist’s tradition is challenged by

1.       The argument that you need to understand apple to put the sense data with the apple

2.       The optical illusions which you can make look like one thing or another

MP thinks consciousness is not causally determined.

Transcendental idealist

1.       The world is composed of determinate entities that stand in external relation to one another

2.       The world is constituted by consciousness

3.       WE cannot know the world in itself

4.       Consciousness lies outside of the world and is wholly different from it

His aim then rejects

1.       The world is composed of determinate entities that stand in external relation to one another

MP Aims for a paradigm shift, i.e. the base axioms of thought.  This is hard if not impossible and you can always get counter arguments to support a challenged theory. At most he is looking to put pressure on the old paradigm

Description vs explanation

There is no pure description of phenomena it is always classified, categorised somehow. For MP his phenomenology is of lived experience where the hammer is always transcending its immediate experience into the project where it is engaged with.

Conclusion

The object of the phenomenal investigation is the phenomenal field, i.e. the worldly region as presented, perceived by the perceiver. He performs a transcendental phenomenal reduction, i.e. he suspends objective thoughts axioms to describe lived experience in a way that doesn’t presuppose them.

Chapter 2 Traditional prejudices and a return to phenomena

MP argues that Empiricist thought can’t account for perceptual experience.

Sensation

Empiricists argue that the world is reducible to its most basic components.  Perceptual experience is nothing more than the sum of its basic parts, like atoms in an object.  The most basic unit of perception is sensation.

Perceptual experience is intentional in that it points to something “in the world”

Sensations are in this sense non intentional.          

MPs argument is:

1.       Sensations must be homogenous

2.       Perception of a completely homogenous area is impossible

3.       The smallest instant of perception experience cannot be a sensation.

MP argues that to see something with colour it must have extension and therefore spatiality and therefore in the world. For colour to be spatial it is differentiated. Likewise with pain it is always has a felt spatial location. His argument that all sensation has spatiality doesn’t apply to sound, where sound doesn’t have a location, and you can have two sounds at the same time.

The argument against sensations also comes from Gestalt psychology where all experience is via figure and ground.  This provides differentiation which is an argument against homogeneity.

The ground of figure is indistinct and homogenous, blurry sometimes, it is seen as continuing beneath the figure.

MP thinks perception necessarily has figure ground. He doesn’t have supporting arguments, but one would be that to talk of figure you have to identify it, find its end. For a figure to have an end it must be contained in something else, the ground.

The nature of vision is about focus, which differentiates an object from its surround, i.e. figure, ground.

The figure \ground uses all senses. So if there is a pure visual effect in front of you, touch might provide the ground to enable the visual effect to be object. Again one experience flows from another and the ground can be previous and potential experiences.

You do not get pure experience of sensations, colour is always of something, the material of the object the colour is of affects the colour, e.g. woolly red, and likewise light changes the colour, but it couldn’t do if it were a sensation.

Constancy hypothesis: perception is of the sensations bouncing off the object into our sense organs. The constancy hypothesis is that there is a one to one relationship between stimulus and the effects it produces in us.

However this isn’t the case, a sound that gets louder changes its pitch. 
Two lines with different endings can look like they have different length, but the constancy hypothesis says this can’t be the case.  The different chromatic thresholds in the retina, should make a red book have different colours but that isn’t the case, it’s seen as a uniform colour. A toy cow held close to my face, will produce the same retinal image as a cow in a field, but yet the toy cow will appear smaller than the real cow.

The Mueller Lyons the constancy theory people claim is the result of a judgement not a sensation and that you can train yourself to see the lines as similar. However MP says you cannot never completely refute a hypothesis you can always bring in extra hypothesis to deal with exception and secondly the argument here, is what through practice you find is argued that it is there all along, but seemingly that’s the case o0nly if you believe the Constancy theory. Another way to look at it is that your first sensation is the perception, the second through practice is not

Constancy hypothesis argues that perception is a faithful and one to one relation to the world. They take information to come in through the argument then is we are passive to receive sensation, each of the sense organs operates independently. A change in the sense organs leads to a change in the perception.

However it isn’t the case that sense organs operate independently, if the nerves are damaged in the hand, then the hand moves across things more rapidly to get more information and compensate. This isn’t a conscious decision by the person, the body does this.

Secondly that perception is a simple representation of the world. When there is injury to the visual system, then colour saturation reduces, then there are only 4 colours that can be seen, then two, then finally a monochrome grey which is different to any colour previously experiences.

But if it were the case that sense organs are transmitters, then they would work or not surely, but rather what is happening is a changing in the quality of experience.

The constancy theory also has that perception is a composite out of the atoms of sensation. However the Mueller Lyons, shows that its context that makes a difference. Secondly that there are no atomic colours they are always composite with extension.

Again perception is atomic, as you recognise someone’s face without knowing the colour of their eyes, but their eyes don’t show as a blank.

MP argues that perception has both implicit and indeterminate aspects. Figures are perceived distinctly whereas the background is indistinct.  You therefore perceive things in the background, out of the corner of your eye as indistinct as that’s what they are. Again with the implicit if you see an object which is partly obscured you brain puts in the rest of the object for you.  Again to experiences things in 3 dimensions we must perceive depth but we don’t we perceive 2 two two dimensional images, the 2 images then help us imply but even  if we shut one eye then the image still has depth.  This is best done if you look straight onto something, it doesn’t change into a two dimensional object.

There are two theories that use sensation and perception the empiricist and the intellectualist, i.e. Kant\Descartes

Empiricism

Empiricism takes consciousness to be just another thing in the world and therefore subject to causal laws. This means that perception happens, it’s not something we do.  In this view sensations are caused by objects and consciousness passively receives them.

The causal approach of sensation and perception runs into problems, as it argues that it is the light bouncing into the eyes that gives sensation, but this means sensation is not intentional rather it is the effect of the perpetual field. However when you have a sensation you say that it part of something the chair the table, but empiricism can’t allow the object to pre-exist the sensation, all they can argue is there is a sensation, but not what makes it part of the table.

Empiricists also argue that movement is what keeps sensations as part of an object, and that static objects are understood derivatively from that which doesn’t move, whilst that around it does move, e.g. mountains. However to see an object moving you have to understand the thing that moves, if you can understand a thing that is static then you already have an understanding of objects.

Empiricists also use the argument from memory, this looks like a camel because it reminds me of a previous camel I experiences. However firstly why does this perception remind you of a camel, because it looks like a camel and secondly how did you have the original experience.

Intellectualism

Transcendental idealism, is that the consciousness constitutes the world and is wholly outside it.

Empiricists and intellectualist agree that there is an independent world to us that stands in external relations. Empiricists believe that the sensations cause perceptions, intellectualists believe that we receive sensations and then judge them which produces perceptions. This is a form of scientific realism.

Kant and early Husserl are different as they see consciousness as constituting the world.  Kant thinks we synthesise sensation to make perception but that it is below the level of consciousness. So there are two types of intellectualist, one that combines sensation by judgement and one that combines sensation by synthesis.

Descartes is a good example of judgement. So all the properties of wax can change but I still judge it as wax. But he starts from there are objects in the world that I get sensations from, therefore if I get sensations not of which are essential therefore I must judge from these sensations that   there   are   objects. But this is only the case if you assume there are objects in the world that you get sensations from this doesn’t help us understand perception.

However for the intellectualist to judge sensation then how do they know they are right?  What they judge is their sensations to correspond to an actual object. So they can either have that their judgements are groundless as they judge sensations or they have a happy coincidence, which is where all the scepticism comes in. The intellectualist loses their connection with the world.

To make perception depend on judgement seems to therefore stop any distinction between these two terms which standardly are, perception is taken at face value, judgement is an assertion whose veracity depends on evidence.

The intellectualists can’t explain why in the Zollner duck or rabbit pictures why someone changes their judgement from one to the other. Likewise the parallel or converging lines, if one judges one way and then changes your opinion this must be that the first way was irrational, but it doesn’t seem irrational to have this two ways of looking ambiguous experience.

Kant’s argument is the below conscious synthesis is rational. However MP argues whilst there is a perceptual syntax, e.g. look at an object in the distance without objects between you and it, it looks closer, however there is no reason why this is so. The meaning that arise from perception cannot be used to create the rationality for the structure that enables perception.

See a steeple in the distance with objects between us its smaller and further away than if the objects are taken away.

How sensation is synthesised does not provide the meaning of the perception that emerges from it

Chapter 3 The Body

MP sees the body as a form of consciousness. Empiricism takes consciousness to be the outcome of things going on in the body. Intellectualism sees the body as material and therefore consciousness as non-material, i.e. the mind body split. MP sees the body as a subject and not merely an object.  Bodily consciousness underpins our mental activities, i.e. our beliefs, desires and thinking. Bodily consciousness is seen through perceiving and acting.

The case of Schneider

Schneider cannot perform abstract physical movements, but can do meaningful ones. Schneider had to move parts of his body, he had to move all of his body and then refine it. He had to watch his body move to work out what was going on. This shows that ordinarily we have a spatial understanding in our bodies, we know where our bodies are in space, which can be damaged. This is not the mind that knows but rather the body, as he has no difficulty in talking about the problem set.

Schneider and objective thoughts

Empiricism takes the world to be causally determined and atomistic. Empiricism explains Schneider by two theories either damage to his sense of vision or sense of touch But you couldn’t choose between either.

MP argues that are senses are integrated, as if you have multiple senses of the same thing you have exactly that, rather than separate experiences, of the smell of the cheese, the touch of it etc. Secondly you get composed quality so colour and texture can go together so you might get a carpet that is woolly red. The shape informs the colour. Again as we perceive we use more than one sense, as you see iron, you experiences its heaviness, and its coldness to the touch. As you look at the feather, you might experience its lightness, its tickliness. This is the case as you can approach it knowing what to expect and you can see that you do expect it as if your expectation is wrong, you get a surprise.

We thus have an integrated bodily engagement in perception. There are 5 senses standardly given, touch, taste, sight, hearing and smell, but there is also the proprioceptive senses, balance, hunger, tiredness, position of our limbs.

Some don’t see the outer senses as different from the inner sense, it is through my proprioceptive understanding of my hand that I can feel the shape of the cat as I stroke it.  Again vision is underpinned by proprioception that it is only through being aware of how you move your body and how that affects your vision. You look around a flat, you move your body, the information that you get can only be understood in relation to your moving body.

MP says of Schneider that behaviour is inaccessible to causal thought.

The intellectualist would say Schneider has lost the cognitive ability to abstract.

The intellectual position is that intention which are mental bring about actions. The intention being some representation of the forthcoming action.  Intellectualists have thought as being symbolically representative of a thing and is not constrained by context but but certain thoughts are context independent if you believe x, x must be the case, but you can think the current king of France has a bread. So can we use this to explain Schneider, has Schneider got the inability to make context independent representations or to form intentions? We know as he can act but only in very specific ways. The intellectualist would argue that Schneider has a failure of rationality but Schneider is rational, he knows what is asked of him, but can do it in one context but not in the other. Thus we know he can intend and conceptually represent per se just not in abstract situations

Absorbed coping

MP understands perception in terms of engagement with the environment in terms of your meaning of value these things have to you, so the environment invites certain possibility, disallows us, because of the way that you see it. We see our desires in the world.

Concrete actions represent the actual desires that you perceive, with abstract situations then you have to transcend the situation and make one object, the psychologist both figure and ground. MP argues that Schneider can perform concrete actions as his action was created by how he perceived his environment, in the same way a tennis player perceives the court.

Whilst the environment calls for certain responses, whilst in social situations, playing sport, or sitting in your study, through practice you increase your skills in the situation and  become more able within your environment to do what the environment is appropriate for.

So the argument is there are two ways of acting, one that is drawn from your motor skills with your environment, where you perform concrete action. The other where you transcend the immediate environment and perform abstract action. However MP does not say that you are determined by your environment as your body can respond very quickly to other environments. For instance an organ player can very quickly learn a different configuration of pedals, far quicker than a condition response approach would allow.  That motor skills are non-determined is because an environment is perceived and perception will be different each time as your ground is different.

Motor skills as practical knowledge

The   typist has knowledge in their hands. Motor skills are not supported by beliefs, I do not know where the keys are on the keyboard. Motor skills are acquired by practice until they feel right. They are acquired gradually. Beliefs are different, they are acquired definitely at certain times. I saw Elvis in the supermarket I now believe he is alive. We apprehend space in so far as we see the environment as requiring action from us.

The subjects perceives the environment on the basis of their capacity to act with it. This depends then on 3 things, one their skills, two their values, and three their body schema.

Space you perceive objects in space as around you, as separated by a distance that you know how you would navigate and once there how you would interact with the object.  Likewise you are introspectively aware of your body in space and what you need to do to achieve your goal. So as your body is stiff, or heavy or the other ways that you perceive yourself to be, then like a mood your world opens up to you differently.

I experience my body as a whole as doing a task, although sometimes various areas stand out, my aching back. It is only through proprioception that I can engage with my environment. My body is actually a body schema that has different values that depend on the different values I place on it, likewise different things can get incorporated into it, the tennis racquet, the tool, the car.

The power to reckon with the possible

Schneider can only see the possible as related to his current task. So his current tasks he perceives and acts accordingly but only spots the possibilities that are related to his immediate task. What he lacks is to be able to see the possibilities of possible projects.

When someone feels the urge to action, then they are not passively receiving data from the world, but rather summoning the invitations to behave from the world, the project a situation around them.  Perception is an activity of the perceiver in line with their current projects.  Where you act in an imaginary sense, for instance, demonstrating a karate move against an imaginary attacker, then MP thinks you imagine the perception which would contain this attacker and it is this which draws you to action.

Youi perceive in terms of your desires\projects a situation that calls you to action, calls your motor skills to interact with the environment in a certain way.,

To act on an abstract basis like Schneider, then you need to be able to imagine the scenario and then have your action pulled by that perception. This on one level is no mean feat. You can think of a scene, but to fully imagine it takes a lot more effort. Think of this that people act not on the basis of their actual perceived situation but their imagined one, as with the kickboxing coach who demonstrates the being attack by her assailant.

When you use thought to create an intention then you need to imagine a situation that you can then perceive to call you to action.

So when we get back to Schneider then he cannot create possible environments to generate action

To learn you have to start off with copying or using the possible, you do it repeatedly after a while you have the skill and the association of when a stimulus is presented the response is called for.

Conclusion

Objective thought sees the body as an object whose behaviour is governed by causal laws. Empiricism takes consciousness to be the   result of causal goings on in the body. Intellectualism realises that this can’t be the case and claims consciousness is non corporeal.

MP using Gestalt psychology says you perceive on the basis of your environment requiring certain sorts of action. This action is a function of your desires, skills and your body.

Your body as a form of consciousness, has knowledge that we see in motor skills. Has emotion. Has feeling MP argues that perception is an activity we do in the service of our desires. We need not however just act on the actual, on what is presented to us, we can also perceive that which isn’t related to our current project or to the possible. However with the possible we need to imagine the scenario, we need to perceive it to generate action.

Chapter 4 The world and its relation to consciousness

Empiricism and intellectualism both agree there is an independent world with external relations. Empiricism says we know it directly and our consciousness is caused by it. Intellectualism says our consciousness creates it and is wholly independent of it.

The structure of the phenomenal field

For MP consciousness is of the world, consciousness is not in us but in the phenomenal field which is seen outside the body. I am conscious of the book case. The phenomenal field is the worldly field that is presented to consciousness, thus it is not inner to the perceiver nor independent of consciousness.

The phenomenal field contains both objects and the perceiver that perceives. Things in the world are presented as act-object, I have the act of perception that enables the perception of the object. Whilst I can look at my body as an object be aware of it, I am also aware in my body. When I say I touch the keyboard, there is awareness in my hands of the keyboard, the touch.

I am aware of objects, I am aware in my arm. My arm is an agent, my arm has awareness within it, an object is moved by my arm.  With objects there is an act of perception to reveal the object. With my body in proprioception then I am aware in acting, I am aware as subject not object.

As I perceive an object to be reachable or usable in a certain way, I also experience my body as being capable of doing this. Bodily consciousness is of objects, they are perceived as objects that I can use in certain ways. Thus bodily perception is the opposite side of the phenomenal field. I perceive objects in so far as they can be used by me. My body is that which is experienced as the power to use objects, objects are perceived in so far as they are usable and the world is the setting in which they are used.

The nature of the experienced world

Perception involves summoning appropriate appearances in response to the promptings of the world. I am invited by the world to make the indistinct distinct, the table in the distance, to find the position of maximum grip for an object such that I can use it. Whilst there may be many promptings, many indistinct objects its how I perceive these indistinctions that determines which I move to make distinct.

So the wold depends on our experience of it, in the way that colours don’t exist in objects but are the result of us experiencing objects in a certain way, MP applies this to the world in general.

Depth/Distance

If you look at a picture of a field, you don’t experience depth, you have a representation of it, to have depth you have to be in the scene you attribute depth\distance to.

We can’t account for depth or distance from sensation as this only gives us pointers to our previous experience of depth\distance. With two eyes and seeing something straight on, it’s in 2 d but we experience as it having depth as I know how I would manipulate it, I know how I have manipulated it, but this is not derived from my sensation. My sensation merely reminds me of when I have experienced it as a depth object.

Objective thought says we don’t experience depth everything is 2 d, rather as we know that objects live in geometrical space we infer it.

However all clues to something being a distance or having a depth, can only be clues if you understand what distance or depth is. Depth how I can manipulate something distance how long to travel between etc.

Motives and motivation

I am motivated to do something and I do it, in doing it I support the strength of the meaning that led to the motives, therefore in being motivated to do something I strengthen my motives. When I decide to obey a motive it makes more demands on me and I strengthen it. Motives and motivated behaviour are therefore reciprocal.

Depth

Apparent size isn’t an indicator of depth it is depth. Our experience of apparent size as opposed to real size is our visual way of experiencing distance and depth.  We would have to break out of normal behaviour to notice the size of the apparent size, we would have to measure it, and rather we have it as our experience of the object at a distance.

We don’t know the size of apparent size, we have to force a measurement for the size to arise, rather we experience depth. This experience of depth is our understanding of how we manipulate the object, our experience of distance is what it means to get to a position we can interact with it. Our maximum grip, the optimal position to engage with the object.

The sense of deviation from the maximum grip on and object is a sense of tension that we seek to reduce if the object is one that our actions are orientated to.

Distance is the experience of not having the maximum or optimal grip on an object. Maximum grip isn’t always to do with distance it can be context e.g. lighting or sound etc.

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However it is the fact that distance explains maximum grip or the other way around. This is to say that the objective fact of distance is what weakens the grip, not the experience of not having maximum grip is what makes the experience of distance. I don’t fully understand this.

One argument is that objective distance is an abstraction from the lived experience of distance. Indeed if you take the world and consciousness as two ends of the same continuum then you would need to take this as an understanding of distance. Given objective thought fails as empiricism does, there is no atomic sensation,

When we make perceptual mistakes this is indicating that we haven’t got maximum grip on an object. Truth then is a sense of consistency with experience at maximum grip. It’s not the fact that the object is so big, as when we view from a distance this changes.

Perceptual constancy a shirt will appear uniform blue, even though different light shades fall on it making it darker and lighter in places.

If our world is constituted in perception, do we share different worlds? The reason for this is we, more or less share similar bodies, with the same sense apparatus, the same ability to manipulate objects. We also were taught about the existence of objects and how to use them by another.  A mountain is big in so far as it exceeds my power to easily climb over it.

He describes sense experience as an anonymous existence as it is shared by all therefore anonymous.

As the embodied subject is also experienced, perceived as object, it applies to the same principles as objects in the world.

The subject and the world that precedes perception

Perceived things and the embodied subject are the outcome of being perceived. The world beckons we perceive and you get subject and objects. However to have the world summoning that is then perceived, there must be a prior relation to the act of perception between subject and object.

MP thinks properties are internally related, the red of a woolly carpet is different to the red on a shiny car, the woolly and the shiny create different colours.

The prior relationshi8p between subject and object is seen at the horizon of our experience where we experience such high levels of indistinct ion, of ambiguity that there is a blurred nothing that is felt. This is the prior relation between subject and object that precedes perception.

Indeed within this there is a pull from the world to be interpreted in a certain way. So there is a vague expectation that is satisfied when perceived in a certain way, in some way perceiving the gestalt. When the sight doesn’t make sense in some way then there is dissonance, and there is the movement to perceive in a certain way that resolves the incomplete gestalt. However to have the world pulling is to leave a fundamental subject object relation.  The notion of flesh in later works sees the world and subject as mere forces at other ends of a continuum.

You have an awareness of the world as the background, the indistinct background to all experience.

Chapter 5 Other selves and the human world

Cultural objects

These are perceived differently from natural objects and spreads around the atmosphere of humanity. One perceives the other in a cultural artefact. There is an indistinct and ambiguous reference to the other in a cultural artefact

However the atmosphere of the other, presupposes an experience of the other

The problem of the other

There are three related problems:

1.       The conceptual problem

2.       The epistemological

3.       The phenomenological

Empiricism and Intellectualism with believe in the external world and how the subject interacts with it have the problem of the other as intractable. In empiricism consciousness is a causal process, but how this could provide meaning, significance and affect is uncertain, and MP objects on this ground.

The body for MP is a subject, with its own knowledge and consciousness which is manifest in its grip on the world.

Inter subjectivity: one experiences oneself to be in the presence of other beings, we don’t just believe it. The experience of the other is reciprocal, I am aware of the other as the other is aware of me.

To get intersubjectivity I have to experience my subjectness, my consciousness in a way that others can experience, I also have to experience others as subjects.

Thing is I do experience other people as subjects I do experience myself as knowable.

Symmetrical experience

MP says I do not experience another body as a mere object, but as an action taking subject. I always experience the body of another as situated in the world with a conceivable project. I understand the other in terms of the situation where I see them, I understand this situation as the possibilities that exist for me therefore how I understand the other.

I experience the world as calling me to action, I experience my body as having the power to enable that action. I realise that this call to action, is a call to any human with a body, thus the call to my body is also a call to theirs. I am thus aware of two body consciousness’s mine and the other. Infants will copy adult movement, e.g. play biting their hand, they are aware of the subject body of the other. They do not reason to find this out. The mirror neurones support this view, when I watch you doing something, the same neurones fire as if I was doing it myself, and empathy therefore shows that I understand you as another subject.

When you talk to another, you do not think in advance everything you are going to say, rather the conversation, what they say and how they say it draws forth things from you you didn’t realise you would say.

The problem of self-consciousness

There is a symmetry I have with my experience of the other. I experience the emotions of others through action, I live through my own. I am asymmetrically connect to the emotion of the other as I have a different perspective on it. As I experience myself as the other sees me and to feel emotions in the face of this, is to experience the other as like me, as subject.

Solitude and communication are two aspects of the same phenomena of consciousness, we are both intersubjective, and self-conscious.

As much as the current situation calls me to action, I can also withdraw from this situation and look to other possible situation. My ability to think about possible situations, what the other could possibly do, what else I could possibly do in a situation is the basis of freedom, my ability to transcend my perspective my situation.

I am born in a social world, and taught my self-hood by my mother. I turn from the social world in solitude, so in solicitude I acknowledge the communication I turn from. As much as part of my experience of myself is separate from others, the others is implicated in this.

Chapter Six The mind 1 Perception, Action and emotion

The “mind” is embodied and embedded in the environment. Descartes thinks self-knowledge is clear and distinct and independent of the external world, you can’t doubt you think. Descartes argues that perception of the external world you can be deceived or find that you have an illusion, rather than a certitude.

Descartes: an ideas intention is the object in the world, it represents it.

MP doesn’t have representation, he has motor intentionality, he has direct contact with the cup which is for something, an object that can be used.

Motor intentionality

Motor intentionality involves direct contact between subject and the world.

If consciousness is motor intentional it is out in the world not in the privacy of our mind. This direct access seems straight forward when talking of touch but not sight, which seems to have intermediaries light rays etc.

Indirect theories of perception= something represents the world

Direct theories of perception the world is a direct constituent of perception.

MP has an integrated account of perception where all the senses are involved.

For MP action is not mediated as it brought forth by the situation that I perceive, occasionally this isn’t the case and I might plan, but mostly it isn’t the case.

Perception

There is no inner realm for perception. Perception is the conscious activity of a motor intention of an object. MP says you perceive an object, you can’t remove the parts, and put perception in an inner state, rather your view of the object is the perception. If you make errors in perception that’s what it is, like getting a sum wrong, it doesn’t mean that there is a representation that you are sure about and the referent which shows up as being wrong, i.e. Descartes and the correspondence theory.

For MP perceptions can’t be introspected, you perceive the object. So I am not conscious of perceiving an object, rather I am conscious in perceiving an object. So perception is the conscious motor intentional direct contact with objects. Perception is not an object for perception. Perception is the conscious relation with the object, you can’t take consciousness off that and put it on that relation.

Action

There is no inner realm for action, no intention that enables it, rather there is the pull of the motor intentionality of perception. Descartes view of mind and body has action like telekinesis, like a pilot in a boat, the mind issues commands it is aware of the body responds and we can perceive the sensations of the body responding.

My arm is different to an object that I move. My arm is the agent of moving, it is the subject. The body is presented in experience as the subject of action. Experience presents me, the subject of action as embodied. Again I am conscious in acting, not I am conscious of action.

My body is unlike objects in the world, I can’t take different perspectives on it.  I can never find it missing. Whilst I can observe my body as an object, this is not my primary engagement with it

Emotion

MP sees emotions as motor intentional, they are actions that I can take towards the world. They are direct unmediated contact with the world.

For MP an emotion is both a feeling and a way of acting towards something, love is to feel excited in the presence of and care for. Thus you can be wrong with emotions you can feel the inner part without the outer part happening. Likewise you can feel anxious without there anything to be anxious about. Emotions are for MP a way in which the world is perceived, in the same way is I am conscious in perceiving the object, I am happy in perceiving the person, it is a way of engagement.

Emotions\feelings are part of the perception of objects, or situations, or days in the instance of moods. When I talk of feelings, this means feeling familiar, homely, uncared for, formal etc., feeling is an effective way of being but isn’t an emotion, although has an emotional tinge, I feel something is homely, I like it want to relax there, it’s a way of calling
 You can see this in the case of déjà vu and capgras delusion where you think that people you know have been replaced by someone else. Here either there is too much or too little feeling of familiarity, but this is not on the basis of judgement, rather it is the way you perceive, with familiarity.

Difference between feelings and emotions, feelings may point at a more complex, maybe more behavioural aspect, an emotion points more to an affective state. So a feeling of familiarity, or homeliness, the familiarity isn’t an emotion, but better described as a feeling. If an emotion is a complex of human systems, you might also call the affective part of it the feeling. So feeling has a couple of uses at least. So I guess you could say that you have feelings that emotions have and other states such as familiarity.

Whilst love is a motor intentional perception directed towards the loved one, it also is wider than just them, you look at the world differently being in love, you perceive differently, so whilst one person might initiate it, the perceptual change is wider than just them.

As much as perception is motor intentional then emotions and feelings are the ways in which a situation calls to you. All those feeling words, homely, boring, etc. what they do is describe a way of interacting with your environment, in some ways, emotions are the base affective aspect that colour all these different feeling states.

Love is an existential significance that determines your engagement with the world, as does anxiety.

Situations can have affect without me feeling them, a funeral can seem sombre without me feeling sombre. MP says feelings are false if situationally evoked, e.g. crying in a film as someone has died, doesn’t mean you are grieving.

Perception is not passive, it is an active process of seeing the world in a certain way that depends on your body capabilities, your desires and the beckoning of the world. In turn the perceived situation calls for action from you in a certain way. Really this is just the correlate of perceiving it in a certain way.  The original beckoning of the world seems to point to your history and your society’s history.

You might also see the situational affective values as the repository of your cultures values, situational affect is also where you see the other, how the other would respond, its where you meet the other. I can feel the feelings of the other, of society via empathy and vicarious feelings.

When MP talks of real love, there is no concern of yourself that is hidden from it, it colours your engagement with the world, it doesn’t get turned off in certain situations.

It seems then that you have existential and ontic emotions. Existential of love, ontic of fear, existential of anxiety. It also seems that love is a funny one as in the initial stages it very much affects your emotional engagement in the world, but in the following stages it very much affects your engagement in the world but emotionally?

There is no inner realm, I am wholly outside myself: MP.

Chapter 7 The Mind2 Thought

MP sees thoughts as embodied. But how come I can think of things that aren’t in my current situation.

Thoughts and their expression

To think is to express, only embodied creatures can express. You express in painting, speech, and bodily gesture. All aspects of expression are the same they are thought, they express, develop my meaning. So painting and speaking are the same act of expression. I think in expression my expression is my thought, I realise myself in my expression and in my thought.  When I think to myself I speak to myself or have images for myself. It is an activity between the speaking part of me and the listening part of me. I speak and I hear, I think and I hear.

The embodiment of language is that language articulates are action called for in perception, it holds the embodiment of the interrelated senses of perception, it holds the ability our bodies have for action in the face of that perception. Language therefore is embodied. MP sees the silent utterances of private thinking as imagined speech.

When you summon demands for action via the possible and imagination you call on the situation to change, you call on yourself to reorient yourself within your situation. When you imagine someone you call up your behavioural skills of interacting with them, your body knowledge, you call up your ways of perceiving them, i.e. friendly, funnily etc. These are not silent utterances but embodied actions. To imagine is to create an image, an image is affective and motor intentional, it is to experience. This is part of thinking too, but it is not speech, it expresses experience.

In pre scientific thinking to name something is to create it. In the beginning was the word!! If the word wasn’t the thought you wouldn’t be able to explain this.

You can’t explicitly follow rule governed behaviour or there’s is an infinite regress. The body however after practice can operate to rule governed behaviour with no thought, e.g. typing, or tennis. Youi perceive according to rules, I see the tennis court as offering certain possibilities which accord with the rules.

Our bodies learn before our minds, babies copy long before they think.  The body has knowledge before the mind.

Meaning and Expression

Two competing theories Platonism, the meaning of stick comes from its partaking in the form of stick. Secondly that meaning is represented as an internal mental state, an idea maybe, a fragment of a thought maybe. MP sees meaning coming out of expression, it is constituted in and by it. He sees words as having intrinsic meaning via their gestural component, so how the poetry of the word is shapes what it means, although can’t obviously define it  or there would only be one language.

Physical gestures e.g. shrugging your shoulders are meaningful.  Gestures can originally gain meaning through the situation in which they are used, then convention keeps them going. Because we take part in a communal world we share meanings and therefore can agree on the meaning of a gesture in a situation.  MP argues that the same for gestures is used for words, they get meaning in the shared context that they are used.

Thinking

I think as I act, I put the boxes in the truck in an orderly fashion I don’t have any private thoughts, but I put a box here and then see if that makes sense to me, if it doesn’t I move it. I am thinking as I move the boxes.

Self-knowledge and the tacit ego

For MP you get self-knowledge through watching how you act and how you perceive. You get self-knowledge, awareness from learning about your situation. It is not self-evident. If thought is made through its expression, on one way it’s more about self-creation, rather than self-knowledge. You can be wrong with self-knowledge as you miss various aspects of your experience.

Intentionality=of or about

Chapter 8 Temporality

MP begins by showing that Objective Thoughts view of time must be rejected. Objective thought is that time is a succession of instants.

Objective thought and time

Key aspect of time is that it goes by. Common sense is a rag bag of different views, neither empiricist nor intellectualist, but takes bits from all and includes myths and superstition.

Common sense takes time as an objective property of the world and uses metaphors like a river to describe it, time flows. The river captures the aspect of time going by. However if time is objective this metaphor presupposes someone who is watching the river. However this places the viewer outside time, but they are inside time. They are temporally constructed

You could change this and put a person in a boat of the river, travelling from the past, through the present to the future.

Objective thought, thinks in terms of atoms, reducing everything to their smallest size. The atom of time is the instant, but then how do you get instants to be part of the movement of time, the wholeness of time, its flow, what connects one instant to another, what propels it.,

Empiricism says time is an objective property of the world, external to humans. It says time is related somehow to change but doesn’t say how.

The difficulty with instants is how does change happen, if you have a change then you would have to have instant one where my hair is black, then instant two slightly lighter, then instant three it becomes grey. We have three distinct instant but there is no connection between them, they must exist eternally, they would be like three different parts of the same picture, they don’t change. If you think of an instant as a hermetically sealed unit, then this shows the problem, as you then need to get another slightly different hermetically sealed unit as the next instant. Then they need to exist eternally?  So at one spatio temporal position is one property at another spatio temporal position is another property. But the properties don’t change.

If time and change are inextricably linked then this creates a difficulty for empiricists as it requires an observer so can’t be objective.

Change can happen to an objects properties or by you viewing the object differently. In this way you could have a succession of instants and you go through them and you experiences them as different so they change.

Again for instants to move from past to future requires an observer to see this happening. Why? But again to be the observer means that I stand outside time, but I don’t I exist within time.

Again how do the instants of time relate, that the past instant happens before the now instant. The only way that this can happen is that there is an external conception of time that holds them together.

Again with the intellectualist who has time as a condition of experience, then they must lie outside time to be able to constitute it, well yes this the nominal realm of the human.

The basis of time is that the past, present and future have different types of significance. The past as the done or not done, the present as the doing, the future as the to do, or to not do.

For MP the past and the future exist in the present, they are real and they are absent.

Objective Thought and the experience of time

Empiricism memory holds the past, and imagination the future. This is the box theory, the past is stgored in the memory box, the future in the imagination box. However this doesn’t explain amnesia where there is damage to a widespread area of the brain, not just in one specific place which the box theory would presuppose.

Aphasia you can understand language but have difficulty in using it.  Again if memory is used for language this wouldn’t explain it very well, there is a memory box where words are and we can get them out, but this isn’t the case with this. This theory then is the past is the reactivation of a stored perception. But to experience a stored memory you do so in the present, but then you must recognise it as belonging to the past, therefore you have a sense of the past.

Merleau-Ponty’s account of temporal experience

We experience the past and future as absent in current experiences, this is the same as the horizon in figure ground perception. We also experience parts of objects as absent, but we still experience them, they give our objects dimension. Spatial experience is both of explicit and implicit, i.e. I explicitly see the desk top I implicitly see the desks legs.

A horizon presents you with different temporal and spatial perspectives. As you experience something, there is an implicit presentation of its history and its future, both may be more or less determinate.

Husserl calls what one has experienced retention and what one is to experience protention.  In a similar way with space, my perception comes from the ambiguous and indeterminate to determinate, the same thing happens with time, from the ambiguous indeterminate possible futures to the determinate.

The unfolding of an event its movement from implicit or uncertain past through the present to the future is not the unfolding on an experience piece by piece or this would end in an infinite regress. I guess MP goes for gestalts, so if you watching a duck race, then you watch the whole which has different aspects, there is one duck race that you view from different perspectives effectively.

A retention is a retained experience in the present and it has its own retention. The same is true with protenti9on. Thus there is a chain of temporal events that allows there to be a sequence of time, a changing within time.

MP therefore argues that all of time is compressed into one instant, but this time changes as you change how you see the past or the future. This is the living present.

The temporal nature of subjectivity

Perception is motor intentional, which points at activity. Activity is temporal, has a beginning, middle and end. Subjectivity is constituted by perception, perception is intentional, intentionality is temporal therefore subjectivity is temporal.

A persons episode of life cohere, via pro and retention, via the current episode making sense in terms of the previous episodes, in a sense I arrived here. In other words my past and future are the horizons of my present.  The other aspect MP says coheres my life is my style, my way of doing things. Although will you ever know your style until you are dead, I suppose you can look and see the style to date, you may see the changes and the staying together.

The horizon, the meaningful whole, is not always visible!! Or determinate!!

My situation beckons potential actions that is its pull.

I guess then MP says life is a making explicit of my style, this doesn’t determine you, as your style can be manifest in a variety of ways, but your style will run through all of it.

Merleau-Ponty’s account of time

For MP the past and future are real yet absent. There is only one living present one now, that constantly changes. The past is what is implicitly presented in the present, as with the future. Thus the past and future change dependent on my perspective  in the present.

Objects are spatial and temporal and both have hidden aspects, which with a different perspective I could engage with.

The passage of time is the movement of the explicit present into the implicit past and the implicit future into the explicit present.

Time comes into being through the activity of consciousness.