Phenomenology
of Perception represents
Merleau-Ponty's reconciliation of contemporary philosophy's severance
between Empiricist and Intellectualist conceptions of reality. The
task is not renunciatory, rather it elicits awareness of each
position's limitations. Explicitly acknowledging that reality can
give rise to the claims of both perspectives; it is the ensuing
Cartesian mind-body evisceration he contests. Each perspective
has become paradigmatic. Each conscripting evidence of the bodily or
spiritual to bolster their perspective, resulting in mutually exclusive versions of reality reified from their common genesis.
Merleau-Ponty recaptures the forgotten origin amongst this melee –
'lived perception'.
Understanding
how human reality progenates such divergent claims necessitates a
descent from abstraction to lived perception. For Merleau-Ponty human
reality is not body or soul, it is that which gives rise to these
dichotomous concepts: 'incarnate consciousness'. As the painting
transcends its inanimate constituents, lived
perception becomes the necessary condition for human truth. Evoking Heiddger's
'dasein', he reiterates 'being-in-the-world', extolling holistic
appraisals focused on habit and body.
His arguments prolifically explore examples of anomalous perception. Similarly, I
shall employ novel examples to convey this revelatory aspect of his
discourse. Firstly, Held and Hein's (1963) study on two kitten groups
raised in darkness, exposed to identical visual data. One group
allowed to move around; the other kept passive. After two weeks the
kittens were released. The active kittens explored normally. The
passive kittens however bumped into objects as if blind, supporting
Merleau-Ponty's renunciation of perception as a passive reception of
visual-stimuli. Varela (1991) evaluates, 'objects are not seen by
visual extraction of features, but rather by visual guidance of
action.' Merleau-ponty accords that the body is integral for spatiality to the extent that he distinguishes the body as 'that by which there are objects'. It
is by virtue of embodiment that one experiences objects as being
up or down, inside or outside, near or far. Space is always in relation to the body as situated within the
world, thus the body is not in space for it is the source of space.
Whereas the kittens lacked spatial comprehension, humans often perceive the empirically absent. Merleau-Ponty cites gestalt psychology; the propensity to perceive 'form'. For example:
Lines or cube? Shifting orientation? Staring, the mind seems incapable of
extricating shifting embodied perspective from perception. Sedimentary memories of spatial
habituation are revealed through the
subjective body filtering and constructing visual and embodied interactions attempting to comprehend the present stimuli.
The
sense of depth is not created by mind or body, but by both as unified
within 'incarnate consciousness'. 'Depth
is the most existential of all dimensions'.
Concordantly, he espouses an
existential
phenomenology. Descartes dualism is reconciled.
The
final
example, however, addresses Merleau-Ponty's claim, 'reflection of the body upon itself always miscarries at the last
minute', prompting a recollection of virtual out-of-body-experience studies, seemingly
objectifying the body.
Is
Merleau-Ponty's
thesis refuted? I argue the alien sensation supports his subjective
body thesis and posit that the temporarily deceptive separation of
'I' and 'body' could aid treatment of, for example, body-dismorphic disorders.
Held
and Hein, Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 1963,
Vol.56, No.5, 872-876, Movement-produced Stimulation in the
Development of Visually Guided Behaviour.
Merleau-Ponty,
M, 1962, ‘Phenomenology of perception’ Translated by Colin
Smith., Routledge, London
Merleau-Ponty, M, 1969, The Visible and the Invisible (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy) Northwestern University Press. p.9
Varela,
Francisco J, Thompson, Evan; Rosch, Eleanor, The embodied
mind:Cognitive science and human experience. MIT Press, Cambridge,
MA, USA. 1991. p.175
Jack Mallard - N0242276
I have a number of further interesting inter-disciplinary applications of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology if anyone wishes to start a debate in that direction, can anyone else think of any?
Thank you Jack for this detailed account of Merleau-Ponty. With regard the video I was wondering what might Merleau-Ponty say about an out of body experience. I think his point would hold, when we have an out of body experience, there is still an immediate response back to our lived and embodied environment. Sure, out of body experiences talk about shifts in space and time but there always seems to be some degree of localization in any of these accounts e.g. I floated above the bed, then I was watching my cousins a mile a way. Space seems to be an ever present source of meaning for humans, which is Merleau-Ponty's point I suppose. Interesting though!!
ReplyDeleteWith regard inter-disciplinary applications of Merleau-Ponty I can think of a few. In the domain of psychotherapy an awareness of embodiment can have positive effects, I have seen museums and galleries now coordinated to reflect more tactile and embodied exhibitions, and the one I am most interested in is the degree to which AI can will need to take on board questions of embodiement. If your interested Drefyus is quite critical of this capacity. See his book On the Internet, but I'm not so sure.
Thanks Patrick. Sorry about this mega reply, maybe the marks have been collated already so just thought I would jot down my thinking for the sake of interest.
DeleteI hadn't given traditional accounts of OBEs too much contemplation, so I like your perceptive noting of the paradoxical language they employ. The concepts of up or above would of course have no relation to an entity lacking a stable embodiment to read off such relations to the world from, or as Merlea-ponty would say create the relations. I recall MP noting that human consciousness, whilst having the potential to imagine objects from different perspectives, is always restricted to a particular embodied perspective at any given time. He revels in this situation however, arguing if we weren't within a body, if we could instantaneously know objects in their entirety or were omnipotent then the subject would cease to be subjective. Perhaps the best, although not very satisfactory, example of losing stability might be astronauts who suffer terrible illness inducing mental confusion from the lack of fixed references to orientate themselves with.
I suspect attempting to think philosophically upon a completely non-spatial existence becomes a descent into nonsense, probably to a discussion of God, which MP actually discusses throughout Phenomenology of Perception in advocating the benefits of perception within the human state of embodiment. Not knowing the world in its entirety seems to be something humans feed off and it would be a sad existence if we did know everything. Perhaps God might be bored or miserable then?
The human brain doesn't seem capable of fully contemplating such an existence, although I might reread some Aquinas just in case. Actually, with some thought there seems to be something important and profoundly meaningful in the Christian God taking up an embodied human form, so perhaps this has some legs yet. What better endorsement of the importance of embodiment than God/Jesus? Christians certainly put great value upon the body during communion and it is the act of God taking up human form that is basis for their religion. I suppose religion has always attempted to grapple with the concepts of embodiment and transcendence, so perhaps there's a difference in thought between religions where their deity did or did not take embodied form.
I thought the induced sensation of a separation from one's body in a laboratory setting was rather more fruitful in its practical relevance. Some scientists argued it proved the mind was all that was in control. There was another example though where the subject had a camera on a pole behind them and the feed was relayed to a visor. They found it very difficult to judge spatiality and coordinate their movements from a third person perspective. So the Cartesian notion of the mind controlling the body like a machine was shown as not so simply. Life would be very strange even if we could control our bodies from way up high, any passionate embrace would seem distanced, even voyeuristic, and we would loose immediacy to the world. I started thinking about recent attempts to make video game control systems provide the player with greater immersion within the game world. Xbox Kinect does a good job of taking actual bodily movements inside the game and I recall the ultra violent Wii game Manhunt causing great controversy as people must have been understanding something more meaningful when thought, bodily action and consequence (even if on screen) are combined. So I could see game developers incorporating MP's thought in making gaming more realistic.
This computer side leads into the AI debate you raised. I read some Dreyfus essays incorporating Merleau-Ponty and looked at his book What Computers Can't Do. When discussing AI, along with Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger I kept associating Wittgenstein's notions, such as 'language-games' and 'forms-of-life'. As Wittgenstein asserts, 'If a lion could speak we could not understand him'. This seemed to get the crux of the matter when combined with MP. Competent human-like intelligence comes through being involved within the human daily condition. Also in MP's criticism of dividing the body up into parts, the individual parts tell us nothing about the 'forms-of-life' they work together in, so we could think of 'meaning is use' as similar to the importance of habit creating meaning within much of the French thought we have covered. So AI would have to learn through experience to gain fluid intelligence rather than having set rules encoded.
DeleteI'll just give one of the applications I thought through in case my reply is too lengthy, although the handbook did ask for substantial comment. It was flipping the machine-intelligence relationship around almost. If you consider exoskeleton augmentations such as in Japanese care homes where residents use robotic suits to aid mobility and in the US army where these can increase stamina and strength. Then think of MP's description of a blind man's stick integrating within the envelope of his being so he just feels the world directly. (p.165, 176, 177) Well its great that we can integrate these tools, but what if the augmentation were lost? Which would be the case for army personnel. Then think of MP's description of the phantom limb phenomenon and the distress it causes. Changing how we can reach out to the world simultaneously changes our our consciousness and if we go down the route of augmentation then MP might suggest a potential dependence upon in order to maintain a stable world view.