Discursive Intentionality as Embodied Coping: A Pragmatist Critique of Existential Phenomenology

Abstract

Discursive Intentionality as Embodied Coping. A Pragmatist Critique of Existential Phenomenology [Forthcoming in Pragmatist Perspectives in Phenomenology, ed. Ondřej Švec and Jakub Čapek. Routledge, 2016] 0. Introduction Despite some intriguing parallels, there has been surprisingly little dialogue between pragmatists and phenomenologists. Though one can easily construct parallels between James and Husserl, or between Dewey and Merleau-Ponty, there are also significant obstacles to a mutually productive conversation between these two philosophical traditions. At work in the background to the present essay is their conflicting attitudes towards science. Though Husserl initially envisioned phenomenology the scientific (though non-naturalistic) foundation of all other sciences, existential phenomenology became deeply critical of what is often called "scientism" (Olafson 2001). Conversely, pragmatists have been largely (though not uniformly) accepting of naturalism, historicism, and the continuity between science and other kinds of human inquiry. Thus, while contemporary pragmatists following Dewey have also been critical of scientism (Margolis 2003), they followed a naturalized, Darwinized Hegel of Dewey and other pragmatists rather than the anti-naturalism of Heidegger or Sartre. At stake in the contest between naturalized Hegelianism and existential phenomenology is whether our philosophical task is to revise our self-understanding in light of the natural and social sciences or to isolate that self-understanding from the sciences. I shall now turn to the recent debate between Hubert Dreyfus and John McDowell. ThoughMcDowell is not a pragmatist, his inheritance of key pragmatist themes -in particular, the need to avoid the Myth of the Given and a conception of reason as essentially practical -makes for a

The poverty of embodiment in the work of Juhani Pallasmaa

“…Bodily habits are to be distinguished from thoughts, and perception is constrained by habitual norms that require a correct body position to perceive an object properly. 7 Therefore, pre-reflective consciousness is pure positional awareness, a directedness without 'aboutness'. 8 What is meaningful in perception is not cognitive-semantic content but a pure relatedness to things in the world revealed in an immediacy of agency.…”

“…7 Therefore, pre-reflective consciousness is pure positional awareness, a directedness without 'aboutness'. 8 What is meaningful in perception is not cognitive-semantic content but a pure relatedness to things in the world revealed in an immediacy of agency. It is characterised by awareness at the fringes of thought and a primordial sense of unity of body and the world, which allegedly speaks to our most primitive instincts.…”

“…Alongside Merleau-Ponty's insistence on the necessity of the body for the possibility of perception, Pallasmaa's notion of peripheral vision seems to be an interpretation of the Merleau-Pontian idea of 'awareness at the fringes of thought'. 20 But in emphasising this, Pallasmaa ignores the centrality of the gestalt concept of 'figure-ground' to Merleau-Ponty's account. Contrary to the latter, who rejects the notion of a sensory-cognitive continuum -the idea that there is a direct causal link between what is experienced by the senses and the meaning of that sensation -Pallasmaa's theory, with its insistence on the by-passing of reason and logic, is precisely an instance of the positing of an idea that the senses directly cause meaning.…”

“…Even if, like Pallasmaa, we follow Merleau-Ponty and accept the positing of the primacy of the body, the latter insists on a difference in kind between bodily perception and discursive thought. 58 Like Kukla, Merleau-Ponty does not dismiss the role of the discursive intellect. Rather, the role of somatic intentionality is to constrain and ground discursive intentionality.…”

“…Somatic intentionality is non-apperceptive, pre-personal and non-self-conscious, the part of our perception we share with other sentient animals. 59 It is the necessary condition for any conceptual framework, although it is not itself a conceptual framework. For anti-phenomenologist thinkers, 60 there can be no 'meaning' in the epistemic or sematic sense without language, or at least some form of conceptual consciousness.…”