Phenomenology-Friendly Neuroscience: The Return To Merleau-Ponty As Psychologist

Abstract

This paper reports on the Kuhnian revolution now occurring in neuropsychology that is finally supportive of and friendly to phenomenology -the "enactive" approach to the mindbody relation, grounded in the notion of self-organization, which is consistent with Husserl and Merleau-Ponty on virtually every point. According to the enactive approach, human minds understand the world by virtue of the ways our bodies can act relative to it, or the ways we can imagine acting. This requires that action be distinguished from passivity, that the mental be approached from a first person perspective, and that the cognitive capacities of the brain be grounded in the emotional and motivational processes that guide action and anticipate action affordances. It avoids the old intractable problems inherent in the computationalist approaches of twentieth century atomism and radical empiricism, and again allows phenomenology to bridge to neuropsychology in the way Merleau-Ponty was already doing over half a century ago.One of the most striking impressions of an initial reader of Maurice MerleauPonty's early works, Phenomenology of Perception (1941/1962) or The Structure of Behavior (1942Behavior ( /1967) is the careful attention both books give to neurophysiological and empirical psychological detail. Indeed, a glance at the reference list of the books just mentioned reveals that both cite considerably more physiology and psychology than they do philosophy. Yet philosophical commentators have tended to neglect Merleau-Ponty's emphasis on psychology, especially neuropsychology, while neuroscientists until very recently had tended to be unaware of Merleau-Ponty's important contributions to their own field.In fact, this neglect of Merleau-Ponty in neuropsychology was due to a philosophical trend: both psychology and philosophy of mind after Merleau-Ponty's death became inclined to the view that mental processes are reducible to lower-level mechanistic processes, without reference to the self-organizational dimension stressed by Merleau-Ponty, and seemingly almost to the exclusion of phenomenology altogether. But the good news is that neuroscience is now swinging back the other way, and is again becoming phenomenology-friendly. Neuropsychologists during the past decade have rediscovered the importance of self-organization and self-energized movement in biology, and the philosophy of mind has again begun to recognize

Intencionalidade e Comportamento: a Percepção Vivente em Merleau-Ponty

“…O que se encontra fora do organismo só é constituído como objeto de atenção ou como força influente a partir das próprias normas 1 internas que regulam a atividade sensível. Nessa direção, Ellis (2006) afirma: "Nós somos conscientes das informações aferentes apenas na medida em que nós ativamente 'prestamos atenção' a elas, e este processo de direcionamento da atenção é motivado pelas necessidades do organismo" (p. 46, grifos do autor). Estabelece-se, portanto, no caso dos organismos vivos, uma "intencionalidade de tipo funcional", que se efetiva como uma espécie de "compreensão vital do meio" (Bimbenet, 2004, p. 55).…”

Haunting Space, Social Interaction in a Large-Scale Media Environment

“…This ability builds on the acquisition of cultural techniques [44] [28]. 11 The emerging curiosity to engage with the presented idea and metaphor arises from the recognition of the materials and contents arrayed by the artist. The more concrete and realistic these elements are, the quicker recognition occurs; the less mysterious or abstract the piece appears, the faster patterns of engagement are tried out.…”

“…This activity responds to affordances in the (natural) environment [15], which are defined as the potential for action or perception that is on offer; in the discourse about design this concept gets differentiated between perceived and objective affordances [33], between cognitive, physical, sensory, functional affordances [18], and affordances of control [35]. The visitor's learning of the interaction modality happens through a reinforcing action-perception coupling (or a circular causality [30, p. 15] [11]), where they clearly perceive their own agency [14, p. 237], and see or hear a clear dependency between an action and the response by the (artistic) work, i.e., the media environment.…”

Is the human body a nervous machine?: body theory of Merleau-Ponty facing the challenges of the technological society

“…Ralph D. Ellis, filósofo de la Universidad Clark-Atlanta, destaca la importancia de la reflexión de Merleau-Ponty acerca del cuerpo personal, la cual ilumina a las neurociencias en su comprensión del hombre, y permite que éstas se distancien de una visión materialista. Ellis considera que la diferenciación entre lo viviente y lo no viviente, tan importante en la obra del filósofo francés, permite comprender la consciencia y los procesos mentales (Ellis: 2006).…”