Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, and philosophical mysticism

I study embodied cognition, an emerging field which has taken considerable inspiration from the phenomenological work of the likes of Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and Heidegger. As such, I've been attempting to get to grips with phenomenology, which given my analytic, Anglo-American philosophical education, is a somewhat odd experience. Phenomenology, broadly speaking, was a reaction against both empiricism and idealism, placing primary emphasis on "lived experience" and the act of perception. Merleau-Ponty in particular also focused on the interaction between the perceiver and the world, and it is this sense of "embodiment" that embodied cognition has most taken to heart.

Merleau-Ponty: grumpy

However there is another side to phenomenology, one which has the potential to be profoundly inimical to the whole project of cognitive science, embodied or not. There is evidence to suggest that Merleau-Ponty, at least, understood phenomenology to be far more than a modification of our psychological methodology. His most famous work, Phenomenology of Perception, is  littered with cryptic remarks that undermine any attempt to read it as a work of empirical psychology. He explicitly states that it is a work of transcendental philosophy, aimed at achieving "pre-objective perception". It is not at all clear what this might be, or even whether it can be expressed in words. Throughout the book (which I'll admit I haven't yet read), there is apparently a sense in which many things go unsaid, perhaps even things which will "only be understood by those who have themselves already thought the thoughts".

Wittgenstein: even grumpier

That sounds familiar. The above quote comes from the introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus (which I have read, although I won't claim to have understood it). Both Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty seem to be struggling to express the unexpressable, and both, perhaps, ought to be read as "anti-philosophers", whose mission is not to solve any great problems but to help us understand why there never were any problems in the first place. This is certainly the opinion of a psychology lecturer I know who, under the influence of both Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty, seemed shocked that us philosophers might still be trying to solve the "problem" of consciousness. Whilst I think this is somewhat arrogant (and ignorant), it is true that both Merleau-Ponty and Wittgenstein regarded analytic philosophy as curiously misguided, tied up in knots of its own creation.

In light of which it may seem odd that half a century later analytic philosophy continues to venerate Wittgenstein, and that analytic philosophy of mind, or at least a certain strand of it, has recently adopted Merleau-Ponty as something of an idol. If both or either of them were right, surely we're completely missing the point? In fact I don't think this should worry us too much. Neither Merleau-Ponty nor Wittgenstein were perfect, and much of what they wrote may have been as confusing to them as it is to us. What is important is to pay attention to the issues that they do highlight, and to take to heart anything that does make sense to us. Daniel Dennett takes this approach with regard to Wittgenstein (in Consciousness Explained and elsewhere), and Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi seem to be doing something similar in The Phenomenological Mind, where they attempt to apply phenomenological insights to contemporary cognitive science. Regardless of whether or not either Mearlea-Ponty or Wittgenstein would have approved, I find this approach extremely useful, and phenomenologically speaking, perhaps this is all that should matter. It is, after all, my lived experience, not Merleau-Ponty's!

(Some credit should go to the phenomenology reading group at the University of Edinburgh, with whom I discussed much of the content of this post. Any errors or misunderstandings, however, are entirely my own.)

• Dennett, D. 1991. Consciousness Explained. Little, Brown & Company.
• Gallagher, S. & Zahavi, P. 2008. The Phenomenological Mind. London: Routledge.
• Merleau-Ponty, M. 1945/1962. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge.
• Wittgenstein, L. 1921/1991. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. New York: Dover.

"To Squeak and To Squeak Well Are Two Different Things"

 I'm not very much fun at parties. In a recent discussion I overheard regarding a friend's pet guinea pig and their “speaking” to another, I didn't have the sense to ignore it, but decided to ruin a perfectly amiable encounter into a debate about animal communication in which everyone left feeling no more satisfied with life.

On a number of occasions, mostly amongst non-philosophers, I've noticed a common response to a denial of language amongst non-human animals is a dismissive “well how do you know!?”. In an accusatory tone, they question how you could possibly think yourself so arrogant as to make claims about the inner workings of a small furry yet impenetrably mysterious rodent. As a matter of fact I think there's a large consensus amongst most philosophers and scientists that the vast majority, and probably all, non-human animal species are incapable of something equivalent to language (there is of course disagreement about the communicative abilities of primates and some other species). It's worth emphasising to people what is really being said, or not said, when claiming animals "aren't really speaking”, but instead partaking in other, admittedly complex, often not well understood forms of communication. 

It's important to realise that when I say guinea pigs don't have language, I'm not implying...

1. Cartesian Certainty. I don't know for 100% per cent, bet your sweet bippy that guinea pigs don't have language. Neither am I certain lampshades don't have language. Neither am I certain guinea pigs aren't made of cheese. But this sort of Cartesian doubt is as relevant to the question of language capacity, or inner mental activity of any kind, as it is to whether you're all in my head, or the world is a computer-simulated reality run by exploitative machines. In other words, it isn't relevant at all. Not to ordinary daily discourse. Hyperbolic doubt has its place, but it's not really a convincing argument against a particular theory. I don't know guinea pigs aren't really communicating in language, not for certain. But I believe they don't, based on certain inferences given certain empirical data. 

Neither am I saying...

2. Guinea pigs are rubbish. I'm under the impression that a common underlying feeling amongst layfolk is that by claiming animals aren't really “talking” when communicating, I'm somehow being disrespectful.That by denying them language I'm not only arrogant, but attacking their worth. It's as if not being able to communicate with language morally equates animals closer to a packet of Wotsits than a human. One clearly doesn't necessarily imply the other. Of course even if I did think that lack of language ability carried important moral ramifications (and truth be told I do think there is something to that thought), that wouldn't constitute an argument against my initial premise. It's just an implication you don't like.

Mr Tiddles. Less talk, more fluff.

The ascription of communicative abilities within other species must be an empirical question, in so far as once we've sorted out (theoretically) what we're looking for, it's an empirical question as to whether we find them in other species. If it's not, ultimately, an empirical question, I fail to see how we avoid naval gazing ponderment about what Mr Tiddles is really communicating to Fluffy Features.

I think the same extends to broader issues of mental life. Consciousness is an obviously more complex topic than language, lacking anything close to agreement on how we should use the word. But I do think that once we are more clear about what we're talking about, if we ever get there, ascription of consciousness will become more and more an empirical issue.

An important caveat: It is of course entirely possible that our empirical questions cannot practically be answered because of limits to our methods, or because we never manage to coherently establish the theoretical framework. Whilst whether or not Mr Tiddles is communicating in language is an empirical matter, it could be the case that we have insufficient means to pursue the investigation- though in fact with language we have some well established criteria. It is for more plausibly an issue with consciousness and its related issues. It strikes me that it is for insufficiencies within the theoretical understanding, and disagreements over empirical ground world, that we have so much disagreement e.g. with ascription of theory of mind to non-humans.

HPCK and Modal Representations

It's been a busy month, moving into a new flat and starting an MSc. I'm studying full time again, which in terms of blogging is a mixed blessing - lots of material, but very little time.

It's nice when you can combine two previously isolated ideas, and that's what I'm going to try and do today. One comes from the philosophy of science, Boyd's "homeostatic property cluster" theory of natural kinds, and the other is an idea from the philosophy of mind, that our mental images might not be entirely separate from our sensory perception.

I'll start with modal representations, because they're probably simpler. A mental representation is basically a mental state that stands for some part of the external world (Clark 1997: 463), whatever we take that to mean. Mental representation is a thorny topic, but all I'm interested in here is one aspect of the issue: whether such representations are composed of sensory information (modal) or are purely abstract (amodal). For example, does our representation of a sunny day call to mind the pleasant feeling of the sun on our skin, or do we somehow comprehend it in isolation from any sensation? For the previous century (analytic) philosophers tended to pick the latter option, no doubt influenced by classical logic, but some (relatively) recent experiments have questioned that assumption. It seems that there is a systematic connection between representations and the sensory qualities of what they represent, as demonstrated by experiments such as those conducted by Zwan, Stanfield & Yaxley (2002) and by Glenberg & Kaschak (2002). The implications of these experiments are still being debated, but one interpretation is that our representations (and by extension, our concepts) are composed of bundles of modal (sensory) data, rather than discrete, amodal definitions.

This is where Boyd comes in. His theory is a form of realism about natural kinds, but I think that it shares some interesting similarities with the idea of modal properties. Motivated by the messiness of biological kinds, Boyd characterises a natural kind as sharing a cluster of properties, none of which are necessary or sufficient. These kinds are rooted in the causal structure of the world, and are thus real, but they allow for the flexibility that is necessary when it comes to biological kinds. Given that our access to kinds is mediated by our senses, I think it might make sense to identify the modal bundles that I described above with Boyd's property clusters. Our concept or representation of a cow might consist of the vague appearance of a cow, the smell of cow dung, and the monotonous sound they make - and this will in some sense correspond with (at least some of) the properties in the natural kind cluster "cow". Boyd's point is that there doesn't have to be an exact matching for every instantiation of a natural kind, so everyone's perception of cow's can (and will) be subtly different.

I still haven't quite got to grips with Boyd's theory, and I'm not sure how much he would support this idea, but I think it could allow for an evolutionary justification of how classify natural kinds. This would be similar to Quine's empiricist position (see his 1969), and might not be as realist as Boyd would like.

• Clark, A. 1997. "The Dynamical Challenge." Cognitive Science 21(4): 461-81.
• Glenberg, A. & Kaschak, M. 2002. "Grounding language in action." Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 9: 558-65.
• Quine, W.V.O. 1969."Natural Kinds." In Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. New York and London: Columbia University Press.
• Zwan, R., Stanfield, R. & Yaxley, R. 2002. "Language comprehenders routinely represent the shape of objects?" Psychological Science 13: 168-71.