http://www.phil.indiana.edu/ejap/1996.spring/dreyfus.1996.spring.html The Current Relevance of Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Embodiment Hubert L. Dreyfus University of California - Berkeley [1] In Phenomenology of Perception Merleau-Ponty tells us that: The life of consciousness - cognitive life, the life of desire or perceptual life - is subtended by an `intentional arc' which projects round about us our past, our future, our human setting, our physical, ideological and moral situation. (1962: 136) In this paper I would like to explain, defend, and draw out the implications of this claim. Since the intentional arc is supposed to embody the interconnection of skillful action and perception, I will first lay out an account of skill acquisition that makes explicit what Merleau-Ponty's claim presupposes. I will then show how his account of skill and the intentional arc it establishes allows Merleau-Ponty to criticize cognitivism and introduce a new account of the relation of perception and action. Finally, I will suggest that neural-network theory supports Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology, but that it still has a long way to go before it can instantiate an intentional arc. [2] To begin with we need to distinguish two different understandings of embodiment in Phenomenology of Perception. On the first understanding, embodiment refers to the actual shape and innate capacities of the human body - that it has arms and legs, a certain size, certain abilities. In so far as I have hands, feet, a body, I sustain around me intentions which are not dependent upon my decisions and which affect my surroundings in a way which I do not choose. These intentions are general... they originate from other than myself, and I am not surprised to find them in all psycho- physical subjects organized as I am. (1962: 440) Merleau-Ponty points out in his critique of Sartre's extreme view of freedom that mountains are tall for us, and that where they are passable and where not is not up to us but is a function of our embodied capacities. That the shape and physical capacities of the body is reflected in what we see is a powerful argument against Sartre's over-estimation of human freedom but it plays no further role in Phenomenology of Perception. A related view, however, that as we refine our skills for coping with things, things show up as soliciting our skillful responses, so that as we refine our skills, we encounter more and more differentiated solicitations to act, does play a crucial role in Merleau-Ponty's book. [3] But we still need to make one more distinction. J.J. Gibson, like Merleau-Ponty, sees that characteristics of the human world, e.g. what affords walking on, squeezing through, reaching, etc. are correlative with our bodily capacities and acquired skills, but he then goes on, in one of his papers, to add that mail boxes afford mailing letters. This kind of affordance calls attention to a third aspect of embodiment. Affords-mailing-letters is clearly not a cross-cultural phenomenon based solely on body structure, nor a body structure plus a skill all normal human beings acquire. It is an affordance that comes from experience with mail boxes and the acquisition of letter-mailing skills. The cultural world is thus also correlative with our body this time with our acquired cultural skills. [4] These three ways our bodies determine what shows up in our world - innate structures, basic general skills, and cultural skills - can be contrasted by considering how each contributes to the fact that to Western human beings a chair affords sitting. Because we have the sort of bodies that get tired and that bend backwards at the knees, chairs can show up to us - but not flamingos, say - as affording sitting. But chairs can only solicit sitting once we have learned to sit. Finally, only because we Western Europeans are brought up in a culture where one sits on chairs do they solicit us to sit on them. Chairs would not solicit sitting in traditional Japan. By embodiment, Merleau-Ponty intends to include all three ways the body opens up a world:

The body is our general medium for having a world. Sometimes it is restricted to the actions necessary for the conservation of life, and accordingly it posits around us a biological world at other times, elaborating upon these primary actions and moving from their literal to a figurative meaning, it manifests through them a core of new significance: this is true of motor habits [sic] such as dancing. Sometimes, finally, the meaning aimed at cannot be achieved by the body's natural means it must then build itself an instrument, and it projects thereby around itself a cultural world. (1962: 146) [5] Merleau-Ponty uses "habit" as synonymous with "skill," so when he wants to refer to skill acquisition he speaks of "the acquisition of a habit" (1962: 143). Thus for him the ability to perceive is like an already acquired bodily skill. The analysis of motor habit as an extension of existence leads ... to an analysis of perceptual habit as the coming into possession of a world. Conversely, every perceptual habit is still a motor habit and here equally the process of grasping a meaning is performed by the body. (1962: 153) Thus Merleau-Ponty's notion of intentional arc is meant to cover all three ways our embodied skills determine the way things show up for us. [6] To see how our embodied skills are acquired by dealing with things and situations and how these skills in turn determine how things and situations show up for us as requiring our responses, we thus need to lay out more fully than Merleau-Ponty does, how our relation to the world is transformed as we acquire a skill. Many of our skills are acquired at an early age by trial and error or by imitation, but to make all possible stages of skill development as explicit as possible I will consider the case of an adult acquiring a skill by instruction.(1) Skill Acquisition: The Establishment of the Intentional Arc Stage 1: Novice [7] Normally, the instruction process begins with the instructor decomposing the task environment into context- free features which the beginner can recognize without benefit of experience in the task domain. The beginner is then given rules for determining actions on the basis of these features, like a computer following a program. [8] For purposes of illustration, let us consider two variations: a bodily or motor skill and an intellectual skill. The student automobile driver learns to recognize such interpretation-free features as speed (indicated by his speedometer) and he is given rules such as shift to second when the speedometer needle points to ten miles an hour. [9] The novice chess player learns a numerical value for each type of piece regardless of its position, and the rule: "Always exchange if the total value of pieces captured exceeds the value of pieces lost." He also learns that when no advantageous exchanges can be found, center control should be sought, and he is given a rule defining center squares and one for calculating extent of control. Most beginners are notoriously slow players, as they attempt to remember all these rules and their priorities. Stage 2: Advanced beginner [10] As the novice gains experience actually coping with real situations, he begins to note, or an instructor points out, perspicuous examples of meaningful additional aspects of the situation. After seeing a sufficient number of examples, the student learns to recognize them. Instructional maxims now can refer to these new situational aspects, recognized on the basis of experience, as well as to the objectively defined non-situational features recognizable by the novice. [11] The advanced beginner driver uses (situational) engine sounds as well as (non-situational) speed in his gear-shifting rules. He shifts when the motor sounds like it is straining. He learns to observe the demeanor as well as position and velocity of pedestrians or other drivers. He can, for example, distinguish the behavior of the distracted or drunken driver from that of the impatient but alert one. No number of words can take the place of a few choice examples in learning these distinctions. Engine sounds cannot be adequately captured by words,