PHL340 Notes January 10-26
Review of Merleau-Ponty
Two underlying/primal aspects of perception
-passivity of sense experience
-activity of bodily skills
(sensory and motor dimensions)
Perception
-bodily phenomenon – we experience our own sensory states not as states of mind, but as state of our bodies
-relation between perception and body is not causal or conceptual
-my body is my point of view on the world, mode of being in the world, not an object in the environment
Reflex-Arc Model
-perception and movement are not related to one another as cause and effects – but coexist in a complex
interconnected whole
-it is impossible to say whether the stimuli or response came first
-behaviour is the first cause of all stimulants – stimulants organs received are only possible through prior senses
-pre-existing perceptions and behaviours make intelligible sensations and reflexes, not vice versa
-reflexes in nature and simulations are different; they are made to work to respond to isolated stimuli
-situation and reaction are not cause and effect, they are two moments of a circular process; animals react in
coordinated ways to a whole situation and produce responses to isolated stimuli
-reflexes are never blind processes; they adjust themselves to a sense of the situation and express our orientation
toward a behaviour milieu (setting)
Review of Descartes
-body as machine – free-standing physical system whose behaviour as a whole is a function of the workings of its
individual parts, which interact rigidly by direct causal contact
-the body is the chunk of the physical world that happens to be causally contingent with the soul
MP Bodily Point of View
-the bodily point of view is the ordinary intuitive understanding we have of ourselves as embodied perceivers
Proprioception – our direct sensorimotor awareness of our own bodies, differing from our perception of external things
-habitual body and present body – short term and long term sense of body e.g. phantom limb
-we always have an intuitive understanding of our own bodies e.g. where we feel pain, where our actions are
initiated and performed – immediate and intuitive bodily sense of ourselves
Body schema – phenomenal field of space of perceptual possibilities, impossibilities and necessities; our ability to
anticipate and incorporate the world prior to applying concepts to objects (also called habit –the body understands);
constitutes our precognitive familiarity with ourselves and the world we inhabit
-motivational connections forge bonds of meaning in experience, allowing us to preserve and maintain a best grip on the
world; best grip when my perception offers a clearly articulated view and when motor intentions receive responses from
the world they anticipate
-our bodies are constantly, unconsciously and involuntarily, adjusting themselves to maintain best grip
Motor Intentionality – bodily awareness that allows us to encounter the environment as an environment
Shneider – visual form agnosia – unable to perform abstract movements with his eyes closed, movements not relevant
to any actual situation; he could still perform concrete movements, movements necessary for life, provided they have
become habitual for him
Abstract movements- not relevant to any actual situation (actual background)
Concrete movements- necessary for regular life (projected background)
-two neurological functions are involved in normal bodily behaviour; one for pointing and one for grasping
-Shneider has lost the ability to point to things out of context, but his grasping skills remain intact
-vision for perception and vision for action are two streams in the brain
-normal behaviour is a composite of two distinct functions, pointing and grasping
-a regular situation of concrete movement – task elicits the necessary movements from him by a kind of attraction
Shneider – concrete movement is guided by a kind of visual grip on the world
-Shneider lacks immediate intuitive knowledge of whether he is lying or standing, but must infer things from his body
-our bodies and worlds are given to us in sensory intuition, this Shneider lacks
-Shneider cannot create the thought of movement into actual movement – he is lacking what is between a third-person
process and thought as the representation of movement; an anticipation or arrival at a result, ensured by the body itself
as a motor power, a motor intentionality
-lacking any direct intuition of objective spatial relations, Shneider also lacks the ability to project himself into imaginary
actions and imaginary worlds
-for the normal person, every movement has a background and that movement and its background are moments of a
unified whole e.g. Shneider throws himself into salute
-Shneider can perform concrete movements, but he lacks the perceptual background that ordinary imbues such
movements with their worldly significance; his concrete movements are blind in a sense
-concrete movement occurs in being or in the actual and adheres to a given background, abstract movement occurs in
the nonbeing and projects its own background
-the distinction between grasping and pointing misses the crucial intermediary phenomenon of motor
intentionality, which involves the projection of a world given in intuition, as opposed to constructed in thought
Motor intentionality- the normal utility and integration of our bodily movement and our intuitive awareness of a given,
stable environment
-it seems intuitively obvious that the visual image that allows us to recognize a coffee cup is the same one that guides
our hand when we pick it up, but this belief is an illusion; vision is not one thing, but two – one genuinely phenomenal,
and the other merely action-guiding
January 10 - Merleau-Ponty – 127
Motor Intentionality - something between movement as a third person process and thought as a representation of
movement
-something which is an anticipation of or arrival at the objective, and is ensured by the body itself as a motor power
-every movement is movement and consciousness of movement for the normal person
-every movement has a background; the movement and its background are moments of a unique totality
-the background to the movement is not a representation associated/linked externally with the movement itself, but it is
present, immanent in the movement and sustains it at every moment
-an action is to relate oneself to the object, and is on the same footing as perception
Concrete movement – background is the world as given
Abstract movement – background is built up
Example of motor intentionality; waving to a friend to come over from across the room; we do not realize we do it, it is
not a thought prepared inside the person, it is like a reaction to seeing the friend; there is not a perception followed by a
movement, but both form a system together
165
-the body catches and comprehends movements
-the acquisition of a habit is the grasping of a significance; motor grasping of motor significance
-motor intentionality - e.g. a woman with a feather in her hat keeps a safe distance away from things that may break it
off; she feels where it is, just like she feels where her hands are
-e.g. not checking width of a door with width of body, just walking right through
-the objects have ceased to be objects with size/volume established by comparison with other objects
-the objects are potentialities of volume, the demand for a certain amount of free space
-areas immediately appear passable or impassable for my body
-e.g. blind man’s stick is an extension of his senses
172
-all the movements towards e.g. reaching for the telephone, are enveloped in each other
-desire certain result, the relevant tasks are spontaneously distributed amongst appropriate segments of the body
-e.g. when learning to grasp, children look at the object rather than at their hand
-their movement is a result of the task that needs to be done
Notes from Movie
Visual agnosia – cannot point to an isolated stimuli (but can grab)
Optic ataxia – cannot grasp an isolated stimuli (but can point)
-exposing two independent visual pathways in the brain – one for identifying what objects are and one for identifying
how to engage with them
-could pathological cases be creating features that are absent in the normal case?
-cannot just draw a straight line from pathological to normal activity – must triangulate from pathological activity to
fundamental function of pathological activity and back down to normal activity – MP presents a method to do so
-motor intentional activities cannot be counted as involuntary unconscious actions, not voluntary conscious actions e.g.
checking your width through door frame
-activities fall between intentional reflective action and unintentional reflexive reaction
-MP thinks Shneider lacks motor-intentionality – uses him to show the existence of motor intentionality
Spontaneous behaviours – movements not solicited by or relevant to the current situation
Habitual behaviours – movements solicited by or relevant to the current situation
-Shneider has difficulty initiating spontaneous behaviours e.g. miming military salute
-and difficulties modifying habitual behaviours, actually giving salute when ordered
-since unable to spontaneously mime military salute, he had to move his arms around until his hand came to his head
-Shneider could perform spontaneous movements only by going through preparatory movements or by watching the
limb required for the movement
Shneider lacks – bodily freedom – bodily openness to be drawn in to, or to be solicited by new situations
Starting problems – difficulties to initiate actions without throwing himself into movement
Concrete Liberty – a bodily openness to put oneself in to or to initiate a new situation
-Shneider lacks the concrete liberty, general power of putting oneself into a situation
-so also bodily openness to be drawn into new situations and concrete liberty
-his two deficits show us, through triangulating, the world structure at the core of consciousness
-world structure – two stages of sedimentation and spontaneity
Diagram – Shneider’s lack of bodily freedom and concrete liberty – struggled to orient spontaneous body
towards the sedimented part of the world – could not launch into new situation
-also lacked being open to world solicitations on his own body – lack of bodily freedom
-motor intentionality is different from the world structure – it is an actual activity
-in normal cases when the world structure is ensured by the body itself we find motor intentionality; both bodily
freedom to be solicited by situations and concrete liberty to put yourself into a situation
-meeting point of bodily behaviours and intentions are motor intentions; inseparable unities of intentions and
movements
Gelb and Goldstein’s Mistakes
-thought that Shneider could perform habitual behaviours but not spontaneous behaviours
-Shneider’s habitual behaviours were also impaired – he had a starting problem and a stopping problem
-MP; perhaps what we can learn about the normal from the pathological is also what we can learn by doing
phenomenology
January 12 – Descartes – Selections
-men are composed of soul and body; these two natures are joined and united to construct man
-body is a statue/machine made of earth formed by God
-God places internally all the parts required for man’s actions e.g. breathing, walking
-made by God, the body is capable of more movements and artistry than what is imaginable
-the blood that travels to the brain are called animal spirits, meeting at the pineal gland
-the animal spirits have the power to change the shape of muscles in which the nerves they pass through are embedded,
and this is how the body is moved