Invitations: Merleau-ponty, Cognitive Science and Phenomenology

A number of recent movements in cognitive science have been inspired by Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of perception, and his work is often used to provide philosophical support for post-cognitivist accounts of perception. Drawing on the work of Hubert Dreyfus, Francisco Varela, Shuan Gallagher and Charles Taylor, Tauber critically examines the psychological and philosophical aspects of this reception, and clarifies the difference between connectionist and enactivist readings. These readings often assume that Merleau-Ponty's interest in Gestalt psychology signals a break from Husserl's transcendental idealism and makes his phenomenology compatible with a broadly naturalistic approach to cognition. However, Tauber argues that Merleau-Ponty's specific interest in pathological case-studies is itself a kind of transcendental strategy - a strategy that is much closer to Husserl's later work than generally acknowledged. Demonstrating this strategy in a contemporary context, and contrasting it with the work of John Haugeland, allows Tauber to reveal Merleau-Ponty's distinctive, invitational account of embodied perception, its sensuality and intersubjectivity.