Embodied higher cognition: insights from Merleau‑Ponty’s interpretation of motor intentionality

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F61989592%3A15210%2F23%3A73608411" target="_blank" >RIV/61989592:15210/23:73608411 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11097-021-09769-4" target="_blank" >https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11097-021-09769-4</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11097-021-09769-4" target="_blank" >10.1007/s11097-021-09769-4</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Embodied higher cognition: insights from Merleau‑Ponty’s interpretation of motor intentionality

Original language description

This paper clarifies Merleau-Ponty’s original account of “higher-order” cognition as fundamentally embodied and enacted. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy inspired theories that deemphasize overlaps between conceptual knowledge and motor intentionality or, on the contrary, focus exclusively on abstract thought. In contrast, this paper explores the link between Merleau-Ponty’s account of motor intentionality and his interpretations of our capacity to understand and interact productively with cultural symbolic systems. I develop my interpretation based on Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of two neuropathological modifications of motor intentionality, the case of the braininjured war veteran Schneider, and a neurological disorder known as Gerstmann’s syndrome. Building on my analysis of Schneider’s sensorimotor compensatory performances in relation to his limitations in the domains of algebra, geometry, and language usage, I demonstrate a strong continuity between the sense of embodiment and enaction at all these levels. Based on Merleau-Ponty’s interpretations, I argue that “higher-order” cognition is impaired in Schneider insofar as his injury limits his sensorimotor capacity to dynamically produce comparatively more complex differentiations of any given phenomenal structure. I then show how Merleau- Ponty develops and specifies his interpretation of Schneider’s intellectual difficulties in relation to the ambiguous role of the body, and in particular the hand, in Gerstmann’s syndrome. I explain how Merleau-Ponty defends the idea that sensorimotor and quasi-representational cognition are mutually irreducible, while maintaining that symbol-based cognition is a fundamentally enactive and embodied process.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

60301 - Philosophy, History and Philosophy of science and technology

Project

—

Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2023

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences

ISSN

1568-7759

e-ISSN

1572-8676

Volume of the periodical

22

Issue of the periodical within the volume

2

Country of publishing house

NL - THE KINGDOM OF THE NETHERLANDS

Number of pages

29

Pages from-to

369-397

UT code for WoS article

000692302500001

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85114163250