Expanding the Extended Mind: Merleau-Ponty’s Late Ontology as Radical Enactive Cognition

Abstract

In this essay, I argue that the late ontology of Maurice MerleauPonty, in particular the system he began to develop in The Visible and the Invisible, can be conceived of as a form of Radical Enactive Cognition, as described by Hutto and Myin in Radicalizing Enactivism. I will begin by discussing Clark and Chalmers’ extended mind hypothesis, as well as the enactive view of consciousness proposed by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch in The Embodied Mind. However, neither Clark and Chalmers’ extended mind hypothesis nor the enactive view of consciousness advanced by Varela et al. are radical enough to fully capture Merleau-Ponty’s late ontology. Inasmuch as Hutto and Myin’s formulation combines features of the extended mind thesis and enactivism, and expresses both in a sufficiently radical fashion, it overcomes the deficits of both theories and can serve as a translation, so to speak, of MerleauPonty’s “ontology of the flesh” into contemporary terms. In particular, their formulation makes explicit several central aspects of his theory: the intimate, mutually constitutive relationship between perceiver and perceived world, the equal weight given to the contributions of perceiver and world within this relationship, and the displacement of representational content from its central position in the understanding of consciousness. It is thus the ideal vehicle for demonstrating some perhaps unexpected ways in which Merleau-Ponty’s thought is compatible with contemporary conversations concerning the nature of mind. Essays in Philosophy 17(2) 95 Essays Philos (2016)17:94-155 | DOI: 10.7710/1526-0569.1558 Published online: 8 July 2016. © Gina Zavota 2016 Contact author: gzavota@kent.edu t the end of their seminal article “The Extended Mind,” in a section intriguingly entitled “Beyond the outer limits,” Andy Clark and David Chalmers speculate on conclusions that might be drawn if we accept the sort of “active externalism” about mind for which they argue. In particular, they claim that “we may be able to see ourselves more truly as creatures of the world.”i In this essay, I will argue that the late ontology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty – the system he developed most fully in The Visible and the Invisible and the essay “Eye and Mind,” but whose roots stretch back to some of his earliest publications – anticipates some key aspects of Clark and Chalmers’ hypothesis. It thus represents one possible way of viewing ourselves as “creatures of the world.” However, I will also contend that more recent research in philosophy of mind is even closer to Merleau-Ponty’s position than the original extended mind hypothesis is. I will begin with a brief discussion of Clark and Chalmers’ extended mind hypothesis, and of the “enactive” view of consciousness proposed by Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch in The Embodied Mind. Unlike Clark and Chalmers, Varela et al. explicitly couch their discussion in terms of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, in particular as presented in the early text The Structure of Behavior. However, neither Clark and Chalmers’ extended mind hypothesis nor the enactive view of consciousness advanced by Varela et al. are radical enough to fully capture Merleau-Ponty’s late ontology. A Expanding the Extended Mind | Zavota 96 Thus I will consider a more recent, and more radical, formulation, namely Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin’s “Radical Enactive Cognition,” which I believe comes closest to expressing the theory of mind that was emerging in Merleau-Ponty’s late work. Their formulation makes explicit several central aspects of his theory: the intimate, mutually constitutive relationship between perceiver and perceived world, the equal weight given to the contributions of perceiver and world within this relationship, and the displacement of representational content from its central position in the understanding of consciousness. It is thus the ideal vehicle for demonstrating some perhaps unexpected ways in which Merleau-Ponty’s thought is compatible with contemporary conversations concerning the nature of mind. It is my hope that such a demonstration will serve as a first step toward a more active incorporation of his late ontology into these conversations. Before proceeding, I would like to specify a few things that I will not be doing in this paper. First, although I am admittedly partial to Merleau-Ponty’s view of conscious experience, this paper is not meant as an argument for the accuracy of his account or of any other. It is, instead, an attempt to illustrate the extent to which the ontology that he was beginning to develop in The Visible and the Invisible — the so-called “ontology of the flesh” — is compatible with some contemporary ideas in the philosophy of mind, in particular those stemming from the Anglo-American tradition. As a result, I will not consider in detail any of the empirical evidence cited within the texts I will be discussing but will instead focus on the theories these empirical studies are used to support. Finally, although Merleau-Ponty clearly owes a great debt to both Husserl and Heidegger, and although Heidegger himself is an important figure in contemporary discussions of consciousness and cognitive science, I will be focusing Essays in Philosophy 17(2) 97 exclusively on Merleau-Ponty, and in particular on aspects of his ontology which are not present (at least not to such a great extent) in Husserl’s or Heidegger’s thought. That having been said, I will now turn to an overview of Clark and Chalmers’ watershed article.