UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM
The Effort of Naturalizing
Consciousness by
Reinterpreting Nature
An Assessment of this Possibility as Attempted
by the Project of Naturalized Phenomenology
Paul Speets1 Universiteit van Amsterdam
Master Philosophy Thesis Author: Paul Speets
Supervisor: Christian Skirke Second Reader: Maarten Coolen Date: 30-9-2015
Abstract
In this thesis, it will be discussed whether a reinterpretation of ‘nature’ is a possible solution to the critique posed by transcendental phenomenology towards naturalized phenomenology. Whether or not Merleau-Ponty is interpreted correctly when opted for such a solution, and whether a reinterpretation of nature contains a solution in general, are seen as two essential questions that will be discussed. Thesis central question: Is a reinterpretation of the concept of nature, using Melreau-Pontyen ideas specifically, a possible way to resolve the critiques of transcendental phenomenology towards naturalized phenomenology?
2 Table of Contents
Introduction and Outline of the Argument ... 3
Chapter 1: Naturalized and Transcendental Phenomenology ... 6
1.1 Introduction ... 6
1.2 Naturalized Phenomenology... 6
1.3 Husserl and Transcendental Phenomenology ... 10
1.4 Transcendental Phenomenology’s Critique ... 13
1.5 A Difference in Methodology ... 14
1.6 Naturalized Phenomenology’s Response... 15
Chapter 2: Using Merleau-Pontyean Ideas to Reinterpret Nature so as to Make Consciousness a Part of it ... 17
2.1 Embodied Consciousness ... 17
2.2 The Body as Part of Nature ... 18
2.3 Natural Subjects, Subjective Nature ... 21
2.4 The Body is in Phenomenal Nature ... 22
2.5 Is the Science of Consciousness no More Limited than Any Other Science? ... 24
Chapter 3: Nature According to Merleau-Ponty ... 28
3.1 Introduction ... 28
3.2 Objective Features within Perception ... 28
3.3 Merleau-Ponty as Re-Naturalizing the Subject ... 32
3.4 Being and Temporality ... 34
3.5 Merleau-Ponty as Maintaining a Fundamentally One-Sided Relationship Between Subject and World ... 37
Conclusion: Consciousness as Distinct from the Phenomenon in Nature ... 40
4.1 Introduction: Answering Two Central Questions... 40
4.2 The Relationship Between Science and the Phenomenal ... 41
4.3 The Meaning of Intentionality is Itself not Reducible to an Intention ... 43
4.4 Consciousness Requires a Different Kind of Analyses than a Phenomenological Reduction ... 44
4.5 The Essence of Subjectivity is Realized in the Necessary Limit to Science ... 47
4.6 Embeddedness is a Claim About the Structure of Consciousness, not the Ontology of Consciousness ... 48
4.7 The Futility of Reinterpreting Nature ... 50
4.8 Mutual Enlightenment? ... 50
3 Introduction and Outline of the Argument
This thesis has as its subject matter the current debate between naturalized and transcendental –phenomenology. Naturalized phenomenology can be characterized as an attempt to mix phenomenological ideas with the cognitive sciences, as an attempt to achieve a complete theory of consciousness that includes both. Transcendental phenomenology is a critique of this attempt from a phenomenological standpoint. Certain phenomenological insights appear to dispute the possibility of a complete mixture of phenomenology and the natural sciences into a single framework. This is because science is thought to be committed to a naturalistic view of nature, whereas phenomenology has traditionally rejected such an ontology. But a solution to this apparent impossibility has also been put forth, namely a reinterpretation of the concept of nature, usually attributed by its defenders to ideas by Merleau-Ponty. Whether this is indeed a solution to the problem mentioned, is the topic of this thesis.
I want to continue this introduction by giving an outline of the argument. The central question of this thesis, is whether a reinterpretation of the concept of nature, using Melreau-Pontyen ideas specifically, is a possible way to resolve the critiques of transcendental phenomenology towards naturalized phenomenology. The critique concerns the constitutive properties of consciousness: the (phenomenological) idea that consciousness structures the world around us, and is therefore not ‘explainable’ just by looking at this world. Consciousness to transcendental phenomenology, is not thought to be part of the world since one can only appreciate what consciousness is by realizing its function of structuring the world, instead of just being another ‘thing’ within it. Making consciousness a part of nature, would be to miss this essential distinction. It’s not that consciousness cannot have any natural components, but the constitutive features are simply missed when consciousness is treated as another natural object. Naturalized phenomenology, as will be discussed in chapter one, is an effort to combine cognitive science with phenomenology. Because cognitive science uses a naturalistic framework to explain consciousness, it appears to be in contradiction with phenomenology, though only up to a point. Husserl and Merleau-Ponty for example,
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held the sciences in high regard, but also thought they needed to be put in their place. Because they thought the world is as a matter of fact not naturalistic in its nature, but rather naturalism is a useful tool to abstract from a world that is to be considered phenomenal primarily. Eventually, naturalism breaks down, it is a secondary appropriation of the world. One of these points where naturalism breaks down is precisely the question of consciousness. Naturalism deals with objects, and to transcendental phenomenologists, cannot deal with subjects.
In an attempt to reconcile these opposing views, the idea of reinterpreting nature has been put forth (Bernet: 2013, Grant: 2013). This will be discussed in chapter two. Perhaps, it is thought, it is possible to think of a concept of nature that is capable of dealing with subjects after all. The concerns of transcendental phenomenology are taken seriously: naturalism necessarily misses phenomenological insights into the nature of consciousness. However, if nature herself is no longer thought of as naturalistic, but is given a meaning that is capable of dealing with constituting subjects, a middle ground might indeed be found.
It is sometimes thought that Merleau-Ponty has given such an interpretation of both nature and subjectivity. Because Merleau-Ponty talks about embodied subjects, embedded consciousness and a co-constitution of nature and subjectivity, it might indeed be possible to read Merleau-Ponty as placing the subject back in the natural world alongside everything else, though “nature” has to be appreciated in another, non-naturalistic manner. But again this is controversial, and whether or not Merleau-Ponty truly naturalizes subjectivity, will be discussed in chapter three.
In the conclusion however, I will try to show that this solution cannot work, for two different, but related reasons. First, I argue in chapter three that Merleau-Ponty actually does not imply that subjectivity is correctly understood as a part of nature. There are still transcendental concerns within the relationship between subjectivity and nature. Second, there are reasons to claim that turning nature into something phenomenal instead of naturalistic, cannot solve the problem of transcendental subjectivity in general. Briefly explained, this is because even if nature is considered phenomenal, subjectivity cannot be properly understood as another phenomenon. It is instead the
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phenomenal nature of the world itself that is at stake, when getting to grips with a phenomenological understanding of subjectivity.
Because the phenomenal nature of the world is accepted with a reinterpretation of nature, this must also mean that the special status of subjectivity as the intentional force that constitutes these phenomenon, must be taken on board as well. Such an understanding does not come by only looking at subjectivity as a phenomenon in nature, but again requires an analysis that takes us outside of the different things that are present in the world. Intentionality, not just what might contribute to, it but the meaning of this idea, is not found ‘in nature’ alongside everything else. The meaning of an object may be found in nature, but the meaning of a subject is not. It is therefore impossible to have a scientific relationship with subjectivity, as science is appreciated as having an abstract relationship with an object in (phenomenal) nature. One has to take such a stance towards science and subjectivity when committing to a phenomenal, instead of naturalistic -worldview, which is essentially what a project of a reinterpretation of nature promises. A reinterpretation of nature thus contradicts itself, when looking at what it is meant to achieve. This central claim, as an answer to the central question asked in this thesis, will be outlined in more detail in the conclusion.
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Chapter 1: Naturalized and Transcendental Phenomenology
Only someone who misunderstands either the deepest sense of intentional method, or that of transcendental reduction, or perhaps both, can attempt to separate phenomenology from transcendental idealism.
(Husserl: 1999, 86)
1.1 Introduction
In this chapter, the discussion between naturalized and transcendental phenomenology will be introduced. By exploring both sides of the debate and the gist of their argumentation against one another, I hope to set out a basic framework for the topic of discussion at hand. The reader will first be introduced to the project of naturalized phenomenology. After that, I will give a brief analyses of Husserl’s phenomenological project, in order understand why phenomenology has a transcendental domain to it (and what this means). Next, it is possible to understand why transcendental and naturalized -phenomenology are at odds. I shall then defend the claim that what is primarily at stake in the discussion, comes down to a difference in methodology. Finally, some possible responses from the side of naturalized phenomenology will be mentioned, one of which is a reinterpretation of nature, which will be the focal point for the rest of this paper.
1.2 Naturalized Phenomenology
Naturalized phenomenology is a recent movement in the philosophy of mind, that started with the work of Francisco Varela (1992). Varela proposed the idea of combining phenomenological insights into the nature of consciousness, with the scientific investigation of the mind as performed by the cognitive sciences. What may sound like an obvious marriage of two disciplines concerned with consciousness and how it works, has become a topic of great debate among phenomenologists. On the one hand, Varela and his successors are in favor of combining phenomenology and science as a best approach to a theory of consciousness. The other side of the argument,
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however, has been that this is impossible to do without damaging the phenomenological project in such a way that whatever makes phenomenology philosophically interesting, would have to be abandoned (Zahavi: 2004, 340).
Phenomenology can be defined as a philosophical investigation of the structure of consciousness and experience (Smith: 2013). It is thus an investigation of consciousness from the starting point of consciousness itself. Before being concerned with how it is possible to have an experience, the experience itself may have a great deal to teach us about its own nature as an experience as such. On the other hand, a scientific investigation of consciousness, such as neuroscience, is then concerned with the question of how experience can come about from a scientific, naturalistic, point of view. Rather than investigating experience as such, cognitive science can be said to investigate the processes that precede it; before experience has become experience as we know it and are all familiar with. Another way of putting this is that phenomenology is a first personal investigation of consciousness, whereas cognitive science is third-personal.
It might not be immediately obvious why a first and third-personal account of consciousness would benefit from interacting with one another. Both approaches should ultimately be concerned with the same subject matter, but how does this play out in practice? From phenomenology to neuroscience, the claim goes as follows: in trying to explain experience, you always have some definition in mind, whether conscious or not. So for example, if we want to investigate visual perception neuro-scientifically, what concept of perception is being put on the table that is going to be ‘explained’? Merleau-Ponty, for example, has tried to show how perceiving the world isn’t at all like having an exact picture of the environment in our minds at all times. Assuming this is correct, a neuroscientist might start off with a distorted view of what perception is as a first personal phenomenon, and ends up trying to explain features that aren’t a part of perception in the first place. Without realizing that some kind of concept of experience is always at play, and without realizing that our experience is far from being transparent but can actually be very mysterious and difficult to disentangle (as the work of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty have shown), cognitive science may be in serious trouble when refusing to take seriously analysis of the first-personal domain.
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What about the other way around? To quote Zahavi: “phenomenologists are not infallible” (2013, 37), and of course, they also disagree amongst each other. One idea is that the first-personal domain itself might be testable by way of scientific experimentation. This is what Varela had in mind with what he called neurophenomenology (1996). The idea is to train subjects in a basic form of the phenomenological reduction. The goal is to have subjects give a clear-cut report of their experience within a given setup, without introducing any theoretical understanding of what experience ought to be like or questions on how it can arise. This makes it possible to treat phenomenological insight as data, gathered in an experimental manner. The data, then, is the phenomenological insights as given by the trained subjects. One can then combine this data with the data from third personal investigations of the experience; i.e. data gathered on brain activity. The act of turning phenomenological insight into data makes it possible to put both the phenomenological and neurological into a single framework, according to Varela (Gallagher: 2013, 34). It would thus make it possible to combine phenomenology with scientific investigation, while still taking phenomenology seriously, but also without admitting to any ‘gaps’. Such a theory of incorporating both the first and third-personal into a single theory, would therefore serve as a framework for an ultimate explanation of consciousness, satisfying both levels of analyses as it were.
A different method would be to help phenomenological insight set up the experiment itself. This second alternative is called front-loaded phenomenology (as introduced by Gallagher: 2003). Rather than have a phenomenological analyses come into the experiment at the end, when the subject are reporting on their experiences, front loaded phenomenology wants the phenomenological analyses to play a role in the experiment from the very start. This means using existing ideas within the phenomenological tradition (as conceived by Husserl or Merleau-Ponty, for example), and designing an experiment in such a way as to gain insight into these existing ideas on a cognitive scientific level of analyses. Gallagher (2013, 38-39) gives the example of the phenomenological insight of the difference between a sense of ownership and a sense of agency when it comes to bodily movement. Once such a distinction has been made phenomenologically, it is possible to conceive of an experiment where these differences
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are relatable to neurological events, which would therefore lend the phenomenological insight to a neuroscientific explanation. Linking the experiential domain to brain activity in such a manner, shares the same goal with neurophenomenology. The difference is that it doesn’t rely as heavily on the reporting of subjects, but allows for perhaps more complicated insights to be researched. Also, the claim is that neuroscientific insight may add to or refute phenomenological insight, which would make front loaded phenomenology a two way street between phenomenology and cognitive science. Gallagher calls such an interaction between the two disciplines a process of mutual enlightenment (1997).
What does naturalized phenomenology ultimately hope to accomplish? One possible way of analyzing this, is that a neuro-scientific or psychological theory of the human being doesn’t address the what it’s likeness, and is therefore incomplete, or worse, doesn’t relate back to what it is that it’s trying to explain. The first personal domain is left unexplored even though cognitive science ultimately is about the first personal, even if the method of analyses doesn’t seem to include it. A purely phenomenological theory of the human being, on the other hand, can be said to be unscientific, or perhaps not yet scientific. A possible, though very characteristically modern, critique of ‘traditional’ phenomenology would be that if something isn’t yet explained scientifically, in what sense can it be said that we fully understand it?
A complete theory of consciousness, to a natural phenomenologist, would thus include both the first and third-personal domain. It takes the first personal domain seriously, but at the same time doesn’t deny that the first personal should relate back to our scientific understanding of the world, and is part of this world, and thus ultimately understandable within a single (naturalistic) framework. To a natural phenomenologist it should be possible to talk about experience in scientific terms, but at the same time this doesn’t mean we can simply ignore the experiential domain and ‘just do the science’. If one only takes science into consideration when talking about consciousness, than obviously the first personal is missed, and one may be said to end up with a scientific theory that doesn’t take into consideration certain essential features of the ‘object’ it is trying to explain. A theory of consciousness that doesn’t address the phenomenal in any way quite clearly sounds incomplete. On the other hand, a
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phenomenological theory of consciousness that dismisses science altogether appears to be ignoring any progress made in cognitive science generally, and neuroscientific research especially. Given such an analyses, combining both approaches into a single framework might seem not only worthwhile but perhaps even necessary.
Wherein does the controversy lie among phenomenologist? It might seem that any philosophical realization made respectable to science would be doing it a favor, but again, this is a very modern approach that not everyone would agree with. As a matter of fact, it is the scientific worldview itself that is the topic of controversy among modern phenomenologists. The opposing side of the debate has been categorized as transcendental phenomenology. The term transcendental relates to the idea of ‘what precedes what’ when giving an explanation of anything. To naturalism, consciousness emerges out of the natural world, and this gives a full understanding of its ontology: it is simply another thing out there in the natural world alongside everything else (Zahavi: 2013, 31). Transcendental phenomenology however, claims that the natural world (and a naturalistic worldview), is dependent on consciousness and can therefore not be explained by it. Naturalism is claimed to take for granted a phenomenological understanding of the world: a naturalistic worldview implicitly uses it but doesn’t address this. Naturalism thus overlooks its own condition of possibility. One cannot be a scientist other than in relation to a world that is already structured by subjectivity. Combining both approaches therefore, misses the priority of phenomenology when it comes to any possibility of scientific understanding. The significance of phenomenological insight is given within this priority, and this is dismissed by naturalized phenomenology when it is looking for a naturalistic explanation of the constitution of the phenomenal world. Subjectivity is reduced to a ‘thing’, whereas transcendental phenomenology claims it is not a thing, but rather that which makes any scientific investigation (of different kinds of things) possible (Thompson: 2014).
1.3 Husserl and Transcendental Phenomenology
To take a step back, it is important to realize what the intention of the phenomenological project as launched by Husserl originally was. It isn’t simply the case that Husserl (and his successors) wanted to have a more thoughtful analysis of
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consciousness as a possible subject for scientific research. One could rather claim that Husserl was concerned with an analysis of existence generally, and ‘discovered’ that whatever we can say or know about existence must ultimately relate back to consciousness. For example, our knowledge of what a human being is, ultimately comes down to how human beings manifest themselves in consciousness. Whatever other definition we might want to give of human beings, is only valuable insofar as this corresponds to human beings as we primarily know them from conscious experience. The essence of the human being then, can be discovered by asking ourselves what it would take for someone not to be considered a human being anymore in conscious experience (for example, when it possesses no life, such as a doll or a dead body). So for starters, the essences of different entities in the world are ultimately relatable to the way these entities manifest in conscious experience1 (Husserl: 1983, 5-19).
Now imagine walking down an alleyway at night and mistaking a garbage bag for a person staring at you. For a while, in experience, there was a shifty character there, but now there is a garbage bag. What has changed? Certainly the world hasn’t, and neither has whatever light was coming into your eyes. According to Husserl, there would be a change in intentionality (1983, 27-53). Intentionality is the way in which consciousness approaches the world. So first you intended there to be a person, thereafter an inanimate object. This difference in intentionality is ultimately the meaning of a given feature of the world. The meaning of the object does not lie in the object itself, as we have seen, but in how we approach it. Thus it is this approach itself, this difference in intentionality, that contains all the fundamental differences between, in this case, a person and an object. The meaning of the world, when paying close attention to it, comes down to consciousness, not because we consciously decide what we would like to think of something, but rather because of the intentional structure of consciousness. Husserls insight, then, is that the world shapes itself according to the structure of consciousness. There seems to be no way around this realization. In a world of books, people, animals, but also love, hatred and politics, all these features that make up the world depend on having a point of view. The world appears to become completely featureless (and meaningless), without subjectivity in it to constitute it. Consciousness
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here is no longer conceived of as an observing force, receiving a readily structured existence, but is indeed that which structures existence itself; an existence which under this conception has become wholly dependent on consciousness.
It should be clear that given such an analyses, investigating consciousness can quickly become synonymous with investigating the world ‘as we know it’. This is not a scientific or empirical investigation, in which certain facts or deterministic analyses are the topic of discussion, but rather an investigation of the structure of the world and of meaning, the background of whatever empirical facts we wish to discover. What this means is that conscious structures are the necessary meaningful contexts in which empirical facts can be allowed to make sense. This wouldn’t just include different fields of investigation (definitions like ‘human being’ and ‘object’, as we have seen), but even the distinction between fact and fiction, or the notion of objectivity as a means of understanding the world.
Being consistent therefore, ideas about the world should be susceptible to the same sort of phenomenological analysis. Ideas are part of consciousness, and thus can be put under similar investigations. So an idea such as the world is objective, entails concepts such as ‘world’, ‘objectivity’ (and consequently, ‘subjectivity’ as it’s opposite), which are again not empirical but rather concepts on which the empirical depends. Another way of putting this would be to state that an ‘objective worldview’ is undeniably a view belonging to subjectivity. It’s meaning and fundamental structure are again part of consciousness: it is a way of approaching the world. Even when considered true, there is still undeniably a tie to subjectivity. It is very easy to overlook that notions like ‘true’ and ‘false’, ‘evidence’, and even ‘objectivity’ are still mind-dependent; ideas that have their essential structure and meaning within consciousness, exactly like the different entities of the world do (Moran: 2013, 104-108).
To give a short recap, Husserl wasn’t simply interested in studying consciousness as another object within the world, but thought that through the access of consciousness it is possible to get to the most fundamental insights of existence itself. Consciousness operates as the background of everything we can know. Not just different entities in the world but also ideas. Being consistent, it shouldn’t be allowed that objectivity gains a
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special status of not being based on, or embedded in, consciousness after all. This means that consciousness has a special relation to objectivity: namely that the objective needs the conscious experience in order to make sense, rather than the other way around.
1.4 Transcendental Phenomenology’s Critique
We are now in a position to understand the position of transcendental phenomenology when it comes to whether or not phenomenology should be naturalized. The problem is that phenomenology isn’t simply an analysis of subjectivity, but a reinterpretation of subjectivity in which it is ‘discovered’ that everything we can know about the world is preceded by the subjective. ‘An objective worldview’ is ultimately a subjective statement: it is an idea uttered by and understood by a conscious being. Objectivity, for Husserl, cannot be considered a fully independent state of affairs, waiting to be discovered by the subject. Just like the true meaning of a human being can be found in subjectivity (namely, it is dependent on how we approach a given entity in the world), the true meaning of objectivity is discoverable, and comes down to, a way of subjectivity to view the world around itself.
Rather than subjectivity being one of the entities in the world that can be explained like any other, for transcendental phenomenology, subjectivity is the source and therefore cannot be treated as such. Subjectivity has a transcendental relationship towards objectivity, in that objectivity has a need for the subjective in order to be made sense of (and not the other way around). This doesn’t mean that consciousness is completely opaque to any scientific investigation. There are many aspects of subjectivity that might not be considered transcendental. Our behaviors have a certain logic to them, and a certain predictability. Perception may indeed ‘work’ a certain way, and usually it isn’t a topic of controversy whether or not this is testable. The problem arises when talking about the properties of consciousness that allow there to speak of a world in the first place. This, to transcendental phenomenology, is mistaken since it is only possible to objectify anything in a secondary manner, something which is already ‘here’ before any objectification. The abstract terms of the objectification themselves have an origin within the subjective, as we have seen, and therefore cannot truly be self-supportive but rely on a pre-given subjective understanding of the world.
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Therefore, if consciousness is indeed transcendental in relationship to an objective worldview, then it’s impossible to look for a fully objective theory of consciousness. This is the controversy between naturalized and transcendental -phenomenology. Consciousness can only be fully described objectively if it is in fact no longer thought of as having transcendental properties. So in order to naturalize phenomenology, it would need to get rid of its transcendental domain. But what is left of phenomenology if its transcendental concerns are not taken on board? In what sense can it still be labeled as phenomenology, when one of its most fundamental philosophical notions is being rejected? And in what sense is it even still philosophy, rather than simply becoming an assistance to scientific research?
1.5 A Difference in Methodology
One preliminary remark to make is the following: there is at least one reason for which to support the claim that naturalized phenomenology is no longer truly a phenomenology. As a method, phenomenology is meant to ‘bracket’ any preconceived notion about the world in order to investigate what experience itself may teach us. This is how phenomenological insight is supposed to be gained. Naturalized phenomenology might go a long way with this, but stops short of bracketing the naturalistic (or objective) worldview. It must make an assumption about the world, and this can be considered a case of breaking off the phenomenological method when it comes to the question of naturalism; before the reduction has reached the end of its inquiry. As far as I’m aware of, no phenomenological investigation has led to the insight that the world is objective or independent of consciousness after all. This might even be a contradiction. So naturalized phenomenology may be criticized philosophically, by claiming it never goes past a certain point of a phenomenological investigation. It treats consciousness as an object, and this might ultimately not be what consciousness has to teach us (Zahavi: 2004, 335). There may be said to be no phenomenological grounds to be a naturalist. Is there therefore something schizophrenic about such an approach to consciousness? Also, the question quickly arises whether there are any naturalistic grounds to take
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phenomenology seriously. Does naturalized phenomenology ultimately lack a philosophical ground for taking on both science and phenomenology?
On the other hand, if the engagement between cognitive science and phenomenology is proven to be fruitful, why break off such an engagement on the basis of a philosophical disagreement? There might be different, creative ways of solving the problem of the constitution of the world that are compatible with naturalism after all (Grant: 2013, Morris: 2013). Why not use whatever meaningful tools that are available to discuss a topic as complicated as consciousness might be, and postpone whatever fundamental disagreement may ultimately arise between phenomenology and science? Before this happens, science may have a great deal to teach phenomenology (such as Gallagher is claiming, 1997) There may be many questions about subjectivity that aren’t transcendental, or it may be possible to be committed to transcendental phenomenology and still learn a thing or two about a scientific investigations of consciousness. Might indeed phenomenology not go a long way before becoming transcendental?
Framed in this way, the disagreement between transcendental and naturalized – phenomenology may be considered to be a difference in methodology. Transcendental phenomenology is more ‘faithful’ to the phenomenological project, by not giving consciousness any preconceived ontological status. Science must, they would claim, treat everything under investigation as an object (Moran: 2013, Zahavi: 2004). Therefore, to have science be an ultimate explanation of consciousness is to commit to the idea that consciousness is an object (or inversely that the world is fundamentally objective). It is therefore quite straightforward to conceive of a phenomenological critique of naturalized phenomenology.
1.6 Naturalized Phenomenology’s Response
One possible reply for naturalized phenomenology, is to simply not be interested in whether their methods are to be considered phenomenological or not, and just get on with their own project. But this might be too easy of a way out. In looking for a theory of consciousness, naturalized phenomenology too must possess a certain framework in
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which consciousness is ultimately to be explained. They must therefore be able to defend why transcendental properties are not a part of consciousness after all, or why consciousness should ultimately not be considered ontologically any different from any other entity in the world.
In the debate between the two sides, it is arguable that two different routes have been taken in rebuttal of the critique by transcendental phenomenology. The first is to argue against the transcendental properties of consciousness itself. This has taken on several different forms, such as denying certain phenomenological insights scientifically (Roden: 2013), or engaging in a discussion about the validity of transcendental concerns (Petitot: 1999). This could be considered a direct rebuttal against the supposed transcendental properties of consciousness. The second route, has been to try to redefine nature rather than redefine consciousness. Is there any way in which the constituting properties of consciousness are kept intact, but still have some sense of a natural world that precedes this, and how should we dream up such a strange relationship in which both seem to precede each other (Grant: 2013)?
This second possibility is what I want to explore further. Rather than abandoning transcendental concerns within phenomenology altogether, it has been though plausible by several contemporary authors that the work of especially Merleau-Ponty allows itself to such a reading; namely a theory of consciousness that is both ‘natural’ and allows for transcendental properties (Grant: 2013, Morris: 2013). The claim is that if nature is redefined, a constituting consciousness may find a place within this notion of nature. Because Merleau-Ponty’s theory of consciousness is one of embodiedness (and for other, less obvious reasons which will be explored in chapter three), it is sometimes thought that Merleau-Ponty allows consciousness on equal terms with ‘nature’, though it will need to be re-explored what ‘nature’ now means as well. The question is whether such a reading of Merleau-Ponty is justified, and if his apparent modified view of nature is still relevant for naturalized phenomenology, or whether perhaps the concept of nature has been changed so drastically that any connection with the naturalism of contemporary science has become too far-fetched.
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Chapter 2: Using Merleau-Pontyean Ideas to Reinterpret Nature so as to Make Consciousness a Part of it
2.1 Embodied Consciousness
In the previous chapter, I have tried to explain that there may be two different routes to reconcile phenomenology with naturalism. The problem, as has been shown, is the transcendental aspect of consciousness, that traditionally phenomenology has claimed. If consciousness is constitutive of the world, than it must be impossible to fully explain consciousness in any framework that doesn’t include it from the very beginning. Since naturalism doesn’t include consciousness from the very beginning, but leaves it as an emergent property, consciousness can never be considered as having transcendental aspects in a naturalistic explanation.
The two possible routes are the following: either it is denied that consciousness is transcendental, or ‘the natural’ can be reinterpreted in such a way that it can include the constitutive properties of consciousness. In this chapter, I want to focus on this second possibility of the reinterpretation of nature. What kind of ‘nature’ is capable of including, as one of its features, a subjectivity on which it depends?
Several attempts have been made in this direction (Bernet: 2013, Grant: 2013, Morris: 2013). A phenomenological thinker who is usually attributed to a reconfiguration of nature is Merleau-Ponty. Whereas Husserl has often been accused of not being able to get out of a subject –object paradigm, Merleau-Ponty has been interpreted presenting view where the subject and nature do not need to be ontologically separated (Bernet: 2012, 44). The question is whether such an interpretation is correct, and if Merleau-Ponty should be considered as presenting a framework in which subjectivity can once again be considered as a part of, and on ontologically equal terms with, nature.
First, it is important to explain why one would go to Merleau-Ponty, rather than say Husserl or Sartre, for a ‘re-naturalization’ of subjectivity. This is because for bot Husserl and Sartre, subjectivity lacks any sense of exteriority to it, and it is therefore harder to think of any way in which subjectivity can be placed back in amongst the other things in
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the natural world. If subjectivity remains an invisible force, as something only fully accessible to the subject herself, there remains a sense of distance between the subject and nature that seems harder to bridge. Merleau-Ponty however, considers the body as the subject, and the body seems to be at least one step closer to something that could be considered as being embedded in nature; as existing alongside every other entity in the natural world. In an important sense, embeddedness enters the picture of subjectivity when considering the body as the subject, and thereby the gap between subject and nature seems less unbridgeable in comparison to a subjectivity that shares absolutely no substantial features with the rest of the natural world.
For Merleau-Ponty, just like Husserl, subjectivity is constitutive of the world. However, this constitution is accomplished by an embodied subject: what makes the world a possibility is the structure of the subject insofar as it is embodied. Husserls intentionality is taken to be performed by the body: it is no longer considered as a purely mental phenomenon. For example, hard and soft, far away and up close, big and small, are dependent on being a body that is in certain place, that has a certain size and that has itself a certain softness which makes other objects hard or soft relative to it (Merleau-Ponty: 2005, 348-351). The world, as it manifests itself, is dependent on consciousness (this is what Husserl had already shown), but this consciousness is bodily rather than purely mental.
2.2 The Body as Part of Nature
The body however, also has an exteriority: it is no longer an invisible subjectivity once it is considered bodily. This can be analyzed by what Husserl has called the difference between Leib and Körper (Bernet: 2013, 46). Insofar subjectivity is the body it can be considered as Leib: it is what I am, it is the center of the universe, it is where subjectivity resides. But insofar the body is also ‘a thing among things’ it is Körper. This is the body insofar it has bones, flesh and organs: an object that is built a certain way, that possesses a certain material structure. So when I pick up an object, my hand is that which is able to manipulate the object in front of me. I don’t see two objects colliding in space; rather “I am grabbing an object”. “I” here, is not an object, even though it is my hand that is doing the grabbing. But my hand is me, it is subjectivity, even though it is
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not hidden from view, just like the object it is (or rather: I am -) grabbing. This is the body considered as Leib.
But this same hand can also be broken. When I have some type of accident, my hand can come under the investigation of a doctor who analyses what bones have been broken and what will have to be done to ‘fix me up’. Suddenly, my hand has become a ‘thing’, with bones, arteries and muscles, which will need to be ‘repaired’. The body has become objectified. It may contain parts I’ve never heard of or thought about. I have become aware of it under a completely different light. Under such an analyses, my hand has become precisely as the objects it was able to grab. It is now analyzed as Körper, or a thing among things (Bernet: 2013, 46-48).
So our body, according to Bernets reading of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty (2013), can be analyzed in these two different ways. It is both subjectively and objectively analyzable. When subjective, it is transparent (Flynn: 2012), I am not usually aware of my hands when I grab something, or of my legs when walking. In this sense, the body is subjective, it is that with which I am directed towards the world. But my body can also be analyzed as an object. This is the body considered as material, as something that can be damaged or destroyed. I am usually not aware of my body as an object, but it is possible for me to switch to such a point of view, when for example, something happens to it and a material, objective point of view on the body becomes apparent. The point both Husserl and Merleau-Ponty wish to make however, is that this objectified view of the body can only be accomplished by there being a subjective body on which such a possibility of objectification depends. The objectified view is only understandable because of the primary view of the body as a subject (Bernet: 2013, 58).
There is a possibility for a naturalized phenomenology to take the idea of an embodied subject on board, but relate constitutive aspects of subjectivity (how the world manifests itself ‘for us’) to the structure of our objectified body’s. So the body, when analyzed as a (natural) object, has certain visible features that can be held accountable for the specific manner in which the world manifests itself, or in other words, where these objective features of the body serve as an explanation for intentionality. This is what authors such as Bernet (2013) and Morris (2013) have attempted to do. One can
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arguably use Melreau-Pontyen ideas to, for example, explain why somebody who is in a wheelchair literally lives in a different world from an able bodied person (Merleau-Ponty: 2005, 524). This is a feature that is explainable by specific ‘objective’, or natural features of someone’s body.
Rather than performing a phenomenological reduction in order to discover a ‘hidden’ structure of consciousness, the structure of consciousness, when embodied, can actually be considered as fully visible and thereby analyzable in a manner that doesn’t involve a mind that is not present in nature, in the same manner as everything else is. There is a crossover point in which the body as ‘a thing among things’, so not the body as transparent but the body as an entity in the world, serves as an explanatory framework for the phenomenon as manifested for the embodied subject. The difficulty, as we shall see, is that for Merleau-Ponty the body as ‘a thing among things’ is still a phenomenon present in a phenomenal (instead of naturalistic) -world.
But let’s first explore this possibility further. If we want to for example argue that our conception of space is bodily, that should imply that if the shape of the body is altered, the subjective experience of space is altered as well. When visiting the house of your childhood, you might be struck with how small the house appears in comparison with how you remember it. One can account for this difference in a non-objective experience by a change in terms of the shape of the objectified body (Körper): it has simply become larger. The shape of the objective body has been altered, and this has consequences for the subjective experience.
So if the body can be analyzed objectively and as part of nature, this means that subjectivity should be accessible through an analyses of nature. Though this is still distinctly different from a phenomenological reduction, it allows for a different approach that isn’t necessarily in contradiction with it. Subjectivity is claimed to show up in nature just as any other natural phenomenon does. How does such an analyses of consciousness tie in with our discussion of naturalized phenomenology? The critique of transcendental phenomenology, as we have seen, is that the constitutive aspects of consciousness can never be explained objectively. If however, these constitutive aspects of consciousness are considered to be bodily, and the body itself can be analyzed as a
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natural phenomenon (as part of nature), than indeed the transcendental aspects of consciousness should allow themselves to be analyzed objectively.
The explanation of why the world manifests itself this way rather than that way, can be found in analyzing the body as a thing among things. Though the idea of constitution itself may not be understood by just looking at nature, the body as a natural phenomenon has a responsibility in the specific way in which these constitutions are played out. It is no accident that the shape of my naturalized body ‘produces’ this specific ‘world’ for me: there is an explanation to be found when analyzing the body as part of nature. The claim would then be that what is really going on, is that aspects of constitution are present in nature in the form of the body as a natural phenomenon. Subjectivity is thought to be shown to have a relationship with nature after all. This is beginning to look like an interdependent relationship of nature and subject, and an entry into the reconstitution of nature that naturalized phenomenology has aimed for (Bernet: 2013, 46-62).
2.3 Natural Subjects, Subjective Nature
On this reading, the body is shown to be constitutive of nature, but also a part of nature, because that which constitutes nature is present within it, and analyzable not just by a phenomenological reduction but by an analyses of the body-subject as present in nature. David Morris (2013) has taken this to mean that meaning in the world is relatable to the structure of the living organism. For example, given the fact that a bacterium needs glucose, the importance of glucose in the environment of a bacterium is inherent, and relatable to its metabolism. Here we come across Merleau-Ponty’s Idea of a ‘field’ of experience. Instead of a neutral environment awaiting interpretation, a field spontaneously organizes itself in relation to the subject. My world is always already structured before I’ve had any opportunity to give it an active interpretation or analyses. There are people, animals, shapes and sizes. All of this is instantaneous instead or ‘after the fact’ (Merleau-Ponty: 2005, 60-76). But this spontaneous organization is to be attributed to the structure of the embodied subject. The world gets its primary meaning from the structure of my body, not from any interpretation I wish to place on
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top the world. Our first contact with the world is one of structure and meaning, not one of full ambiguity awaiting some kind of active judgment (348-402).
But this spontaneous structure of the world is in some sense impersonal. I did not choose to be a creature that needs to eat, but if I haven’t eaten in a while, stuff that is eatable to me starts to stand out in my environment. I will never be drawn to a field of grass when I’m hungry, and this isn’t so much a preference or a choice: it is a relational function attributable to the structure of my metabolism. The idea here is that intentionality can come down to something as straightforwardly ‘natural’ as the metabolism of a specific organism: Because any conscious effort is taken out of the equation, but a spontaneous, impersonal and immediate structure of experience is ‘doing the work’. The explanation for the spontaneous organization of Merleau-Ponty’s “field of experience”, is thus thought to be traceable to specific features of the bodily workings of the organism: in other words the body analyzed as a natural phenomenon (Morris: 2013).
2.4 The Body is in Phenomenal Nature
The manifested world is what we refer to as ‘experience’ (or ‘world’) and is to be considered the starting point of a phenomenological investigation (Morris: 2013, 336). In this way, we are coming into contact with a strange interdependency. On the one hand, experience should be considered as the starting point from which to construct all of our ideas. Phenomenology dictates that this is the world as it is. On the other hand, ‘the natural world’ has been reintroduced as being ultimately responsible for the ‘life-world’ (Moran: 2013, 101). But we have already seen that this conception of ‘the natural world’ is not to be considered as naturalistic but rather as phenomenal. So when talking about the body as a natural phenomenon, this should not be confused with the body as a naturalistic object, but rather as an object that is part of a concept of nature as phenomenal (Morris: 2013, 340).
The interdependent relationship is the following: the body can be analyzed as having objective features, but the world itself is in fact not an objective state of affairs. It might be possible to consider the body as part of nature, but nature is still constituted by
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subjectivity. In other words, it is not an independent state of affairs. Whatever we can say about the body as being a thing among things, is once again problematized by the fact that ‘objectivity’ is not to be considered the final ontological state of the world. So at the very least, what Merleau-Ponty hasn’t allowed us to do is to naturalize subjectivity in the sense of having a fully working scientific explanation of consciousness. ‘The natural’ is still dependent on subjectivity.
Merleau-Ponty repeats on numerous occasions that perception cannot be explained by science, because every scientific explanation must assume the perceived when trying to explain it (Baldwin: 2013, 190). This perceptual world is the only real world of which to speak of, there is no digging underneath or hidden truth behind the field of experience. Merleau-Ponty argues every scientific or objective worldview to be an abstraction with no independent reality; a way of talking about the real world which is the world of perception (2004). So if the body is a ‘thing among things’, this cannot mean ‘things’ in the naturalistic interpretation of a thing which has an independent existence. A ‘real thing’, rather than an abstract thing, can only mean a thing which is dependent on subjectivity. So a cup for example, is a perceptual object primarily and an abstract concept secondarily. There is no ‘independent’ cup even if an abstract worldview would like to claim this. Therefore, in Merleau-Pontyean terms, even insofar the body has an objective dimension to it, this still has to mean objective in the sense of being a perceptual object rather than an independent abstract object (Merleau-Ponty: 2005, 349). The primacy of subjectivity in relationship towards objectivity, which is a transcendental phenomenological claim, is maintained in Merleau-Ponty’s concept of nature. The natural world that Merleau-Ponty talks about, is not a naturalistic world but a phenomenal world. This will turn out to be a crucial distinction as our discussion develops.
Subjectivity, for Merleau-Ponty, manifests a field in which certain objects are able to appear. This is where we would have to place the natural in Merleau-Pontyean terms: as part of a perceptual totality (2005, 381-389). Indeed, as has been analyzed, my body is ‘perceivable’ too, as well as being the source of perception. But we might wonder what has been gained when the analyses has led to such an interpretation of a relationship
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between subject and nature. Is this simply a different manner of talking about self-consciousness?
Though we might say that certain features of the body are responsible for features of perception, these features are not abstract but again only sensible to perception. A change in the size of my body, to return to this earlier example, only makes sense in a perceptive world in which shapes and sizes find their original meaning. This doesn’t mean however that Merleau-Ponty is not any different from Husserl when it comes to a constituting subjectivity. As has been analyzed, the constituting properties of the world such as shape and size are still bodily for Merleau-Ponty (instead of ‘mental’).
The body for Merleau-Ponty can be analyzed as an object in nature, but not an abstract object but rather a phenomenal object. Therefore, if we wish to naturalize phenomenology by using Merleau-Pontyean ideas, this would have to mean naturalizing in the sense of nature as an experiential domain and not an independent abstract construction. Merleau-Ponty again and again describes the world as being a subjective rather than an objective state of affairs. A possible conclusion therefore, is that embodied subjectivity may be claiming little more than subjectivity being both constitutional of experience and being part of experience too (observable for other subjects, just as everything else in the world). Such a conclusion may do very little for the possibility of a scientific understanding of consciousness. Science, for Merleau-Ponty, remains an incomplete story, and will always need the perceived without ever being able to illuminate it. We appear to be right back where we started.
2.5 Is the Science of Consciousness no More Limited than Any Other Science? But this conclusion may be too hastily. Before, the influence of subjectivity on nature was only one directional. Merleau-Ponty however, does leave room for an influence of nature on the constituting subject. Before we figure out what this could mean for naturalized phenomenology, we should run past how such a mutual influence works for Merleau-Ponty.
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Nature is independent of me as an agent, insofar as I cannot willfully change certain properties of nature that manifest themselves. But these properties can only manifest themselves in relationship to the structure of my body. So there are genuine facts about the world, but these facts do not float in midair: they are facts dependent on a subjective constitution of the world. But this constitution can be considered as being factual too. They are part of the world that I have manifested, rather than being an impenetrable force. The point here, we might say, is that the world doesn’t seem to be traceable to either nature or to subjectivity: both are immediately manifested. Nature changes with a different subjective intentionality, but these changes are part of the natural world. Subjectivity is no longer to be considered as the source, but rather the world appears to be an organization of subject-environment (Baldwin: 2013, 207).
Is it possible to do anything with such a concept of nature scientifically? On the one hand, as we have seen, the answer is ‘no’. Nature still has a dependency on subjectivity, so whatever naturalistic explanation one may search for, it will always fall into the trap of trying to illuminate something which it depends on. This is the classical critique of transcendental phenomenology, and on this reading, Merleau-Ponty cannot be instrumentalized to overcome this problem.
On the other hand, the answer may be affirmative as well. It is possible to argue that, with an embodied consciousness, the constituting properties of nature are factual. This means it is possible to analyze them in a way which we can all agree upon. It should even be possible to mean that we can scientifically investigate these contributing factors to constituting, just as other natural phenomenon lend themselves to such scientific testing. Though the final analyses cannot be a subjectivity that is fully illuminated by science, this is also not what naturalized phenomenologists, that are looking for a reinterpretation of nature, are claiming. We had to look for a new way of talking about nature, after all. Just as any science, according to Merleau-Ponty, is an abstraction from the actual state of affairs, a science of subjectivity may be just such an abstraction. However, such an abstraction would thereby also be ‘just as good’ (or susceptible to the same sort of limitations), as any other scientific inquiry, instead of being especially impossible.
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What this implies is that a science of consciousness should be just as much a possibility as any other scientific inquiry. Though we never are able to talk about the world without relying on perception, there is in principle no difference between a cosmologist and a neuroscientist. A feature of the manifested world is being made sense of in a specific model in which certain facts can be discovered and said to be in relationship with one another.
This would in an important sense be a middle ground between a transcendental and naturalized phenomenology as discussed in chapter one. On the one hand, consciousness cannot be naturalized with Merleau-Pontyean Ideas, because a fully functioning and independent natural world, according to Merleau-Ponty, simply doesn’t exist. Nature here, is a phenomenal world that cannot be fully objectivized in general. In this sense, every scientific inquiry is ultimately incomplete (Baldwin: 2013, 190). However, what this also implies is that a scientific inquiry of consciousness, would be no more problematic than a scientific inquiry into the structure of a mountain, for example. The constitutive properties of consciousness are claimed not to be especially hidden from view, but are, just like any feature of the world, possible to investigate scientifically, even though science by its nature is an abstraction from the real. If this is valid, then it should be possible to analyze consciousness as a relational function between the structure of the body and the phenomenal world (Morris: 2013). A scientist may be able to functionally analyze what structure of my embodied mind is responsible for what type of phenomenal feature. It might also be fair to admit that any neuroscientific investigation has had no greater ambition than this in the first place. The phenomenological side to such a scientific investigation of the functioning of different structures of my embodied mind, would then be to pay attention to the phenomenon which certain aspects of my embodied mind are manifesting. A phenomenological analyses of the world and a scientific investigation into the functioning of the embodied mind would complete the story of a scientific theory of consciousness. Consciousness would never truly be naturalized for a Merleau-Pontyean, but there would be available a scientific manner of speaking about the constitutive properties of consciousness, something that transcendental phenomenologist claim is impossible. Whether such a theory of consciousness in philosophically satisfying
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remains an open question. It may be scientifically satisfying, though. A philosophically satisfying explanation of consciousness however, may have nothing to do with science, because if the world according to Merleau-Ponty is primarily perceptual, then consciousness is illuminated by investigating the world around us, and science, as always, remains a secondary appropriation to something that is primarily already manifested for us from the very start.
The central question has been whether it is possible to use Merleau-Pontyean ideas to reinterpret nature in such a way that transcendental consciousness has become a part of it. The answer so far, as we have seen, is that this is only possible when nature takes on such a new meaning that it is phenomenological rather than scientific. The gain is that consciousness for Merleau-Ponty, because it is embodied, can be seen as part of this particular concept of nature. The story is however far from complete, because this new sense of nature is in itself inherently subjective, which denies any straightforward answer to the question of whether or not consciousness can be naturalized. I shall continue with a closer examination of Merleau-Ponty’s own analyses of the natural world, as performed in the Phenomenology of Perception (2005). What sensible interpretation of the natural world as he conceives of it can be made in light of the discussion at hand? Is it indeed fair to consider consciousness as being on par with nature as Merleau-Ponty conceives it? Or is there perhaps a more subtle dimension to this specific question of ontological convergence?
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Chapter 3: Nature According to Merleau-Ponty 3.1 Introduction
In the previous chapter, I have discussed the possible routes for a naturalization of consciousness using Merleau-Pontyean ideas. ‘Nature’, we have seen, can be shown to have a relationship with the structure of our bodies, and the structure of our bodies in turn may be susceptible to a scientific (objective) analyses. I have also tried to show that this hypothesis is immediately problematized by the fact that even an objective structure for Merleau-Ponty isn’t an object in the way in which science may conceive it, but a perceived object instead. We will have to analyze what objectivity, and ‘nature’, mean for Merleau-Ponty, in order to fully appreciate what a naturalization of consciousness on the basis of his ideas may amount to, or is in fact a fair use of his line of thought at all.
We have also seen in the last chapter that Merleau-Ponty’s concept of nature can be thought of as having an interdependent relationship with subjectivity (Bernet: 2013, Morris: 2013). In this sense, it may be said that Merleau-Ponty is less of an idealist than Husserl, for whom the relationship between subject and nature appears to remain one sided (Bernet: 2013). Merleau-Ponty’s chapter ‘the thing and the natural world’, in the phenomenology of perception (2005), constructs a concept of ‘world’ that involves both subject and nature, whom can only be separated artificially, but not actually. In this chapter, I will attempt to reconstruct this concept of nature, by first showing how one could interpret Merleau-Ponty as making subjectivity continues with nature. After this first analyses however, I will have also paved a way to show how it actually should be considered a more plausible approach to conceive of Merleau-Ponty as still conceiving of subjectivity as having a transcendental relationship with the natural, and how every apparent reinterpretation of subjectivity is more plausibly a continuity of a still fundamentally one-sided relationship between subjectivity and nature. In other words, how Merleau-Ponty is in fact is not suitable for a complete naturalization of subjectivity.
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But let’s start out by exploring Merleau-Ponty’s concept of nature more generally. Nature, for Merleau-Ponty, is part of the world that is manifested for the subject. So subjectivity is both part of (or ‘embedded in’) a phenomenal world, and manifests this world. This concept of world has as one of its categories ‘the natural’. As discussed in the previous chapter, it is possible to view the body-subject as part of nature, but it is also possibly part of different categories within the world as present for the subject, such as the social world for example. So the world is the total environment in which a subject finds itself, where nature is one of the possible categories, in which ‘things’ and objective features are relevant phenomenon. But as explained, these are phenomenological features, as opposed to naturalistic objects, and find their meaning as such.
Merleau-Ponty seems to reject both (a rigid form of) idealism and objectivism (2005, 348-349). The world is neither an idea, nor an objective state of affairs as described by the sciences. Science must always remain an abstraction from the world as it is, which is the perceived world. Idealism on the other hand, rejects the world as an independent state of affairs, but nevertheless, there appear to be certain facts about the world, the world is investigable, and objects appear to be ‘what they want’ without awaiting my judgment (348-351). The world of perception is both independent in its state of affairs, but dependent insofar it is always perceived. Or as Merleau-Ponty puts it: “in-itself-for-us” (375). How is it possible to conceive of such a world?
Merleau-Ponty starts out by analyzing how it is possible to speak of objectivity in the world of perception. Objectivity cannot be described as an independent state of affairs behind perception, as Descartes would have it, that our perception is than able to translate somehow. Rather, the objective properties of a thing are recognized instantly in perception, they are part of the world around us. I do not need a ruler in order to discern big from small: such qualities are part of the perceived world. Furthermore, they maintain a consistency. This consistency, for Merleau-Ponty, is the basis of objectivity. It is the fact that no matter who perceives it, or from what angle, features such as size and weight do not change with such perspectival changes (349-351).
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So there must be said to be objectivity in the perceived world, because there is no need for us to ‘figure out’ properties such as size and weight, but rather these are immediately apparent in perception. These ‘perceptual constants’ (348) are the basis for any abstract notion of objectivity: they can be constructed on the basis of perceptual constants (and not the other way around) (348-349). The world then, has objective features in this sense: that different perspectives (of different subjects), will agree upon certain features of a ‘thing’. Or, the same features of a thing will show themselves through different perspectives (350-351).
I don’t need to ‘conclude’ that my friend standing a hundred meters away (appearing very small), or standing right next to me (taking up the greater part of my field of vision), has one continues size. This is because we never actually see absolute sizes in such a way. We always already see things in perspective (Merleau-Ponty: 1964, 15). Looking out into the distance, I don’t see ‘a tiny man’, but rather I see ‘a man out in the distance’. We don’t need the rational in order to understand that this is the case. Perception has its own inherent logic to it. This inherent logic allows there to be continues features in the world, without resorting to some kind of unobserved, ‘neutral’ basis. An object has one definite size, in the sense that if I were to walk away from it, I can expect it to change its apparent size along with me. So its actual size is given by a consistency of different apparent sizes from different perspectives (Merleau-Ponty: 2005, 351).
This logic however, is again not an intellectual synthesis, in which I take all of the perspectival information I have in order to decide the actual size of an object (this is Merleau-Ponty’s critique of Kant). Rather, the object has an optimal distance from which it wants to be seen (352). I know the actual size of the object by coming to grips with the object from the optimal distance. Any change in distance is relatable to this optimal distance. The object isn’t some kind of law, or consistency, that is the sum total of all perspectives in which I have perceived it. Rather, the object is as I perceive it, and any change in perspective shows an object at a sub-optimal distance. The true object thus shows itself in the process of perceiving it: my body reconstitutes it (381). My friend off in the distance, is my friend that I know from up close, and has the same properties that
