Peer-Reviewed Articles by Hayden Kee
Environmental Philosophy, 2025
Can we empathize with plants? Critics object that supposed empathy with plants entails anthropomo... more Can we empathize with plants? Critics object that supposed empathy with plants entails anthropomorphic or zoomorphic projection. In reply, a phenomenological account of empathy claims to avoid this objection. However, phenomenological accounts of empathy center on one sentient (phenomenally conscious) mind accessing another. If plants are not sentient, then they appear to be inappropriate targets for empathy. I reply by exploring how the organic body is implicated in sentience, even if it is not usually focal. Interoceptive experience gives us indirect access to our own organic body, and thus provides a basis for a problematic, paradoxical empathy with plants.
Synthese, 2024
Some accounts of human distinctiveness focus on anatomical features, such as bipedalism and brain... more Some accounts of human distinctiveness focus on anatomical features, such as bipedalism and brain size. Others focus on cognitive abilities, such as tool use and manufacture, language, and social cognition. Embodied approaches to cognition highlight the internal relations between these two groups of characteristics, arguing that cognition is rooted in and shaped by embodiment. This paper complements existing embodied approaches by focusing on an underappreciated aspect of embodiment: the appearance of the human body as condition of human sociality and cognition. I approach this issue through Merleau-Ponty's understanding of the animate body as an intertwining of perceiving and perceivable aspects. The eye is both an animal's embodied, perceptual openness onto the world, and the means by which that experiential openness can be perceived by others. The morphology and appearance of its embodiment condition how an animal comes to understand others and itself as animate subjects. I interpret the perceivable appearance of the human eye and skin in comparison with those of other animals. An underappreciated dimension of human distinctiveness, I argue, is the way the human sense organs render human perceiving comparatively more perceivable to conspecifics.
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2024
In recent years, social cognition approaches to human evolution and Material Engagement Theory ha... more In recent years, social cognition approaches to human evolution and Material Engagement Theory have offered new theoretical resources to advance our understanding of the prehistoric hominin mind. To date, however, these two approaches have developed largely in isolation from one another. I argue that there is a gap between social-and material-centred approaches, and that this is precisely the sociomateriality of the appearance of ancestral hominin bodies, which evolved under selective pressure to develop increasingly complex, cooperative sociality. To get this sociomaterial body in focus, I develop an esthesiological framework, appropriated from Merleau-Ponty (2003), for interpreting the expressive body in an evolutionary and comparative context. The guiding hypothesis of esthesiology is that before being rationality (social or material), "humanity is another corporeity" (Merleau-Ponty, 2003, p. 208). Esthesiology studies the appearance of the body and its sense organs as an intertwining locus of a sensing power (the ability to see, to touch, etc.) and a sensible character (the visible, touchable body). It is this dual-aspect character of the body that facilitates the most basic affective and sensorimotor modes of sociality. Examining these features from a comparative perspective, we find that the human body is distinctively suited to prosocial communication and cooperation: a more cooperative eye, an exposed and communicative skin. I thus propose a cooperative body hypothesis, by analogy with the cooperative eye hypothesis (Tomasello et al., 2007). Esthesiology provides a framework for integrating and interpreting a wide range of otherwise disconnected facts concerning human and nonhuman animal bodies, forms of life, cognition, and evolution, thereby bridging the gap between social cognition and material engagement perspectives. In doing so, however, it not only solves problems and proposes new directions of investigation, but also demands theoretical revisions from each.
Humana.Mente, 2023
In his late lecture course titled "Nature and Logos: The Human Body" (1959-1960), Merleau-Ponty p... more In his late lecture course titled "Nature and Logos: The Human Body" (1959-1960), Merleau-Ponty proposed that we understand human symbolism, language, and reason by viewing the human being initially as a variant on animal embodiment and perception prior to being a rational animal. To elaborate this project, he outlined an "esthesiology" informed by the study of evolution. However, in the sketches that survive of "Nature and Logos," we find neither a detailed explanation of how Merleau-Ponty understood this approach nor its concrete execution with respect to the human body. In this paper I reconstruct Merleau-Ponty's esthesiology. An animate body possesses two "sides": it is a sensing organism open onto the world and a sensible part of the natural world. Visual animals such as humans can see, see themselves, and be seen by others. To understand their way of life, we must study not only the body's capacities for perception and action, but also how those capacities are seen by other organisms, especially conspecifics. The body's visibility shapes the social prospects of a species and its potential for developing complex sociality, language, and cognition. I apply this basic esthesiological principle to study the human eye. Both in its vision and its visibility, the human eye is a distinctive variation on animality and one that conditions and shapes human sociality and cognition. I develop this insight with respect to a central philosophical theme of Merleau-Ponty's late work, the relation of the visible and the invisible. I conclude by discussing the importance of Merleau-Ponty's esthesiology for his late thought and current discussions of the naturalization of phenomenology.
Humana.Mente, 2022
This paper tracks the development of Merleau-Ponty's inquiries into language through the themes o... more This paper tracks the development of Merleau-Ponty's inquiries into language through the themes of institution, symbolism, and nature in his Collège de France lectures of 1953-1960. It seeks to show the continuity of Merleau-Ponty's inquiries over this period. The Problem of Speech course (1953-1954) constitutes his last extended treatment of speech, language, and expression, and it leaves many questions unanswered. Nonetheless, a careful study of the course reveals that the inquiries that follow into institution and symbolism, and later into nature, do not mark a sharp rupture with his earlier thought. Rather, the later investigations are required by those into language and expression to clarify the underlying functions that support them. Ultimately, the themes of language and nature will be deeply interwoven in Merleau-Ponty's late thought, with institution and symbolism serving as important mediating concepts.
Philosophy East and West, 2021
This paper combines insights into the nature of language from yogic mantra meditation and phenome... more This paper combines insights into the nature of language from yogic mantra meditation and phenomenology. I argue that phenomenologists can gain insights into the formative experiences that shape linguistic meaning from mantra meditators. Meanwhile, phenomenology can offer an original perspective on debates in mantra research concerning the linguisticality of mantras.
Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, 2020
This paper provides a critical discussion of the views of Merleau-Ponty and contemporary enactivi... more This paper provides a critical discussion of the views of Merleau-Ponty and contemporary enactivism concerning the phenomenological dimension of the continuity between life and mind. I argue that Merleau-Ponty’s views are at odds with those of enactivists. Merleau-Ponty only applied phenomenological descriptions to the life-worlds of sentient animals with sensorimotor systems, contrary to those enactivists who apply them to all organisms. I argue that we should follow Merleau-Ponty on this point, as the use of phenomenological concepts to describe the “experience” of creatures with no phenomenal consciousness has generated confusion about the role of phenomenology in enactivism and prompted some enactivists to ignore or turn away from phenomenology. Further, Merleau-Ponty also emphasizes the stark distinction between the vital order of animals and the human order to a greater degree than many phenomenologically inspired enactivists. I discuss his view in connection with recent research in developmental and comparative psychology. Despite the striking convergence of Merleau-Ponty’s thought with the most recent findings, I argue that he somewhat overstates the difference between human experience and cognition, and that of our closest animal kin. I outline a developmental-phenomenological account of how the child enters the human order in the first years of life, thereby reconciling the stark discontinuity of orders. This results in a modified Merleau-Pontian version of the phenomenological dimension of life-mind continuity which I recommend to enactivism.
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2020
In this paper I develop a novel account of the phenomenality of language by focusing on character... more In this paper I develop a novel account of the phenomenality of language by focusing on characteristics of perceived speech. I explore the extent to which the spoken word can be said to have a horizonal structure similar to that of spatiotemporal objects: our perception of each is informed by habitual associations and expectations formed through past experiences of the object or word and other associated objects and experiences. Specifically, the horizonal structure of speech in use can fruitfully be compared to that of a tool in use. The comparison suggests an account of our linguistic faculty as continuous with more foundational faculties of perception and action. I provide empirical corroboration of this account by drawing on recent neuroimaging studies of the multimodal, sensorimotor bases of speech comprehension. I then discuss how such an understanding of our linguistic ability helps advocates of embodied, non-representationalist accounts of cognition respond to a common objection. Critics grant that embodied approaches may be adequate to account for lower-level, online modes of cognition, such as perception and action, which directly engage their object. But they question whether such approaches can “scale up” to higher modes of cognition, such as imagination, memory, thought, and language, which can entertain absent, non-existent, or abstract objects. By providing a plausible account of the continuity of lower cognition and language-involving cognition, my approach responds to this objection, at least where language is concerned.
Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 2019
I have two objectives in this article. The first is methodological: I elaborate a minimal phenome... more I have two objectives in this article. The first is methodological: I elaborate a minimal phenomenological method and attempt to show its importance in studies of infant behavior. The second objective is substantive: Applying the minimal phenomenological approach, combined with Meltzoff’s “like-me” developmental framework, I propose the hypothesis that infants learn the pointing gesture at least in part through imitation. I explain how developments in sensorimotor ability (posture, arm and hand control and coordination, and locomotion) in the first year of life prepare the infant for acquiring the pointing gesture. The former may directly enable the latter by allowing the infant to experience its own body as being “like those” of others, thus allowing it to imitatively appropriate a broader range of adult behavior. My proposal emphasizes the embodiment of mind in the development of cognition, contrary to latent dualistic tendencies in some developmental literature.
European Journal of Philosophy, 2019
Approaches to the naturalization of phenomenology usually understand naturalization as a matter o... more Approaches to the naturalization of phenomenology usually understand naturalization as a matter of rendering continuous the methods, epistemologies, and ontologies of phenom-enological and natural scientific inquiry. Presupposed in this statement of the problematic, however, is that there is an original discontinuity, a rupture between phenomenology and the natural sciences that must be remedied. I propose that this way of thinking about the issue is rooted in a simplis-tic understanding of the phenomenological reduction that entails certain assumptions about the subject matter of phenomenology and its relationship to the natural sciences. By contrast, Merleau-Ponty's first work, The Structure of Behavior, presents a radically different approach to the phenomenological reduction, one that traverses the natural sciences and integrates them into phenomenology from the outset. I outline the argument for this position in The Structure of Behavior and then discuss consequences for current methodological issues surrounding the naturalization of phenomenology, focusing on the relationship between empirical sciences of mind, phenomenological psychology, and transcendental phenomenology. This novel exegesis of Merleau-Ponty's view on the reduction offers new insight into his oft-quoted remark that the phenomenological reduction is impossible to complete.
This paper was named European Journal of Philosophy's 2019 Prize Essay in Transcendental Philosophy.
Synthese, 2018
Radical and autopoietic enactivists disagree concerning how to understand the concept of sense-ma... more Radical and autopoietic enactivists disagree concerning how to understand the concept of sense-making in enactivist discourse and the extent of its distribution within the organic domain. I situate this debate within a broader conflict of commitments to naturalism on the part of radical enactivists, and to phenomenology on the part of autopoietic enactivists. I argue that autopoietic enactivists are in part responsible for the obscurity of the notion of sense-making by attributing it univocally to sentient and non-sentient beings and following Hans Jonas in maintaining a phenomenological dimension to life-mind continuity among all living beings, sentient or non-sentient. I propose following Merleau-Ponty instead, who offers a properly phenomenological notion of sense-making for which sentience is a necessary condition. Against radicalist efforts to replace sense-making with a deflationary, naturalist conception of intentionality, I discuss the role of the phenomenological notion of sense-making for understanding animal behavior and experience.
Human Studies, 2018
This paper clarifies Merleau-Ponty's distinction between speaking and spoken speech, and the rela... more This paper clarifies Merleau-Ponty's distinction between speaking and spoken speech, and the relation between the two, in his Phenomenology of Perception. Against a common interpretation, I argue on exegetical and philosophical grounds that the distinction should not be understood as one between two kinds of speech, but rather between two internally related dimensions present in all speech. This suggests an interdependence between speaking and spoken aspects of speech, and some commentators have critiqued Merleau-Ponty for claiming a priority of speaking over spoken speech. However, there is a sense in which Merleau-Ponty is right to emphasize the priority, namely, in terms of the ontological priority of the speaking subject with respect to language understood as a constituted cultural ideality. The latter only maintains its ontological status insofar as it is taken up by a language community. I favorably contrast Merleau-Ponty's views on this question to those of the late Heidegger and de Saussure, and suggest potential applications of this clarified position for contemporary discussions in philosophy of language.
Contributions to Edited Volumes by Hayden Kee
Narrative and Ethical Understanding, 2024
The COVID-19 pandemic inaugurated a resurgence of interest in Albert Camus' 1947 novel The Plague... more The COVID-19 pandemic inaugurated a resurgence of interest in Albert Camus' 1947 novel The Plague. Recent commentaries on the work have emphasized its themes of human nature, decency, and solidarity. However, hasty readings of the novel often trade in simplifications and misunderstandings that conceal or misconstrue the novel's subtler existential and ethical insights. In this chapter, I set up a plausible prima facie reading of central themes from The Plague based on recent commentaries. I then show how the novel's message is much more complex than the prima facie reading realizes. The Plague offers no simplistic ethical prescriptions. Rather, it challenges us to further existential and ethical reflection and inspires courage.
The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Mindfulness, 2023
Most of the dialogue between phenomenology and yoga thus far has occurred between the classical y... more Most of the dialogue between phenomenology and yoga thus far has occurred between the classical yoga of Patanjali and transcendental phenomenology, or between the Buddhist Yogacara tradition and phenomenology. Little attention has been paid to the more bodily focused practices of hatha yoga and its descendent, modern postural yoga. In this contribution I outline some central themes for a phenomenological interpretation of postural yoga practice. I use postural yoga practice and experience as a testing site to explore and refine phenomenological themes of embodiment, such as the openness of the body, its grounding in the earth, the reflexivity of the body, the body as flesh, the body schema, and the minimal self. I also indicate how reflection on yoga breathing practices could be of interest to phenomenologists with a clinical or ontological interest in the breath.
Understanding Merleau-Ponty, Understanding Modernism, 2018
Conference Proceedings by Hayden Kee
![Research paper thumbnail of 'In infancy, the child is attracted to speech': Merleau-Ponty on the social-affective origins of language [En la infancia, el niño está atraído por el lenguaje: Merleau-Ponty y los orígenes socio-afectivos del habla]](https://a.academia-assets.com/images/blank-paper.jpg)
XV Jornadas Peruanas de Fenomenología y Hermenéutica, 2022
Following Merleau-Ponty’s spirit, this article aims at exploring the affective and motivational s... more Following Merleau-Ponty’s spirit, this article aims at exploring the affective and motivational sources of human uniqueness in the development of social cognition and language. In order to do so, the author sets himself to consider some of the dominant language and cognition-centered approaches to human uniqueness in the work of Noam Chomsky and Michael Tomasello. Then, he develops his Merleau-Pontian alternative, supported on a discussion of recent research on uniquely human affective and motivational characteristics in early infancy. After that, he outlines a general explanatory-developmental account that takes into consideration these features as the ultimate and basic origin of species-unique social cognition, language, and culture. He closes discussing a test case which shows an intersection between Merleau-Ponty and Tomasello.
Maritain Studies, 2016
Aristotle’s De Interpretatione has been referred to as the most influential text to be written in... more Aristotle’s De Interpretatione has been referred to as the most influential text to be written in the history of semantics. I argue, however, that it is Plato who lays the foundation for subsequent reflection on signification. In the Cratylus, Plato confronts the two prevalent views of his time on the nature of the relationship between a name and a thing named: conventionalism, which holds that there is an arbitrary, imposed relationship between names and what they name; and naturalism, which holds that there is a natural relationship between names and what they name. The true originality of Plato’s line of reasoning consists in arguing that whether we begin with naturalism or conventionalism, we are soon forced to introduce a third, mediating term between word and thing into the relation of signification. Plato thus establishes the tertiary nature of the sign-relation, a position that Aristotle takes for granted.
Translations by Hayden Kee
Synkrētic: The Journal of Indo-Pacific Philosophy, 2024
Etudes phénoménologiques - Phenomenological Studies, 2021
This is the first English translation of “Sur l’Indochine,” which was published in the February 1... more This is the first English translation of “Sur l’Indochine,” which was published in the February 1946 issue of Les Temps Modernes. While situated in a particular context and treating a specific issue, this essay offers one of the first sustained phenomenological reflections on interculturality and decolonization.
Husserl: German Perspectives, 2019
Edmund Husserl, generally regarded as the founding figure of phenomenology, exerted an enormous i... more Edmund Husserl, generally regarded as the founding figure of phenomenology, exerted an enormous influence on the course of twentieth and twenty-first century philosophy. This volume collects and translates essays written by important German-speaking commentators on Husserl, ranging from his contemporaries to scholars of today, to make available in English some of the best commentary on Husserl and the phenomenological project. The essays focus on three problematics within phenomenology: the nature and method of phenomenology; intentionality, with its attendant issues of temporality and subjectivity; and intersubjectivity and culture. Several essays also deal with Martin Heidegger’s phenomenology, although in a manner that reveals not only Heidegger’s differences with Husserl but also his reliance on and indebtedness to Husserl’s phenomenology.
Taken together, the book shows the continuing influence of Husserl’s thought, demonstrating how such subsequent developments as existentialism, hermeneutics, and deconstruction were defined in part by how they assimilated and departed from Husserlian insights. The course of what has come to be called continental philosophy cannot be described without reference to this assimilation and departure, and among the many successor approaches phenomenology remains a viable avenue for contemporary thought. In addition, problems addressed by Husserl—most notably, intentionality, consciousness, the emotions, and ethics—are of central concern in contemporary non-phenomenological philosophy, and many contemporary thinkers have turned to Husserl for guidance. The essays demonstrate how significant Husserl remains to contemporary philosophy across several traditions and several generations.
Includes essays by Rudolf Bernet, Klaus Held, Ludwig Landgrebe, Dieter Lohmar, Verena Mayer and Christopher Erhard, Ullrich Melle, Karl Mertens, Ernst Wolfgang Orth, Jan Patočka, Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl, Karl Schuhmann, and Elisabeth Ströker.
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Peer-Reviewed Articles by Hayden Kee
This paper was named European Journal of Philosophy's 2019 Prize Essay in Transcendental Philosophy.
Contributions to Edited Volumes by Hayden Kee
Conference Proceedings by Hayden Kee
Translations by Hayden Kee
Taken together, the book shows the continuing influence of Husserl’s thought, demonstrating how such subsequent developments as existentialism, hermeneutics, and deconstruction were defined in part by how they assimilated and departed from Husserlian insights. The course of what has come to be called continental philosophy cannot be described without reference to this assimilation and departure, and among the many successor approaches phenomenology remains a viable avenue for contemporary thought. In addition, problems addressed by Husserl—most notably, intentionality, consciousness, the emotions, and ethics—are of central concern in contemporary non-phenomenological philosophy, and many contemporary thinkers have turned to Husserl for guidance. The essays demonstrate how significant Husserl remains to contemporary philosophy across several traditions and several generations.
Includes essays by Rudolf Bernet, Klaus Held, Ludwig Landgrebe, Dieter Lohmar, Verena Mayer and Christopher Erhard, Ullrich Melle, Karl Mertens, Ernst Wolfgang Orth, Jan Patočka, Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl, Karl Schuhmann, and Elisabeth Ströker.
This paper was named European Journal of Philosophy's 2019 Prize Essay in Transcendental Philosophy.
Taken together, the book shows the continuing influence of Husserl’s thought, demonstrating how such subsequent developments as existentialism, hermeneutics, and deconstruction were defined in part by how they assimilated and departed from Husserlian insights. The course of what has come to be called continental philosophy cannot be described without reference to this assimilation and departure, and among the many successor approaches phenomenology remains a viable avenue for contemporary thought. In addition, problems addressed by Husserl—most notably, intentionality, consciousness, the emotions, and ethics—are of central concern in contemporary non-phenomenological philosophy, and many contemporary thinkers have turned to Husserl for guidance. The essays demonstrate how significant Husserl remains to contemporary philosophy across several traditions and several generations.
Includes essays by Rudolf Bernet, Klaus Held, Ludwig Landgrebe, Dieter Lohmar, Verena Mayer and Christopher Erhard, Ullrich Melle, Karl Mertens, Ernst Wolfgang Orth, Jan Patočka, Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl, Karl Schuhmann, and Elisabeth Ströker.
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I distinguish between regressive and progressive approaches to the inquiry into linguistic intentionality. Regressive approaches begin with a developed theory of language and then attempt to work backwards from this to the underlying intentionalities that underwrite language and the relationships between those intentionalities and linguistic intentionality. Progressive approaches, by contrast, begin with rich accounts of more basic modes of intentionality – such as perception, action, and social cognition – and then attempt to trace the emergence of linguistic intentionality from these more basic intentionalities. Though both approaches have their merits, I argue that the regressive approach is especially prone to falsifying the nature of basic modes of intentionality by superimposing the structures of linguistic intentionality upon them. I illustrate this with a brief discussion of Michael Dummett’s call for a “full-blooded theory of meaning” in the philosophy of language. Nonetheless, the frequent return to the regressive approach in philosophy of language (e.g., the recent work of Scott Soames) illustrates a need for an account of the intentionalities that support linguistic intentionality. I argue, however, that this account should come from a progressive (and phenomenological) approach.
I then consider four progressive approaches: The naturalist-externalist research program (NERP), the phenomenal intentionality research program (PIRP), Searle’s biological naturalism, and Husserl’s early static phenomenology of linguistic intentionality. Though these views can be categorized as progressive approaches, all tend to relapse into the temptations and pitfalls of the regressive approach.
NERP (e.g., in the work of Dretske, Millikan, Fodor, and Dennett) attempts to understand the basic intentional relationship between mind and world in naturalistic terms as a relationship between an organism and an objectivistically described external world. Technical critiques of this view abound, but a more originary critique targets the scientistic starting point of the research program. Its assumptions about the nature of nature are highly contentious, relying on a constructed and abstracted view of nature that is then assumed to be ontologically basic. In critiquing this view, I take the first step towards a more holistic and phenomenological view of nature – a phenomenological naturalism – that is to be developed throughout the dissertation.
PIRP (e.g., in the work of Uriah Kriegel) emerges as a response to the shortcomings of NERP. It takes the phenomenal (i.e., conscious, experiential) character of intentionality as ontologically basic, and thus constitutes a step in the direction of phenomenology. Nonetheless, I argue that PIRP’s account of basic phenomenal intentionality fails to grasp the originality of the intentional relationship. It treats consciousness as just another kind of stuff within the natural world and then asks what the relationship is between this kind of stuff and the material world with which it is intentionally correlated. It thus treats the relationship between consciousness and the world as external, whereas the radical insight of phenomenology is to understand this relationship as the internal (co-)relation of mind and world – a transcendental relationship, in at least a minimal sense of the term “transcendental.”
Searle’s view bears many affinities with PIRP and indeed with phenomenology proper. However, I argue that Searle’s account of basic intentionality and its relationship to linguistic intentionality is ultimately inadequate. This is in large part because Searle relapses into regressive reasoning, basing much of his account of perceptual intentionality on his analyses of linguistic intentionality, the structures of which he then superimposes upon perception. These shortcomings, I suggest, arise from Searle’s adherence to a method of logical or conceptual analysis that is unsuited for the subject matter he is investigating. The relationship between language and underlying modes of relating to the world is not exclusively, and not primarily, an affair for logical analysis. Insofar as this relationship can be understood as a natural phenomenon with a phenomenal-experiential aspect, it must be investigated through a phenomenologically informed naturalistic inquiry – that is, through phenomenological naturalism.
The preceding critiques motivate a turn to the phenomenological tradition proper. I consider the possibility that a static phenomenological account of linguistic intentionality, such as we find in Husserl’s early writings (see especially Logical Investigations and Ideas I), is sufficient for the problem. I argue that ultimately this approach will not suffice, and that this can be seen both substantively by the proper elaboration of the problematic as much as it can be seen through tracing Husserl’s own approaches to the problem in his middle and later period texts. First, Husserl’s early works are written from an explicitly monological perspective and hence elide the essentially communicate and intersubjective character of language. Second, linguistic meaning interweaves with and draws from perceptual sense. The latter, however, can only be understood as a genetic achievement of a temporal subject. The same holds, then, for the linguistic meaning that is shot through with perceptual sense. To understand linguistic intentionality, then, we must understand it in its genesis alongside the temporal dynamics of perception and action. The proper characterization of this genetic problematic, and the development of the appropriate method for developing such a phenomenology of linguistic meaning, is the topic of Chapter 2.
(The complete chapter is available upon request. Please contact the author.)
For my purposes, the basic idea of genetic phenomenology is that the concrete character and meaning of any current experience is informed by its experiential history. Take the example of a soccer ball sitting in the corner of my office, which attracts my attention while I am writing. The way I perceive it, the prospects for continued perception and action it outlines for me, and the associated content elicited in its perception (e.g., typically related equipment and locations; practical activities I tend to engage in with the ball; the typical and specific individuals who participate in the world of soccer with me; and affective and memorial associations) have all been habituated through past interactions with this ball and others of its type.
A similar genetic history can be unearthed beneath the meaning we experience in perceived language. I illustrate this by considering the case of learning a new word. In learning a new word, I come to associate it with concrete perceptual and actional contexts. In my example, the person who instructs me in the use of the word does so by using other words whose sense is already more or less clear to me, and by using pantomime and gesture to help clarify the intended sense of the term. These experiences sediment into an indeterminate and flexibly applicable understanding of the meaning of the term, a sort of meaning-schema that adapts to the present practical and discursive context. The case of word learning shows that it is such experiences of original institution of word meaning that we must investigate genetically in order to understand the relationship between linguistic meaning and the affective, perceptual, and actional senses that underpin it. However, at the same time as we have gained a guiding insight for our inquiry, the challenge of the task has also grown immensely. For behind our current use of language lies a vast experiential history that far outstrips the phenomenologist’s access via the classical phenomenological resources of reflection on present first-person experience. Indeed, our most originary history of language learning is buried deep in the obscure depths of infantile amnesia. But it is precisely these experiences that are required for a genetic phenomenology of linguistic intentionality. How, then, are we to proceed?
My solution is to understand genetic phenomenology for present purposes as the genetic-phenomenological interpretation of developmental psychology, studies in earliest language acquisition and infant sociality in particular. Genetic phenomenology becomes the phenomenology of ontogenesis, or, developmental phenomenology. This is a viable path for phenomenology because the experience of the other – even a quite different other, such as an infant or a non-human animal – is not utterly inaccessible to us but is rather disclosed mediately through empathy. We may also admit elements of construction into our phenomenology in order to piece together the preverbal experiential world of the infant which is the foundation upon which linguistic intentionality is elaborated. I discuss how a similar method has already been employed in contemporary phenomenology (e.g., Zahavi, Gallagher) in order to develop and support a phenomenological account of social cognition that is now a viable and original alternative position within the cognitive science and philosophy of mind.
I conclude by addressing some of the most pressing objections against my developmental phenomenology, which can be classified broadly as a form of naturalized phenomenology (or, as I prefer, phenomenological naturalism). These objections arise from more classical phenomenological perspectives and claim that contaminating phenomenology with naturalism obscures the transcendental nature of phenomenological philosophy and undermines the critical position phenomenology would like to claim vis-à-vis natural scientific inquiry. My response here is twofold. First, I draw attention to passages in classical phenomenology (including Husserl) where the kind of “mutually enlightening” dialog I advocate between phenomenology and the empirical sciences of mind has already taken place. I point out that this exchange is both perfectly innocuous and utterly necessary. Phenomenological and empirical research have demonstrated the possibility of fruitful collaboration in practice, notwithstanding the explicit methodological statements of orthodoxy to the contrary from some prominent phenomenologists. Second, I explain how viewing both phenomenology and natural scientific inquiry as unfolding and incomplete projects should remind us to be humbler about our assertions concerning what can and cannot count as phenomenology or naturalism. In our present imperfect state of knowledge, it is simply too soon to claim that there is an irresolvable opposition between these two styles of inquiry, their methods, ontologies, and epistemologies. On the contrary, there is reason to hope that they will ultimately prove to be complementary and even mutually corroborating in our pursuit of a comprehensive account of mind, nature, and the cosmos. For this, however, a more comprehensive phenomenological philosophy of nature would be required, a topic to which I return in the conclusion.
(The complete chapter is available upon request. Please contact the author. See also my publications "Phenomenology and Naturalism in Autopoietic and Radical Enactivism" (2018, Synthese), "Phenomenological Reduction in Merleau-Ponty’s The Structure of Behavior" (2019, European Journal of Philosophy), and "Pointing the Way to Social Cognition" (2019, Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology) - all available on academia.edu.)
Merleau-Ponty’s notion of expression is very different from that of Husserl’s Logical Investigations discussed in Chapter 1. For Merleau-Ponty, there is an internal relation between what is expressed and the means through which it is expressed. There is no thought independent of the act of expressing through which thought is incorporated. The body in action and gesture are at the center of Merleau-Ponty’s account of expression. Though at times he suggests that all expressive activity in the diverse media and arts are on an equal footing, there is a certain priority ascribed to expressive acts that emanate more directly from the body, such as gesture. Thus, there is not only a formal analogy between gestural and linguistic expression. Expressing ourselves verbally is rather a continuation, expansion, and refinement of more basic bodily modes of gestural expression.
It is in the context of this gestural-expressive understanding of language that Merleau-Ponty introduces the distinction between speaking and spoken speech. His favorite illustrations of speaking speech include the mythical first people to speak, the writer or philosopher who fashions new ways of seeing and using language, and (of especial interest to us) the child uttering its first word. I clarify some of Merleau-Ponty’s confusing pronouncements concerning the nature of speaking speech, such as that speaking speech is speech “about speech” [parole sur la parole]. Considering the context and other similar locutions in Merleau-Ponty’s works, I propose that we understand parole sur la parole as speech not about speech, but speech on the basis of (sur) preceding sedimented and habituated acts of speech.
What kind of distinction is the distinction between speaking and spoken speech? Most commentators, not without some textual warrant, have understood this as a distinction between different kinds of speech act (or of expressive event more broadly): we can categorize all acts of speech as either speaking or spoken speech. I adduce textual and phenomenological considerations that favor an alternative interpretation: the distinction should be understood as one between two dimensions or aspects of all expressive activity. There is never an act of expression that does not unfold in the surrounding individual and collective context of already achieved expression, nor is there ever an act of expression properly so-called that does not contain a minimal moment of novelty and creative potential. If nothing else, routine speech has the re-creative function of reinforcing and reinstating the sense of conventional language, which would otherwise erode.
A question of priorities arises here. Merleau-Ponty occasionally asserts that speaking speech has some sort of priority over spoken speech. Most interpreters, however, have argued that the two are interdependent. I agree with the commentators so far as the analysis of the meaning of any isolated occurrence of expression is concerned. However, there is a deeper sense in which speaking speech has an ontological priority over spoken speech. This is the case insofar as spoken speech also concerns the constituted domain of ideal meanings and individual languages treated as abstract objects. The latter are ontologically dependent on real acts of expression – they are systems of spoken speech that require speaking speech as their ontological foundation. Interpreted in this way, Merleau-Ponty is able to do justice to the extent to which language as a collective achievement outstrips the individual, while also maintaining that the speaking subject must not relinquish its position at the center of the science, phenomenology, and philosophy of language. Heidegger maintains that “language speaks” (Die Sprache spricht). Merleau-Ponty may agree, but he amends this elliptical and cryptic pronouncement: Language speaks only because speaking subjects take it up anew in their ongoing effort of expression and desire for communion. The insight for the ontology of language, contrary to ancient and persistent abstract and idealist tendencies in the field, is that language only is in its concrete becoming. We may formalize it and treat it in abstraction from its concrete incorporation in speech, as linguistics, logicians, and philosophers of language are wont to do. But we must avoid hypostasizing such treatments of language and we may ascribe neither methodological independence to these investigations nor ontological independence to language so conceived.
The distinction between speaking and spoken speech, and clarification of its import for our understanding of language, sets the stage for a discussion of an exemplary instance of speaking speech in action: the acquisition of a first language by the infant.
(The complete chapter is available upon request. Please contact the author. A version of this paper has been published as “Phenomenology and Ontology of Language and Expression: Merleau-Ponty on Speaking and Spoken Speech” (Human Studies, 2018).)
One of the infant’s first means of interacting with the surrounding world is through a rudimentary form of imitation known as neonatal imitation. Neonates can imitate a few basic facial gestures from caretakers, such as mouth opening and tongue protrusion. This ability appears to be the expression of a neonatal body schema that allows the infant to coordinate visually perceived information from the seen face of the other with its own kinesthetic-proprioceptive experience of producing a correlated gesture. There has been much debate in recent decades as to whether neonatal imitation should be understood as “genuine” (i.e., voluntary, goal-directed) imitation. I propose a phenomenological distinction between voluntary and deliberate action to help mediate this debate, arguing that early imitation is genuine in a minimal sense and that it is the experiential foundation for more explicit, self-reflective acts of imitation later in infancy and childhood.
Early imitation is the primary example of a precocious dyadic sociality (primary intersubjectivity), where infants are involved in face-to-face exchanges between self and other. Triadic modes of sociality (secondary intersubjectivity), in which infant and caretaker are jointly oriented towards a third term (typically, some object of interest in the immediate environment), begin to emerge towards the end of the first year of life. Of greatest importance for the development of verbal referential ability is the infant’s comprehension and eventual production of the pointing gesture. Another crucial development is an increasing ability to deal with the world anticipatively, that is, not only as a brute and current actuality, but as an actuality open onto further possibility. This ability is illustrated in the infant’s developing grasp of object permanence (the recognition that what is out of sight is not necessarily out of being); and in symbolic play (treating something as something else, e.g., a banana as a phone) and pretense in the second year of life. In these transitional behaviors and competencies we can establish a continuity between the presentational character of action and perception and the re-presentational power of language: the actual, what is present in perception and action, is already teeming with the possible, what is absent and lies proximally or distally beyond the here and now.
I include in Chapter 4 an intermezzo on differences between the sociality and cognition of humans and non-human primates, arguing that some of the most important differences might be primarily affective and motivational rather than basically cognitive or linguistic.
The stage is now set for the acquisition of words. I argue that where referential language is concerned, words can be seen as taking over and extending the use of the pointing gesture. An important insight here is that the word comes to stand in not for the thing (or property, relation, event, place, etc.) to which it refers, but rather for the gesture that indicates that thing. Language always remains the language of speaking subjects who speak and indicate a world. On the basis of this insight, and extending the discussion of Chapter 3, I distinguish between gestural and objectivist theories of language. The former recognize that all language is the language of speaking subjects who cannot be elided from the theory of meaning. The latter, by contrast, attempt to advance theories of language and meaning where the meaning-maker is understood without reference to the subject who speaks language. Truth-conditional theories of meaning, for example, understand the meaning of a sentence to be determined by the (objectivistically construed) truth conditions of that sentence. On my account, this exhibits a fundamental misunderstanding of how language works.
I discuss how the rich phenomenological account of gestural ostension combined with infant social cognition I develop can respond to concerns about the underdetermination of ostension advanced by Wittgenstein and Quine.
Language must be understood not only on the social level of joint attention (secondary intersubjectivity) in the face-to-face-to-world transaction. For language may be employed by anyone in my language community. As the infant moves out of the family world and into the broader language community, it comes to see that the use of language is regulated not just by how you and I as specific and concrete individuals convene to use it, but more pervasively by how one uses language in our community. This next level of sociality I term tertiary intersubjectivity. Here my earlier claims concerning the centrality of the speaking subject may appear to be under threat. For the vast majority of the time, the individual contribution of any subject to the sense of the language she uses as a whole will appear to be null. However, this is an illusion created by the division of labor of speaking subjects in creating and sustaining the language.
I conclude Chapter 4 with a number of takeaway insights concerning the nature of language. (1) Language trades in possibility, but in a possibility that is rooted in and interwoven with actuality, or at least in the possibility of such actuality. (2) Language is intersubjective, and in tertiary intersubjectivity its functioning may even appear anonymous, but such intersubjectivity must not be mistaken for an asubjectivity of language that elides the role of speaking subjects in the fashioning and maintaining of language. (3) Language is essentially temporal, on the various cascading timescales of (a) momentary expressive events, (b) the acquisition of language in ontogeny, and (c) the phylogenic and historical evolution and development of languages. (4) Language is a global structure, the Gestalt of these intersecting dimensions of actuality-possibility, of subjectivity-intersubjectivity, and of the various timescales of its unfolding. Any philosophy or science of language that omits these points will risk advancing an abstracted or idealized philosophy of language instead of deepening our understanding of the language we speak and live.
(The complete chapter is available upon request. Please contact the author. See also my publication "Pointing the Way to Social Cognition: A Phenomenological Approach to Embodiment, Imitation, Pointing, and Social Cognition in the First Year" (Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 2019), available on academia.edu).
The phenomenology of object perception (esp. in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty) and acting with tools (Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty) has long been a centerpiece of phenomenological texts. Perceived objects have horizons: networks of practical, perceptual, affective, and memorial associations that are implied in current perception and action, based on past experience with this object or similar ones and the habitual familiarity that arises from past experience. These horizons specify the sense of the present phase of experience and outline its anticipated possible continuations. Of especial interest to me is what Husserl calls the empty outer horizon, which involves implied possibilities of experience that are not sensuously given in the present phase. Returning to the example from Chapter 2, in perceiving the soccer ball in my office, the possibility of kicking the soccer ball is elicited in the empty outer horizon of my perceptual experience. Depending on how vivid the perception is and the surrounding practical and motivational context, a sensorimotor activation may even occur and I may experience a dim “motor image” of using my body to engage the ball, even as I sit in my chair in my office. An interesting change of the empty horizon can be noted here between just staring at the ball (the beholder’s attitude), and actually going out and kicking the ball in a match (the participant’s attitude). In the former case, kicking the ball is a distant, empty possibility outlined in the empty outer horizon. When I actually play the match, however, I fulfill this empty possibility, and new empty possibilities of continuation of play become more proximate in the empty horizon, such as running upfield in anticipation of a cross from a teammate, or dropping into a more defensive position in anticipation of a turnover. In the flow of the game, I am so absorbed in actualizing an empty possibility of the outer horizon that even as I dribble with the ball, if I am a skilled enough player, my attention will be directed to the empty outer horizonal possibilities outlined by the ball rather than to the ball itself.
How do these analyses bear on the phenomenology of language? In this connection, it must first be remembered that the word, too, is in some respects a perceived thing, in some ways akin to (and in others different from) a material spatiotemporal object like a ball. In principle, then, it should bear a comparable horizonal-experiential structure. What we find is that the word directs us towards an empty horizonal possibility just as the thing or tool does. The word ball, for example, elicits in me the empty horizonal intentional relation towards balls. As a generic term, if not further specified, it awakens in me an anticipatory directedness that would be typical of my engagement with balls in general. That is, all other things being equal, it will weakly elicit certain sensorimotor expectations about typical kinds of perceptions and actions, emotional and perhaps memorial associations, that I have with the term. Just as in the case of putting an artefact into action, when I use words, I am so fully immersed in attending to the content to which they direct me that I am not attentionally aware of the word itself, just as while dribbling the ball the expert soccer player is already attentionally directed to what she will do next with the ball and hence is not attentionally directed to the ball itself. The difference, however, is that, whereas with the ball in use, we tend primarily to actualize empty horizonal possibilities in reality (e.g., by performing the anticipated pass), with the word in use, we might only “actualize” the empty horizonal possibility imaginatively or in thought, as when I am talking about a match with a friend and thinking about the content of our discourse, but not actualizing it in perception or action. The word, we might say, is like a tool of the imagination, and much of its power in this capacity derives from the fact that we do not also use words as practical objects for causally interacting with nature, as we do with hand tools and other simple material artifacts.
In light of these investigations, I turn to a number of supposed differences in kind between the properties of linguistic cognition and the word vis-à-vis perception and action and the material object or artifact. I argue that these turn out to be differences in degree rather than kind. (1) As seen in Chapter 4, language is capable of displacement: it can refer to what is absent in space or time, to what is non-existent or even impossible. But this turns out to be a property of perceived objects, too. I may closely associate a necklace with a loved one such that every time I see or touch it I think of her. (2) The empty horizon of a spatiotemporal object is determined primarily by the kinds of causal interaction it can come into with other objects, whereas that of the word is determined by arbitrary, conventional associations. However, viewed phenomenologically, these are both instances of a more general associative-motivational relationship of indication (Husserl) or reference (Verweisung, Heidegger) (a theme already prepared in Chapters 1 and 2). (3) Structuralists and post-structuralists maintain that the sense of a word is determined negatively, or diacritically, through lateral relationships with other words, whereas the associations of the object are determined through “positive” relationships of contact, contiguity, causality, and the like. However, as Merleau-Ponty’s appropriation and reconciliation of Gestalt psychology and structural linguistics illustrates, the basic principles at play in both domains are in fact the same. (4) There are formal-syntactic properties of language that are often thought not to have any counterpart in the domain of perception and action. But, in fact, we can understand action itself as having a sort of “syntax of action” that is the foundation for the basic syntactic structures of language.
I then discuss how these insights from phenomenology converge with recent neurolinguistic research on language processing and production. A host of neuroimaging and behavioral evidence now supports the general view, complementary to my phenomenological position, that (1) perceiving (an object) and acting (with an object), (2) imagining and recalling such perceiving or acting, and (3) processing language associated with such perceiving or acting all employ the same broad underlying neurobiological networks and activate relevant somatotopic sensorimotor networks. For example, hearing words for simple bodily actions (e.g., “lick,” “kick”) activates the corresponding sensorimotor networks (e.g., for the face and legs respectively). Nouns for common objects function similarly. For example, nouns for graspable objects activate sensorimotor areas associated with grasping.
I conclude by discussing the relevance and a consequence of my empirically corroborated phenomenological account for a current debate in cognitive science. Embodied and enactive approaches to cognition have recently enjoyed much success in modeling basic sensorimotor abilities of organisms, such as perception and action, using non-representational accounts of cognition. Critics object, however, that these accounts cannot “scale up” to deal with higher modes of cognition, such as imagination, thought, planning for the future, and language use. My account, however, by highlighting the phenomenological and neurobiological continuity between perception and action with things and the use of language, shows precisely how the apparent gap between these two modes of cognition can be bridged, at least where language is concerned. On the one hand, the rich phenomenological account of perception and action reveals that there is more “intelligence” to these procedures than is usually admitted. They already open onto higher modes of cognition such as imagination and symbolicity. On the other hand, language use is to a certain extent de-intellectualized in my account, revealing it to be a thoroughly embodied, sensorimotor ability very much like the skillful use of a tool. Breaking down the apparent dichotomy between supposedly higher and lower modes of cognition allows us to see the continuity between these different domains of behavior and cognition and thus constitutes a valuable contribution to enactive and embodied cognitive science.
(The complete chapter is available upon request. Please contact the author. See also my publication "Horizons of the Word: Words and Tools in Perception and Action" (Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2020), available on academia.edu).