The work is significant not only for its illuminating assessment of Kant's thought but also for its elaboration of themes first broached in Being and Time, ...

:Space is not an empirical concept that has been drawn from outer experiences. For in order for certain sensations to be related to something outside me , thus in order for me to represent them as outside and next to one another, thus not merely different but as in different places, the representation of space must already be their ground. Thus the representation of space cannot be obtained from the relations of outer appearance through experience, but this outer experience is (...) itself first possible only through this representation. 1Abstract:Der Raum is kein empirischer Begriff, der von äußeren Erfahrungen abgezogen worden. Denn damit gewisse Empfindungen auf etwas außer mir bezogen werden, imgleichen damit ich sie als außer und neben einander, mithin nicht bloß verschieden, sondern als in verschiedenen Orten vorstellen können, dazu muß die Vorstellung des Raumes schon zum Grunde liegen. (shrink)

In previous work I urged that the perceptual experience we rational animals enjoy is informed by capacities that belong to our rationality, and - in passing - that something similar holds for our intentional action. In his Presidential Address, Hubert Dreyfus argued that I thereby embraced a myth, "the Myth of the Mental". According to Dreyfus, I cannot accommodate the phenomenology of unreflective bodily coping, and its importance as a background for the conceptual capacities exercised in reflective intellectual activity. My (...) paper responds to this accusation. Dreyfus misreads my invocation of Aristotle, and is thereby led to suppose, wrongly, that I conceive rationality as detached, brought to bear on practical predicaments from a standpoint other than one of immersion in them. I urge that even unreflective bodily coping, on the part of rational animals, is informed by their rationality. Dreyfus mentions Heidegger's distinction, which is picked up by Gadamer, between being oriented towards the world and merely inhabiting an environment. But he sets it aside, whereas it is crucial for the issue between us. Engaged bodily coping involves responsiveness to affordances, and responsiveness to affordances on the part of rational animals belongs to their relation to the world. I explain how the idea that conceptual capacities are actualized in our perceptual experience is connected with the thought that our perceptual experience opens us to the world. Finally, I suggest that the real myth in this area is the conception of rationality underlying Dreyfus's resistance to my picture. (shrink)

I criticize recent nonconceptualist readings of Kant’s account of perception on the grounds that the strategy of the Deduction requires that understanding be involved in the synthesis of imagination responsible for the intentionality of perceptual experience. I offer an interpretation of the role of understanding in perceptual experience as the consciousness of normativity in the association of one’s representations. This leads to a reading of Kant which is conceptualist, but in a way which accommodates considerations favoring nonconceptualism, in particular the (...) primitive character of perceptual experience relative to thought and judgment. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty is one of the most important philosophers of the Twentieth century. His theories of perception and the role of the body have had an enormous impact on the humanities and social sciences, yet the full scope of his contribution not only to phenomenology but philosophy generally is only now becoming clear. In this lucid and comprehensive introduction, Taylor Carman explains and assesses the full range of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. Beginning with an overview of Merleau-Ponty’s life and work, subsequent chapters (...) cover fundamental aspects of Merleau-Ponty’s thought, including his philosophy of perception and intentionality; the role of the body in relation to perception; philosophy of history and culture; and his writings on art and aesthetics, particularly the work of Cezanne. A final chapter considers Merleau-Ponty’s importance today, examining his philosophy in light of recent developments in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Merleau-Ponty is essential reading for students of phenomenology, existentialism and Twentieth century philosophy. It is also ideal for anyone in the humanities and social sciences seeking an introduction to his work. (shrink)

In previous work I urged that the perceptual experience we rational animals enjoy is informed by capacities that belong to our rationality, and - in passing - that something similar holds for our intentional action. In his Presidential Address, Hubert Dreyfus argued that I thereby embraced a myth, "the Myth of the Mental". According to Dreyfus, I cannot accommodate the phenomenology of unreflective bodily coping, and its importance as a background for the conceptual capacities exercised in reflective intellectual activity. My (...) paper responds to this accusation. Dreyfus misreads my invocation of Aristotle, and is thereby led to suppose, wrongly, that I conceive rationality as detached, brought to bear on practical predicaments from a standpoint other than one of immersion in them. I urge that even unreflective bodily coping, on the part of rational animals, is informed by their rationality. Dreyfus mentions Heidegger’s distinction, which is picked up by Gadamer, between being oriented towards the world and merely inhabiting an environment. But he sets it aside, whereas it is crucial for the issue between us. Engaged bodily coping involves responsiveness to affordances, and responsiveness to affordances on the part of rational animals belongs to their relation to the world. I explain how the idea that conceptual capacities are actualized in our perceptual experience is connected with the thought that our perceptual experience opens us to the world. Finally, I suggest that the real myth in this area is the conception of rationality underlying Dreyfus’s resistance to my picture. (shrink)

Can we accept John McDowell’s Kantian claim that perception is conceptual “all the way out,” thereby denying the more basic perceptual capacities we seem to share with prelinguistic infants and higher animals? More generally, can philosophers successfully describe the conceptual upper floors of the edifice of knowledge while ignoring the embodied coping going on on the ground floor? I argue that we shouldn’t leave the conceptual component of our lives hanging in midair and suggest how philosophers who want to understand (...) knowledge and action can profit from a phenomenological analysis of the nonconceptual embodied coping skills we share with animals and infants, as well as the nonconceptual immediate intuitive understanding exhibited by experts. (shrink)

Selected essays of Maurice Merleau-Ponty published from 1947 to 1961.

The French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty claims that there are two distinct ways in which we can understand the place of an object when we are visually apprehending it. The first involves an intentional relation to the object that is essentially cognitive or can serve as the input to cognitive processes; the second irreducibly involves a bodily set or preparation to deal with the object. Because of its essential bodily component, Merleau-Ponty calls this second kind of understanding ‘motor intentional’. In this (...) paper I consider some phenomenological, conceptual, and cognitive neuro-scientific results that help to elucidate and defend the distinction between intentional and motor intentional activity. I go on to argue that motor intentional activity has a logical structure that is essentially distinct from that of the more canonical kinds of intentional states. In particular, the characteristic logical distinction between the content and the attitude of an intentional state does not carry over to the motor intentional case. (shrink)

I argue that Merleau-Ponty’s use of the case of Schneider in his arguments for the existence of non-conconceptual and non-representational motor intentionality contains a problematic methodological ambiguity. Motor intentionality is both to be revealed by its perspicuous preservation and by its contrastive impairment in one and the same case. To resolve the resulting contradiction I suggest we emphasize the second of Merleau-Ponty’s two lines of argument. I argue that this interpretation is the one in best accordance both with Merleau-Ponty’s general (...) methodology and with the empirical case of Schneider as it was described by Gelb and Goldstein. (shrink)

This book argues that Kant's transcendental idealism has been misinterpreted: it denies not simply the super-sensory reality of space, time, and appearances, but their reality outside imagination as well. After adducing extensive and explicit textual evidence in its favor, Waxman shows this interpretation to be essential to the Transcendental Deduction, the affirmation of things in themselves, and the attempt to surmount Hume's scepticism. He further argues that Kant's much-neglected claim that, besides himself, "no psychologist has so much as even thought (...) that the imagination might be a necessary constituent of perception," should be construed so that even our consciousness of sensation itself (visual, tactile, etc.) is impossible without imagination. A compelling and original contribution to Kantian scholarship, Kant's Model of the Mind will also bear close examination by students and scholars of Hume, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of science. (shrink)

From Platonism to phenomenology -- Kant's epistemological shift to phenomenology -- Hegel's phenomenology as epistemology -- Husserl's phenomenological epistemology -- Heidegger's phenomenological ontology -- Kant, Merleau-Ponty's descriptive phenomenology, and the primacy of perception -- On overcoming the epistemological problem through phenomenology.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty was described by Paul Ricoeur as 'the greatest of the French phenomenologists'. The essays in this volume examine the full scope of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy, from his central and abiding concern with the nature of perception and the bodily constitution of intentionality to his reflections on science, nature, art, history, and politics. The authors explore the historical origins and context of his thought as well as its continuing relevance to contemporary work in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, biology, (...) art criticism and political and social theory. What emerges is a fresh image of Merleau-Ponty as a deep and original thinker whose philosophical importance has been underestimated, in part owing to the influence of intellectual movements such as existentialism and structuralism, into which his work could not be easily assimilated. New readers will find this the most convenient and accessible guide to Merleau-Ponty currently available. (shrink)

The reality of the thinking subject -- The paralogisms and transcendental idealism -- The first paralogism -- The second paralogism -- Transcendental self-consciousness -- Other interpretations of the paralogisms -- Empirical apperception -- Pure apperception -- The person as subject -- Apperception and inner sense -- The third paralogism and Kant's conception of a person -- The embodied subject -- The fourth paralogism.

Introduction: schema, substance, and symbol -- Linguistic form: the critique of reason becomes the critique of culture -- Mythical thought: beginning the ladder of consciousness -- Phenomenology of knowledge: taking phenomenology in the Hegelian, not the modern sense -- Metaphysics of symbolic forms: spirit, life, and Werk -- Logic of the cultural sciences: nature and culture -- Animal symbolicum -- Human freedom and politics.

Phenomenology -- Perception -- Embodiment -- Behaviour -- Being human -- Time -- Other people, society, history -- Art and perception.

Following this work, Cassirer extended his insights to encompass a broad spectrum of philosophical themes: from investigations into Western epistemological and ...

This paper pursues the double task of presenting Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms as a systematic critique of culture and assessing this systematic approach with regards to the question of reason vs. relativism. First, it reconstructs the development of his theory to its mature presentation in his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Cassirer here presents a critique of culture as fulfilling Kant’s critical work by insisting on the plurality of reason as spirit, manifesting itself in symbolic forms. In the second part, (...) the consequences of this approach will be drawn by considering the systematics Cassirer intended with this theory. As can be reconstructed from his metaphilosophical reflections, the strength of Cassirer’s philosophy is that it accounts for the plurality of rational-spiritual activity while at the same time not succumbing to a relativism. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms steers a middle course between a rational fundamentalism and a postmodern relativism. (shrink)