Invitations - Merleau-Ponty, Cognitive Science and Phenomenology

ISBN-13: 9783836475921 / Angielski / Miękka / 2008 / 212 str.

Justin Tauber

Opis

A number of recent movements in cognitive science have been inspired by Merleau-Pontys philosophy of perception, and his work is often used to provide philosophical support for post-cognitivist accounts of perception. Drawing on the work of Hubert Dreyfus, Francisco Varela, Shuan Gallagher and Charles Taylor, Tauber critically examines the psychological and philosophical aspects of this reception, and clarifies the difference between connectionist and enactivist readings. These readings often assume that Merleau-Pontys interest in Gestalt psychology signals a break from Husserls transcendental idealism and makes his phenomenology compatible with a broadly naturalistic approach to cognition. However, Tauber argues that Merleau-Pontys specific interest in pathological case-studies is itself a kind of transcendental strategy - a strategy that is much closer to Husserls later work than generally acknowledged. Demonstrating this strategy in a contemporary context, and contrasting it with the work of John Haugeland, allows Tauber to reveal Merleau-Pontys distinctive, invitational account of embodied perception, its sensuality and intersubjectivity.

O autorze

Tauber, Justin Justin Tauber has an undergraduate degree in Physics from the University of New South Wales and a Masters in Philosophy from the University of Sydney, where he has taught both phenomenology and new media.