International Phenomenological Society

Merleau-Ponty and the Problem of Intentional Explanation Author(s): Stan Van Hooft Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Sep., 1979), pp. 33-52 Published by: International Phenomenological Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2107136 Accessed: 14/09/2009 16:52
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MERLEAU- PONTY AND THE PROBLEM OF INTENTIONAL

EXPLANATION*

Maurice Merleau-Ponty spent a significant number of years during his intellectual life studying the works of Husserl as well as those of the early Gestalt Psychologists. From the former he drew the notion of "operative intentionality."' However, he did not rest with this notion but rather, expanded it to embrace his own enlarged conception of the existence of subjectivity. In the first part of this paper I will detail this expansion. In the second part I will raise some points concerning the relation of Merleau-Ponty's thought to the sciences (and in particular to the theories of the gestalt psychologists) and the place of his notion of intentionality in that relation. In the last and third section, I will briefly indicate that Merleau-Ponty created the basis for the possibility of giving scientific explanations of human reality and of existence. I Broadly speaking, the notion of an operative intentionality in the thought of Husserl was intended to explicate the discovery by consciousness of a meaningful "Lebenswelt" or environment of which consciousness is taken to be the center and which is constituted by that consciousness.2 As opposed to Husserl, however, Merleau-Ponty refuses to understand operative intentionality as the constituting act of a pure subject, albeit an anonymous act the occurrence of which only phenomenological reflection will disclose.' There are at least two reasons for this. Firstly, as is well known, Merleau-Ponty argues against the notion of a pure subject, whether it be a transcendental ego, or a soul within the body, or the mind. The subject is situated in a world and discovers himself as already so situated as a precondition for the life of consciousness as it is experienced. The life of perceptual consciousness, it is argued, presupposes the worldly and temporal ex*This is a shortened Phenomenology Conference version of a paper read at the 1976 Australian at the Australian National University, Canberra.

' Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The Phenomenology of Perception trans. by Colin Kegan Paul 1962) (hereinafter referred to as PP) Preface: xviii, Smith (Routledge & 418. 2 Gerd Analysis in Brand: "Intentionality, and Intentional Reduction, Husserl's Later Manuscripts" reprinted in J. J. Kockelmans: Phenomenology (Doubleday, 1967). 3 PP, 80, 217, 232, 264, 353, 438, 446.

33

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PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

istence of the subject. Accordingly, the life of subjectivity and the life of consciousness are not coextensive. Consciousness is the power of reflection that accompanies subjectivity as a cogito -as the 'I think' that accompanies all experience -but subjectivity in itself precedes consciousness as its very possibility.4 Again and again, Merleau-Ponty argues that there would not be a consciousness of the world with all its order and immediately discovered meaning if it were not for the anonymous (or in Sartre's language, prereflexive) functioning of subjectivity.5 The analyses of sexuality as experienced and structure of experience,' of space as a lived context,7 and of time as the form of subjectivity itself,8 show conclusively that subjectivity operates to bring about the preobjective realm of primordial experience (of which we may or may not be conscious), and is presupposed as the possibility of the emergence of this realm. It follows from this that it is also presupposed as the self-reflection of the cogito as it discerns a meaningful world in the place of its experiential field. This distinction between the preobjective and objective worlds will assume some importance in our argument later, so it will be useful to elucidate it a little here. The preobjective world is that notyet-articulate, or not-yet-reified, or not-yet-differentiated world of our primordial experience.9 It is argued for, for example, by noting the possibility of error in perception. 10 Error is a wrong articulation of the indeterminate perceptual field known as the preobjective world. Again, Merleau-Ponty argues" that the meaning of a figure in the perceptual field is generated in perception and uncovered by reflection before its constituent elements need to be articulated. On the other hand, the objective world is that world which is the outcome of our applying the concepts and articulations of experience which we gain intersubjectively. Our observational statements and thoughts belong to this realm as does the activity of explanation.'2 According-

4 PP, 136, 214. 5 PP, 344.

6 pp.

154ff.
98ff.

7PP,
8

PP, 410 ff. PP, 12, 36, 46, 264, 275, 291, 381.

" M. Merleau-Ponty: The Structure of Behaviour, Trans. by A. L. Fisher (Methuen, 1963) (hereinafter referred as SB), 172. 12 pP, 43, 70, 136, 254, 415.

10 PP, 297.

MERLEAU-PONTY AND THE PROBLEM OF INTENTIONAL EXPLANATION

35

ly, science (particularly the physical sciences) is based on the objective world, as is any form of empiricist epistemology.'3 However, the preobjective does not stand to the objective as cause to effect as an empiricist might argue, nor as premise to conclusion or judgement as an intellectualist might assert. Rather, it is Merleau-Ponty's view that perception of the objective world stands to the possession of a preobjective world as the expression of a subject' stands to the existence of that subject as a cogito. ' Once again, however, this subject is situated in space and timne and is bodily so that it must not be confused with a transcendental ego or any other sort of pure subject. The expression of the existence of this subject is, therefore, also worldly. The thing experienced is the unity of the primordial experience in the preobjective realm and the expression of the subject's relevant knowledge. It is for Merleau-Ponty, a task of phenomenological reflection to disclose this preobjective realm as the product of a situated operative intentionality. The second reason that Merleau-Ponty has for refusing to understand operative intentionality as the constituting act of a pure subject is that phenomenological reflection just does not disclose such an act. We just do not capture ourselves in the act of constituting our lived environment or its meaning. What we do discover in phenomenological reflection is that environment and the meaning that it has as 'already there'. 6 If we then ask how that meaning could have emerged, we might be tempted to answer by way of hypothesis that it was the result of a constituting act; but this would be an hypothesis of the sort that empirical psychologists might make and belongs to the realm of objective thought rather than phenomenology. A first person reflection must take the disclosed meaning of the world-as-experienced as a given. To postulate an act of consciousness (or even of subjectivity) to explain this is not only bad methodology, but it also leads to Idealism'7 in that it leaves the problem of the grounding of the contents of experience in the real world unresolved. This is a case of the sort that Merleau-Ponty castigates" in which the theorist seeks the foundation of the possible rather than the foundation of the actual. Such a view is elicited by
13 PP, 203.
14 pp,

146, 166, 206, 392.

71.

15
16

PP, 50, 79, 203, 292, 309, 415.

pp.

'
18

PP, 299 ff, 374. pp 443.

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PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

asking what makes experience possible rather than what is the basis of any actual experience. The actual experience is of the objective world. Its basis can only be discerned by a phenomenological reflection to be the preobjective world (rather than the pure act of a disembodied consciousness) where this preobjective world is the outcome of the situation of the subject in reality itself. It is by this actual situating of the existence of the subject that Idealism is rendered unintelligible. Yet another way in which Merleau-Ponty makes this point is to say that some of the meaning that resides in our lived environment is not clearly attributable to any constituting act of our consciousness. Some of the features of our Lebenswelt are natural signs the meaning of which are discovered as 'already there' by consciousness or by subjectivity.19 The account for this phenomenon is given in terms of the meaning giving function of the human body itself which constitutes a level, as it were, of meaning in the lived environment. I will return to this notion of levels in a moment. It is perhaps true to say that Merleau-Ponty is not sufficiently explicit in making the distinction that I have made between consciousness and subjectivity, though this distinction is clearly implied in his arguments. For example, one account that he gives of the cogito is in terms of the "I can" of bodily action possibilities rather than the "I think" of consciousness.20 He also regards consciousness as being preeminently thetic;2' i.e., concerned with the objective realm. We might understand consciousness as the presence to itself of the subject as indicated by the possibility of reflection.22 However, Merleau-Ponty's notion of the cogito clearly embraces the functions of his wider notion of subjectivity, in that subjectivity is described as not only presence-to-self, but also the "outrunning" of self by the self.23 What this means is that subjectivity reaches back into its past and anticipates its projected future in the meaning that it gives to its present. Again, it means that the horizons of the subject's 'here' are operative in investing the subject's place with meaning. Both in the temporal and the spatial dimensions, therefore, the subject reaches out and embraces its world so as to direct its existence out from itself. It is subjectivity which anonymously constitutes the preobjective world that consciousness can reflect upon. (In this way we see the on19
21 22

PP, 429; SB, 120.

20 pp,

136.

PP, 290. pp. 344.

23

pp, 44, 109, 170, 388, 418.

MERLEAU-PONTY AND THE PROBLEM OF INTENTIONAL EXPLANATION

37

tological meaning of Sartre's notion that existence is a lack and a constant becoming.) However, for Merleau-Ponty, a further important fact is that the body "outruns" itself when it constitutes a preconscious environment for consciousness to uncover. The body is the seat of subjectivity. Are we then left with no defining characteristic for consciousness as opposed to subjectivity? Perhaps the possibility of reflection is the only criterion. Perhaps, also, the notion of intentionality that applies to consciousness differs from that which applies to the broader concept of subjectivity. The notion of intentionality that applies to consciousness is that elaboration with which we are now fairly familiar of the idea that all consciousness is consciousness of an object which is particular to that act of consciousness. This notion leads to that notion of operative intentionality which I have already mentioned: that act of constituting meaning which accompanies all discovered meaning-asobject and which is available to reflection just to the extent that the meaning-as-object is. As against this, the notion of intentionality that is apposite to Merleau-Ponty's notion of subjectivity is the notion of existence as this applies to the body as well as consciousness. Existence is anonymous and underlies the very emergence of preobjective experience. In The Phenomenology of Perception, a useful example of this notion is the orientation of the subject to 'the virtual' that is exemplified in the case of the phantom limb24 or which is truncated in Schneider's case.25 In the latter case for example, only an actual sexual stimulation will procure a response, while a 'virtual' stimulation which would arouse desire in the normal subject (such as a Playboy centerfold) elicits no response in Schneider.26 The patient only reacts to actual stimulation such as a touch, but is unable to project into even his immediate future so as to carry his desire forward and to work towards the completion of the sexual act. The patient's effective preobjective world is limited by a bodily limitation. Again, in the case of the phantom limb, where the patient feels a pain in the toe of a leg that has been amputated, Merleau-Ponty's interpretation has it that the body (rather than consciousness, since the patient really does feel the pain, so that even consciousness is taken in) projects beyond itself that world which the subject would have if his leg were not amputated. This projection is an instance of the body reaching forward
24 25 26

pp.
pp, pp,

75

132. 156.

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PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

in lived time so as to create an environment for itself and for the subject. (There is, of course, no ontological distinction implied in the separate mention of the body and the subject here.) Schneider's problem is 'caused' by a lesion in his brain and it is this physical handicap which has foreshortened the range, as it were, of his subjective existence. It is, therefore, the body which constitutes basic levels of the exercise of intentionality which is the mark of the subject's existence as a meaning-giving function constituting the preobjective world of primordial experience. Similarly, insofar as the patient with the phantom limb continues to feel the pain even though he consciously knows that he has no leg where the pain is felt (and also, insofar as the pain can be stopped by an appropriate lesion in the brain) we see that this is a case of bodily intentional existence in the sense of an exercise of the body's meaning-giving function. It appears that Merleau-Ponty does have a view of the lebenswelt, and correspondingly, a view of the meaning-giving existence of subjectivity, which admits of a multilevel analysis.27 Not only is there the meaning which arises at the physical level of interaction between the body and its material spatiotemporal environment, and then the meaning which arises at the biological level of the body and its biological environment, but there is also the meaning which arises at the level of preobjective consciousness as when we emotionally respond to things from our first apprehension of them. Also, sensation as such is argued to be intentional and thus meaning-giving.28 Further yet, there is the objective world: the level of recognition and articulate thought. We will need to see later whether Merleau-Ponty stands in need of a theoretical construction which will unify these levels so as to produce that whole which is the meaningful content of consciousness disclosed by phenomenological reflection. For the moment, however, we might note again that there are levels of meaning constitution which are preobjective and hence, preconscious. These cannot, then, be the outcome of a constituting act of consciousness. Merleau-Ponty elaborates this notion of levels in various ways at various times. One example that he has, for example,29 is the difference between perception and attention which consists in the raising of the experience in question to a more structured level; where the notion of structure is instantiated by the gestalt relation of figure to ground. In attention, for example, it may happen that what was
27 28 29

PP, 30, 79, 84, 130, 146, 282. pp. 213.

PP, 30.

MERLEAU-PONTY AND THE PROBLEM OF INTENTIONAL EXPLANATION

39

ground to perception becomes figure to attention. This is a process in which the indeterminateness of the perceptual field gives way to the gaze of the subject.30 Attention is a greater synthesis of the elements of experience than is involved in the unattended-to perception.3' However, the synthesis that we refer to here is a synthesis of levels in a slightly different sense. Merleau-Ponty discerns such levels as those of biology, habit, and culture32 in the interaction of subject and environment which go to make up the meaning content of experience at a preobjective level. The distinction of levels that we refer to when we differentiate attention from perception is a distinction which may in some instances be seen to correspond to the distinction between the preobjective and the objective realms. Within the constituting of the preobjective realm on the part of subjectivity we may discern also levels of the operation of that subjectivity, and it is this sense of the notion of levels that will be of special interest to us. For it is Merleau-Ponty's thesis that the correct structuring of these levels is what produces the meaning which we experience as the content of our perceptual consciousness. He argues this point in several places33 by saying that the pathological case is a case where there is either a disorder of the structure of levels or an absence of several of those levels. The case of the phantom limb, for example,34 is a case which combines the levels of the psychic and the physiological in order to produce bodily experiences which have a meaning expressive of the intentionality of the subject's bodily orientation towards his world, or his 'being-in-the-world'.35 Again, psychoanalysis treats cases in which the integration of the biological as well as other levels of meaning-generation through sexuality is disturbed.36 For Schneider the world has no 'physiognomy'.37 What this means is that the structure of the world as lived which is in the normal case a certain integration of levels of interaction between the subject and his world, is for Schneider incomplete. Other cases of illness are also seen as a loss of levels.38 In the normal case it is the intentional gaze of the subject which integrates the levels of experience so
30 31
33 34

pp, 264. PP, 237.

32 pp,

146.

PP, 75, 132, 158; SB, 20, 65.

PP, 75 ff. PP, 80.

36 pp, 37 pp,
38

158. 132.
88.

pp.

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PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

as to constitute a preobjective world.39 Perception is a synthesis of these levels and the body, in which this intentionality is based, is a synergic system. " The exercise of this system is the existence of the human subject in his bodily situation."1 This notion of existence is absolutely crucial for Merleau-Ponty in that it crosses and combines the levels which I have outlined constituted by the activity of the body; the activity of the subject. A further defining feature of this notion of existence is its relation to temporality.42 Insofar as it projects itself to a future, (and it may also be argued that it carries with it a past-it is the world of activity as it once was lived by the intact body that the crippled body is seeking to reconstitute in the phantom limb) existence stands in that peculiar relation to time whereby this moment is not only present to itself but also 'outruns' itself forward to its future and backwards to its past. This is the characteristic feature of subjectivity itself, and indeed, it becomes clear that in the notion of lived temporality, we have a metaphysical notion that allows us to define subjectivity as existence .43 II Having said all this, the question that must now be asked is to what extent Merleau-Ponty's notion of intentionality allows us to have a fuller understanding of human reality from either the first or third person points of view. It is clear that Merleau-Ponty thought his notion to have considerable explicatory worth in that he applied it not only to questions of philosophical psychology and the philosophy of language, but also to all the various sciences of man including history and sociology.44 Merleau-Ponty's frequently mounted attacks on the pretensions of science in the elucidation of human reality and human actions45 seem to me to be preeminently applicable to that science which models itself on the methodologies and ontologies of the physical sciences. The ideals of explanation posited by the physical
39PP, 264.
40 pp, 41

149, 203, 234, 315. 139, 239, 331 ff, 432.

Our talk of levels here does not refer to the spatial levels that Merleau-Ponty refers to (PP, 249 ff, 279) in his discussion of the body and lived space.
42 43

pp,

The ontological understanding of existence as non-Being which Sartre employs is elucidated by these points also. 44 cf. Merleau-Ponty's footnote in PP, 171 and the chapter on Freedom in PP in which he offers a phenomenology of class consciousness. 45 especially PP, 47, 115 ff, and throughout SB.

MERLEAU-PONTY AND THE PROBLEM OF INTENTIONAL EXPLANATION

41

and perhaps biological sciences and applied to human subjects are criticised by Merleau-Ponty on the grounds that they cannot but be reductionist in effect, as we will explain presently. He says, for example,46 that
"the object of psychology is such that it cannot possibly be expressed as the relation of function to variable."

This is because the central function of human subjectivity or existence is to constitute meaning as the content of experience and meaning is not a function of variables. He further criticises reflex theories of human action47 and all other forms of ontological behaviorism for leaving out of account the phenomenon of meaning. However, his positive mention of the human and social sciences that I have mentioned indicates that he is not opposed to a systematic understanding of man as such so long as that understanding is not reductionist or distortive in any other way. Merleau-Ponty's theory of intentionality might be seen therefore to have a positive explanatory role as well as a negative polemical one. From a negative point of view it is clear that Merleau-Ponty's notion has helped to clear away many of the errors engendered by empiricism on the one hand and intellectualism on the other. I use Merleau-Ponty's own terms here because the architecture of his argument is based on his polemic against these positions as he so described them. Without going into too much detail here, we might say that empiricism seeks to account for the relations that characterize human reality: the relations of subject to object; of belief to knowledge; of experience to belief; or even of a putative experience of sense-data to experience; in short, the relation of the preobjective to the objective realms, on the model of a linear causality, while intellectualism seeks to understand these relations on the model of a judgement so that the relations become logical or necessary relations. On the positive side, in place of either of these accounts or account schemas, Merleau-Ponty offers the new and rich notion of intentionality. Insofar as subjectivity or existence 'outruns' itself or projects itself forward so as to constitute meaning in its world and its future, there is a dynamic running through human reality which connects the terms of the relations we have mentioned.48 There is, to the phenomenological point of view, an intentional or dynamic forward46 pp, 47 48

116. cf SB, chapt. 1. pp, 94, 109.

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PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

running relation between the elements of an experience and the meaning of that experience. In his description of perception, for example, Merleau-Ponty expresses this by saying that the features of a perceptual field are the motive49 for the understanding that a subject has in perception or experience. This is a sort of 'operative reason' mediated by meanings (which are, of course, themselves constituted by subjectivity) in the environment.50 Now, this notion of motivation or, more generally, of intentionality, is here seen to take on an important explicatory if not explanatory function in the sciences that deal with human reality. If Merleau-Ponty is genuinely concerned to advance these sciences, then it will be crucial to understand these notions aright. Again, it seems clear from a reading of the Phenomenology of Perception that Merleau-Ponty is not concerned just to give a complete and accurate description based on the first person point of view of human reality, but also to give a 'genetic' account of the emergence of meaning in the world as lived, from that point of view.5' This is seen, for example, in his concern with gestalt psychology and in his concern to not understand the descriptions of the gestaltists as causal in any empiricist sense.52 Once again, the notion of a motive or a motivation as the expression of that human existence which constitutes the meaning of the lived environment will be crucial for giving this genetic account without falling into the traps of empiricism and intellectualism. It is because of his concern to avoid these last that Merleau-Ponty eschews the word "explanation" for his enterprise.53 However, it does seem that Merleau-Ponty wants, in uncovering that which is presupposed in the actual, to give explications and descriptions of human reality which are epistemologically close cousins of explanation. We will need, once again, to understand Merleau-Ponty's notion of 'motive' insofar as it is the basic notion for his genetic account. This same notion also figures in Merleau-Ponty's noncausal accounts of behavior."4 The best clarification that Merleau-Ponty offers of these notions is drawn from his close familiarity with gestalt psychology. Insofar as the features of a perceptual field interact as they do so as to constitute
49PP, P0pP, 51PP, 52 pp,
54PP,

30, 47, 120, 258, 396, 455.

50.

118. PP, preface.

119 ff.

71, 126.

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the unified whole meaning which is the object of the subject's perceptual understanding of what is before him, we can say that features of the perceptual field 'point to' that understanding. Indeed, the dynamic of subjectivity or existence that I have mentioned flows through these features to that understanding so that the 'apprehension' of these features (which is usually implicit in the experience) becomes the 'motive' for our perceptual understanding." But, of course, that our perceptual field can have such dynamic or meaningful features at all as disclosed in reflection, is a function of the meaning-giving function of human subjectivity: of existence. The meaningful features of the gestalt perceptual field are the outcome of the dialectical interplay of subject and environment where the subject's question, emerging as it does from the subject's presence in the world, elicits a meaningful response from that world. That the features of the perceptual field point to the meaning of that field as a motive, therefore, is the outcome of the subject's existential stance towards his world. The motivation that the subject experiences to understand his perceptual world one way rather than another is but one half, therefore, of a complex dialectic relating the subject to his world and that lived world to that subject.56. It seems from all this that the delineation of an element in the content of perceptual consciousness is a structuring of the preobjective realm. It is in this preconscious or not-yet-thought-about sphere that these elements have the meaning that they have. The outcome of their being motives for perceptual understanding is manifest in the objective realm when I just do understand distance, for example,57 as the first articulation or expression of my perception. It is only in special reflection that I can (and I normally do not need to) say how I was led to so understand my perceptual field as involving distance on the basis of my preobjective experience of the convergence of my eyes, and my preobjective experience of the apparent size of things as both pointing to' that distance. Given that this is the way that the concept emerges in our phenomenological descriptions, from the point of view of one who is interested in the sciences of man, how are we to understand this notion of a motive or this notion of a dynamic which ties together meanings so as to constitute a future or a projected environment for the
55 56 57

PP, 35, 47, 258.

pp,

404.

PP, 261.

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PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

subject of action as well as for the subject of cognition? MerleauPonty himself explicitly rejects causal and logical accounts as we have seen. He says that I understand this function only by "enacting it myself'.58 In short, only a systematic phenomenological reflection will disclose the intentional relationships in action and knowledge. However, it seems clear that something more is required, or at least that something more must be possible. We must be able to apply the notion descriptively. How else could Merleau-Ponty understand Schneider's case or the case of the phantom limb? Merleau-Ponty suffered no brain lesion, and it is not the case to my knowledge that he ever experienced a phantom limb. One is understanding the function of subjectivity descriptively in these cases, therefore, by applying it to the interpretation of the accounts offered by science of these cases. Does this mean that when talking of motives one may be dealing with the realm of the objective rather than the preobjective? If so, then that notion of existence which gives us the account of the emergence of a meaningful preobjective realm might be applicable to objective descriptions also. However, Merleau-Ponty rejects as inappropriate scientific causal accounts of action and knowledge on the grounds that they operate in the realm of objective experience.59 It is this last which is the object of a phenomenal reflection. Insofar as the movement of intentionality is discovered by this reflection, it seems to belong to the realm of the preobjective. Science goes wrong when it tries, on the basis of objective thought and the theories which such thought engenders, to say what must be the case about experience. So, for example, if the phenomena of objective thought are to be explained by the notion of causality, then it must be the case that that notion is also applicable in the 'explanation' of experience; i.e., in the 'explanation' of the emergence of preobjective meaning. In this way the notions of intentionality or of motive become usurped by the notion of causality. However, it is conceded as valid that objective thought would be able to proceed on the basis of the preobjective. Now, one way in which we could elucidate and resolve this demarcation dispute is to say that it is the business of science to explain phenomena (including to the limited extent that it is able, human phenomena) while it is the job of phenomenology to assist us in the correct understanding of human reality and of terms we use to describe it or report on it from the first person point of view. It will be
58

pp

75.

PP, 95 and preface.

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45

a discovery of phenomenology leading to a correct conceptual analysis of our descriptive terms, then, that human reality centrally involves existence. However, it seems clear from what we have already said that Merleau-Ponty wants his phenomenology to take on a bigger task than this: namely, the elucidation of the content and genesis of Not only should a meaning as an object of experience. description make comprehensible for us the phenomenological emergence of an in-itself,60 but also the emergence of meaning as an expression of existence.6' One could, I think, distinguish part one of the Phenomenology of Perception as a genetic phenomenology from parts two and three as descriptive and transcendental respectively. Now, must a genetic phenomenology confine itself to the preobjective realm? What we would like to ask is whether it may not also be possible to give an 'objective' account of the intentional relations of the preobjective synthesis, and must this account not be owed to us if MerleauPonty's notion of intentionality is to be of use to us in the sciences of man? We have already seen that Merleau-Ponty seems to use the notion of motive himself in the objective realm and in the general (objective) elucidation of human reality. We could argue that an account in the realm of the objective must be possible just by noting the various levels at which subjectivity operates. We have seen that these the the biological, the merely mechanical, levels include psychological, the emotional, and so forth. Phenomenological reflection may be necessary to establish the point that subjectivity operates at all these levels, but that which combines the more basic of these levels (if not all of them); the bodily; operates in a way that is preconscious. The description of this operation can therefore not be the elaboration of a reflection, even if its presence is disclosed in reflection.62 This description must belong to the objective realm. Reflection may serve as a check to this description so that no description need be accepted which would lead us to say that the content of our reflection should be other than it in fact is, but it is nevertheless in the realm of objective thought that this description is to be offered. reflection will place some positive Further, phenomenological theoretical demands on that description as well, for, if subjectivity operates at various levels, then these levels must be understood in such a way that allows for that operation (and this will include the
60 61 62

SB, 183.

71. pp, 208, 130, 392.

pp,

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PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

physical levels). Of course, the description of that operation will not constitute a complete account of these levels any more than the account or description of the operation of a motor constitutes a complete account or explanation of how it works. As we have seen, an interesting instance of Merleau-Ponty's grappling witly this problem occurs in his discussion of the Gestalt psychologists' own account for the phenomena of perception that they describe. The interaction and mutual implication of features of the perceptual field was accounted for by the early gestalt psychologists themselves in terms of fields of force operating in the brain. Today's psychologists reject their explanations as being fanciful and as being without empirical verification, but Merleau-Ponty himself in The

Structure of Behaviour63 disallows the explanation on the grounds

that the gestaltists ontologize the forms of the perceptual field (i.e., transfer them to the objective realm) so as to be able to postulate a topographical parallel between these forms and the forms of the force fields in the brain. This is a particular example of Merleau-Ponty's general rejection of scientific explanation on the grounds that they attempt to say what must be the case in experience on the basis of their theories or the demand for completion of their theories. Such scientists forget, says Merleau-Ponty, that their theories are ultimately based upon experience as it is lived. If, therefore, a scientific theory about perception implies a description of experience and its contents which is not born out by phenomenological reflection, then so much the worse for that theory. Considerations of topology demand for the gestaltist that there be real objective force-fields or interactions in the perceptual field. But this would demand a conception of lived space modelled on the empirical space of science and geometry. This is not disclosed by phenomenological reflection on the preobjective experience of space, and therefore, the gestaltist's explanation for what he started out by describing quite accurately as an intentional dynamic in the perceptual field must lapse. However, what was in The Structure of Behaviour a particular argument against a particular scientific explanation for a perceptual phenomenon, becomes in the later book (and in particular in the preface to that work) generalized into a general criticism of scientific explanations of human events, with the result that scientific explanatory accounts seem to be deemed forever irrelevant to that which is disclosed by reflection. Merleau-Ponty seems to move from an argument for the epistemological primacy and privilege of the first
63

SB, 134 ff.

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person point of view over the third person point of view to the complete exclusion of the latter from the first. If this is so then it is difficult to see how the findings of phenomenology can be integrated with the findings of science so as to be relevant to the sciences of manand-womankind. It seems on the face of it that the realm of intentionality is epistemologically removed from the realm of causal (or logical) explanation. However, if Merleau-Ponty has shown, as I think he has, that the realm of existence, insofar as it is grounded in the physical world grasped preobjectively, is not ontologically removed from the realm in which causal explanation has its place, namely the objective world, then he must also be able to bridge the epistemological gap that is involved here, which is a gap between the preobjective and the objective worlds. I suggest that he will be able to do this if he can show that the descriptions offerable of existence or intentionality at the various ontological levels that we have described are of the same epistemological type whether they be in the preobjective realm or in the objective. If the description of intentionality as it applies to consciousness were of the same type as the description of intentionality as it applies to subjectivity at the bodily level, then this will have been achieved. In rejecting the early gestaltists' account of perceptual consciousness, Merleau-Ponty is rejecting an account of the wrong epistemological type. What we need to ask is whether the account in terms of motives that he offers in The Phenomenology of Perception is an account of the right epistemological type: a type that will allow for the kind of integration of views about humanity that his extension of the notion of subjectivity to the body indicates. III An important clue as to what this account might be like is given by Merleau-Ponty throughout The Structure of Behaviour by his use of the concept of "form"64 which turns out to be a prototype of the concept of "system" as used in General System Theory65 which, in
SB, 47. Seminal texts on General System Theory include: L. von Bertalanffy: General System Theory (Penguin, 1968) W. Buckley, ed: Modern Systems Research for the Behavioural Scientist (Aldine; Chicago, 1968) E. Laszlo: The Systems View of the World (Braziller, 1972) F. E. Emery, ed: Systems Thinking (Penguin, 1969) For a stress on the information theory aspects, see D. M. McKay: Information, Mechanism and Meaning (MIT Press, 1968)
64 65

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turn, has given us further useful concepts developed by Anthony Wilden and Gregory Bateson. Systems theory postulates explanatory schemas which consist in interlocking sets of systems in communication with their specific environments such that a feedback controlled set of interactions at one level, which would involve internal movements of matter-energy which maintain or increase order, interacts along an interface with its immediate external environment so as to constitute a new system at a new and broader level. It may not be too metaphorical a usage to describe this exchange between systems as dialectical. The exchange of matter-energy between systems at various levels constitutes for Wilden a form of communication" in the sense of an exchange of information which might be coded in ways appropriate to the nature of the interface. The human organism may be seen as an example of this hierarchical stacking of open systems in that various chemical and other kinds of systems are situated in broader biological systems, and these are situated in the body which in turn is in systematic interaction with its ecosystem. Merleau-Ponty's thesis invites us to consider subjectivity in communication with its environment as a systems hierarchy in this way. Explanation in such a descriptive schem a involves what Bateson has called "Cybernetic Explanation."67 An example that Bateson gives of this is when we see a monkey banging away apparently haphazardly on a typewriter while we also notice that the resultant printout is quite meaningful. In that case, says Bateson, we look for structural constraints within the process that will eliminate meaningless letters or words rather than looking for a teleological causal function at the input level of the system. What we have here is a holistic teleonomy by internal constraints. We also have a case of a conversion of energy into information which involves, according to Wilden, a shift in system-theoretic levels68 which requires an output of work and which can in some cases reach such a sophisticated level of metacommunication of information as to create meaning.69 Once again, the system-theoretic schema will allow this emergence to be explained without appeal to any atomistic linear causal schemas. Given that this causal schema is non-linear, it is also non-temporal in the
66 A. Wilden: System and Structure: Essays in Communication and Exchange (Tavistock, 1972) esp. chapt. XII. 67 G. Bateson: Steps to an Ecology of Mind (Paladin, 1972) p. 375 ff. 68 Wilden, op. cit., 202. 69 Wilden, op. cit., 233.

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empiricist's sense and this gives it a prima facie applicability to subjectivity. This being so, we can now suggest a reformulation of our problem. It is, according to Merleau-Ponty, a feature of descriptions of intentionality in the preobjective realm, that intentionality displays form and systematic interaction. It is this fact which is the primary datum for the gestaltists. Again, the biologists' use of systems theory indicates that the life of subjectivity in the world understood in the objective realm can be understood on a systems hierarchy, and this is a description of bodily intentionality, as we have seen. Now, the systems that are seen to operate at the level of the objective world will bear a system-theoretic relation to the systems disclosed by reflection as operating at the preobjective level if the objective and the preobjective could be shown to be heuristic levels of a metasystem of which those two levels were subsystems. If we could show, therefore, not only that the preobjective realm displayed form of the kind in question and that the objective realm displayed form of the kind in question, and that the objective realm displays form because the preobjective realm displays form (as Merleau-Ponty admits70) but also that this last is true because of a system-theoretic relation between the two realms, then we could also show that the preobjective realm displayed form because the objective realm does so and the explanatory circle would be complete. We will be able to show this if we can demonstrate that the preobjective realm and the objective realm are related as elements in a system. This would be so if the distinction that Merleau-Ponty makes between these levels was a distinction of system-theoretic heuristic levels as we understand them, or if there was a metasystem which embraced both the preobjective and the objective realms. For Merleau-Ponty, the link between the preobjective and the objective realms is preeminently an intentional link. The link between sensation and understanding is made by the subject reaching out and projecting the significance which is grounded not only in the world but also in the subject's existence. This projection is also what unifies the levels of life of the subject in the sense of the levels of organism, sensation, understanding, emotion, and so forth, as well as the levels of stimulus recognition and context recognition. All these heuristic levels are combined in the nonpathological case through the a presence which is that presence of the subject in his environmental
70 SB, 142; PP 75, 243.
71

SB, 65.

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of bodily existence. Again, when the subject expresses himself through gesture or speech, it is his body which provides the foundation for a full and many-levelled significance which is thereby intentionally produced in the environment. We see here the theory of interface developed to a rich extent. Merleau-Ponty's notion of intentionality, therefore, expresses the movement within and beyond the human system which produces meaning as a function of form which is the structure of the dialectical interface between the subject and his environment. The relation between the preobjective and objective realms that is disclosed in phenomenological reflection is similarly intentional and expressive of -human existence. Now, if we can understand this relation as a relation of levels of a system-theoretic kind, then the movement from one level to another can be made amenable to cybernetic explanation of meaninggeneration. We will show that the relation is such a relation of levels if we can show that the relation is one of levels of communication. That is, if we can show that the objective realm is the expression of a communication about the preobjective realm. Merleau-Ponty understands the objective realm to be the content of the conscious and articulate understanding that we have of the world that we experience before all reflection, which latter is the preobjective world. The objective world is the product not only of our experience, but also of our knowledge of the world as we experience it and of the language that we use to articulate it (albeit to ourselves). It is through our possession of an objective world that we can think about the world of our experience, do research on it, seek to explain it, and talk about it to others. The intention that carries us through from our primordial experience of the preobjective world to the possession of an objective world may, therefore, be understood as an intention to express one's experience whether in action, or in utterance, or in thought, so that we will have this world, and hence, may be understood as an intention to communicate.72 Another way of expressing this conclusion is to say that the objective world as it is possessed by a subject, is the outcome of a communicative intention directed upon one's experience. The objective world is a communication about the preobjective world. One argument for this conclusion is based on the essential place of language in our possession of an objective world, and language is primarily an instrument for expression and communication. Again, another argument for this conclusion is based on the insight that the
72

pp, 52, 317.

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possession by a subject of an objective world is the outcome of a more or less explicit reflection about an experience as had; an experience the object of which was the preobjective world. The articulation of this primordial realm is an activity of the cogito through its perennial presence in experience. Hence, even when the reflection in question is not engaged in deliberately, the very possession by a subject of an objective world (which is the typical case) discloses the expressive intentionality of the subject. Once again, Merleau-Ponty's analysis of attention can be understood as involving metacommunicative levels over ambiguous perception. On the basis of these considerations, therefore, we can regard the objective world as a higher communicative level of the dialectical interaction of the subject and his world; a higher level of the kind, therefore, which is generative of meaning as a new level of information. All this shows that the system-theoretic explanatory schemas are appropriate to the task of explaining how these levels of meaning are generated. The dynamic expressive intentionality which is the meaning-giving function of the human subject can be understood as an intention to communicate. Of course, the entire stress of MerleauPonty's chapter on the body as expression and speech bears out this as does the centrality of the example of gestures as interpretation,73 existence. (Our use of the word "communicate" here an expression of is not meant to imply that human existence only expresses itself in an intersubjective situation involving discourse. The sense of "communicate" here is summed up by the notion of constituting meaning in the lived world as a result of an expressive intentionality. If there must be an object term for this communicative relation, then the world as such will suffice. I communicate with my world in the sense of expressing myself in it and towards it in my intentional reach towards that world, whereby I constitute that world as my meaningful environment.) We have seen that the total dynamic whereby the interaction between a subject and his world gives him an environment is intentionality. If the subject were not a subject and had no existence, then his interaction with the world would proceed at lower levels such as the physical and biological only. System-theoretic account schemas would still be applicable, as the usefulness of such schemas in the
" PP, 174 ff. see also; R. L. Lanigan: Speaking and Semiology: M. MerleauPonty's Phenomenological Theory of Existential Communication (Mouton, 1972).

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study of animal behavior and life indicates, but they would have a more limited scope. However, what we now see is that the highly singular nature of human existence does not demand totally new and separate forms of description, but only a greater sophistication of the model of an open system in communication with its environment. Intentionality or existence can be seen as an open system embracing many levels and giving new meaning to the interactions at all of its levels. This broad system is what achieves the synthesis of these many levels as well as the dialectic of the existence of the subject with his world. Therefore also, the modern theory of systems which embraces cybernetic explanation allows us to explain the movement of intentionality of the sensory to the perceptual, and the perceptual to the cognitive on an open system schema. In this way we can understand the notion of "motive." This is the elaboration of energy into information or of information at one level to information at the higher levels of meaning. This elaboration involves an output of work and introduces order into the system, thus producing a qualitative change which may be understood as meaning.74 If, therefore, the move from the preobjective to the objective realms is a move that constitutes meaning, or a move that alters the level of information, then there seems no theoretical reason why it could not be understood on the open system schema. If this is so then the last province in which only an intentional description may be offered is made amenable to and Merleau-Ponty's arguments explanation, systems-theoretic against the relevance of scientific accounts for an understanding of human reality on the basis of the epistemological primacy of the preobjective breaks down. Merleau-Ponty may be right to insist that preobjective experience must always precede scientific theorizing, but there is now no reason why such- theorizing may not grasp the very life of subjectivity itself so as to explain its own foundations. Moreover, just as science can become fully reflexive by this argument, so can reflection become scientific. STAN VAN HOOFT.
UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE.

7 Cf. an unpublished work by the present author entitled Knowledge and Intentionality.