Prospects for a deep phenomenology of embodiment

Matt Bower
membower@gmail.com

1. Embodiment, shallow & deep

Shallow: Certain experiences involving the body that admit a skull-bound explanation are a core component of
our basic cognitive repertoire.
Embodied accounts of emotion (Prinz 2004), conceptual metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson 1999),
grounded concepts (Barsalou, 2008) are best understood as shallow views.
Goldman’s B-format representation hypothesis is meant to accommodate these approaches.
“Cognition (token) C is a specimen of embodied cognition if and only if C uses some (internal) bodily
format to help execute a cognitive task (whatever the task may be).” (Goldman 2014, 102)
Deep: Certain experiences involving the body that do not admit a completely skull-bound explanation are a core
component of our basic cognitive repertoire.
Differences in how to go deep tend to be a function of one’s view of mental representation.
Strategy 1: Admit a fully representational explanation, but argue that representations may span brain and extra-
neural body.
In perceiving a projectile, saccadic eye movement might be thought to represent its trajectory
(Rowlands 2006).
“The physical act of gesturing […] plays an active (not merely expressive) role in learning, reasoning,
and cognitive change by providing an alternative (analog, motoric, visuospatial) representational
format.” (Clark 2008, 125; Goldin-Meadow 2003)
Strategy 2: Deny a (fully) representation explanation, and argue that non-representational extra-neural bodily
factors partly explain cognition.
For instance, dynamical systems approaches explain cognition as a case of non-linear brain-body-
environment coupling (Thelen and Smith 1994; Chemero 2009).
Two dynamicist claims: (a) Cognition is a body-involving interactive process; (b) what a brain can do is
defined partly relative to certain extra-neural biophysical variables.
“[S]eeing is conceived of as an ‘exploratory activity,’ ‘attuned to’ sensorimotor contingencies, or ways
in which sensory stimulation changes with movement—such as when a retinal image changes when
one walks around an object.” (Myin and Degenaar 2014, 91)
Walking, or acquiring the ability to walk, might be partly a function of body mass and musculoskeletal
morphology (Thelen and Smith 1994).
2. Obstacles for a deep phenomenology of embodiment
Two worries:
Worry 1: Actual phenomenological claims about embodiment are shallow ones.
Worry 2: Phenomenology can in principle say nothing for or against deep embodiment.
RE: Worry 1 – Are phenomenological claims shallow?
Egocentric spatial perception (see Husserl 1989, 61, 165-167; cf. Sartre 1956, 408-409, 416-419; Merleau-
Ponty 2002, 288; Patočka 1998, 27-33; Taipale 2014, 43)
Kinesthesia and sensorimotor ability (see Husserl 1989, 58/63; cf. Sartre 1956, 424-425; Merleau-Ponty 2002,
270, 291; Patočka 1998, 44-45; Taipale 2014, 45-47)
Bodily feeling (see Sartre 1956, 437; cf. Patočka 1998, 42-43; Stolorow 2014; Ratcliffe 2008)
Levinas’ take: “The materiality of the body remains an experience of materiality.” (Levinas 1978, 69)
“If […] every perception has something anonymous in it, this is because it makes use of something
which it takes for granted. […] [W]e merge into this body which is better informed than we are about
the world […].” (Merleau-Ponty 2002, 277)

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Bower Prospects for a deep phenomenology of embodiment

“The body is a permanent contestation of the prerogative attributed to consciousness of ‘giving

meaning’ to each thing […].” (Levinas 1969, 129)
RE: Worry 2 – Can phenomenology speak at all to the shallow/deep issue?
Reductionism worry: Not if its anti-reductionism bars it from relating the mental to the physical.
But the idea is just that the body may be a genuine bearer of sui generis psychological predicates.
Transcendentalist worry: Not if doing so involves a confusion of the constituting & constituted.
Suppose, with Husserl, that the content of psychology and transcendental philosophy is the same, only
the orientation thereto differs (Moran 2012, 101).
Then biophysical bodies (and perhaps as such) may figure in constitutive processes.
Otherwise, perhaps, so much the worse for transcendentalism (Romano 2016).
Consciousness worry: Not if phenomenology’s subject matter is conscious experience alone.
Perhaps consciousness extends into the extra-neural body (Honderich 2006; Rowlands 2010).
Or perhaps there is “a phenomenological approach to the unconscious as a […] dimension of the
body” (Fuchs 2012, 69).
3. Ideas for a deep phenomenology of embodiment
A two-phase strategy:
Phase 1: Identify a phenomenological explanandum underdetermined by its conscious explanans.
I.e., Gallagher’s (2005) “negative phenomenology”
Phase 2: Argue that the missing explanatory factors are not only non-conscious, but also extra neural.
How might a phenomenological explanation reasonably invoke a deeply embodied explanans?
We must deny this: “[T]he physiological processes in the sense organs, in the nerve cells and in the
ganglia,” in short, “[w]hat I do not ‘know’, what in my experience, my imagining, thinking, doing, is
not present to me as perceived, remembered, thought, etc., will not ‘influence’ my mind.” (Husserl
1989, 231/243)
So phenomenology must not confined to “intuition” (à la Husserl) (Ricoeur 1975)
Perhaps even: “The organism has to keep going, because to be going is its very existence – which is
revocable – and […] it is concerned in existing.” (Jonas 1953, 191)
The consciously available components of pertinent mental states are taken either as dependent
moments in a temporally extended process, or as manifestations of a tendency.
Phenomenology then explicates intentional states by reference to their intentional antecedents and
consequents.
Motivational/functional constraint: The non-conscious explanans must be functionally or motivationally
continuous or congruent.
Motivational: Aiding the fulfilment of a consciously aware or felt goal.
Functional: Aiding the fulfillment of a goal prescribed by habit or biological function.
Vehicle constraint: The non-conscious explanans should not be the intentional target, but an intentional
vehicle.
Tactic 1: Invoking antecedent/consequent phases of an intentional episode
E.g., physiological arousal (antecedent), fine-grained body movement (consequent)
Tactic 2: Invoking non-occurrent dispositions (or the like) to explain intentional episodes
E.g., bodily biomechanics, sensorimotor ability
Tactic 3: Invoking temporally extended interactive dynamics to explain intentional episodes
E.g., morphology of sensorimotor apparatus, sensorimotor contingencies

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