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Intercorporeity and the first-person plural in Merleau-Ponty

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Abstract

A theory of the first-person plural occupies a unique place in philosophical investigations into intersubjectivity and social cognition. In order for the referent of the first-person plural—“the We”—to come into existence, it seems there must be a shared ground of communicative possibility, but this requires a non-circular explanation of how this ground could be shared in the absence of a pre-existing context of communicative conventions. Margaret Gilbert’s and John Searle’s theories of collective intentionality capture important aspects of the We, but fail to fully account for this shared ground of communicative possibility. This paper argues that Merleau-Ponty’s concept of intercorporeity helps reconcile the positive aspects of these accounts while also explaining how the genesis of the social world is continuous with perceptual life in general. This enables an account of the first-person plural as dependent on reciprocal communicative interaction (à la Gilbert) without the need to posit a primitive or primordial “we-mode” of consciousness (à la Searle). “Intercorporeity” designates a bodily openness to others that is not fundamentally different in kind from the general style of bodily comportment found in Merleau-Ponty’s rich analyses of perceptual life.

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Notes

  1. Gilbert (1989, 2003, 2007); Searle (1990, 1995, 2010).

  2. Schmid (2014, p. 12).

  3. I draw on Mathiesen (2005) in explicating these criteria.

  4. Schmid (2009, 2014).

  5. On the conceptual problem, see Avramides (2001) and Davidson (2001). On the epistemological problem, see Hyslop (2016) for a comprehensive history and overview.

  6. See Gallagher and Zahavi (2008, ch. 9).

  7. Walsh (2014)

  8. Heidegger (1962, pp. 149ff.). See Koo (2015) and Zahavi (2019) for discussion.

  9. See Gilbert (1989, p. 178) on the distinction between the “full-blooded” sense of “we” that I explicate here, and the “initiatory” sense of “we” present in phrases such as “Shall we dance?” Throughout the paper I am using “full-fledged” rather than Gilbert’s “full-blooded.”

  10. Zahavi (2019, p. 255).

  11. Ismael (2011).

  12. As Mathiesen (2005) notes, the awareness condition is meant to preserve a notion of intentionality that is inextricably linked to having a conscious perspective on the world, as opposed to the “as-if” intentionality that we may ascribe to systems that appear to exhibit goal-directed behavior (e.g., streams “want” to flow downhill). The idea that consciousness is essential to intentionality arguably goes back to Brentano (1874), and has been prominently defended by Smith (1986) and, more recently, Kriegel (2009).

  13. Canonical analytic accounts include Bratman (1992, 1993, 2014), Searle (1990, 1995, 2010), Tuomela (2007, 2013), Gilbert (1989, 2014), Rovane (1998), Pettit and List (2011), and Pettit (1993). For an overview of recent work in the phenomenological tradition, see Szanto and Moran (2015) and Salice and Schmid (2016).

  14. Schmid (2014, p. 11).

  15. Szanto and Moran (2015, p. 5).

  16. Schmid (2014).

  17. Bratman (1993).

  18. Gilbert (1989).

  19. Searle (1990, 1995, 2010); Tuomela (2007, 2013).

  20. Schmid (2014).

  21. Szanto (2016, p. 155).

  22. Pacherie (2012, p. 166).

  23. Schmid (2014, p. 10).

  24. Gilbert (1989, pp. 198 ff.; 2014, pp. 1–22).

  25. Gilbert (1989, p. 218; 2014, pp. 324–340).

  26. Schmid (2014, p. 5).

  27. Gilbert (2007), Hornsby (1997), Pacherie (2012), Zaibert (2003).

  28. Schmid (2014).

  29. Brinck et al. (2017, p. 137).

  30. Schmid (2014, p. 22, my emphasis).

  31. See, e.g., the earlier “static” phenomenology of Husserl (2001, 2014) or the account of perception in Searle (1983).

  32. References to Merleau-Ponty’s works are formatted English/French pagination.

  33. See, e.g., Goldman and Gallese (1998) and Gallese (2001, 2003, 2005).

  34. Overgaard (2005), Zahavi and Overgaard (2012), Zahavi (2011).

  35. These two passages (as well as two more below) on coupling and pairing come from the version of Merleau-Ponty’s 1950–1951 lecture ‘The Child’s Relation with Others’ translated by William Cobb and appearing in The Primacy of Perception (PrP) edited by James Edie. This version draws on the 1960 edition of the lecture published by the Centre de Documentation Universitaire, whereas the version translated by Talia Welsh in CPP, which I am otherwise citing, comes from the 2001 edition published by Editions Verdier, and differs slightly. See Welsh’s “Translator’s Introduction” (CPP ix).

  36. Gallagher (2011, 2016); De Jaegher (2008), De Jaegher and Di Paolo (2007), Fuchs and De Jaegher (2009).

  37. Gallagher (2016, p. 168, my emphasis).

  38. Gallagher (2016, p. 169, my emphasis).

  39. See Muller (2017) and Sheredos (2017) for recent explications of Merleau-Ponty’s notion of form, how he adapted it from the Gestalt psychologists, and its role in his overall philosophy.

  40. See, e.g., Varela et al. (1991), O’Regan and Nöe (2001), Nöe (2004), Thompson (2007).

  41. See Dreyfus (2002) and Kelly (2005) for analyses of the nature and significance of this “felt normativity” in Merleau-Ponty’s account of perception.

  42. Welsh (2014, p. 68).

  43. Whitney (2012, pp. 190–191).

  44. Whitney (2012, p. 191). See also Welsh (2014, p. 47).

  45. Welsh (2014, p. 45); CPP (248/312).

  46. Welsh (2014, p. 47).

  47. Welsh (2014).

  48. Welsh (2014, pp. 52–53, 60).

  49. Stawarska (2003, p. 304).

  50. Stawarska (2003, p. 304).

  51. Welsh (2014, p. 47).

  52. Welsh (2014, p. 49).

  53. This is a significant thesis in its own right, that cannot be defended or refuted here, given arguments from Zahavi (1999, 2005, 2014) that phenomenal consciousness entails an essential experiential sense of self, or “for-me-ness.”

  54. Whitney (2012, p. 203).

  55. Heinämaa (2015, p. 125).

  56. Heinämaa (2015, p. 132).

  57. It may be the case that intercorporeal coupling is developmentally prior to the sort of body-world coupling of perceptual life since intercorporeal coupling is already occurring between fetal and maternal bodies prior to birth (Lymer 2010). Even if this is the case, however, I would still characterize this in terms of the body’s general style of being-toward involving a reciprocal dynamic interplay.

  58. Wehrle (2017, p. 325).

  59. See Zeiler (2013) on bodily incorporation and excorporation.

  60. Bordieu (1990).

  61. See Wehrle (2017) for a comprehensive discussion of habits and normativity in the phenomenological as well as post-structural traditions.

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    Philip J. Walsh

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Abbreviations

SB

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1963. The Structure of Behavior. Translated by Alden Fischer. Pittsburgh: Dusquene University Press. Structure du Comportment. 1942. Paris: Les Presses Universitaires de France

PhP

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2012. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Donald Landes. New York: Routledge. Phénoménologie de la perception. 1945. Paris: Gallimard

PrP

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1964. The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics. Edited by James Edie. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Les relations avec autrui chez l’enfant. 1960. Paris: Centre de Documentation Universitaire

CPP

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2010. Child Psychology and Pedagogy: The Sorbonne Lectures 1949–1952. Translated by Talia Welsh. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Psychologie et pédagogie de l’enfant: Cours de Sorbonne 1949–1952. 2001. Paris: Editions Verdier

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Walsh, P.J. Intercorporeity and the first-person plural in Merleau-Ponty. Cont Philos Rev 53, 21–47 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-019-09480-x

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