5 - Merleau-Ponty and Recent Cognitive Science

Summary

In opposition to mainline cognitive science, which assumes that intelligent behavior must be based on representations in the mind or brain, Merleau-Ponty holds that the most basic sort of intelligent behavior, skillful coping, can and must be understood without recourse to any type of representation. He marshals convincing phenomenological evidence that higher primates and human beings learn to act skillfully without acquiring mental representations of the skill domain and of their goals. He also saw that no brain model available at the time he wrote could explain how this was possible. I argue that now, however, there are models of brain function that show how skills could be acquired and exercised without mind or brain representations.

THE FAILURE OF REPRESENTATIONALIST MODELS OF THE MIND

The cognitivist, Merleau-Ponty’s intellectualist opponent, holds that, as the learner improves through practice, he abstracts and interiorizesmore andmore sophisticated rules. There is no phenomenological or empirical evidence that convincingly supports this view, however, and, as Merleau-Ponty points out, the flexibility, transferability, and situational sensitivity of skills makes the intellectualist account implausible.