Coping with Nonconceptualism? On Merleau-Ponty and McDowell

Abstract

Does Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology matter to recent debates concerning nonconceptual content? Prima facie answer might be no; debate has been largely a matter for analytic philosophers, often following basic terms set out in Gareth Evans's Varieties of Reference and John McDowell's ensuing critique of Evans in Mind and World.1 But despite its analytic roots, for some this debate provides fertile ground for combining Continental and Anglo-American philosophy. In particular, several scholars, including Charles Taylor and Hubert Dreyfus, have argued that existential phenomenology, of type found in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception, supports Evans's idea that mere is a nonconceptual component to human experience. Merleau-Ponty is thus also used to argue against McDowell. It is not clear, however, that Merleau-Ponty's work has been presented correctly in debate. Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology is pertinent to contemporary concerns, but it is (qualifiedly) wrong to put Merleau-Ponty with supporters of nonconceptual content. Or so this essay will contend. While Merleau-Ponty would most likely disagree with McDowell on many issues, such points of disagreement are not realiy conveyed by recent literature, and that literature also misses certain aspects of Merleau-Ponty's work that display an affinity with McDowell's aims. Ultimately, using Merleau-Ponty to make arguments in favor of nonconceptual content runs counter to general aims of his phenomenology. To frame argument, I will briefly present an overview of nonconceptualist position, with an eye to providing context for evaluating Merleau-Ponty's potential contribution. Then I will examine most prominent arguments for interpreting Phenomenology of Perception as contributing to nonconceptualist side. Following this it will be shown that those arguments misconstrue differences between Merleau-Ponty and McDowell by understating and overstating, respectively, rationalism present in their views, and by missing role that intersubjectivity, language, and culture play in works of both. Evans and Basis of Nonconceptualism One initial way to link Merleau-Ponty to debate over nonconceptual content (which is noted in introduction to recent Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty) is to draw a line from Merleau-Ponty to Gareth Evans through Charles Taylor.2 Evans played a crucial role in introducing notion of nonconceptual perceptual content back into contemporary philosophy. And in middle of his most influential discussion of nonconceptual content, he draws crucial insights on perception from Taylor's essay The VaUdity of Transcendental Arguments.3 Taylor, in turn, takes Merleau-Ponty's conception of embothed agency to be central to his arguments.4 So it seems that Merleau-Ponty played an indirect role in bringing about current debate over nonconceptual content. In portion of Varieties of Reference that contains Taylor/Merleau-Ponty connection, Evans argues that there is an information-link between subject and object, which provides subject with (nonconceptual) information about states and doings of [perceived] object.5 This information is not necessarily part of conscious experience, nor is it necessarily thought about. It may become the input to a thinking, concept-applying, and reasoning but it is important to note that such a conceptual system stands separately from information system which provides inputs.6 As Evans put it: I am not requiring that content of conscious experience itself be conceptual content. All I am requiring for conscious experience is that subject exercise some concepts - have some thoughts - and that content of those thoughts should depend systematically upon informational properties of input.7 So perception presents us with information that provides a kind of raw material to be conceptualized through our thinking and reasoning activities. …