Shores, “Being Machine: Two Competing Models for Neuroprosthesis”

 

by Corry Shores

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Corry Shores

 

“Being Machine:
Two Competing Models for Neuroprosthesis”

 

 

 

I recently placed a pre-print version of this paper on academia.edu [click title above].

 

Below is a gif summary of the paper, using some of its figures.

 

 

 

Shores, Corry. ‘Being Machine: Two Competing Models for Neuroprosthesis’. In Darian Meacham (Ed.), Medicine and Society, New Perspectives in Continental Philosophy, pp.271–294. Dordrecht: Springer, 2015.

At SpringerLink: http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-017-9870-9_16

 

Pre-print version available here:

  https://www.academia.edu/25917804/Being_Machine_Two_Competing_Models_for_Neuroprosthesis

 

.

Somers-Hall, (3.3), Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, ‘3.3 Descartes and the Postulates of Common Sense and Recognition (132–4/168–70)’, summary

by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary. All boldface, underlining, and bracketed commentary are my own. Proofreading is incomplete, so please forgive my typos and other distracting mistakes. Somers-Hall is abbreviated SH and Difference and Repetition as DR.]

Summary of

Henry Somers-Hall

Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition:
An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide

Part 1
A Guide to the Text

 

Chapter 3. The Image of Thought

3.3 Descartes and the Postulates of Common Sense and Recognition (132–4/168–70)

 

Brief summary: 
Deleuze’s first postulate that describes traditional philosophy’s problematic “image of thought” was good sense, that is, the belief that our methods of reasoning are sufficient in themselves for finding truth and for philosophical thinking in general. The second is common sense, which has two meanings of “commonality:” 1) all our faculties work in common to synthesize givens into a common object, which we may recognize by judging what it is, and 2) all people commonly share this ability to organize coherently their givens. This common sense is always at work. But in cases of misrecognition, our reason might incorrectly judge the organized givens as something which they really are not.

 

 

 

Summary

SH begins by asking, what is the structure of thinking, for Deleuze [since it is not to be found in reason and its structures such as the structure of judgment]. As we have noted, “Deleuze argues that there are eight postulates of representational thought which together allow it to function as a coherent system” (104). Deleuze’s critical account of the image of thought operates on two levels: 1) “it is concerned with the presuppositions inherent in prior philosophical systems,” and 2) it is also concerned “with the implicit assumptions of everyday | thinking from which such formal philosophical structures will be traced” (104-105). As such, “Each of the postulates will have a double structure” (105). We previously discussed the first postulate, which is “the ‘cogitatio natura universalis’, the presumption which emerges from a paralogism that the structure of systematic thought is such that it is in accordance with knowledge” (105). [We saw this double structure in Descartes’ account, since the Everyman “Polyander” was able to think philosophically using his own inherent abilities to reason, and Eudoxus questioned the Aristotelian method of generating knowledge through genus-species definitions. And Deleuze was critical of the Descartes assumptions that all people equally can find truth using their own reason and also that such a method really is pure of presuppositions in the first place.] “The double nature of this assumption is clear in that both Polyander (Everyman) and Eudoxus (sound judgement) both held to it. Thought therefore relies on a good will on the part of the thinker, and a good will on the part of thought itself” (105). We also noted in this prior section that “Feuerbach’s claim was that such an account is really an account of the structures of communication, rather than the structure of the world” (105).

We also noted how for both Feuerbach and for Deleuze, philosophical thinking originates with an encounter [with something outside reason]. It might seem that all philosophy seeks this encounter, since it wants knowledge of the world around us. Descartes for example wants to base his account of the natural world on his method of reasoning. Deleuze however thinks that representation hinders our ability to have such an encounter. To understand why, we need to see two more of his postulates of thought and how they operate in Descartes’ Mediations. The first one is “the postulate of the ideal, or common sense,” and the second one is “the postulate of the model, or recognition” (105). Deleuze refers to the second meditation’s example of the piece of wax.

Here, Descartes attempts to reinforce his privileging to the cogito by showing that material objects are not as well known as the self. Descartes gives us the following example [the following up to citation is Descartes quotation]:

Let us take, for example, this piece of wax. It has just been taken from the honeycomb; it has not quite yet lost the taste of honey; it retains some of the scent of the flowers from which it was gathered; its colour, shape and size are plain to | see; it is hard, cold, and can be handled without difficulty; if you rap it with your knuckles, it makes a sound. In short, it has everything which appears necessary for a body to be known as distinctly as possible. But even as I speak, I put the wax by the fire, and look: the residual taste is eliminated, the smell goes away, the colour changes, the shape is lost, and the size increases; it becomes liquid and hot; you can hardly touch it, and if you strike it, it no longer makes a sound. But does the same wax remain? It must be admitted that it does; no one denies it, no one thinks otherwise. So what was it in the wax that I understood with such distinctness? Evidently none of the features which I arrived at by means of the senses; for whatever came under taste, smell, sight, touch or hearing has now altered – yet the wax remains. (Descartes 1984a: 20)
(SH 105-106)

So here Descartes is arguing that we do not really perceive objects, since all their perceivable properties can change all while we regard it is the same thing. Descartes then introduces another example to explain what gives unity to objects, since it is not perception [the following quotes Descartes].

But then if I look out of the window and see men crossing the square, as I just happen to have done, I normally say that I see the men themselves, just as I say that I see the wax. Yet do I see any more than hats and coats which could conceal automatons? I judge that they are men. And so something I thought I was seeing with my eyes is in fact grasped solely by the faculty of judgement which is in my mind. (Descartes 1984a: 21)
(SH 106)

[So what we see has certain visual properties. But they could be properties of one thing, people, or of another, robots dressed like people. What unifies them as either one or the other is the subject perceiving them and making that judgment.]

In this sense, it is the subject that is responsible for unifying the various properties of the object into a coherent object, since the possibility of error shows that the object is not given to us as such. For this reason, even when we are dealing with objects outside of the subject, we are still in a position whereby we only recognise them as objects in so far as they are brought together by the thinking subject into a unity under the form of an object. In this case too, therefore, we can note that we are in a position whereby what is perceived (or what we take to be important in what is perceived) is a function of reason itself.
(106)

[So we see that we have a series of perceptions. In this case we see hats and coats worn by walking figures. And perhaps also there are other givens that are not directly perceived. For example, perhaps our imagination supplies us with vague images of other visual elements, like faces, and maybe also images from the other senses, like sounds and so on.] But by themselves the perceptual elements are given independently of one another. It takes another action to relate them all to an object. There is a faculty that brings all these various givens together and judges them to be attributed to some common source, either humans or robots. This faculty is the common sense, and it is what allows us to recognize things.

The faculty of the subject that is responsible for unifying the different sense modalities of the subject by relating them to the structure of an object is, for Descartes, common sense, or sensus communis. If we look at the example of misrecognition, we can say that what leads us to posit the hats and coats as men is the | fact that different sense impressions are all in accordance. This accord leads us to misrecognise them as properties of people. As Deleuze notes, the concepts of common sense and recognition are therefore intimately linked: ‘An object is recognised, however, when one faculty locates it as identical to that of another, or rather when all the faculties together relate their given and relate themselves to a form of identity in the object’ (DR 133/169).
(SH 107)

There are two sorts of commonality involved in the common sense. The first is that there is some common object to which all the sense modalities are informing us about, and also that all our faculties are working in common to organize the givens coherently. The second is that everyone shares such a unifying faculty in common, meaning that any person who would also be given similar sense modalities would likewise recognize probably the same object. [SH then relates this to an idea in Merleau-Ponty, which seems to be that for the sake of communication, we forget the perspectivalism of our experience which makes it unique to us and thus not common to all. I will quote in case I missed the point.]

Common sense in fact refers to two kinds of commonality. On the one hand, it allows different sense modalities to be related to one another, and brought together into a judgement. On this reading, it literally presents what is common to the senses. On the other hand, it is also intimately linked with the ‘everybody knows’ which was the first postulate of the image of thought. If we return to the work of Merleau-Ponty, we can see that the fact that consciousness is ‘forgetful of the perspectivism of my experience’ (Merleau-Ponty 1962: 70) in positing objects as the source of my perceptions allows the kind of objective world that makes objective knowledge, and hence communication, possible. Referring directly to Descartes’ account in the second meditation of the central role of judgement to perception, Merleau-Ponty writes that [The following up to citation is Merleau-Ponty quotation]:

like the object, the idea purports to be the same for everybody, valid in all times and places, and the individuation of an object in an objective point of time and space finally appears as the expression of a universal positing power . . . I now refer to my body only as an idea, to the universe as idea, to the idea of space and the idea of time. Thus ‘objective’ thought (in Kierkegaard’s sense) is formed – being that of common sense and science – which finally causes us to lose contact with perceptual experience, of which it is nevertheless the outcome and natural sequel. (Merleau-Ponty 1962: 71)
(SH 107)

Now SH distinguishes good sense and common sense. [Note, Deleuze seems to define good sense in Descartes as the capacity for thought. “Descartes's famous suggestion that good sense (the capacity for thought) is of all things in the world the most equally distributed rests upon no more than an old saying, since it amounts to reminding us that men are prepared to complain of lack of memory, imagination or even hearing, but they always find themselves well served with regard to intelligence and thought” (p.132 of DR, Continuum edition). I am not sure I completely understand the distinction between good sense and common sense as SH describes them. I think the idea is that common sense is what allows us to unify our perceptual (and other) givens in a coherent way, but good sense is what enables us to make rational judgments about those unifications. It seems perhaps SH is also saying that part of common sense  is the assumption that whatever we encounter will always be structured in such a way that we may make judgments about it. (Or actually this might be the good sense, but I am not entirely sure). So common sense (or maybe it is the good sense) tells us that what we see, for example, will be a thing which has properties, and so on the basis of the properties, we may discern what thing it is. Then, in the case of misrecognition, good sense fails, since our rational faculties failed to deduce correctly which object takes the properties we see. Nonetheless, common sense did not fail, since it properly unified the givens, even though the good sense made the wrong judgment about them. Let me quote to be sure we have it right.]

We can further note a distinction between two problematic notions of sense. Common sense provides us with the formal nature of a unified subject to which objects correspond. Good sense, on the contrary is how we actually carve up the world. Thus, common sense is operative in both reality and in dream states, as in both we see worlds that are constituted by objects. To mistake a dream for reality would be a failure of good sense, however, as this would be to illegitimately apply the model of common sense in a given case. Deleuze claims that common sense and recognition form two distinct but strongly interrelated postulates of the image of thought. We recognise something as an object when the same element is presented to each of the faculties (as in the case of | the wax example). However, as the wax example shows, recognition is only possible on the basis of the fact that reason presupposes that what it will encounter will be structured in accordance with judgement (an object with properties). Even where good sense fails, common sense is preserved.
(SH 107-108)

So we have seen these postulates regarding the common sense, the good nature of thought, and recognition. [But since they give a view of thinking which is limited just to those cases which take the structure of judgment, and since in reality there is more to thinking than this representational kind, they give us just a “restricted vision of the world”. Really, there is more to what thinking can do than just what rational thinking can do. The good nature of thinking, however, assumes that the nature of rational thought is adequate for expressing all thoughts, when in fact there is more to thinking than rational thinking. Moreover, in reality, not all thinking involves all the faculties and all the givens working in common and uniting around a common object, and also not all thinking will be common to all people. Yet this is what the idea of common sense suggests. Deleuze will show how these problematic assumptions are found in the major tradition of philosophy, by turning to Kant.]

The postulates of the good nature of thought, common sense and recognition therefore operate together in order to guarantee that philosophy only produces a restricted vision of the world. The good nature of thought guarantees the communicability of philosophy through a paralogic confusion of the nature of thought and the conditions for the expression of thought. Common sense forces an understanding of the world in terms of unified subjects, whose faculties are in (or at least can be brought into) accord with one another, and recognition posits a world of objects as a correlate to the unified view of the subject. Deleuze’s claim is that while each philosophy puts these assumptions into operation in different ways (‘No doubt philosophy refuses every particular doxa [popular opinion]; no doubt it upholds no particular propositions of good sense or common sense’ [DR 134/170]), the essential features of the image of thought that they constitute are at play in the major tradition of philosophy. In order to show this, and to introduce the fourth postulate, the postulate of representation, we need to return to Deleuze’s analysis of Kant.
(108)

 

 

Citations from:

Somers-Hall, Henry. Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University, 2013.

Or if otherwise noted:

DR:
Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994/London: Continuum, 2004.

Descartes, René (1984a), ‘Meditations on First Philosophy’, trans. John Cottingham, in John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch (eds), The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vol. II, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–397.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1962), Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

 

 

 

 

Somers-Hall, (1.11), Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, ‘1.11 Phenomenology (55–7/67–9)’, summary

by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary. All boldface, underlining, and bracketed commentary are my own. Proofreading is incomplete, so please forgive my typos and other distracting mistakes. Somers-Hall is abbreviated SH and Difference and Repetition as DR.]

Summary of

Henry Somers-Hall

Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition:
An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide

Part 1
A Guide to the Text

 

Chapter 1. Difference in Itself

1.11 Phenomenology (55–7/67–9)

Brief summary:

Many philosophical systems explain reality by means of such concepts as limitation, negation, and opposition. Deleuze showed these to be flawed concepts. However, there is a reason they arise. Our knowledge of the things in our world is limited to our perspectival knowledge of them. In perception we can only view an object from our perspective, and we never see it from all possible perspectives at once. Nonetheless, we regard it as a whole thing, even though our phenomenal data can only constitute it partially. Deleuze thinks that the way we do this is by placing the partially constituted object into oppositional relations with other objects, so to define its boundaries and to constitute it negatively. In reality, the object can be no more than our perspective on it. Merleau-Ponty’s perspectival phenomenology could perhaps be not based on identity, but in fact it is, since the body is taken as a center of perception and thus to have a fixed identity.

 

Summary

[Previously we noted that Deleuze for the most part is against difference understood in terms of opposition. We now learn that, nonetheless,] “Deleuze does have a place for the notion of difference as opposition, although he says that ‘negation is difference seen from its underside, seen from below’ (DR 55/67)” (SH 50). And it is “only ‘the shadow of the more profound genetic element’ (DR 55/67)” (SH 50). Negation is often understood spatially, since something’s not being something else can be thought of as it standing outside it. “This pencil is not this piece of paper to the extent that they occupy different positions within the same space” (SH 50). [The basic reasoning here seems to be this. Most basically there is not extensive difference but rather there is only intensive difference. How that can be so will hopefully be clarified. What would that mean in physics for example, which studies the motion of objects through extensive space? At any rate, take that claim to be true. Extensive space is an illusion, and  is not fundamentally real. The next step in the reasoning seems to be that you cannot have oppositional difference without extensive spatiality. Since extensive spatiality is an illusion, then oppositional difference would be illusory too. The question we might raise is, ‘Is there really no other way to conceive oppositional difference except on the basis of extensive spatiality?’ I cannot think of any. It does seem that opposition requires an external relation between separate entities, and that externality carries with it a spatial sort of relation. Is it possible to have self-opposition without the self becoming two selves, or without that opposition being internal, like two warring components of oneself (which would be external to each other even though internal to the self they compose)?]

We can see that the same is true of the concept of negation. If we think about something not being something else, then we normally think of them as being spatially separated from one another. This pencil is not this piece of paper to the extent that they occupy different positions within the same space. Deleuze argues that extensive space is an illusion, but one that emerges quite naturally from the way in which we relate to the world. Intensive difference is generative of our notion of objective space, and it is this space which forms the basis of oppositional difference. If we forget the fact that this conception of space is generated from something more primitive, then we end up in a situation where it is possible to introduce the notions of opposition and negation. The world thus has a tendency towards oppositional difference, but we make a mistake when we take this tendency to be a completed state of things.
(50)

So somehow we generate the illusion of [negation and opposition and thus] identity. Deleuze explains how this is so by revising one of Merleau-Ponty’s central phenomenological claims. Deleuze will give a ‘genetic account’ of how this illusion of identity comes about. To follow his reasoning, we need to look first at three statements Deleuze makes in DR. [The first is that there are an infinity of representations in infinite representation. This can take two forms, depending on whether it is an infinity of the Large as with Hegel or an infinity of the Small as with Leibniz. With Hegel, the whole of the dialectic’s movement is infinite in that it is ceaseless (although I am not sure how to explain the fact that it begins in pure being and ends in the absolute). For Leibniz, each smallest part of the world expresses the entirety of the rest of the world, which is infinite. The next two quotes I cannot explain on the basis of what we have learned so far.]

1. Infinite representation includes precisely an infinity of representations – either by ensuring the convergence of all points of view on the same object or the same world, or by making all moments properties of the same Self. (DR 56/67)

2. The immediate, defined as ‘sub-representative’, is not therefore attained by multiplying representations and points of view. On the contrary, each composing representation must be distorted, diverted and torn from its centre. Each point of view must itself be the object, or the object must belong to the point of view. (DR 56/68)

3. Difference must become the element, the ultimate unity. (DR 56/68)
(SH 51)

SH then moves directly to a passage in Merleau-Ponty that Deleuze refers to. It comes from Phenomenology of Perception, and in it Merleau-Ponty gives “his account of the movement from our own perspective on the world to a positing of objective being” (SH 51). [In this quote, Merleau-Ponty first notes that our understanding of a phenomenal object is always limited by the fact that we can only see it from one perspective at a time. It is impossible to grasp it from all the infinitely many perspectives at once. This is not mentioned, but we might also think of how the object is internally composed and yet our vision often cannot penetrate most objects’ surfaces to see inside them. We might also note that there are many temporal perspectives as well. Nonetheless, instead of seeing the object itself as incomplete and unformed and missing the elements we cannot perceive, we instead ‘posit’ it as a whole object. Merleau-Ponty says this is a sort of ek-stase, which in other contexts he means a going outside of oneself. In this case it is perhaps us going outside the limitations of our own perspectival grasping of things and entering into a more third-person sort of position in relation to the objects of our experience]:

But, once more, my human gaze never posits more than one facet of the object, even though by means of horizons it is directed towards all of the others . . . If I conceive in the image of my own gaze those others which, converging from all directions, explore every corner of the house and define it, I have still only a harmonious and indefinite set of views of the object, but not the object in its plenitude . . . If it is to reach perfect density, in other words, if there is to be an absolute object, it will have to consist in an infinite number of different perspectives compressed into a single coexistence, and to be presented, as it were, to a host of eyes all engaged in one concerted act of seeing . . . The positing of the object therefore makes us go beyond the limits of our actual experience which is brought up against and halted by an alien being, with the result that finally experience believes that it extracts all its own teaching from the object. It is the ek-stase of experience which causes all perception to be perception of something. Obsessed with being, and forgetful of the perspectivism of my experience, I henceforth treat it as an object, and deduce it from a relationship between objects. (Merleau-Ponty 1962: 69–70)
(SH 51)

SH then explains what this passage means with regard to the limitations to perspectives. He also observes that when we posit the object, we seem to be treating all the perspectives on the object as inessential and logically posterior to the object itself. [It seems that originally the perspectives are essential to the object. I suppose we mean here essential to the phenomenal constitution of the object synthesized by means of our object-constituting consciousness.]

Merleau-Ponty’s point is that perception is always originally from and of a certain perspective. I can never see such a thing as a totalised object. As I move around the object, I begin to notice that although my | perspective on the object changes, when I return to my original position, something similar to the original perspective returns. On this basis of the fact that my own memory appears to preserve some perspectives, I posit what Merleau-Ponty calls ‘the memory of the world’ (Merleau- Ponty 1962: 70), which includes all possible perspectives on the object. Now, with an understanding of the object based on an infinite number of possible perspectives, my own view ceases to be relevant (I become ‘forgetful of the perspectivism of my experience’). I now suppose that rather than the object emerging from the accumulation of perspectives on it, the perspectives are in fact inessential, and logically posterior to the object itself.
(51-52)

[It seems that in order to move to the next point, we need to recognize that “the object is not considered to be constituted by perception”. We saw above that it is ‘posited’, but we never have sufficient perception to constituted it as a whole object. I suppose that is not controversial, but I assume that in phenomenology the object is still constituted in consciousness, using data from perception. I am not sure if the question is: using what other data is the object constituted? The remainder of this section I find very perplexing. I will go through it gradually.]

The final stage is to recognise that now the object is not considered to be constituted by perception, we need another explanation of how it is constituted.
(52)

[SH will now explain that one way the object can be constituted is by deducing it by means relationships between objects. It is not clear to me if we are still talking about phenomenal object constitution or some other sort of constitution, like physical constitution. But it seems safe to assume that it is phenomenal constitution. So we begin by noting that we cannot see a table for example from all spatial  perspectives both outside and within it, during this moment and all others of its existence. Still somehow the table becomes fully constituted in our mind even with that missing information. Supposedly now we understand it by means of its relationship with other objects. I will try to find some ways to understand this. One way is that we see that the table is not the floor and it is not the air around it. So while we do not know all of the table, we can maybe see a lot of what it is not, and by that means we can develop a negative or a relational sense of the table’s constitution. The table is not a whole phenomena in the sense that it is a thoroughly and completely determined phenomena, but it is whole in the sense that it has boundaries that we can discern, or it has determinate relations to other things which help define its boundaries. The only other way I would offer for making sense of this has to do with Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on the interconnectedness of all phenomena. I will not get into the details here, but if you want them you can read more in section 2 of my paper “Body and World in Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze”. The basic idea is similar to what we said in the prior section about Leibniz and the perspectival expression of the entire world in each monad. We look at the floor. It has certain shadings of color that tell us there is something obscuring the light falling on it. We indirectly perceive that there is a light and also a chair blocking that light, for example, even though we do not look up and see these other phenomenal objects yet. Each part of our phenomenal awareness is phenomenally connected with each other part, and they make a dense fabric. We in a way do perceive all corners of the cosmos, but just very, very implicitly. This is because the phenomenal traits of any part of our awareness are conditioned by phenomenal traits of nearby phenomena, which are conditioned by their nearby phenomena, and thus transitively the entirety of the phenomenal world is implied in each part. Perhaps SH means something else, but I cannot figure out what yet. He then says that these relationships are based on opposition and limits. So perhaps we might say that whatever other phenomena one phenomenon implies would lie outside its constitutional limits. (However, in the second possible interpretation I offer above, the absolutely thorough interpenetration of all phenomenal objects with all others would call into question the boundaries between any).

The final stage is to recognise that now the object is not considered to be constituted by perception, we need another explanation of how it is constituted. We thus alight on the idea that it can be deduced ‘from a relationship between objects’. This relationship is, of course, the relationship of opposition and limit. At this point, therefore, negation enters our world, as a precondition for limit.
(SH 52)

[The next point is interesting. So the reasoning again seems to be that perspectival perception is inadequate to constitute objects in their entirety, yet we still somehow do so, and we do so on the basis of negations, limits, and oppositions. For the next part of the reasoning, we need to assume that this negation, limit, and opposition were not already there, but were instead fabricated somehow by our consciousness. This seems perfectly possible, but it would help for some reasoning to understand why this might be. We seem to need to take it as an article of faith that negation, limit, and opposition are not inherent in the world. As far as I can tell, the reason we have to conclude this is that because these notions lead us to unresolved problems in explaining reality in its broadest and most specific senses (the problems of the Large and the Small), they must not be real. Therefore any instance of them must really be an illusion. But we seem to be begging the question here. How do we know that negation, limit, and opposition are phenomenal illusions or fabrications superimposed onto a world where there are none? Can it not be that they really are there, and that we are also phenomenally aware of them or that we phenomenally reconstitute them in our awareness? Our eyes move from left to right. We see a range of variations. We then draw lines in our world where before there was a continuous variation of visual information. But still, what we see on the left is different from what we see on the right. How could it possibly be that there is in reality not extensive space, with certain parts being external to other parts? I can understand how on the most local level of variation, for example our eyes just in the act of moving see a pure variation, that there can be no externality between parts but rather just pure intensive variation. However, our eyes make a wide sweep. How can it be that we see a different left from a different right side unless they are spatially distinct or somehow external to one another? Is it just because of the continuity of variation between one and the other makes them inseparable? At any rate, we are to regard the genetic conditions of negation and limit as being perspectivism. I am not sure, but I think what SH means here is simply that the limits of perspectivism create the conditions for us generating the illusion of negation and limit. Perspectivism does not however explain the actual genesis of negation and limit. This is perhaps irrelevant anyway. SH then asks how this fits in with Deleuze’s account, which implies I think that before we were indeed sticking with a Merleau-Pontian phenomenological sort of account.]

At this point, therefore, negation enters our world, as a precondition for limit. This account is therefore the account of the generation of an illusion, which, as Deleuze puts it, is nonetheless well founded. It shows how negation and limit enter the world through representation ignoring its genetic conditions (perspectivism). How does this then fi t in with Deleuze’s account?
(52)

[SH then will return to the three Deleuze quotations we began with. He says this account we give above fits in with what was said in those quotations. The first quote was: “1. Infinite representation includes precisely an infinity of representations – either by ensuring the convergence of all points of view on the same object or the same world, or by making all moments properties of the same Self. (DR 56/67)” (SH 51). SH says this account fits with “Deleuze’s characterisation of infinite representation as the convergence of all points of view (quotation 1)” (SH 52). I think I should try to make this clear, even though it seems quite clear already. The account we just gave said that we do not have all points of view. We compensate for this lack by fabricating oppositions. So perhaps this account ‘fits’ not in the sense that it matches up with its conclusion, but rather that it matches up with a claim that the account rejects. The only other explanation I can think of is that we are dealing with the thorough interpenetration of all phenomena that we discussed in our commentary above. That we noted is very much like the infinite representation of Leibniz. In that case, the need for negation and limit comes from the implicit/explicit distinction. Each phenomenal object is in fact thoroughly determined by means of its relations to all other phenomenal objects. However, much of our awareness of these infinitely many determinations is implicit and never comes to the surface of our consciousness. So perhaps it is on the basis of that implicit/explicit limitation somehow that we fabricate negation and limit.]

Such an account fits with Deleuze’s characterisation of infinite representation as the convergence of all points of view (quotation 1).
(SH 52)

[The next point is a bit difficult to grasp. The first part of it says that “Opposition comes into play through the gradual elimination of perspectives” (SH 52). I am not sure what is meant by ‘gradual elimination’. In the account as it was explained, there are perspectives that we have and those we do not have. We make up for our lacking knowledge by making use of fabricated limits and oppositional negations. I do not recall how any of those perspectives were eliminated. I can think of two ways this was so. First was that the other perspectives were possibilities or were otherwise hypothetical, and thus we eliminate them since they are not phenomenally available. The other way I can think this is so is that in fact we have all these other perspectives, but they are too implicit to make ready use of them in our object constitution, so we eliminate them. But in neither case do I understand how this elimination would be ‘gradual’. The next part of this point is that the account “fits with Deleuze’s desire that each point of view instead be the object, or the object must belong to the point of view (quotation 2)” (SH 52). This is not clear for me. Perhaps the reasoning is like this. We first take if for granted that for some reason the negation, limit, and opposition are illusory. That means the object is not fundamentally constituted by means of negation, limit, and opposition. That further means that we are left only with what we started with, our limited perspectival phenomenal data of it. On that basis, we noted, we cannot have the object as a unified and complete thing. At best, the object is little more than what is given in that limited perspective. Recall the quoted Deleuze passage was: “2. The immediate, defined as ‘sub-representative’, is not therefore attained by multiplying representations and points of view. On the contrary, each composing representation must be distorted, diverted and torn from its centre. Each point of view must itself be the object, or the object must belong to the point of view. (DR 56/68)” (SH 51). I am still not sure what is meant by the representation being distorted, diverted, and torn from its center. I was assuming that we are left with just our limited perspective. How is it torn away from us? Is it on account of the interpenetration of phenomena?]

Opposition comes into play through the gradual elimination of perspectives. It also fits with Deleuze’s desire that each point of view instead be the object, or the object must belong to the point of view (quotation 2). Such a view is a return to a form of perspectivism such as that found in Merleau-Ponty.
(SH 52)

[Merleau-Ponty was saying that we are limited to our perspectives (although this is only with explicit phenomena). Deleuze says that there is a “superior empiricism” that helps us understand “the reason behind the qualities and the being of the sensible”. I am not sure why from a perspectival phenomenology we would be unable to understand how the qualities of the sensible are given. (Also, I do not know what is meant by the ‘being of the sensible’). The issue as I understood it was that the perspectival phenomenology was unable to account for the phenomenal object in all its phenomenal properties. Also, Merleau-Ponty’s claim was that we do in fact go beyond our limited perspective to posit the object in its wholeness. Perhaps the difference here with Deleuze is that the positing is done without recourse to limitation, negation, and opposition. But I am not sure. Please judge for yourself.]

What about Deleuze’s final claim that ‘difference must become the element, the ultimate unity’? In the next paragraph, Deleuze claims that ‘the intense world of differences, in which we find the reason behind the qualities and the being of the sensible, is precisely the object of a superior empiricism’ (DR 57/68–9). This suggests that Deleuze’s analysis is going to go beyond the kind of perspectivism Merleau-Ponty proposes.
(SH 52)

[Also, it is still not clear to me how for Deleuze difference will be the element and ultimate unity. Is it that reality is somehow fundamentally a continuous intensive variation; since it is continuous, it is a unity, and because it is intensive variation,  it is differential? I think we will learn this later.]

[The next paragraph is also very difficult for me grasp. For Merleau-Ponty, as perhaps for Husserl too, the body is the the orienting center of all our perceptions. The first point SH seems to be making is that because it is a center, it is singular and has an identity. And because it is conceived as having an identity, it is improperly conceived, since we have rejected the possibility that things can fundamentally have an identity (again, perhaps on account of the problems of the Large and Small which tell us this identity is an unsuitable basis for our accounts). SH’s next point is that Deleuze will “explore what makes possible the kind of account Merleau-Ponty gives” (52d). I suppose this means Deleuze will explain on what basis we are able to incorrectly build a theory of phenomenal givenness that has a perspectival center of orientation, namely, a body which has an identity. Somehow that deeper basis is intensive difference. To get to the final point, it seems we need to regard certain assumptions phenomenologists make, such as that we have a body as a center of perception, as being byproducts of more basic genetic elements. Thus these assumptions are really “epiphenomena.” But I am not sure if by this Deleuze means that the more basic elements are themselves phenomenal, and the higher flawed ones are also phenomena but secondary and thus epiphenomenal. That does not seem right, so perhaps the ‘phenomenal’ here does not mean ‘phenomena’ in the sense of ‘givenness to our awareness’, but rather more like how it is used in science to refer to observable events.]

For Merleau-Ponty, what makes possible the field of perspectives is the body, but the notion of a body operates as an identity. Instead, Deleuze is going to try to explore what makes possible the kind of account Merleau-Ponty gives. Such an account will be what Deleuze calls elsewhere a ‘transcendental empiricism’, since it will deal with the | conditions of real experience. Intensive difference will therefore take the place of identity as being generative of our experience of the world. This means that while Deleuze can accept the phenomenological criticism of the objective understanding of the world, he can also reject phenomenology’s own account as not truly explaining the genesis of its own account. Phenomenology rejects the notion that the self-identical object gives coherence to perception, but fails to recognise that perspective itself still needs an explanation, this time in terms of difference. Phenomenology provides a description of phenomena, but what is needed is a genealogy of phenomena. Thus, Deleuze claims that ‘the whole of Phenomenology is an epiphenomenology’ (DR 52/63).
(SH 53)

 

Citations from:

Somers-Hall, Henry. Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University, 2013.

Or if otherwise noted:

DR:
[Deleuze] Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994/London: Continuum, 2004.

 

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1962), Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

 

 

Frederick B. Mills “A Phenomenological Approach to Psychoprosthetics”, summary

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Frederick B. Mills

“A Phenomenological Approach to Psychoprosthetics”

Summary

 

Brief Summary

The integration of prosthetic devices into users’ bodies and activities can be seen in terms of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body.

Abstract [Quoting]

The phenomenology of human embodiment can advance the practitioner’s understanding of the lived human body and in particular, what it means to incorporate a prosthetic device into one’s body. In order for a prosthesis to be incorporated into the lived body of the patient, the prosthesis must arguably be integrated into the body schema. This article uses the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and others to identify three of the necessary conditions of embodiment that determine the body schema: corporeal understanding, transparency and sensorimotor feedback. It then examines the structure of each of these conditions of embodiment and how they impact the lived body’s incorporation of prostheses and other artifacts. (Mills p.1)

Summary

Introduction

The aim of Mills’ article is to “offer an interpretation of how some of the insights about embodiment contained in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s work relates to the relatively new health science field of psychoprosthetics. These insights show the value of the phenomenological method to the understanding of human embodiment and introduce practitioners to the practice of phenomenology.” (1Ac)

Methodological considerations

Mills draws from Gallagher et al.’s definition of psychoprosthetics. Psychoprosthetics is “the study of ‘the psychological aspects of prosthetic use and of rehabilitative processes in those conditions that require the use of prosthetic devices’” (1Bd). Psychoprosthetics is concerned with “prosthetic technologies and the behavior and experience of the prosthesis user” (2Aa). Psychoprosthetics makes use of two complementary methodologies: 1) (object-orientation) evidence-based empirical research, which is thus mostly concerned with measurable outcomes; and 2) (subject-orientation) phenomenological efforts, normally concerned more with the qualitative lived experiences of the prosthesis user, and it “includes the systematic use of introspection, testimonials and questionnaires as research tools. Such phenomenological research, when applied to psychoprosthetics, is inter-subjective, empathetic, and focuses on what it is like to be the user of an artificial limb as he or she progresses through the rehabilitative process”. (2Aa.b)

Mills notes the importance of phenomenology in the work of Craig Murray, who  claims that clinical intervention that is informed by phenomenological research will make it more likely for prosthesis users to not give up until their device becomes integrated into their body schema; “until the prosthetic device is integrated into their bodies. This is because the qualitative experience of prosthesis use determines to a significant degree whether a prosthesis is really being progressively integrated into the user’s body. The work of Merleau-Ponty is relevant to this task because it helps us to systematically identify and study the basic experiential features of the incorporation of artifacts into the lived body.” (2Ab citing Murray 2008)

Merleau-Ponty does not ignore the importance of empirical research, and he deals with the question of what about human nature that opens it to both subjective and objective study. Merleau-Ponty breaks with the Cartesian substance dualism of mind and extension, which “poses an irresolvable problem of how the activities of the mind and body are nevertheless systematically correlated.” (2AD)

Merleau-Ponty thinks we need to “reach back to our lived experience prior to reflecting about our bodies as objects, we do not find ourselves divided into two separate worlds (a mind and a body) but as living, sensing and moving bodies.” (2Ba)

Our everyday experiences tell us that we do not normally separate mind and body, as for example when we see someone smile, we do not see it merely as flesh moving nor merely as an imperceptible emotion. “With this expressive nature of human behavior in mind, we can engage in a phenomenological investigation into the basic features of human embodiment and its extension in artifacts and in particular, prostheses.” (2Bb)

Basic features of embodiment

The body image and the body schema

Human embodiment’s structure includes both body image and body schema. There is no consensus on their meanings, but Mills will work through some distinctions and relations between them. (2Bc)

Our body image is the way we think we look to others. (2Bc)

Body image is also important for prosthesis integration, but this paper focuses more on body schema. (2Bd)

Shaun Gallagher defines body schema as ““a system of sensory-motor processes that constantly regulate posture | and movement – processes that function without reflective awareness or the necessity of perceptual monitoring” (Gallagher qt in Mills pp.2|3)

Mills broadens this definition. Body schema is the general idea of schema and body schemas are the system or plurality of schemas. Mills also broadens the concept of body schemas to include “processes of which we can be marginally and even focally aware.” (3Aa)

Body schemas are what allow us to engage skillfully with the world. Neuronal descriptions are not enough to describe this; we need to see how the structure and meaning of phenomenal experience correlates with neurophysiological processes in the brain. (3Ab)

Body image helps in the development of our body schema. (3Ac)

To elaborate the concept of body schema, Mills quotes Merleau-Ponty from Phenomenology of Perception [p.160-167]

A movement is learned when the body has understood it, that is, when it has incorporated it into its ‘world’, and to move one’s body is to aim at things through it; it is to allow oneself to respond to their call, which is made upon it independently of any representation. (Merleau-Ponty qtd in Mills 3Ac)

Mills gets three basic features of the body schema from the paragraph this quote comes from: 1) corporeal understanding, 2) transparency, and 3) sensory-motor feedback.

Corporeal understanding

Corporeal understanding is not reflexive because “unless we are learning a new skill, we do not normally represent a situation to ourselves prior to enacting the intended behavior; we merely aim at our purpose and the behavior unfolds in | its very enactment”. (3A-B) But our corporeal understanding is not reflexive either, because our behaviors are normally not mechanical responses to stimuli but instead “Objects call our attention because they have a certain value for us. We are active players in generating our behaviors.” (3Ba)

Corporeal is not something cognitive but is more like as Hubert Dreyfus calls it ‘know how’. We know how an action comes about in the context of a wider activity, like hitting the ‘h’ key while typing, even though we do not have an explicit visual map of the keyboard. (3Bb)

We need to reenact a behavior to recall it, because “corporeal understanding is activated at the lived body-world interface. At the body-world interface, we do not experience our bodies per se, as separate from the world; we experience our bodies as joined with and challenged by the world.” (3Bc)

Transparency (absence and presence)

Cognitive understanding requires that the part of the body that is perceptually and kinesthetically engages with the world be transparent to us. Drew Leder notes that insofar as our body brings some part of the world to presence, revealing it to us, the part of the body that does the revealing withdraws from our view, like our our eyes are absence from our field of vision. (3Bc)

Mills quotes Merleau-Ponty to elaborate [Phenomenology of Perception p.104]:

I observe external objects with my body, I handle them, examine them, walk round them, but my body itself is a thing which I do not observe; in order to be able to do so, I should need the use of a second body which itself would be unobservable. (3Bd)

Transparency is a part of all our kinetic and perceptual behaviors. (3-4)

Michael Polanyi notes how our the motile and perceptive parts of our body recede and in a sense become transparent; Drew Leder “calls this type of absence focal disappearance”. (4Aa)

Also, according to Leder, we experience the background disappearance of our body; through most of the day we have just a marginal awareness of it. Mills will use ‘transparency’ to refer to both kinds of phenomenal absence. (4Ab)

Intentionality is thinking’s manner of being directed towards objects. For Merleau-Ponty, it is the whole lived embodied person who does the thinking, perceiving and behaving.

As living bodies, we are both perceptually and kinesthetically directed towards and engaged with the world. Merleau-Ponty conceptualizes the ways in which we are directed towards our world as rays of intentionality projecting out of the body schema. These rays constitute our many purposes and invest our surroundings with the meaning of possible behaviors. The door is the way out of the room. The keyboard is the potential to enter data. The light switch is the potential to turn the lights on or off. The road is the way out of the neighborhood. The rays of intentionality are correlated with a network of utilitarian relationships between objects in the world. Merleau-Ponty refers to the totality of these rays as an “arc of intentionality” (4Ac)

Normally much in our arc of intentionality remains below our thematic awareness until something brings them into focus. (4A.B)

Things can come into focus for a variety of reasons, depending on the context. (4B.ab)

Changes of thematic awareness can be like Gestalt figure/ground shifts. (4B.b)

Sensorimotor feedback

From the physiological perspective, “sensations are neural events and sensorimotor feedback is a dynamic relationship between the adaptive body and environmental stimuli”; but from the phenomenal perspective “sensations are qualitative experiences.” Mills will focus on the phenomenal aspect. (4B.c)

Sensorimotor feedback can be marginal and focal and involve more than one perceptual Gestalt at a time. (4D) This helps us attend to multiple tasks at one time. (5Aa)

Incorporation of artifacts into the lived body

On these bases will will conceptualize the incorporation of artifacts, such as prosthetic devices, into the lived body.This requires a modification of the three basic features of embodiment. (5Ab)

Incorporation of artifacts involves integrating them into our body schema.

When an artifact is integrated into the body schema such that it modifies the corporeal understanding, the body and artifact merge in such a way that together they interface with the world to generate behaviors that are neither reflexive nor conceptually guided but rather skillful or habitual. This means that the body schema comes to include the artifact in its arc of intentionality. (5Abc)

Incorporation also involves a change in the absence presence dynamic where the artifact becomes absent or transparent.

Ideally the prosthesis can become a part of the body from which a worldly gestalt becomes present and a skillful or habitual behavior becomes possible. Such integration can occur when sensorimotor feedback appears to come from the interface between body-artifact as a unified whole and the world rather than the interface between the body and the artifact. (5Ac)

Examples of the embodiment of artifacts

Merleau-Ponty uses the examples of the walking stick and the typewriter. [At the end of this entry we look at the examples and the passages they come from.] Mills quotes Merleau-Ponty [Phenomenology of Perception 165-166]

The blind man’s stick has ceased to be an object for him, and is no longer perceived for itself; its point has become an area of sensitivity, extending the scope and active radius of touch, and providing a parallel to sight. In the exploration of things, the length of the stick does not enter expressly as a middle term: the blind man is rather aware of it through the position of objects [p.165 | p.166] than of the position of objects through it. (5Ba)

So the walking stick eventually is incorporated into the arc of intentionality and becomes like an extension of her body.

The user literally extends her reach, the stick being lived as part of the extended arm. The stick becomes transparent because the blind person is not focused on her grasp of the walking stick; she is directed towards the ground through the hand-stick combination. Sensorimotor feedback is experienced not as a relation between the hand and movements of the stick but rather as an experience of the texture and location of the ground and other items through the stick as if it were an extension of her arm. (5Bb)

Mills also quotes Merleau-Ponty’s typewriter example [Phenomenology of Perception 166-167]

It is possible to know how to type without being able to say where the letters which make the words are to be found on the banks of keys. To know how to type is not, then, to know the place of each letter among the keys, nor even to have acquired a conditioned reflex for each one, which is set in motion by the letter as it comes before our eye. If habit is neither a form of knowledge nor an involuntary action, what then is it? It is knowledge in the hands, which is forthcoming only when bodily effort is made, and cannot be formulated in detachment from that effort. The subject knows where the letters are on the typewriter as we know where one of our limbs is…. When the typist performs the necessary movements on the typewriter, these movements are governed by an intention, but the intention does not posit the keys as objective locations. It is literally true that the subject who learns to type incorporates the key-bank space into his bodily space. (5Bb.c)

The key, the finger, and other aspects of the body’s positioning and behavior fall into the background. (5Bc)

The corporeal understanding of the skilled typist is not reflexive, because the keys are not stimuli causing her fingers to move. And the typing does not involve representation, because the typist does not make use of a mental model representing the keyboard. “The corporeal understanding is in the hands.”  (5Bc.d)

Embodiment of prosthetic devices

So the incorporation of prosthetic devices requires a modification in our corporeal understanding, transparency, and sensorimotor feedback. (5-6) Mills draws from Craig Murray’s empirical studies of prosthetic incorporations.

For there to be transparency, the device must be affixed properly so that no pain or discomfort is felt, for otherwise it will be noticed rather than disappear from awareness. Practice is as well critical for attaining transparency. [Following first quotes Mills, then has Mill’s quote of Murray 2004]

Murray notes that some respondents testify that with practice, walking starts to become natural again:

Walking becomes pretty intuitive after the age of three or four; you don’t think about it, you just do it. Now, I do have to think occasionally, such as when I stand up from a chair. I have to think which foot, is that foot in the right position, is it going to hit anything? You do still have to check for things like that. Occasionally, I’ll get it trapped under a chair as I stand up. So a couple of times it brings it back to you that you have a problem there. But once moving, in general, it’s pretty much a matter of well I want to go from here to there, and I just walk. It’s intuitive now. (6Abc)

Mills continues [again first Mills then Murray 2004]

The prosthesis, in one report, became so transparent, that the user got up from bed without realizing that the artificial limb was not on: “I fell on the floor, landing on the distal end of the stump. It was a very frightening thing. Scary. It hurt like hell, and I stayed off it for about a week. So I guess I have reached a point where I am capable of such foolish acts as that and forget my leg was not on.” (6Ad)

Incorporation could be more likely if sensorimotor feedback occurs “at the interface of the prosthesis and the environment”. (6Ad) Mills notes [second is quote from Murray 2004]

One user in the Murray study reported: “I do sense it [the ground] with the prosthesis on. It is a general awareness of the ground. As I walk, I can feel my heel land, and the foot move forward to the toes”. (6Ba)

There are technologies that can make the feedback appear to come from the environment.

For example, prosthetics fixed to bones rather than fitting in sockets tend to give better feedback. [citing Hagberg et al.]

For example, the sensorimotor feedback provided by boneanchored (osseointegrated) prostheses (OI), osseoperception, seems to be more vivid and detailed than that attained by socket technology. In one study, several patients reported more control over their artificial limb (than with a socket style prosthesis) and the ability to identify the material of the surface they are walking on. Other users report that the osseointegrated prosthesis feels more like a part of the body than did the socket prosthesis. (6Bb)

Another technique for enhancing sensorimotor feedback is targeted re-innervation, which “improves the communication of the surface of the prosthesis with intact nerves on the residual limb.” (6Bb) [When a limb is amputated, it seems in these cases that the nerves of that limb are removed and reattached to the remaining limb nerve channels, so that sensations normally given in the limb are still givable through these nerves. Then, sensors in the prosthetic limb create signals that stimulate the attached nerves so that the user feels as if the sensation is coming from within the prosthetic device.]

There are a variety of technologies that seek to improve the communication of the surface of the prosthesis with intact nerves on the residual limb to improve sensorimotor feedback. One of these strategies is targeted re-innervation. In a 2010 study conducted at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and led by Paul D. Marasco, an artificial sense of tactile sensation was created for a prosthetic limb so it felt, to the user, as though sensations were coming from the prosthesis and not merely mediated by the prosthesis. Here is how it works. Sensors are placed on the artificial hand. These sensors send a message to a robotic device that is located on the residual limb in proximity to areas sensitized by the re-innervated nerves. The robotic device responds to the sensor information by stimulating “surgically redirected cutaneous sensory nerves... that once served the lost limb”. I want to emphasize that Marasco used both evidence-based medicine and phenomenology. In particular, he made use of questionnaires and testimony as well as temperature changes in the residual limb. He found that the illusion that sensations were coming from the prosthesis were vivid. Marasco suggests that “this may help amputees to more effectively incorporate an artificial limb into their self image, providing the possibility that a prosthesis becomes not only a tool, but also an integrated body part”. If we couple this technology with recent advances in the kinesthetic response of prosthetic devices, users may benefit even more from enhanced sensorimotor feedback. It is likely that the more such devices mimic organic limbs and provide sensorimotor feedback, the more a corporeal understanding and a natural feel can be achieved. [Mills 6Bb citing Marasco et al.]

Conclusion

Not all prosthesis users attain transparency. “However, in those cases where integration is the goal, the insights of Merleau-Ponty on the lived body help us to understand what it means for a prosthetic device to be incorporated into a patient’s lived body.” (6Bd)

Mills concludes “Those rehabilitative strategies that begin to make the prosthesis more transparent to the user; provide finer grained sensorimotor feedback as coming from the (body-prosthesis) – world interface; and restore increasingly more skillful functionality are likely to achieve the maximal prosthetic incorporation.”  (7Ab)

Frederick B. Mills. “A Phenomenological Approach to Psychoprosthetics.” Disability & Rehabilitation, 2012; Early Online: 1–7 © 2012 Informa UK, Ltd. ISSN 0963-8288 print/ISSN 1464-5165 online

Gallagher P, Desmond D, MacLachlan M. Psychoprosthetics: an introduction. In: Gallagher P, Desmond D, MacLachlan M, editors. Psychoprosthetics. London: Springer-Verlag Limited; 2008. pp 1–10.

Gallagher S. How the body shapes the mind. New York: Oxford University Press; 2005.]

Hagberg K, Häggström E, Jönsson S, Rydevik B, Brånemark R. Osseoperception and osseointegrated prosthetic limbs. In: Gallagher P, Desmond D, MacLachlan M, editors. Psychoprosthetics. London: Springer-Verlag Limited; 2008. pp 131–140.

Leder D. The absent body. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press; 1990.

Marasco PD, Kim K, Colgate JE, Peshkin MA, Kuiken TA. Robotic touch shifts perception of embodiment to a prosthesis in targeted reinnervation amputees. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain; 2011, January 20.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Transl. Colin Smith. London/New York: Routledge, 1958.

Murray CD. An interpretative phenomenological analysis of the embodiment of artificial limbs. Disabil Rehabil 2004;26:963–973. 3.

Murray CD. Embodiment and prosthetics. In: Gallagher P, Desmond D, MacLachlan M, editors. Psychoprosthetics. London: Springer-Verlag Limited; 2008. pp 119–129.

Andy Clark. 8.8 of Being There, “Roots”, summary

summary by Corry Shores
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Andy Clark

Being There:

Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again

Ch.8

Being, Computing, Representing

Part 8.8
Roots

[this summary focuses on the Merleau-Ponty parts]

Brief Summary:

Merleau-Ponty’s body-world synergistic integration is like Clark’s continuous reciprocal causation, and this can be seen with Merleau-Ponty’s example of using a device to hold a captured animal: our hand motions are just as much causes of as they are reactions to the same stimuli they receive from the squirming animal.

Summary

Andy Clark has been discussing anti-representationalist and anti-computationalist ‘intuitions’ we might have with regard to cognitive systems. Clark will now discuss the recent and not-so-recent roots of these views. (170-171)

Clark begins with Heidegger’s Being and Time. Here Heidegger describes how the structure of the world, and our place in it, can be seen in terms of the functional couplings of the parts of the world, revolving around our intentional relationship with that world. (171a.b)

Thus Heidegger’s ideas would be in line with what Clark has been saying with regard to “action-oriented couplings between organism and world”. Yet Clark’s positions do not align with Heidegger in other ways. (171b.c)

Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy involves a concept of body-world integration (“whole organism-body-world synergies”)that is much like Clark’s “continuous reciprocal causation”. [for more on this notion of cuasation, see Clark’s explanation in Being There and Menary’s in his introduction to Extended Mind (specifically here )] Clark refers to Merleau-Ponty’s example of using some device to hold a captured animal. [Merleau-Ponty gave this example to show how our reactions to a stimulus are as well what helped give that stimulus its form in the first place. The motions of our hand that react to the animal’s squirming are the same motions that put our hands in the positions that allowed us to feel the squirming in that particular way. This blurs the line between us and the animal, because we together can also be seen as producing a conjoined system, since we and the animal are reacting so immediately and directly to one another simultaneously, like parts in a larger machine.]

Closer in spirit and execution to the present project is the work of the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who was concerned to depict everyday intelligent activity as the playing out of whole organism-body-world synergies. In particular, Merleau-Ponty stressed the importance of what I have called "continuous reciprocal causation"—viz., the idea that we must go beyond the passive image of the organism perceiving the world and recognize the way our actions may be continuously responsive to worldly events which are at the same time being continuously responsive to our actions. Consider a lovely example, which I think of as "the hamster and tongs":

When my hand follows each effort of a struggling animal while holding an instrument for capturing it, it is clear that each of my movements responds to an external stimulation; but it is also clear that these stimulations could not be received | without the movements by which I expose my receptors to their influence The properties of the object and the intentions of the subject are not only intermingled; they also constitute a new whole. (Merleau-Ponty 1942, p. 13)

In this example the motions of my hands are continuously responsive to those of the struggling hamster, but the hamster's struggles are continuously molded and shaped by the motions of my hand. Here action and perception, as David Hilditch (1995) has put it, coalesce as a kind of "free form interactive dance between perceiver and perceived." It is this iterated interactive dance that, we saw, is now recognized in recent work concerning the computational foundations of animate vision. [Clark 171-172, boldface mine]

Consider also the Gibsonian notion of an affordance.

An affordance is an opportunity for use or interaction which some object or state of affairs presents to a certain kind of agent. For example, to a human a chair affords sitting, but to a woodpecker it may afford something quite different. (172b)

Merleau-Ponty’s stress on “the way perception is geared to the control of real-time, real-world behavior” is like a discover of Gibsonian affordance. (172b)

Gibson did not think that there needed to be internal representation as an additional entity that mediates between perception and action, as with the case of how certain light patterns that we see tell us there is a “flat plain affording human walking.”  If our perception system becomes attuned to these affordances, we would not need internal representations. (172c)  [Clark discusses representationalism in this part of Being There]

Finally, Varela et al.’s work [The Embodied Mind, 1991] also influences Clark’s ideas. For example they discuss reciprocal (or circular) causation. (173a)

Yet there are important differences between Clark’s and Varela et al.’s basic assumptions and conclusions. (173d)

 

Clark, Andy. Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again. Cambridge, Massachusetts/London: MIT, 1997.

 

Merleau-Ponty, Ch1.2.1 The Structure of Behavior, “The Stimulus”, summary

by Corry Shores
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[All boldface and underlining is my own. Citations give English translation pages first, then the French ones. Text in brackets is my own commentary.]

Merleau-Ponty

The Structure of Behavior
La structure du comportement

Ch.1
Reflex Behavior
La comportement réflexe

Subsection 2
The Classical Conception of the Reflex and Its Auxiliary Hypotheses
La conception classique du réflexe et ses hypothèses auxiliaires

Sub-subsection 1
The ‘stimulus’
Le ‘stimulus’

Very Brief Summary:

An organism must process holistically its stimuli to know how to respond, and it also plays a productive role in the formation of that stimuli, by altering its own form of receptivity, which as well can alter the form not just of how the stimuli is received but also it can alter the form of the behavior of the thing stimulating it. This influence can be mutual, making the causal relation circular.

Brief Summary:

The organism’s reflexes respond always to complex stimuli. The classical approach analyzes the stimuli into simple stimulus-response mechanical triggers, such that the whole response is the simple sum of all the smaller direct mechanical reactions. However, many actual animal responses do not fit this description. Quantitatively different stimuli of the same sort can have very qualitatively different responses, for example. A holistic model is better. The organism on the one hand waits to discern a more complex pattern before responding, and also it changes its manner of receiving the stimulus simultaneously with its affection. So (1) responses to stimuli involve processing that information at a higher ‘computational’ level, and (2) part of this process involves the sensing organism self-modifying the form of its receptivity-behavior so to influence the form of the stimulus input. This can also influence the behavior of other organisms it might be sensing. Thus response behaviors are fundamentally complex and the responding organism is in a circular causal relation with the world stimulating it.

Summary

The stimulus has spatial arrangements, rhythms, and rhythms of intensity. It also has elementary properties. The action of the stimulus on the organism comes more from its arrangements and rhythms than from its properties. Merleau-Ponty goes on to quote Sherrington and Miller, who describe how stimuli with different structures are applied to the same nerve locations and yet evoke different responses [implying that the reflex response is not a direct mechanical response to the stimulus but rather involves computational processing that recognizes patterns of stimulation.]

Five different reflex responses can be obtained by stimulating the ear of a cat depending on the structure of the excitant employed. The pinna of the ear flattens out when it is bent, but responds to tickling with a few rapid twitches. The character of the response is completely modified depending on the form of electrical excitation (faradic or galvanic) or its strength; for example, weak strengths evoke rhythmic responses; strong ones evoke tonic reflexes. A decerebrate cat [swallows] water as soon as it is placed in the pharynx; but water to which a few drops of alcohol has been added provokes a doubling-up response and movements of the tongue (Sherrington and Miller). [qtd in Merleau-Ponty English translation p.11 /  French p.9]

The classical conception of nerve stimulus response is to break down the complexity of both the stimulus and the response into elementary processes, which are

composed of a stimulus and a response which were always associated in experience. || For example, the action of the scratching stimulus would be analyzed into as many partial actions as there are anatomically distinct tactile receptors in the ear. The twitching of the ear which responds to this excitant would be resolved in turn into a certain number of elementary contractions. In principle, to each part of the stimulus there should correspond a part of the reaction. And the same elementary sequences, combined differently, should constitute all the reflexes. The qualitative properties of the situation and those | of the response—that which makes the difference for consciousness between scratching and bending the ear of the animal, between a twitching of this ear and a retraction movement—should, if the same receptors are really affected in both cases, be reducible to diverse combinations of the same stimuli and of the same elementary movements. (11|12 / 9||10)

[So perhaps, in the classical approach, bending the cat’s ear would be broken down into tiny motions touching nerve endings that mechanically trigger certain muscle contractions causing the ear to flatten, and were the stimulus instead a tickling, different sorts of elementary motion stimulations would affect different nerve endings altogether, which themselves mechanically trigger different muscle contractions, causing the ear to twitch. I am uncertain, but Merleau-Ponty seems to be saying that instead of any one nerve ending being stimulated differently by different stimuli, that instead different stimuli stimulate different nerve endings, but only the ones sensitive to that particular kind of sensation; and, no processing of the information is needed in the brain, because that selective activity is performed on the level of sensitivity (this interpretations seems to correspond to what he says at the end of this section).]

It is absolutely excluded that an organic substrate could fulfill truly different functions in turn and that the reaction could change in nature because of a simple difference in the rhythm of excitations applied in turn to the same apparatuses. (12 / 10)

Yet, this method of decomposing into elementary reactions does not work for the the sorts of behaviors Merleau-Ponty was describing before. He cites two examples. Recall that “A decerebrate cat [swallows] water as soon as it is placed in the pharynx; but water to which a few drops of alcohol has been added provokes a doubling-up response and movements of the tongue”. But when we mix water and alcohol, we do not have a chemical reaction that results in a new substance. [If the classical approach were right, then there should have still been a reaction to the water, a swallowing to some degree, because the water did not go away when the alcohol was added. Thus information about the stimulus was processed not through direct mechanisms but rather through some sort of neural processing.]

the action of water with a few drops of alcohol on the decerebrate cat cannot be understood in terms of the action of the pure water nor of that of the pure alcohol. On the other hand, water and alcohol do not constitute a chemical combination which could exercise a different action than that of the components. It is within the organism then that we will have to look for that which makes a complex stimulus something other than the sum of its elements. (12 / 10)

Previously Merleau-Ponty wrote:

In case of competition of stimuli it is the form much more than the nature, the place or even the intensity of the excitation which determines the resulting reflex. A painful excitation of the penis, even if it is weak, inhibits the reflex of erection. A simple touch immobilizes the spinal snake (Luchsinger), while stronger cutaneous excitations evoke very different responses. (11 / 9)

Merleau-Ponty’s second example for a case where the classical approach fails is this snake response. [We cannot say the responses are the addition of smaller ones, because there is too much variety in the response compared to the relatively much less variety in the stimulus. Also this case might be one where a threshold in quantitative variation in the stimulus is crossed, causing a qualitative change in response, which cannot be explained on the basis of the addition of component mechanical triggers.)

In the same way the inhibiting effect of a cutaneous contact on a spinal snake cannot be understood as a simple algebraic addition of the excitations which it provokes and of those which, on the other hand, provoked the crawling movement. If the most frequent observations are considered, there is no basis for treating the reactions which we will call qualitative as appearances, and the reactions which conform to the reflex theory as exclusively real. (12 / 10)

Now even though there is internal processing of the stimulus information, this does not mean that Merleau-Ponty is relying on some sort of mentalism, because all this complex behavior can still be explained in mechanistic terms. [Consider how a piano keyboard can make very different musics and noises depending on the precise “form” of the stimulus, that is, the “order and the cadence of the impulses received.” Also consider how our speech patterns have a temporal order and also a spatial one, perhaps the size of the sound waves, which correlates with their frequency. What the phone transmits depends upon variations of these parameters. This is not necessarily an analogy for the above examples. It is merely showing that temporally varying patterns of input for keyboards and phones produce many various output responses. There are “forms” coming in, and the machine responds to it. Complex variations in the form of the input cause complex variations in the response.]

A keyboard is precisely an apparatus which permits the production || of innumerable melodies, all different from each other depending on the order and the cadence of the impulses received; the extent to which the metaphor of the keyboard has been used in the physiology of the nerve centers is well known. An automatic telephone is even more clearly an apparatus which responds only to excitants of a certain form and modifies its responses according to the spatial and temporal order of the stimuli. (12 / 10||11)

But these machines only respond mechanically in direct response to their inputs. The forms of their response then originate not in their processing of the information but rather in the organism using the machines.

But do the constellations of excitants act on the organism as the fingers of the pianist act on the instrument? Nothing is ever produced in the piano itself but the separate movements of the hammers or the strings; it is in the motor system of the performer and in the | nervous system of the auditor that the isolated physical phenomena, of which the piano is the seat, constitute a single global phenomenon. And it is there that the melody truly exists in its sequence and characteristic rhythm. (12|13 / 11)

What makes the difference between organisms and such machines as these is that organisms contribute to the form of the output [while the machines have just a simple functional assignment of input variations to output variations. Consider Edwards and Penney’s machine illustration of mathematical functions. For the function f(x) = y, for whatever x is inputted into the machine, some determinate y is given as output.

(From Edwards & Penney, pp.2-3)

The keyboard or phone has its own predetermined assignment functions, for example louder talking makes stronger electrical current and thus stronger sound at the other phone receiver, or higher pitch of sound becomes higher frequency of electrical current, meaning higher frequency sound output. Or also in this case of the phone, different sequences of dialed numbers or letters (sequences which are interpreted as a whole and not number-by-number) will connect the line to different locations. Organisms are machines that also respond to the complex forms of inputs with complex output behaviors, however there is not a direct mechanical functional assignment for inputs and outputs such that the output is the simple sum of the inputs. This is because the input information must be internally processed so that the proper reaction is given.] Merleau-Ponty writes:

The organism cannot properly be compared to a keyboard on which the external stimuli would play and in which their proper form would be delineated for the simple reason that the organism contributes to the constitution of that form. (13 / 11)

[The reason he seems to give for this is not just that the organism has internal processing, but also that the inputs coming in are already modified by output behaviors. So in a way, an organisms preforms the input with responses that are simultaneous with the stimuli. But how does this explain the example of the cat ear? Does this imply that the cat’s ear turns flat when bent, and twitches when tickled, because it changed its comportment toward the stimuli, its way of receiving the stimuli?] [Merleau-Ponty then gives an example of capturing an animal with some device, perhaps this could be like a net or fishing line.] He writes:

When my hand follows each effort of a struggling animal while holding an instrument for capturing it, it is clear that each of my movements responds to an external stimulation; but it is also clear that these stimulations could not be received without the movements by which I expose my receptors to their influence. ". . . The properties of the object and the intentions of the subject . . . are not only intermingled; they also constitute a new whole.” (13 / 11; the quotation is cited as “Weizsäcker, Reflexgesetze, p.45. “L’organisme est, dit Weizsäcker, Reizgestalter.” [Note: Reizgestalter is misspelled as Reizgestaller in the English translation.])

Quand ma main, tenant un instrument de prise, suit chaque effort de l’animal qui se débat, il est clair que chacun de mes mouvements répond à une stimulation externe, mais clair aussi que ces stimulations ne pourraient être recueillies sans les mouvements par lesquels j’expose mes récepteurs à leur influence. « (……) Les propriétés de l’objet et les intentions du sujet (……) non seulement se mélangent, mais encore constituent un tout nouveau. » (11)

[So here he seems to be saying that his movements are doubly both reactions to the forms of stimuli while as well being productions of those very same forms of stimuli. One interpretation of this text concerns merely the receiver and its influence over its own way of receiving the stimulus. Because we will later examine Andy Clark’s treatment of this example, we will use his particular illustration, a hamster in tongs. So according to the first interpretation (a): we catch a hamster with tongs, and for example it lengthens itself so its body narrows to slip out of the grips. Our hands sense the decrease in the animal’s width, and we tighten our hold so to keep it captured. But consider if we had never changed the strength of our hold. The hamster would have slipped out, and then we never would have tightened our hands in the first place, because we would not have felt its body changing shape. So the tightening of our grip was both simultaneously the cause for us being able to sense the hamster narrowing while at the same time being our response to its narrowing. The second interpretation would say that in fact our simultaneous or advance response causally modifies the stimulus source itself: (b) The hamster increases its narrowing in response to our tightening, and we increase our tightening in response to the hamster’s narrowing. This interpretation is more concerned with the reciprocal causality each organism has on the other’s behavior. The first interpretation however was only concerned with how one organism’s self-modifying reactions to a stimulus are in the same stroke productions of that very stimulus it is reacting to. This example alone seems to support the first interpretation. Merleau-Ponty writes: “each of my movements responds to an external stimulation; but it is also clear that these stimulations could not be received without the movements by which I expose my receptors to their influence.” The second interpretation would need this to read “…these stimulations would not have been generated by the animal’s behavior without the movements by which I affect its behavior. Also, what is important for the second interpretation is that the thing being sensed be something capable of having its own behavior be modified through our own interaction with it, especially our own perceptive interaction with it. The second interpretation would not apply then to cases when we are perceiving something inert or acting independently of our behavior. Yet as we will see, the following examples deal with objects more of this non-animal sort, so it would seem very likely that the second interpretation is inaccurate. The reason we address this other interpretation is because it seems to be the one Andy Clark gives for this passage in his book Being There, which we will turn to in a forthcoming post.]We consider another example, and this one more clearly supports the first interpretation we mentioned above in brackets. Consider when our eyes follow something in our vision, let’s say something catches our eye and we look to it. The interesting thing can be said to cause our eyes’ behavior of moving toward it, however, we would not have noticed it in the first place had we not already moved our eyes into its vicinity, and had been in a mode of visual attentiveness to such visual stimuli [for we could have been pondering on something so deeply we noticed nothing in our field of vision.]

When the eye and the ear follow an animal in flight, it is impossible to say "which started first" in the exchange of stimuli and responses. Since all the movements of the organism are always conditioned by external influences, one can, if one wishes, readily treat behavior as an effect of the milieu. But in the same way, since all the stimulations which the organism receives have in turn been possible only by its preceding movements which have culminated in exposing the receptor organ to the external influences, one could also say that the behavior is the first cause of all the stimulations. (13 / 11)

We have a manner of offering our sensitivities to the stimuli we sense, and this manner ‘creates’ the form of the stimuli we are responding to. We react to stimuli, but we choose the stimuli we react to on the basis of the properties of that stimuli. Thus the equivalent for the keyboard example would be like a mechanical hammer falling at a steady rate, and the keyboard moving itself underneath so to produce some more complex melody.

Thus the form of the excitant is created by the organism itself, by its proper manner of offering itself to actions from the outside. Doubtless, in order to be able to subsist, it must encounter a certain number of physical and chemical agents in its surroundings. But it is the organism itself—according to the proper nature of its receptors, the thresholds of its nerve centers and the movements of the organs—  || which chooses the stimuli in the physical world to which it will be sensitive. “The environment (Umwelt) emerges from the world through the actualization or the being of the organism—[granted that] an organism can exist only if it succeeds in finding in the world an adequate environment.” This would be a keyboard which moves itself in such a way as to offer—and according to variable rhythms—such or such of its keys to the in itself monotonous action of an external hammer. (13 / 11||12)

[Consider how a telephone seemed to have worked in Merleau-Ponty’s time, what he is calling a téléphone automatique. It seems that you dialed not a number but rather the name of the person you are calling, although perhaps a number was still needed for further determination of the receiving party. If we were sticking with the classical approach, we would only note that dialing an O mechanically triggers a predetermined response, and all the other letters their own responses. Yet there are many letters in the name but only one destination for the call, so the whole sequence of letters must be regarded more holistically as a stimulus rather than a sum of independent stimuli. There is what seems to be a processing center (central automatique) in between phones that determines the proper channel for the call signal to be sent through. As we noted, a dialed O only causes a response in the context of its fellow letters, and different combinations including that O will result in different channels being connected. So this example seems to support our earlier interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of stimulus response, which is that there is a neural processing part of the system that deals with the information more in a holistic synthetic way rather than as a simple sum of mechanical triggers. So consider the two cases of dialing either Oberkampf or Botzaris. There is an O next to a B in both cases. From the phone to the automatic central, there is a simple mechanical response relation; each dialed letter on the phone results in a letter registering at automatic central. However at this processing center, the overall behavior of choosing the proper channel involves the central waiting for all stimuli to come in, then see their arrangement. What matters here is the order, whether B comes before or after O. This explanation gets a bit more unclear with the next example that he says is the same situation. We are now to consider looking at a painted panel with concentric solid circles, with the larger one being solidly rose-colored and the smaller inner one being solidly blue-colored. Merleau-Ponty says that this painting can appear two different ways depending on the relations we see the circles having to one another. So if we see the  rose circle as the background, then the blue disc appears as if standing atop the red beneath it. Or we might instead see the red circle primarily and the blue one is like a hole in the red one. Consider a familiar example, the Rubin’s vase illusion.

Rubin's Vase

(layersmagazine.com. Thanks Jacob Cass)


(Thanks wikipedia)

Our seeing either a vase or a pair of faces would be our response. This depends a lot on how we are choosing to see the image, how we are comporting ourselves toward it. If we change our sensitivities so to see it as a vase, the visual stimuli likewise are more apt to evoke in us the response of seeing a vase. Merleau-Ponty then makes things even less clearly consistent with his next example. He seems to be having us consider a keyboard that is analogous to the central automatic. So a hammer will hit a certain key in a certain way, then the keyboard machine decides on putting some other keyboard under the hammer for the next hit; I presume this keyboard rotation continues depending on the hits to follow. Perhaps this is like how if we dial a B first, the central automatic, knowing that only a limited set of second letters can come next (as there are no names beginning BN for example), becomes sensitive for only certain letters. It will not register an N coming next, because it is not geared for that stimulus. Let’s try to apply this to the previous example of the cat ears, as he seems to trying to explain the mechanics of it. The ear will either flatten or twitch, depending if it is bent or tickled. The initial pressure of both motions might be the same. But the brain waits a little for more stimuli, which tell it whether the ear will be bent or if it will be tickled. So after the first moment of stimulus, it will be sensitive for a set of forthcoming stimulations but not for others, as it knows these othersnever follow the first sort. Perhaps it no longer becomes sensitive to pulling sorts of motions, and so it changes its movement a little bit, making certain kinds of contractions that allow it to feel this now more limited set of possible forthcoming stimuli. Then as more come, it furthers this process of selection. Or, it waits a little until there is enough to disambiguate the stimulus and provide the proper response.]

The model of the automatic telephone appears more satisfactory. Here indeed we find an apparatus which itself elaborates the stimuli. | In virtue of the devices installed in the automatic central, the same external action will have a variable effect according to the context of the preceding and following actions. An "O" marked on the automatic dial will have a different value depending on whether it comes at the beginning, as when I dial the exchange "Oberkampf," for example, or second, as in dialing "Botzaris." Here, as in the organism, it can be said that the excitant—that which puts the apparatus in operation and determines the nature of its responses—is not a sum of partial stimuli, because a sum is indifferent to the order of its factors; rather it is a constellation, an order, a whole, which gives its momentary meaning to each of the local excitations. The manipulation "B" always has the same immediate effect, but it exercises different functions at the automatic central depending on whether it precedes or follows the manipulation "O," just as the same painted panel takes on two qualitatively distinct aspects depending on whether I see a blue disc on a rose-colored ground or, on the contrary, a rose-colored ring in the middle of which would appear a blue ground. In the simple case of an automatic telephone constructed for a limited number of manipulations, or in that of an elementary reflex, the central organization of the excitations can itself be conceived as a functioning of pre-established devices: the first manipulation would have the effect of making accessible to subsequent ones only a certain keyboard where the latter would be registered. (13|14 / 12)

In further examinations we will see if higher level reactions involve predetermined responses to particular stimuli. [But here at the lower level of simple reflexes, we see that the response is not a product of a real-time mechanical triggering of simple responses, but rather involves a series of temporally distinct stimuli that must be interpreted.]

We will have to examine whether, in reactions of a higher level, it is possible in the same way to make a distinct operation correspond to each stimulus, a visible device to each "factor," or even to relate the function to ideal variables which would be independent. Even at the level of the reflex, it is now certain that the interaction of the stimuli precludes considering || nerve activity as a sum of "longitudinal" phenomena unfolding from the receptors to the effectors and that, as in the automatic central, "transverse phenomena" must be produced somewhere in the nervous system. (14 / 12||13)

The classical attempts at analyzing reflexes into simple isolated stimulus-response parings was not successful; for even the slightest stimulus affects more than one part of the recepter simultaneously. (14d / 13) All stimuli are complex, thus there is little use in finding elementary reactions. Science normally uses quantitative determinations, but the study of stimuli reactions calls even for qualitative determinations; for, Sherrington found that when two stimuli are in competition, it is not necessarily the stronger stimuli but rather the more painful one that presides. But because Sherrington is committed to the classical model, he cannot say that the same receptor can transmit information for pain but rather that there must be different receptors that are responsible for pain sensations. Yet the scientific facts of reflex tell us that stimuli are interpreted within their wider contexts and also that the organism has a circular and not a linear causal relation to the environment it is responding to.

At the very moment that one is obliged to introduce value into the definition of stimulus one actualizes it, so to speak, in distinct receptors. In the theory of nerve functioning everything happens as if we were obliged to submit to the alternative of anthropomorphism or the anatomical conception of the reflex, when perhaps it is necessary to go beyond it. Before any systematic interpretation, the description of the known facts shows that the fate of an excitation is determined by its relation to the whole of the organic state and to the simultaneous or preceding excitations, and that the relations between the organism and its milieu are not relations of linear causality but of circular causality. (15 / 13)

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Structure of Behavior. Transl. Alden L. Fisher. Boston: Beacon Press, 1963.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. La structure du comportement. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1942 / 1967.

Edwards & Penney: Calculus. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2002, p.2a-3c.

Rubin's Vase 1
http://layersmagazine.com/negative-space.html
Thanks Jacob Cass

Rubin's Vase 2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rubin2.jpg