Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to describe some similarities, as well as differences, between theoretical proposals emanating from the tradition of phenomenology and the currently popular approach to language and cognition known as cognitive linguistics (hence CL). This is a rather demanding and potentially controversial topic. For one thing, neither CL nor phenomenology constitute monolithic theories, and are actually rife with internal controversies. This forces me to make certain “schematizations”, since it is impossible to deal with the complexity of these debates in the space here allotted.
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- 1.
“The experimental method is indispensible. /…/ But this does not alter the fact that it presupposes what no experiment can accomplish, namely the analysis of conscious life itself. /…/ Phenomenological psychology is interested primarily in the necessary a priori of every possible empirical psychology” (Kockelmans 1967: 425, 447, quoted by Itkonen 2003: 110). The complementary relationship between phenomenological psychology (Husserl [1925] 1977; Gurwitsch 1964) and phenomenological philosophy, focusing respectively on the ego and world poles of the intentional relation is discussed by Sonesson (2007).
- 2.
However, some modern philosophers of mind, bedeviled with the failures of both physicalist and dualist theories to explain consciousness, appear to be willing to adopt a form of monism which is reminiscent of Husserl’s transcentendal idealism, e.g. Honderich (2006) theory of “radical externalism” or “consciousness as existence”.
- 3.
Some (like an anonymous reviewer) are liable to dispute this claim, and point out that Lakoff and Johnson (1999) postulate different “levels of embodiment” (cf. Section on Embodiment), while Rohrer (2007a,b) explicitly argues that his “levels of investigation” framework in not reductionist: “research in embodied cognitive science should not seek to reduce such phenomena to another level but should instead bridge across these levels” (Rohrer 2007a: 346). Lakoff and Johnson (1999) describe their ontological position as being one of “noneliminative physicalism” (ibid: 109), where “each level is taken as real, as having a theoretical ontology necessary to explain phenomena. … explanation and motivation flow in both directions.” (ibid: 113). However, while this may qualify as an epistemological non-reductionism, ontologically Lakoff and Johnson are physicalists, accepting without any argument “the lack of any mind-body gap” (ibid: 96). Also, just considering that 4 of the 6 “levels of investigation” in Rohrer’s “non-reductive” framework deal with increasingly high-grained analysis of the brain (“Neural systems”, “Neuroanatomy”, “Neurocellular systems” and “Subcellular systems”), while the two highest: “Communicative and cultural systems” and “Performance domain” are characterized as “Multiple central nervous systems” and “Central nervous systems” shows what is really real for this strand of cognitive linguistic thinking. A non-reductionist neuroscientific cognitive linguistics is indeed possible, but as in neurophenomenology (Varela 1996), that would mean not privileging the objective, third-person perspective, but rather starting from, and keeping a focus on, the experiences of speakers, while looking for correlations with these in e.g. neuroimaging studies. I am not aware that any CL-researchers have carried out such projects, but they are of course quite possible.
- 4.
And even less the first-person plural “we”, as done by Rohrer (2007b: 35) in paraphrasing the same passage.
- 5.
Though, of course, Husserl would never have accepted the existence of “brute facts”, and rather have said that they belong to another part of the Lifeworld than the institutional ones. A criticism that may be leveled at the early Husserl is that he, similar to Gibson (1979) hardly recognized the existence of the latter (cf. Sonesson 1989).
- 6.
By convention, linguists prefix “ungrammatical sentences”
- 7.
Again, depending on one’s purposes one may need to “go beyond” such description and seek “explanations” in terms of evolution, ontogenetic development, history, neuroscience etc. Hence, there are subfields of linguistics devoted specifically to such investigations in which phenomenology is indeed “never enough”: psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, diachronic (historical) linguistics etc. The grounds for these, including notions such as “sentence”, “word”, “sense” are, however, set by (informal) phenomenological methods.
- 8.
- 9.
A defense of the reality of “unconscious computation”, suggested by an anonymous reviewer, in line with the view of metaphor expressed by Lakoff and Johnson (1999) is that what is termed “metaphorical” is no less real than what is termed “literal”, as long as it plays an explanatory role. And the level of the “cognitive unconscious” plays such a role, both upwards towards consciousness and downwards with respect to the brain. However, this seems to conflate ontology and epistemology (cf. footnote 3). While both consciousness and the brain are in the broad phenomenological sense empirical phenomena, “unconscious computation” is not, and simply a form of describing either one or the other. But in attempting to capture aspects from both - intentionality on the one hand, and bio-physical causality on the other - it becomes simply incoherent, which is why Searle (1992) argues that we would do best to dispend with it. For a more extensive argument, cf. Zlatev (2007a).
- 10.
In the name of fairness, it should be pointed out that Lakoff, Johnson and Rohrer do not explicitly deny a representational relation between language or pictures and reality, but of “internal representations” of the kind assumed by “first generation” cognitive scientists. However, they never provide an account of “external representations” either, or of internalized such (Vygotsky 1978), and fail to draw a distinction between sensory-motor and representational processes (cf. Ikegami and Zlatev 2007), due to their insistence on a strong form of “evolutionary continuity”.
- 11.
Sonesson (1989) has, however, shown that this picture needs to be complicated a bit. Bildobjekt cannot be the mediating content, since the latter involves a sort of “quasi-perception” in the words of Husserl, e.g. in perceiving a black and white photo, the skin of a given person is seen as white, or grey, while I know that the actual Sujet (referent) has a certain color. Hence, Sonesson adds another mediating “layer”, corresponding to, in the example given, to the apple, as I know that it is: colorful, round etc, that would continue to exist even if the last apple on Earth were eaten.
- 12.
The unacknowledged parallels between Gurwitsch and Langacker are further explored by Sonesson (2004).
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Acknowledgments
I would wish to express my gratitude to Göran Sonesson, Esa Itkonen, Chris Sinha, the editors of this Handbook and an anonymous reviewer, whose comments on an earlier version helped improve the text considerably.
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Zlatev, J. (2010). Phenomenology and Cognitive Linguistics. In: Schmicking, D., Gallagher, S. (eds) Handbook of Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2646-0_23
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