Abstract
In its attempt to come to terms with consciousness or the knowing subject, Western philosophy has been characterised by a tension between two points of view. Consciousness has been described from “within”, as in Husserl“s Transcendental Phenomenology, or it has been described from “without,” as it is in Behaviourism and Artificial Intelligence. While Husserl has tried to reduce all “externality” to whatever it is for the transcendental consciousness, others have tried to reduce all “internality” to something to be found in the external world, like behaviour or neurological processes. Merleau-Ponty has consistently argued against this dualism, claiming that we do not have to choose between a philosophy which “takes our experience from ‘within“ and a philosophy that would judge it from without.” (1968:160) Inside and outside, he says, are inseparable.1
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Notes
“We do not have to choose between a philosophy that installs itself in the world itself or in the other and a philosophy which installs itself ‘in us,’ between a philosophy that takes our experience ‘from within’ and a philosophy … that would judge it from without …” (Merleau-Ponty, 1968:160) “Inside and outside are inseparable.” (Merleau-Ponty, 1962:407)
There are passages in which Frege appears to recognise the paradox in the fact that a “psychological” entity, the mind, can grasp a “thought” without turning it into an idea, without the thought having to be duplicated or represented as an idea. “[The grasping of a thought] cannot be completely understood from a purely psychological standpoint. For in grasping [the thought] something comes into view whose nature is no longer mental in the proper sense, namely the thought; and this process is perhaps the most mysterious of all” (Frege, 1979:145). The process is “mysterious”, because the mental must “open up” to the nonmental, not simply to a mental representation of the nonmental, and psychological subjects do not “open up.” Like adding machines and computers, there is always a numerical distinction between their processes and the propositions or thoughts they emulate. For as long as we conceive of the subject as a psychological entity, distinct from and merely parallel to the realm of “thoughts,” it will be inconceivable that I can grasp the thought itself, as opposed to some representation or token of it. If the nonmental itself can “come into view” we will have to conceive of consciousness in terms of its ability to transcend itself (Merleau-Ponty, 1962:303).
The vulnerability we are articulating here are dimensions of what Merleau-Ponty referred to as “perceptual faith.” “The methods of proof and of cognition invented by a thought already established in the world, the concepts of object and subject it introduces, do not enable us to understand what the perceptual faith is, precisely because it is a faith, that is, an adherence that knows itself to be beyond proofs, not necessary, interwoven with incredulity, at each instant menaced by nonfaith.” (Merleau-Ponty, 1968:28) “My awareness of constructing an objective truth would never provide me with anything more than an objective truth for me and my greatest attempt at impartiality would never enable me to prevail over my subjectivity (as Descartes so well expresses it by the hypothesis of the malignant demon) … if, before any voluntary adoption of a position I were not already situated in an intersubjective world. …” (Merleau-Ponty, 1962:355)
“As soon as I see, it is necessary that the vision (as is so well indicated by the double meaning of the word) be doubled with a complementary vision or with another vision: myself seen from without, such as another would see me, installed in the midst of the visible, occupied in considering it from a certain spot.” (Merleau-Ponty, 1968:134)
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© 2002 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Wait, E.C. (2002). Reconciling Descriptions of Consciousness from within and from without. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) The Creative Matrix of the Origins. Analecta Husserliana, vol 77. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0538-8_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0538-8_3
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