Edoardo Fugali

In this paper I aim at highlighting the role touch plays in comparison to other sensory modalities both in our apprehension of reality and in the development of our bodily selfawareness. I will try to discuss above all the latter topic by showing that touch enjoys an unique status among the senses because of the coincidence between its bodily organ – the flesh – and its material sensory medium. For this essential link with the whole living organism touch ensures at the highest degree our anchorage to the world and exerts an epistemological supremacy since its cognitive performances contribute to establishing a robust sense of reality, by confronting ourselves with the resistance opposed by the things. In its essential connection with proprioception, kinesthesia and bodily feelings tactile perception constitutes the bodily intentionality in its basic form and therefore assures the mutual interplay between different sensory modalities. Another exclusive feature of tactile perception consists in its double function as proprioceptive and exteroceptive direction, as shown by the unique phenomenon of touchant/touché. Husserl and Merleau-Ponty have devoted their attention to the relevance of this experience in generating the bodily self-awareness in its reflexive structure.

_Riassunto_: Questo contributo offre un confronto tra la scienza cognitiva enattivista e la fenomenologia classica, rivolgendo in particolare la sua attenzione su figure chiave come Husserl, Heidegger e Merleau-Ponty. Due questioni saranno al centro dell’indagine la relazione tra soggetto/corpo/mondo e il ruolo mediatore dell’azione all’interno di una concezione dinamica della cognizione. Quanto al primo punto, la prospettiva trascendentale che emerge dalla soggettività incarnata enfatizza la continuità tra azione, percezione e funzioni cognitive superiori, ponendo in questione la dicotomia mente-corpo a favore di un’esperienza fenomenologica unificata e continua. Il secondo punto concerne la messa in revoca del naturalismo fisicalista e la necessità di superare le assunzioni meccanicistiche, proponendo un naturalismo debole che rimanga compatibile con una prospettiva trascendentale, tale da fondare la soggettività in un organismo biologico incarnato. Da ultimo, viene esplorata un’ontologia della natura ispirata da Merleau-Ponty, che enfatizza gli aspetti qualitativi della “carne” e supera le limitazioni proprie dell’approccio husserliano. _Parole chiave_: Cognizione incarnata; Fenomenologia; Enattivismo; Percezione; Soggettività _Transcendental phenomenology and embodied cognition. The relation between subject, body, and world in the framework of a reformed natural ontology_ _Abstract_: This contribution offers a comparison between enactivist cognitive science and classical phenomenology, with a particular focus on key figures such as Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. Two central issues are explored: the relationship between subject, body, and world, and the mediating role of action within a dynamic conception of cognition. The transcendental perspective emerging from incarnate subjectivity emphasizes the continuity between action, perception, and higher cognitive functions, challenging the mind-body duality in favor of a unified and continuous phenomenological experience. The second issue addresses physicalist naturalism and the need to move beyond mechanistic assumptions, proposing a weak naturalism that remains compatible with a transcendental perspective, one that grounds subjectivity in an embodied biological organism. An ontology of nature, inspired by Merleau-Ponty, is explored, emphasizing the qualitative aspects of the “flesh” and overcoming the limitations inherent in Husserl’s approach. _Keywords_: Embodied Cognition; Phenomenology; Enactivism; Perception; Subjectivity.

In this contribution I aim at developing some critical considerations about the possibility of establishing a dialogue between Husserlian phenomenology and embodied cognitive science to which both partners can participate with equal dignity, apart from any concession to radical forms of naturalism. Phenomenology and cognitive science are different theoretical enterprises, each of which relies autonomously on its own methods and categorial apparatus. This does not prevent of course that both disciplines can influence each other by exerting some kind of constraints. Phenomenology alone cannot provide a full explanation of our conscious experiences as regards their sub-personal mechanisms and needs therefore to be integrated in a unitary framework which allows for its communication with the empirical sciences of mind, without any need to distort phenomenology’s transcendental features. On the other side, cognitive science should seriously take into account phenomenological and eidetic descriptions of first-person experience and avoid superimposing on it its own ontological and methodological assumptions. In the first part of the paper, I try first of all to highlight how Husserl’s phenomenology amounts to a theory of experience which keeps itself equidistant from both extremes of scientism and idealism and then to illustrate the necessity of downplaying Husserl’s transcendental philosophy through a critical assessment on its attitude toward natural sciences and by highlighting at the same time its right to conduct its inquiries autonomously. In the second part I explore the mediating role of psychological phenomenology in allowing a mutual exchange between phenomenology and embodied cognitive sciences, as far as it falls on the side of naturalistic attitude. In the third part I proceed to a critical evaluation of the encounter between embodied phenomenology and embodied cognitive sciences by underlining some ontological and methodological shortcomings in which some of their representatives incur. In the fourth part, I argue for a mild naturalization of phenomenology by confronting it with some forms of non-reductionist naturalism (e.g. liberal and enactive naturalism) for the purpose of safeguarding its fundamental tenets. In the fifth and final part I discuss the topic of lived body and embodiment as the turning point which allows for the mutual transition from the transcendental to the empirical level. To this aim, I try to focus on the intrinsic belongingness of lived body to the essential features of transcendental subject to the extent that it plays a major role in disclosing an oriented worldly space through its kinaesthetic powers.

The aim of this article is to demonstrate the intrinsically technical nature of visual perception and pictorial performance through their common anchorage in the corporeity that brings them into existence. As with any other artistic technique, painting reveals itself to be the natural extension of a technological attitude already rooted in the sensorimotor devices of the body in action; painting is led to inhabit a world that is of the same nature as corporeal agents, because the objects that populate it share with it the ontological element of the “flesh”. Through Merleau-Ponty’s analyses of Cezanne’s pictorial works, I demonstrate that the main purpose of painting is, analogically with the descriptive analyses made possible by the phenomenological reduction, to render intersubjectively evident the hidden work of vision before its sedimentation in an accomplished perceptual scene. As the experiments of contemporary neuroscience also demonstrate, perception is by and large a reconstructive process of “image-making” rather than an allegedly accurate reproduction of the spectacle of the world. Painting, on the other hand, both in terms of creation and for the observer, employs the same sensorimotor resources as instruments.

Eduardo Fugali möchte in seinem Beitrag „Die Aktualität der empirischen Psychologie Brentanos in der heutigen Philosophie des Geistes“ Brentanos Denkansätze und wissenschaftliches Selbstverständnis für die aktuelle Philosophie des Geistes bzw. die Kognitionswissenschaften wieder fruchtbar machen, wozu es jedoch zunächst nötig ist, mit bestehenden Missverständnissen und Reduktion hinsichtlich des Denkens Brentanos aufzuräumen. Darüber hinaus gilt es, die Probleme innerhalb des Feldes der Philosophie des Geistes selbst zu beheben, die nach Fugali zur Nivellierung geistiger Tätigkeit in eben diesen Wissenschaften führt. Um dieser Tendenz zu begegnen, stellt Fugali der vermeintlich angenommenen Losgelöstheit von Intentionalität und Bewußtsein deren ursprüngliche Verbundenheit entgegen, um das Missverständnis zu beseitigen. So räumt Fugali mit dem Missverständnis auf, dass Intentionalität analog dem sprachlichen Ausdruck ist. Diesem folgt der Erweis, dass alle Bewußtseinszustände intentional strukturiert sind, was er anhand von Vorstellen und Urteilen exemplifiziert. Weiterhin hebt Fugali die Einheit des Bewußtseins trotz der Mannigfaltigkeit der physischen Erscheinungen hervor, um abschließend die Belastbarkeit Brentanos Theorie von der selbstrepräsentationalen Auffassung des Bewußtseins anhand anderer Ansätze zu prüfen.

Da dove viene il nostro senso di possesso del corpo e quali configurazioni dell’esperienza lo rendono possibile? Il senso di appartenenza di cui facciamo esperienza a proposito del nostro corpo comprende il livello fenomenologico del corpo vissuto come noi lo sentiamo “dall’interno”, ossia il corpo che viviamo dalla prospettiva della prima persona come sigillo della nostra individualità e come punto-zero del nostro orientamento nel mondo. Husserl fornisce una ricostruzione di questo modo fondamentale di esperire il nostro corpo mediante una analisi fenomenologica regressiva che mira a identificare nelle sensazioni tattili di localizzazione il fattore fondamentale che porta alla costituzione sintetica del corpo vissuto. Nella parte conclusiva di questo testo cercherò di delimitare un ambito di possibile convergenza tra analisi fenomenologica e gli approcci sperimentali più recenti nelle scienze cognitive, per stabilire una relazione produttiva tra i due campi d’indagine.

Aim of this paper is a comparison between Husserl’s account of intentionality and consciousness and Searle’s one, particularly concerning their essential relationship. While Husserl insists on the autonomy of both terms and their irreducibility to the ontological region of natural world, Searle turns his efforts to reconcile this feature with the possibility of explaining it within a naturalistic worldview. After discussing Searle’s objections against phenomenology and its method, I try to demonstrate that Searle’s naturalism is not consistent even in his moderate version. Instead of this I prefer to rehabilitate a “classical” account of intentionality like Husserl’s one, since it provides a more sophisticated ontological framework and is therefore more able to take into account the normative dimension of subjectivity and personal identity.

The main purpose of this contribution is to proof the tenability of the notion of trace as useful both to explain individual intentionality and to found a monistic ontological outlook on reality which guarantees the transition from the level of nature to the level of society. I argue that the notion of trace alone doesn’t suffice to give an account of the act side (i.e. quality) of intentionality and that an ontological treatment of the notion of person is requested (within the framework of Husserl’s theory of whole and parts and/or emergentism), since individual subjects play ultimately a crucial role in order to give life to social world.

In this paper, I attempt to oppose the notion of perceptual unamendability proposed by Ferraris to the reductionism dominating the mainstream approaches in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. In particular, my purpose is to challenge the idea that experience is nothing but the product of the brain and that common sense psychology is a theory out of fashion that has to be replaced with the acquisitions of neuroscience. The revaluation of Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology in the context of the sensorimotor approach (confirmed by the supporters of embodied cognitive science) provides the theoretical framework in which I intend to develop my theory. According to my thesis, the amendability concerns the conditions of action and perception more than their practical exercise. The negotiations we make with the basic features of our environment are developed through a process of continuous corrections which is virtually infinite, although restricted by ecological and temporal limits.