Philosophy 188

With growing interest in the role of the body in perception, and in the related question of the possibility and nature of non-conceptual content, Merleau-Ponty’s classic work, Phenomenology of Perception, has become increasingly relevant. We will read Phenomenology of Perception in order to understand and evaluate Merleau-Ponty’s arguments against what he calls empiricism (a sort of behaviorism) and intellectualism (cognitivism), as well as his positive account of what he calls motor intentionality – a kind of intentionality without conceptual content that, Merleau-Ponty argues, is the basic way human beings are embedded in the world.