Therefore, we should be alive to the distinction between causal and constitutive disclosure: to the distinction between disclosure by means of causally sufficient conditions and disclosure by means of logically sufficient conditions. The distinction is not insignificant, and in other contexts it might be crucial. It is unclear, for example, where the constitutive disclosure of the world takes place. Indeed, I have argued elsewhere (Rowlands 2001, 2002, 2003) that it takes place nowhere at all. If this is correct, then we would have to allow that there is an aspect of consciousness that is real but nowhere at all; that the bounds of the real do not coincide with those of the spatial. Even I am willing to accept that this is a controversial claim. Happily, for the purposes of this book, we do not need it.
As we have seen, the thesis of the amalgamated mind-the conjunction of the theses of the embodied mind and the extended mind-is a thesis about the vehicles of cognition, not the content of cognition. It claims that the vehicles of cognition include processes of exploiting bodily structures and/or processes of manipulating environmental structures. If we are going to use the apparatus of disclosure to understand this thesis, then the relevant sort of disclosure will be that belonging to the vehicles of cognition rather than the content of cognitive states. That is, the relevant sort of disclosure will be causal rather than constitutive, and from now on my focus will be exclusively on causal disclosure.
Causal disclosure is a part of the world in the normal way. On Marr's account, for example, causal disclosure takes place in the various mechanisms and processes that make up the progressive transformation of the retinal image into the 3D object representation. If we could successfully transform this algorithmic description into an implementational one, then we will have thereby identified where this particular causal disclosure of the world takes place.
In the rest of this chapter, pace Marr, I am going to argue that there are reasons for supposing that, in general, causal disclosure of the world does not take place purely inside the head of a subject. The essence of intentionality is disclosing activity. The sort of disclosing activity occasioned by the vehicles of intentional states and processes-the sorts of vehicles pertinent to the theses of embodied and extended cognition-is causal disclosure. Causal disclosure can be effected or brought about by states and processes occurring in the brains of subjects of intentional states. But, in general, it is not restricted to neural states and processes. There are many ways of causally disclosing the world-many vehicles through which the world may be causally disclosed to subjects-and brain-based ways are only a subset of these. In general, the vehicles of causal disclosure do not stop at the boundaries of the brain, but extend out into the activity we perform in the world, activity that is both bodily and incorporates wider environmental performances. In the following sections I shall elaborate and defend these claims.
3 Intentionality as a "Traveling Through"
I have argued that the noneliminable core of intentionality consists in a disclosure or revelation of the world. The fundamental sense in which intentional acts are directed toward the objects, therefore, is that they reveal or disclose them as having certain aspects or empirical modes of presentation. Two forms of revelation or disclosure can be distinguished: causal and constitutive. The concerns of this book require only the former. But, whichever sense of disclosure we focus on, the idea that intentional directedness is to be understood in terms of disclosure has a crucial, but largely overlooked, implication: as directedness toward objects, intentional acts are also, necessarily, a traveling-through of their material realizations.
This idea can perhaps best be clarified, in the first instance, by way of a well-known example; indeed, by now, possibly a hackneyed example: Merleau-Ponty's (1962, 143ff.) famous discussion of the perceptual role played by a blind person's cane (cf. Polanyi 1962, 71). As Merleau-Ponty notes, it is possible to tell two quite different stories about this role. The first story treats the cane as an empirical object: in this case, an object of theoretical scrutiny and explanation. The resulting empirical story is a familiar one. Tactile and kinesthetic sensors in the blind person's hands send messages to the brain. Various events then occur in the person's sensory cortex, and these are interpreted as the result of ambient objects standing in certain relations to the person's location. When suitably filled out, there is nothing wrong with this story. However, it only describes the blind person's consciousness from the outside, as an empirical phenomenon. The story from the inside-the transcendental story in the sense introduced earlier-is quite different. The cane-in conjunction, of course, with the requisite neural and other biological machinery-discloses or reveals objects as possessing or falling under certain aspects or empirical modes of presentation. Thus, an object may be disclosed to the blind person as being "in front" of him or her, as "near," "farther away," "to the left," "to the right," and so on.
Merleau-Ponty is at pains to emphasize-quite correctly-the phenomenology of the resulting perception of the world. The blind person does not experience aspects of the objects he encounters as occurring in the cane, even though this is (part of) the material basis of his perception of these aspects. Still less does he experience them as occurring in the fingers that grip the cane; and less again in the sensory cortex that systematizes the experiential input. The cane can be both an object of awareness and a vehicle of awareness. But when the blind person uses the cane, it functions as a vehicle, not an object, of awareness. The cane is not something of which the blind person is aware; it is something with which he is aware. Phenomenologically, the consciousness of the blind person passes all the way through the cane to the world.
Essentially the same sort of point was also made by Sartre. In his famous discussion of the body in Being and Nothingness, part 3, Sartre notes:
I do not apprehend my hand in the act of writing but only the pen which is writing; this means that I use my pen in order to form letters but not my hand in order to hold the pen. I am not in relation to my hand in the same utilizing attitude as I am in relation to the pen: I am my hand. (Sartre 1943/1957, 426)
Similarly:
Thus in a duel with swords or quarter-staffs, it is the quarter-staff which I watch with my eyes and which I handle. In the act of writing it is the point of the pen which I look at in synthetic combination with the line or the square marked on the sheet of paper. But my hand has vanished; it is lost in the complex system of instrumentality in order that this system may exist. It is simply the meaning and orientation of the system. (Ibid.)
One may legitimately contest whether Sartre has described the phenomenology correctly in these cases. It seems that Sartre has, for example, little experience of dueling with quarter-staffs (in particular, if, as he appears to suggest, the quarter-staff at which you are looking is the same as the one you are handling, then, one might suspect, you are going to have a painful afternoon). Nevertheless, the general phenomenological point is a legitimate one: when I am doing things with my hand, then phenomenologically my consciousness passes through my hand to the instruments it employs (and often, of course, it needn't stop there-as Merleau-Ponty's blind person shows).
As points concerning the phenomenology of absorbed coping experience, Merleau-Ponty's and Sartre's claims can, I think, scarcely be contested. However, here I want to distinguish these claims concerning the phenomenology of experience from quite distinct ones concerning the underlying structure of intentional directedness. My primary concern is with the latter claim. And this latter claim is also, I suspect, more basic: the claims concerning phenomenology are grounded in the claims concerning the structure of intentional directedness in the sense that the truth of the former derives from the truth of the latter.
Intentional directedness, I have argued, consists in a form of disclosure or revelation. Intentional acts are directed toward the world in the sense, and to the extent, that they are disclosing or revealing activity. But where does the blind person's revealing activity occur? When the person discloses an object as being in fro
nt of him, for example, where does this disclosing activity occur? It occurs, in part, in the brain. But it also occurs in the body, and also, crucially, in the cane and the cane's interaction with the world. Revealing activity, by its nature, does not stop short of the world: it travels through its material realizations out to the world itself.
The role of the cane, when used in this way, is not one of object of disclosure but vehicle of disclosure. The blind person does not, it is commonly observed, experience the object as "on the end of the cane," nor does he experience it as a blocking or resistance to the cane. But a question seldom asked is: why should the phenomenology of his experience be like this? Why wouldn't he experience aspects of the objects he encounters as occurring in the cane? Why wouldn't he experience them as occurring in his fingers that grip the cane? These facts about the phenomenology of his experience are grounded in the underlying nature of intentional directedness. Phenomenologically, the blind person's experience does not stop short of the world because (1) this experience is intentionally directed toward the world, (2) intentional directedness is revealing or disclosing activity, and (3) disclosing activity does not stop short of the world. Thus, it is in virtue of the object's being on the end of the cane, and in virtue of the resistance it provides to the cane, that the blind person experiences the object as spatially located in the world. In employing the cane, the blind person ceases to experience the cane. As revealing activity, his experience travels all the way through the cane to the object itself. That is why his experience can be a disclosing of the aspects of those objects.
The concept of traveling through should be distinguished from the superficially similar idea of living through. It is quite common to talk of consciousness as, for example, living through the brain. Claims of this sort typically advert to a one-way relation of dependence that can be characterized in terms of the concept of supervenience or realization. In this sense, consciousness lives through the brain to the extent that the brain is responsible for consciousness-that without the requisite neural activity there would be no consciousness. It is true to say, in this sense, that the blind person's perceptual consciousness lives through his cane. The cane is part of the realization of his perception of the world. Nevertheless, although it is true that the blind person's perceptual consciousness lives through his cane, this is not what I mean by describing his experience as a traveling through the cane.
Suppose you are utterly engrossed in a novel. Your consciousness passes through the words on the page-these are not explicit objects of your awareness-through to the characters and plot-lines these words communicate. When I talk of consciousness traveling through its material realizations, I intend this to be something akin to the way in which consciousness passes through the words of a book to the characters that these words describe. This example, however, might suggest that the idea of traveling through is fundamentally a phenomenological one. Phenomenologically, from the point of view of what it is like to have or undergo the relevant experiences, the blind person experiences the objects around him as objects in the world rather than modifications of the cane. Phenomenologically, we might say, his consciousness does not stop short of the world. Similarly, in reading the novel, my consciousness stops not at the words on the page but passes all the way through to the characters those words describe.
However, the concept of traveling through is one that pertains, fundamentally, not to the phenomenology of experience, but to the underlying nature of intentional directedness as disclosure, something in which the phenomenology is grounded. In this respect, a useful template for thinking about revealing activity is provided by processes such as exploration-a paradigmatic example of revealing activity. I am, let us suppose, exploring an unfamiliar terrain. I walk across the clearing, toward the large tree that obstructs my view, and in so doing reveal the lie of the land behind the tree. This is a form of revealing activity. It takes place partly in the brain: if my brain were made of sawdust, no disclosure of the terrain would occur. But it also takes place in my body-the body that propels me across the clearing toward the tree. And it also takes place in the things I do in and to the world. Barring more remote forms of exploration (telescope, satellite imagery, etc.), exploration of a new and unfamiliar terrain requires that I situate myself in that terrain: my exploration of the terrain does not stop short of the terrain itself. This is not to say, of course, that this activity is to be identified with intentionality. All intentionality is revealing activity, but not all revealing activity is intentionality. The point here is that revealing activity, in general, is something that is done in the head, in the body, and also in the world. By its very nature, revelation or disclosure of a given region of the world does not stop short of that world: if it did, it would by definition be unsuccessful (or even fail to be a case of revealing activity at all). Revealing activity is, in this sense, essentially worldly.
4 Heidegger and De-severance
This rather difficult idea of might become clearer if we compare it to the position defended by Heidegger (1927/1962). Some might, not entirely unreasonably, be skeptical of the idea that comparison with Heidegger is even the sort of thing that can help in a process of clarification. But even if we overlook this kind of skepticism, such comparison is not without its difficulties, since Heidegger would eschew the conceptual apparatus in terms of which I have developed the argument: the apparatus of consciousness, experience, intentionality, mode of presentation, and the like. For Heidegger, these are "positive" rather than "primordial" phenomena. That is, they are phenomena that are essentially derivative on more basic ways of relating to the world. Nevertheless, while he would hate the terms in which this argument is expressed, there remains an idea in the work of Heidegger that closely engages with the argument developed here. The idea is that of human beings (Dasein) as essentially de-severant or de-distancing:
"De-severing" [Entfernen] amounts to making the farness vanish-that is, making the remoteness of something disappear, bringing it close. Dasein is essentially deseverant: it lets any entity be encountered close by as the entity which it is. (Heidegger 1927/1962, 139)
And again:
Proximally, and for the most part, de-severing is a circumspective bringing-closebringing something close by, in the sense of procuring it, putting it in readiness, having it to hand. But certain ways in which entities are discovered in a purely cognitive manner also have the character of bringing them close. In Dasein there lies an essential tendency towards closeness. (Ibid., 140)
For example, in connection with walking along the street toward someone one has seen, Heidegger writes:
One feels the touch of it at every step as one walks; it is seemingly the closest and Realest of all that is ready-to-hand, and it slides itself, as it were, along certain portions of one's body-the soles of one's feet. And yet it is farther remote than the acquaintance whom one encounters "on the street" at a "remoteness" of twenty paces when one is taking such a walk. Circumspective concern decides as to the closeness and famess of what is proximally ready-to-hand environmentally. (Ibid., 142)
As with Merleau-Ponty's discussion of the blind person, we can take these remarks in two ways: as a point about the phenomenology of our experience, or as a point about the structure of consciousness (or, as Heidegger would prefer it, Dasein). It is clear which way Heidegger wants to think of it: he regards de-severance as a constitutive feature of Dasein. Indeed, this is a consequence of his regarding the phenomenology of experience as positive rather than primordial. To claim that phenomenological content is positive is to claim that it is derivative upon something more basic. And, for Heidegger, this more basic element was the form of self-interpreting world disclosure that he called Dasein. Heidegger regarded de-severance as a fundamental constitutive feature of Dasein-a primordial rather than positive phenomenon. So, it is reasonably clear that he is not contenting himself with making a relatively mundane claim about the nature of visual phenomenology.
I have, in effect, argued for an anal
ogous position with regard to the relation between the phenomenological idea of traveling through and the structural version of traveling through: the former is grounded in the latter. The objects in the environment of Merleau-Ponty's blind man are located at the end of his cane. But he does not experience them as such: his consciousness passes all the way through the cane to the objects itself. Understood as a point about the phenomenology of what it is like to experience the world in the way that the blind man does, these claims are not really contestable. But nor, on the other hand, are they particularly profound. The claim is, I think, far more significant when they are understood as a claim about the nature or structure of intentional directedness. Intentionality is revealing activity, and this activity takes place, in part, in the cane (and in the brain and in the body, etc.). The cane can with as much justification be regarded as the (partial) locus of the blind man's revealing activity as his brain. The nature of the blind person's revealing activity is that it travels through his brain, through his body, through his cane, out into the world itself.
There is another way of putting this general idea: there is no intentionality at a distance. In classroom discussions of the concept of intentionality we might find chalk arrows arcing out across the void that lies between a person's mental representation and the external item that the representation is about. But intentional directedness, I have argued, is not like this at all. Intentional directedness is revealing activity, and revealing activity does not take place in a void. Activity is always done by something and with something. So, to employ Heidegger's example, when I see my acquaintance on the street at a distance of twenty paces, I do so by revealing, visually, what is on the street as (presumably among other things) a person with whom I am acquainted. But what, in this case, are the analogues of the blind man's cane? What is the intentional ether in which my revealing activities can be grounded or given form? What, in other words, are the vehicles of disclosure-vehicles through which my consciousness travels all the way through to my acquaintance herself?
The New Science of the Mind Page 27
