Body schema dynamics in Merleau-Ponty

This chapter presents an account of Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of the body schema as an operative intentionality that is not only opposed to, but also complexly intermingled with, the representation-like grasp of the world and one’s own body, or the body image. The chapter reconstructs Merleau-Ponty’s position primarily based on his preparatory notes for his 1953 lecture ‘The Sensible World and the World of Expression’. Here, Merleau-Ponty elaborates his earlier efforts to show that the body schema is a perceptual ground against which the perceived world stands out as a complex of perceptual figures. The chapter clarifies how Merleau-Ponty’s renewed interpretation of the figure-ground structure makes it possible for him to describe the relationship between body schema and perceptual (body) image as a strictly systematic phenomenon. Subsequently, the chapter shows how Merleau-Ponty understands apraxia, sleep, and perceptual orientation as examples of dedifferentiation and subtler differentiation of the body-schematic system. The last section clarifies how such body-schematic differentiating processes give rise to relatively independent superstructures of vision and symbolic cognition which constitute our body image. It, moreover, explains how, according to Merleau-Ponty, the cognitive superstructures always need to be supported by praxic operative intentionality to maintain their full sense, even though, in some cases, they have the power to compensate for praxic deficiencies.

The association between number magnitude and space is dependent on notation: Evidence from an adaptive perceptual orientation task

Research on adults' numerical abilities suggests that number representations are spatially oriented. This association of numbers with spatial response is referred to as the SNARC (i.e., spatial–numerical association of response codes) effect. The notation-independence hypothesis of numeric processing predicts that the SNARC effect will not vary with notation (e.g., Arabic vs. number word). To test such assumption, the current study introduced an adaptive experimental procedure based on a simple perceptual orientation task that can automatically smooth out the mean reaction time difference between Arabic digits and traditional Chinese number. We found that the SNARC effect interacted with notation, showing a SNARC effect for Arabic digits, but not for verbal number words. The results of this study challenged the commonly held view that notation does not affect numerical processes associated with spatial representations. We introduced a parallel model to explain the notation-dependent SNARC effect in the perceptual orientation judgment task.

Sedimentation of Habits and Orienting Experiences

Chapter 4 pivots around experiences of race, and explores social and cultural habitation to sensory perceptions and meanings. It discusses the sensorium of race perception beyond the visual, and provides historical and cultural examples of how perceiving bodily Others emerges in and is maintained by sensory experiences. It explores how understanding our orientations and perspectives on the world as fundamentally embedded in and emerging from our bodily manner of existence allows us to begin grasping how it is not reason or intellectual reflection alone by which we can address perceptual alignments that might appear problematic to us. Habits and socio-cultural practices are not simply matters of belief or conviction held in a disembodied mind, but are embedded within our bodily perceptual orientation.

Language and Perception of Normalcy

Chapter 5 connects language, bodily experience, perception, and meaning-making via an exploration of normalcy. Disability and perceptions of bodily difference show how language interrelates to bodily experiences, supporting and challenging socio-cultural habits of perceiving what is normal, health, and human. It points out that language is a bodily and social experience that expresses and shapes our bodily perceptual orientation in the world. To learn a different language is to learn of different bodily social habits, of different ways of perceiving and extending into the world. To be forced to give up a native language, or operate dominantly in a colonizing language, is to be forced to change one’s being in the world, to be dominated by another group’s tacit knowledges which may not resonate with my own.