Phenomenology and Beyond

This chapter considers what kind of explanatory approach is best suited to complement a minimalist phenomenological conception of language. It argues that two more ambitious forms of phenomenology – Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology and Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology – both result in tension with the commitment to describe experience accurately, and that ‘4e’ cognitive science focusing on the embodied, embedded, enacted and extended nature of cognition is a better option. In support of this claim it considers the roles of ‘scaffolds’ and action-oriented representation in 4e cognitive science to highlight key commitments shared with a phenomenological conception of language. Finally, it argues that a minimalist phenomenology of language cannot simply be eliminated in favor of 4e cognitive science, as might be suspected, and that the two approaches should be thought of as complementary and mutually illuminating.

The World Disclosed

This chapter clarifies the sense of world disclosure implied by a phenomenological conception of language. It takes the two main lessons of Heidegger’s discussion of realism and idealism in Being and Time to be that traditional debates are based on mistaken ontological presuppositions, and that there is no gap between the way the world appears ‘for us’ and the way it is ‘in itself’. Applying the second lesson to language, it shows how the mediation and constitutive role of language can be understood as genuinely disclosing the world without introducing a potentially refractive or distortive loss of contact with referents. Applying the first lesson, it contrasts the phenomenological conception of language developed here with some familiar forms of realism and nonrealism, arguing that by rejecting an inside-outside opposition it moves beyond such conventional alternatives.

Phenomenological Commitments

This chapter identifies some general features that characterize a conception of language as phenomenological. Taking Heidegger’s nondualist view of ‘being-in-the-world’ as a model, it suggests that this involves conceiving language as ‘language-in-the-world’, as characterized by an antireductionist attitude and rejection of the ideas that language is a ‘formal’ system of signs and that it sustains an inside-outside opposition. It is then argued that critically assessing the significance of a phenomenology of language in relation to other philosophical conceptions of language requires a specific focus, and that this is provided by Heidegger’s emphasis (chapter 1) on the derivative nature of predication and the possibility of prepredicative language use. Hence the chapter also examines the idea of prepredicative foundation, arguing that this refers to factors that are functionally and structurally presupposed by propositional content.

The Disclosive Function of Linguistic Signs

This chapter adds a more specific level to the Heideggerian framework by considering the complex disclosive function linguistic signs have for Heidegger. This task is approached by considering his ambivalent attitude toward everyday language use (‘idle talk’), which is presented as both practically necessary and somehow deficient. To understand this ambivalence, it reviews Heidegger’s earlier conception of philosophical concepts’ function as ‘formal indication’, before showing how his earlier views reappear in Being and Time and how, together with the foundational role of purposive understanding discussed in chapter 1, they account for Heidegger’s ambivalence toward everyday language use. Given the disparate factors at work in Heidegger’s conception of linguistic signs, it then proposes a distinction between presentational sense and pragmatic sense, before explaining how the limitations of Heidegger’s discussion define the task for the following chapters.

Coping with Language

This chapter has two main tasks. First, it argues that Wittgenstein’s position shows how language is grasped prepredicatively as a linguistic form of knowing-how. Having considered the link between rule-following and customs or institutions – activities lacking the rational transparency of paradigmatically intellectual activities – it takes Wittgenstein’s discussions of the limits of justification, which imply that justification is grounded in a stratum of language-games preceding justification, as a model in to develop an account of prepredicative language use. Second, it shows how Wittgenstein’s views complement Merleau-Ponty’s and Heidegger’s in filling out the Heideggerian framework, before summarizing how the resultant phenomenological conception of language defines language’s role in world disclosure by combining a general picture of language as language-in-the-world with a specific view of linguistic signs’ disclosive function, as instruments characterized by both presentational and pragmatic sense.

The Art and Science of Indirect Sense

This chapter shows how Merleau-Ponty’s notion of indirect sense contributes to understanding the disclosive function of linguistic signs within the Heideggerian framework and explicates the notion of presentational sense. It focuses first on Merleau-Ponty’s appropriation of Saussure’s conception of signs to clarify the structure and preconceptual intelligibility of indirect sense. It then considers Merleau-Ponty’s use of modern painting as an analogy, which highlights the importance of embodiment in providing an innovative model for the presentational (‘pointing out’) function of linguistic signs and the intelligence involved in embodied deliberation. Having clarified how these accounts complement each other as descriptions of prepredicative intelligence, as characterized in chapter 2, the chapter concludes by showing how they fill out and improve Heidegger’s view of the disclosive function of linguistic signs in a phenomenologically convincing way.

Language as the Expression of Lived Sense

This chapter uses Merleau-Ponty’s conception of language as an embodied expressive behavior to begin filling out the Heideggerian framework. It shows that conceiving language as the expression of lived sense, linked with both a biological body and the perspective of speakers’ experience of language, allows Merleau-Ponty to specify how language connects us intimately with the world and plays a constitutive role in formulating thoughts. It then argues that the phenomenon of creative expression – which Merleau-Ponty treats as paradigmatic – should be seen as illuminating certain kinds of language use rather than being explanatorily primary in the general way Merleau-Ponty’s own discussions suggest. Finally, the chapter examines the contrast implied by Merleau-Ponty’s notion of ‘indirect’ sense and sets out how his focus on embodiment complements Heidegger’s overall picture of language.

The “Place” of Language

This chapter sets out a general Heideggerian framework for conceiving language by extracting an overall picture of language’s role in world disclosure from Being and Time. Having introduced Heidegger’s account of how human understanding takes on determinate form, it identifies two problems in understanding where language fits into this account, problems linked with the interpretation of Heidegger’s notion of Articulacy (Rede) and its relation to intelligent nonlinguistic behaviors. Based on Heidegger’s discussion of predicative judgments (‘statements’ or ‘assertions’), particularly the relation between language and content this implies, it then argues that these two problems can be solved by interpreting Articulacy as having distinct purposive and predicative modes. This has the important consequence that a Heideggerian framework allows for ‘prepredicative’ language use that underlies and is irreducible to predication or propositional content.

Introduction: A Phenomenological Approach to Language

A brief sketch of certain kinds of experience in which language is used in practical contexts and in forming thoughts is used to motivate the question of what role language plays in revealing or ‘disclosing’ the world to us in an articulate manner. Having suggested that answering this question requires an approach that is minimally phenomenological, defined by the aim of accurately describing speakers’ experience of language, the chapter considers what this commitment implies for a conception of language and how minimalist phenomenology relates to historical precedents in the phenomenological tradition inaugurated by Husserl. The chapter concludes by outlining the book’s overall argument, showing how three principal authors (Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Wittgenstein (are brought together in the following chapters to yield a phenomenological view of language’s role in world disclosure.

Phenomenology and Semantics

This chapter focuses on Heidegger’s claim (chapter 2) that propositional content has a prepredicative foundation to assess the relationship between a phenomenological approach to language and standard semantics-based approaches that assume the primacy of propositional content. Having clarified the distinction between these two approaches and various possibilities for interpreting Heidegger’s claim, it argues against a weak foundation claim, according to which prepredicative factors do not affect the philosophical adequacy of the semantic notions of propositional and conceptual content, and instead defends a stronger claim – ‘moderate’ functional foundation – based on differences in the functioning of prepredicative factors and semantic properties. This claim is then situated in the context of a debate between Hubert Dreyfus and John McDowell about the role of concepts in prereflective intelligence, in which it offers a midway between their respective extremes of nonconceptual coping and pervasive conceptualism.