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Everyday Expertise
Author(s): Hubert L. Dreyfus
Source: Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 79, No. 2 (Nov
., 2005), pp. 47-65
Published by: American Philosophical Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30046213
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OVERCOMING THEMYTHOF THEMENTAL:
How CANPROFIT FROM
PHILOSOPHERS
THEPHENOMENOLOGYOF EVERYDAY
EXPERTISE
L. DREYFUS
HUBERT
UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY
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48 Proceedings and Addresses of the APA,79:2
I. The Failure of Cognitivism
One promising proposal for understanding human intelligence, while
bypassingthe body and, indeed, experience altogether,seems to have run
its course. In the mid-twentieth century, philosophers, linguists,
psychologists,and computer scientistsjoined in proposinga new discipline
called Cognitive Science that promised to work out how the logical
manipulation of formal, symbolic representations enabled minds and
suitablyprogrammedcomputersto behave intelligently.MarvinMinsky,head
of MIT'sArtificialIntelligence Laboratory,declared in a 1968 press release
forStanleyKubrick'smovie 2001 that"in30 yearswe should have machines
whose intelligenceis comparableto man's."2HilaryPutnamand Iwere both
teaching at MITduring that optimistic functionalistera, and I remember
Hilaryaskingme earnestlyover coffee when Iwould admitto being a Turing
machine.
In the earlyseventies, however, Minsky'sAIlab ran into an unexpected
problem. Computerscouldn't comprehend the simple stories understood
by four-year-olds.3Minskysuggested that givingthe computer the requisite
commonsense knowledge would merelyrequirerepresentinga few million
facts.Butit seemed to me thatthe realproblemwasn't storingand organizing
millions of facts;it was knowing which facts were relevant.
One versionof thisrelevance problemis called the frameproblem.Ifthe
computer has a representation of the current state of the world and
something changes, how does the computer determine which of the
represented facts stay the same, and which representations have to be
updated?Minskysuggested thatto avoidthe frameproblemAIprogrammers
could use descriptions of typicalsituationslike going to a birthdaypartyto
listand organizethe relevantfacts.Influencedby a computerscience student
who had taken my phenomenology course, he suggested a structure of
essential features and defaultassignments, which, like Husserl,he called a
"frame."
Buta system of framesisn'tin a situation,so how, Iwondered, could the
computer determine which of the millions of facts in its database were
relevant for recognizing the relevant frame?It seemed to me obvious that
any AIprogramusing frames to solve the story-understandingproblem by
organizingmillions of facts was going to be caught in a regress, and that,
therefore, the project was hopeless. And, indeed, Minskyhas recently
acknowledged in WiredMagazine that AI has been brain dead since the
early seventies when it encountered the problem of commonsense
knowledge.4
JerryFodornails the pointwith characteristicclarity:"Theproblem,"he
writes,
is to get the structureof an entirebelief system to bear on individual
occasions of belief fixation. We have, to put it bluntly, no
computational formalisms that show us how to do this, and we
have no idea how such formalisms might be developed. ...If
someone-a Dreyfus,for example-were to ask us why we should
even suppose that the digitalcomputer is a plausible mechanism
for the simulation of global cognitive processes, the answering
silence would be deafening.5
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50 ProceedingsandAddressesof theAPA,79:2
landscape.9Freeman'smodel exhibitsa kindof top-downgoverningcausality.
As the organismresponds to what is significantto it, the overall patternof
attractoractivity"enslaves"the activityof the individualneurons the way a
storm enslaves the individualraindrops.Freemanconsiders the philosophy
underlyinghis work close to Merleau-Ponty's,and, indeed, Merleau-Ponty
seems to anticipatean attractoraccount when he says:
It is necessary only to accept the fact that the physico-chemical
actions of which the organism is in a certain manner composed,
instead of unfolding in parallel and independent sequences, are
constituted...in relativelystable "vortices."10
Time will tell whether Freeman's Merleau-Pontyianmodel is on the right
track for explaining the functioning of the brain; meanwhile, the job of
phenomenologists is to get clear concerning the phenomena that need to
be explained.
III.Are perception and action conceptual?
Inhis book Mindand World,John McDowellchampions a seemingly similar
view to Merleau-Ponty'swhen he says: "Anexperiencingand acting subject
is...herselfembodied, substantiallypresentin the world thatshe experiences
and acts on."" And he sounds as if he is channeling Heidegger when he
speaks of "ourunproblematicopenness to the world"'2and how "we find
ourselves always alreadyengaged with the world."'3Like these existential
phenomenologists,McDowellmakes the bold claim that"thisis a framework
for reflection that really stands a chance of making traditionalphilosophy
obsolete."'14 But, unlike the existential phenomenologists, McDowell goes
on to speak of this engagement in the world as a "conceptualactivity."'"
Tosuggest how impingements received fromnaturecan be conceptual
throughand throughwithoutthe mind imposing meaning on a meaningless
Given,McDowellintroducesan account of Aristotle'sidea of second nature:
Humanbeings are...initiated into...the space of reasons by ethical
upbringing,which instillsthe appropriateshape into theirlives. The
resultinghabits of thoughtand action are second nature.'6
McDowellthen generalizes Aristotle'saccount of the productionof second
nature:
Imposing a specific shape on the practical intellect is a particular
case of a generalphenomenon: initiationinto conceptual capacities,
which include responsiveness to other rationaldemands besides
those of ethics. 1'
The phenomenon McDowell has in mind is clearest in phronesis, usually
translated"practicalwisdom." He tells us:
"Practicalwisdom" is the rightsort of thing to serve as a model for
the understanding, the faculty that enables us to recognize and
create the kind of intelligibilitythat is a matter of placement in the
space of reasons.'"
McDowellconcludes that,given our second nature,we can "see ourselves
as animals whose naturalbeing is permeated with rationality."'9 Thanksto
our inculcation into our culture, we become sensitive to reasons, which
then influence our "habitsof thoughtand action."20
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One can easily accept that in learning to be wise we learn to follow
general reasons as guides to actingappropriately.Butit does not follow that,
once we have gotten past the learningphase, these reasons in the form of
habits stillinfluence ourwise actions. Indeed, a phenomenological reading
suggests thatAristotle'saccount of phronesis is actuallya counter example
to McDowell'sconceptualism.
Heidegger,like McDowell,is interestedin Aristotle'saccount ofphronesis
as a paradigmcase of human perception and action, but he has a decidedly
different take on it from McDowell's emphasis on the role of reasons.
Heidegger describes phronesis as a kind of understanding that makes
possible an immediate response to the fullconcrete situation:
[Thephronimos]...is determinedby his situationin the largestsense.
...The circumstances,the givens,the times and the people vary.The
meaningof the action...variesas well. ...Itis preciselythe achievement
of phronesis to disclose the [individual]as acting now in the full
situationwithin which he acts.21
Of course, there will be problematic cases of conflictinggoods where the
phronimos does not see immediately what must be done. Thus, Aristotle
says the phronimos must be able to deliberate well.22But, according to
Heidegger,most of our ethical life consists in simplyseeing the appropriate
thing to do and respondingwithout deliberation,as when we help a blind
person cross the street or when, afteryears of experience, we unreflectively
balance, case by case, the demands of our professionaland personal lives.
As Aristotlesays: "Phronesis...involvesknowledge of the ultimateparticular
thing, which cannot be attained by systematic knowledge but only by
'perception'."23
Heideggerthus claims thatAristotle'saccountof phronesisdoes not
assume, as McDowelldoes, that,ethical expertisecan be conceptually
articulated.On the contrary,phronesis shows thatsocializationcan produce
a kindof masterwhose actionsdo not relyon habitsbased on reasonsto
guide him. Indeed,thanksto socialization,a person'sperceptionsand actions
at theirbest would be so responsive to the specific situationthatthey could
not be captured in general concepts.
Relativeto such specificity,allreasons advancedto justifyan action could
onlybe retroactive
rationalizations.
McDowell
seems to agreewhenhe notes,
"I construe Aristotle's discussion of deliberation as aimed at the
reconstruction of reasons for action not necessarily thought out in
advance."24
Butspeakingof a reconstruction,ratherthana construction,
of
reasons suggests that these reasons must have been implicit all along,
whereas, for Heidegger, the phronimos's actions are not in the space of
reasons at all.As Heideggersums it up:"In[phronesis]thereis accomplished
something like a pure perceiving,one thatno longer fallswithinthe domain
of logos."25
McDowell,however, would no doubt reply that there couldn't be any
such logos-free pure perception. So, in taking perception out of the space of
reasons, Heidegger can only be imposing on Aristotle a version of the Myth
of the Given. Heidegger could counter, however, that in assuming that all
intelligibility,even perception and skillful coping, must be, at least implicitly,
conceptual-in effect, that intuitions without concepts must be blind, and
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52 Proceedings and Addresses of the APA,79:2
that there must be a maxim behind every action26-Sellars and McDowell
join Kantin endorsingwhat we might call the Mythof the Mental.
Merleau-Ponty makes a similarpointplayingoff the intellectualistagainst
the empiricist.Forthe intellectualist,"judgmentis everywherepure sensation
is not, which is to say everywhere."" ForMcDowell,mind is everywhere the
puregiven is not, thatis to say, "allthe way out."Preciselybecause the myth
of the pure Given is dead, we must understand our experience as
conceptuallypermeated throughand through.Thus,like a vulture,the Myth
of the Mentalfeeds off the carcass of the Mythof the Given.
IV.What is expertise?
McDowelland Heideggerboth agree with Aristotlethatpracticalwisdom is
a kind of expertise acquired as second nature. So I suggest that to decide
who is rightas to whether skilledperception and action must be permeated
by conceptual rationalitywe turnto the phenomena and take a look at how
one becomes an expert in any domain, and at what capacities an expert
therebyacquires.
While infantsacquireskillsby imitationand trialand error,in our formal
instructionwe startwith rules.The rules, however,seem to give way to more
flexibleresponses as we become skilled.We should thereforebe suspicious
of the cognitivistassumption that as we become experts our rules become
unconscious. Indeed, our experience suggests that rules are like training
wheels. We may need such aids when learningto ridea bicycle, butwe must
eventuallyset them aside ifwe are to become skilledcyclists.Toassume that
the rules we once consciously followed become unconscious is like
assuming that,when we finallylearn to ride a bike, the trainingwheels that
were requiredfor us to be able to ride in the firstplace must have become
invisible.The actualphenomenon suggests thatto become expertswe must
switch fromdetached rule-followingto a more involvedand situation-specific
way of coping.
Indeed, if learners feel that they can act only if they have reasons to
guide them, this attitudewill stunt their skill acquisition.A study of student
nurses, for example, showed that those who remained detached and
followed rulesnever progressedbeyond competence, while only those who
became emotionallyinvolvedand took to hearttheirsuccesses and failures
developed into experts.28Thisfindingsuggests that,if somethinggoes wrong,
the way to achieve expertiseis to resista disinterested,objectiveexamination
of the problemand the temptationto formulatesophisticatedrulesto prevent
it from happening again, and, instead, to stay involved, taking failures to
heart and gloryingin one's successes. Such emotional involvement seems
to be necessary to facilitatethe switchover from detached, analyticalrule
following to an entirelydifferent engaged, holistic mode of experience-
from left to righthemisphere processing, one might say.
If the learner stays involved, he develops beyond competence by
sharpening his perceptual abilityto make refined discriminations.Among
many situations, all seen as similar with respect to a plan or perspective, the
expert learns to discriminate those situations requiring one reaction in order
to succeed from those demanding another. That is, with enough experience
in a variety of situations, all seen from the same perspective but requiring
different tactical decisions, the expert, without awareness of the process,
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54 andAddresses
Proceedings oftheAPA,79:2
In the case of tacticalrules, however, the master may make moves that
are entirelyintuitiveand contraryto anypreconceivedplan.Insuch instances,
when asked why he did what he did, he may be at a loss to reconstructa
reasoned account of his actions because there is none. Indeed, as we have
seen, the phenomena suggest that an expert has long since abandoned
generalrulesas bikerssets aside theirtrainingwheels. Thus,when an expert
is forcedto give the reasons thatled to his action,his account will necessarily
be a retroactiverationalizationthatshows at best thatthe expertcan retrieve
frommemory the general principlesand tactical rules he once followed as
a competent performer.
Consequently,if one followed the reconstructedrules articulatedby an
expert, one would not exhibit expertise but mere competence, and that is
exactly what has happened. "ExpertSystems"based on the rules so-called
knowledge engineers elicited from experts were at best competent. 30 It
seems that, instead of using rules they no longer remembered, as the Al
researchers supposed, the experts were forced to remember rules they no
longerused. Indeed,as faras anyone could tell, the expertsweren'tfollowing
any rules at all.31
So it seems clear that rules needn't play any role in producing skilled
behavior.Thisis bad news forCognitivists,but McDowellis not a cognitivist.
He rightly rejects the idea that skilled behavior is actually caused by
unconscious rules. His view is much more subtle and plausible, namely,
that, thanks to socialization, experts conform to reasons that can be
retroactivelyreconstructed.Afterall,theremust be one structurein common
to situationsthatreliablysolicit one type of tacticalresponse and another to
those situationsthatreliablysolicit another.Itseems one ought to, at least in
principle,be able to articulatethis structurein terms of reasons. But all we
have a rightto conclude from our phenomenology of expertise is that there
must be some detectable invariantfeatures in what J. J. Gibson calls the
ambientoptic arrayand thathumanbeings and animalscan learnto respond
to them. Thesefeatures,althoughavailableto the perceptualsystem,needn't
be available to the mind.
We can understandthis inaccessibilityifwe consider the way simulated
neural networks can be programmed to produce reliable responses. For
example, nets have been programmed to distinguish sonar echoes from
mines fromthose fromrocks. Such nets are given no rules,nor are they told
what features of the signal are relevant.They are simply exposed to tens of
thousands of examples and their at-first-randomcorrect responses are
reinforced.
In one very limited sense, any successfully trainedmultilayerneuralnet
can be interpretedin terms of features-not everyday features but highly
abstract ones. But in the case of multilayered nets that are devoted to
implementingexpertise, these highlyabstractfeaturesare not interpretable
as features thata mind could possibly experience. Toconstruct a semantic
account of what a network that has learned certain discriminations has
learned, each node one level above the input nodes could, on the basis of
connections to it, be interpreted as detecting when one of a certain set of
input patterns is present. (Some of the patterns will be the ones used in
training and some will never have been used.) If the set of input pattemrns
that
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56 Proceedings and Addresses of the APA,79:2
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58 Proceedings and Addresses of the APA,79:2
options and their utilities and calculating which action is optimal. Such
responses, however, lose the situationalspecificityof expertise, and so are
inferiorto an expert's intuitiveresponse.
Fortunately,the expert usuallydoes not need to calculate. Ifhe has had
enough experience and stays involved,he will find himself responding in a
masterfulway before he has time to think.Justas Aristotle,Heidegger,and
Merleau-Pontysaw, such masteryrequiresa richperceptualrepertoire-the
ability to respond to subtle differences in the appearance of perhaps
hundredsof thousandsof situations-but it requiresno conceptualrepertoire
at all. This holds true for such refined skills as chess, jazz improvisation,
sports,martialarts,etc., butequallyforeverydayskillssuch as cookingdinner,
crossing a busy street, carryingon a conversation,or just gettingaround in
the world.46
V.Nonconceptual Coping and the Justification of Judgments
So farwe have seen that,ifwe understandconcepts as context-freeprinciples
or rulesthatcould be used to guide actions or at least make them intelligible,
a phenomenology of expert coping shows concepts to be absent or even to
get in the way of a masterfulresponse to the specific situation.Norcan such
thinkable content be reconstruction after the fact by deliberation. More
basically,if concepts must be linguistic,Gibson'saccount of our directpick-
up of affordances as high order invariantsin the optic array,and neural net
considerations as to how the brain might detect such invariants,suggest
thatexpertise does not requireconcepts. Indeed, the basis of expert coping
may well be the sort of features that the expert could not be aware of and
would not be able to think. In both cases, then, masterfulaction does not
seem to requireor even to allow placement in the space of reasons.
But these objections may seem to miss McDowell'sbasic point that,in
so far as perceptionjustifies ourjudgments, it must be conceptual all the
way out. As McDowellputs it:
When we tracejustificationsback, the last thingwe come to is stilla
thinkable content; not something more ultimate than that, a bare
pointingto a bit of the Given.47
Lewiswas, indeed, fundamentallymistakenin thinkingthatthe Givenhad to
be ineffable and indubitablein orderto groundjudgments,but, as we have
seen, the Givenneedn't be understoodas bare. Itcan be pure in the sense of
nonconceptual, and yet, like affordances, still have motivationalcontent.
Conceptualists like McDowell point out, however, that the idea that any
nonconceptual given, be it intuitive,practical, normative, skillful,or what
have you, could make a contributiontojustificationis unintelligible.This is
an important objection to the view Lewis defended but not to the
phenomenologists' claim that to perform its world-disclosing function
perception must be nonconceptual.
In so far as McDowell speaks of "ourunproblematic openness to the
world"48and of how "we find ourselves always already engaged with the
world"49-he seems to agree with the phenomenologists that perception
has a function more basic than justification. As Heidegger and Merleau-
Ponty (as well as Wittgenstein) have argued, we can only relate to objects
and make judgments about them insofar as they show up on the background
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Presidential 59
of the world-and the world is not a belief system but is opened to us only
throughour unthinkingand unthinkableengaged perception and coping.
McDowell,however,onlyseems to be in agreementwith these existential
phenomenologists.ForMcDowell,the worldcan onlybe the totalityof objects,
events, and states of affairs.Manyof these are, indeed, directlyperceivable,
and we do depend on beliefs based on perception to justifyour judgments
about them. But this sort of openness to the world is not the most basic
function of perception. We directlyperceive affordances and respond to
them without beliefs and justifications being involved. Moreover,these
affordancesare interrelated,and it is our familiaritywith the whole context
of affordances that gives us our abilityto orient ourselves and find our way
about. As Heideggerputs it:
[W]hat is firstof all "given"...isthe "forwriting,"the "forgoing in
and out,"..."forsitting."Thatis, writing,going-in-and-out,sitting,and
the like are what we are a prioriinvolvedwith.Whatwe know when
we "know our way around."50
Heidegger might seem to be a conceptualist himself since he continues:
"Mybeing in the world is nothing other than this already-operating-with-
understanding."51But when he introduces the term "understanding,"
Heidegger explains (with a little help from the translator)that he means a
kind of know-how:
InGermanwe say thatsomeone can vorstehensomething-literally,
stand in frontof or ahead of it, that is, stand at its head, administer,
manage, preside over it. Thisis equivalentto sayingthathe versteht
sich darauf,understandsin the sense of being skilled or expert at it,
has the know-how of it. 52
Merleau-Pontyalso appeals to a nonintellectualkind of understanding:
We understandthe thingas we understanda new kind of behavior,
not, that is, throughany intellectual operation of subsumption, but
by taking up on our own account the mode of existence that the
observable signs adumbratebefore us.53
And, of course, such givens are not bare givens. As Heideggerinsists:
Everyact of havingsomething in frontof oneself and perceivingit is,
in and of itself,a "having"something as something. ...However, this
as-structureis not necessarilyrelatedto predication. Indealingwith
something, Ido not performany thematicalpredicativeassertions.54
VI.Where Concepts Come In
If nonconceptual perception and coping is necessary for world disclosing,
and there is no way nonconceptual perceiving could ground judgments,
then we must ask how the nonconceptual given is converted into a given
with conceptual content so that perception can do its justificatoryjob.
McDowell seems to rely on the Mythof the Mental, the idea that pure
perception is impossible so perception and coping must somehow always
already be conceptual, to avoid facing this question. In his book Body and
World,Samuel Todes, however, sees the question of how conceptual content
arises from nonconceptual content as the central puzzle bequeathed to
philosophers by Kant.55He, therefore, proposes to work out a detailed
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Endnotes
1. I would like to thank Stuart Dreyfus for his contribution to my
understandingof skilland of neuralnetworks.Iam especiallyindebted
to Sean Kelly, Joe Rouse, Charles Taylor,and MarkWrathall, for
importantsuggestions, as well as to CorbinCollins,WilliamBlattner,
TaylorCarman, Dagfinn Follesdal, Beatrice Han, Alva Nod, David
Cerbone, Rick Canedo, John Schwenkler, MartinStokhof, John
Haugeland, Ted Schatzki, lain Thomson, Dan Turner,and Charles
Spinoza for theirhelpful comments on earlierversions of this paper.
2. John McDowell,Mindand World(Cambridge,MA:HarvardUniversity
Press, 1994),67.
3. MGMpress release for2001:A Space Odyssey, 1968,cited on Michael
Krasny'sKQEDForum.
4. For details, see Hubert L. Dreyfus, What ComputersStill Can'tDo
(Cambridge,MA:The MITPress, 1992),27-62.
5. WiredMagazine, 11:08,(August2003).
6. JerryA. Fodor,TheModularityof Mind(Bradford/MIT Press, 1983),128-
29.
7. See WhatComputersStillCan'tDo, 265-66.
8. RodneyA. Brooks,Flesh and Machines:How Robots WillChange Us
(VintageBooks, 2002), 168.
9. Ibid.,42.
10. See WalterJ. Freeman,How the BrainMakes up its Mind (Columbia
UniversityPress,2001).
11. MauriceMerleau-Ponty,TheStructureof Behavior, trans.A. L. Fisher
(Boston: Beacon Press, 2nd edition 1966), 153.
12. Mind and World, 111.
13. Ibid., 155.
14. Ibid.,134.
15. Ibid., 111.
16. Ibid.(Myitalics.)
17. Ibid.,84.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.,79.
20. Ibid.,85.
21. Ibid.,84.
22. MartinHeidegger,Plato's Sophist, trans. R. Rojcewicz &A. Schuwer
(Indiana University Press, 1997), 101. (My italics.)
23. The Ethics of Aristotle, trans. J. A. K. Thomson (The Penguin Classic,
1955), 180 (1141b 10). Charles Taylor has suggested that, even when
the phronimos does deliberate, "his actions will be 'post' or 'ultra'
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64 ProceedingsandAddressesof theAPA,79:2
36. CharlesTaylor,"Merleau-Ponty and the EpistemologicalPicture,"Taylor
Carman & MarkB.N. Hansen, eds., The CambridgeCompanion to
Merleau-Ponty,(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 2005), 34.
37. This specificity of coping activity corresponds to the situational
specificity of perception that Sean Kelly uses to demonstrate that
perception is nonconceptual. See "The Non-ConceptualContent of
PerceptualExperience:SituationDependence and Fineness of Grain,"
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (with response by
ChristopherPeacocke), 62:3 (May,2001): 601-08.
38. Thereare cases, however, when the affordanceis relativeto what the
mind is capable of. ToKasparov,but not to a merely competent player,
a specific situationon the chessboard affordscheckmate.
39. Since such a response is clearly possible for animals, so it can't be
conceptual in McDowell's sense of the term since, according to
McDowell,animals don't have concepts.
40. CharlesTaylor,"Merleau-Ponty and the EpistemologicalPicture,"Taylor
Carman & MarkB. N. Hansen, eds. The CambridgeCompanion to
Merleau-Ponty(CambridgeUniversityPress, 2005), 34.
41. MarkA. Wrathall,"Motives,Reasons, and Causes,"in The Cambridge
Companionto Merleau-Ponty,T. Carmanand M. B. N. Hansen, eds.,
(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 2005), 118.
42. Phenomenologyof Perception,238.
43. Ibid.,250.
44. Sean D. Kelly,"Seeing Things in Merleau-Ponty," in The Cambridge
to
Companion Merleau-Ponty, T. Carman and M. B. N. Hansen, eds.,
(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press, 2005), 87.
45. Ibid.,97.
46. Fordetails, see HubertL. Dreyfus,"The Primacyof Phenomenology
over Logical Analysis,"Philosophical Topics,MarkA. Wrathalland
HubertL.Dreyfus,eds., Vol.27, No. 2, Fall1999,(2001).
47. Merleau-Pontycalls the sort of intentionalitydefinitiveof the space of
motivations,motor intentionality.Sean Kellyworks out the special
features of this kind of intentionality,as opposed to the conceptual
kind, in his paper, "The Logic of MotorIntentionality."The paper is
availableon his website at/-skelly/Research/LogicMI.pdf.
48. Formore details see, HubertL. Dreyfusand StuartE. Dreyfus,Mind
over Machine:ThePower of Human Intuitionand Expertisein the Era
of the Computer,(New York:Free Press, (1988) 36-41.
49. Sellarsiansmightcounterthatall coping,even the immediateresponse
to the perceived situationin chess, is, nonetheless, conceptual, in that
the master's play is crucially informed by an understanding of what it
is to "win,"to "capture"a piece, legal and illegal moves, etc. Someone
who did not understand these concepts, including having the ability
to use them properly in other contexts, would not be appropriately
regarded as playing chess. But it is not obvious that the discrimination
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PresidentialAddress- PacificDivision 65
of positions, legal from illegal moves, etc. must be linguistic,and so
conceptual by McDowell'sSellarsianstandards.See JohnHaugeland's
imaginary counter example of super-monkey's that play chess but
don't have language in Having Thought:Essays in the Metaphysicsof
Mind,(Cambridge,MA:HarvardUniversityPress, 1998),249-57.Inany
case, the kind of conceptualityof the rules of the game is the sort that
we have seen falls legitimatelyunder McDowell'saccount of second
nature, but it doesn't show that there need be any thinkable content
underlyingthe execution of the skill of playingthe game that can be
reconstructed in deliberation.
50. Mindand World,28-29.(Myitalics.)
51. Ibid., 155.
52. Ibid.,134.
53. Martin Heidegger, Logik: Die Frage nach der Wahrheit,
Gesamtausgabe, Band 21 (Frankfurtam Main:VittorioKlostermann,
1976), 144. (Thomas Sheehan, Trans.,Manuscript.)
54. This disclosing function of perception we share with animals and
infants. Heidegger,however, connects such understandingwith our
understandingof our identity.Inthatconnection, we should note that
mere coping with affordancesgives animals and human beings-what
Heidegger calls an environmentbut not a world. To open a world in
Heidegger'ssense requiresthatthe affordancesthatmatterto us and
draw us in depend not merely on ourneeds and previousexperience,
as with animals,but on what mattersto us given ouridentities,and we
are capable of changing our identities and so our world. This is an
importantdifference between human beings and animals, but since
we are focusing on the role of perception in givingus a background
on the basis of which we can perceive objects and justifyour beliefs
about them, we needn't go into it here.
55. MartinHeidegger,TheBasic Problemsof Phenomenology, 276.
56. Phenomenologyof Perception,319.
57. Heidegger, Logik, 144.
58. See Samuel Todes, Body and World(Cambridge,MA:The MITPress,
2001).
59. MartinHeidegger,Being and Time,trans.J. Macquarrie&E.Robinson
(New York:Harper& Row, 1962), 98-99, 412. For more details see,
HubertL.Dreyfus,Being-in-the-World: A Commentaryon Heidegger's
Being and Time,DivisionI (MITPress, 1991).
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