Page 76 - Contribution To Phenomenology

PHENOMENOLOGY AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE 69

As I proceed I shall sketch the similarities between cognitive science
and phenomenology on these six theses.

III. Typifications in Phenomenology
Basic-Level Categories in Cognitive Science

In order to describe preconceptual experience phenomenologists, like
Aron Gurwitsch, frequently follow Husserl in speaking of "typification"
(Husserl, 1973, pp. 31-39 and 331-334). Objects, according to phenomen-
ology, are perceived as being of certain generic kinds. As examples of
preconceptual typifications Gurwitsch cites trees, automobiles, dogs, and
human beings (1966, p. 394). Moreover, Gurwitsch and Merleau-Ponty
contend that the typical senses that objects present to us are constituted
by the actions through which we use and manipulate them (Gurwitsch,
1979, pp. 66-84; and 1985; Merleau-Ponty, 1962).
The preconceptual types described by Husserl and Gurwitsch are
precisely what Lakoff calls "basic level categories" (Lakoff, pp. 31-57).
Although he employs the word "category," Lakoff is referring here to
preconceptual or prelinguistic rather than conceptual or linguistic categories.
Roger Brown, one of the psychologists who initiated such investigations,
uses as his examples of basic level categories dogs and cats (Lakoff, p.
31). From the traditional point of view of the hierarchy of classification,
we think of the category of dog as occupying an intermediate position
between more specific (subordinate) categories, like retriever, and more
general (superordinate) categories, like anunal. In our everyday, precon-
ceptual experience, however, dog functions as a bask level category in the
sense that we tend immediately to see objects as dogs rather than as
retrievers or as animals. In other words, the sense that objects directly and
immediately present to us in our ordinary perception is this ''basic lever
sense rather than some more specific or general sense. In order to arrive
at the more specific or more general senses of these objects, we would
have to perform mental acts in which we selectively attended to certain
of their features and disregarded others. Apprehending the more specific
or general senses, in other words, requires mental acts of selective
abstraction. Prior to such acts of abstraction—and as a necessary
precondition for them—^we perceive objects at the "basic level" (Lakoff,
pp. 12-57).
Why, according to Lakoff, do these categories function as basic to
human perception? First, it is at this level of meaning that objects are