Page 78 - Contribution To Phenomenology

PHENOMENOLOGY AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE 71

that it would present through such use are emptily and automatically
co-intended by me. The theories of the cognitive scientists thus allow us
to carry phenomenological analyses to their logical conclusions: objects are
perceived as Gestalt-wholes because their typical senses have been
constituted through typical actions. Within the field of cognitive science
the views that Lakoff expounds here are revolutionary. Gurwitsch and
Merleau-Ponty formulated these notions decades ago.

rv. Preconceptual Senses and Conceptual Meanings

In his book, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning,
Imagination, and Reason (1987), Mark Johnson argues for a pre-
conceptual constitution of meaning structures. Independently of phenome-
nology, Johnson develops what I have called above the existentialist thesis
of the primacy of the lifeworld and the epistemological thesis of
embodiment In opposition to the view that he calls "objectivism,"
Johnson claims that not all meaning is propositional or linguistic (pp.
xix-17). In order to be meaningful, propositions presuppose a large
underlying sphere of prelinguistic meanings. These preconceptual meanings
are constituted by what Johnson calls "image schemata." Image schemata
are themselves constituted through bodily activity and perception (pp.
18-30).
Johnson characterizes image schemata as dynamic and rather general
patterns of preconceptual meaning. Schemata are dynamic in that they
bestow meaning on processes that invoh^e organized sequences of steps
or movements that unfold in time. These patterns of meaning are
somewhat general in that a schema can bestow a similar structure on
situations that differ in many of their features (pp. 28-30).
The structure of image schemata is a gestalt structure (pp. 41-64).
This means that each component of a schema is an intergral part of the
whole. Each component, by playing the particular role it plays within the
whole, contributes to the overall structure and meaning of the whole; and
the component derives some of its own meaning from its intrinsic
relatedness to the other constituents that compose the whole. Johnson
claims that we can theoretically discover and describe these
"image-schematic gestalts" because they are repeatable patterns through-
out our experience. Each one is.