Page 84 - Contribution To Phenomenology

PHENOMENOLOGY AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE 11

chairs; but we do not perceive objects through the more general
(superordinate) category of "furniture** (unless we are unfamiliar with the
objects presented to us and discern only their most general purpose). We
do not perceive objects as furniture because there is no generic bodily
use that we make of all furniture. There is no distinctive action that we
perform with regard to all furniture that would lend that category a
distinctive perceptual meaning for us. We do perceive objects as chairs,
however, because there is a distinctive schema of bodily action through
which we use them. This entails that the sense of objects depends upon
the capacities, limitations, and habits of our embodied mental lives. In
terms that Gurwitsch adapts from Max Scheler, the surrounding world is
"existentially relative" to our embodied, active selves. As Gurwitsch writes,

Universally, the milieu is "existentially relative" to living beings at large;
that implies the "existential relativity" of every concretely present milieu
to a living being of determined organization and determined drive
acquisition (Gurwitsch, 1979, p. 58).

In arguing for this "existential relativity" of the surrounding world
Gurwitsch is arguing against a view of perception and knowledge that has
influenced Western thought since Descartes.
Lakoff too opposes a view of perception and knowledge that
permeates Modern philosophy (Lakoff, 1987, pp. 157-259). He calls this
view "objectivism." I believe that we may say that one of Lakoffs central
disputes with "objectivism" is that it overlooks the "existential relativity"
of the experienced milieu that Gurwitsch describes. As Lakoff complains,
"objectivism defines meaning independently of the nature and experience
of thinking beings" (1987, p. 266). In opposition to objectivism, Lakoff
explains his own position: "experiential realism characterizes meaning in
terms of embodiment, that is, in terms of our collective biological
capacities and our physical and social experiences as beings functioning
in our environment" (p. 267). For Lakoff too, then, the meanings of
things are "existentially relative" to the embodied subject who "con-
stitutes" those meanings. The dependence of the experienced world on
an experiencing subject is also captured by Rosch when she writes, "It
should be emphasized that we are talking about a perceived world and
not a metaphysical world without a knower" (Lakoff, 1987, p. 50).