Abstract
For Merleau-Ponty, consciousness in skillful coping is a matter of prereflective ‘I can’ and not explicit ‘I think that.’ The body unifies many domain-specific capacities. There exists a direct link between the perceived possibilities for action in the situation (‘affordances’) and the organism's capacities. From Merleau-Ponty's descriptions it is clear that in a flow of skillful actions, the leading ‘I can’ may change from moment to moment without explicit deliberation. How these transitions occur, however, is less clear. Given that Merleau-Ponty suggested that a better understanding of the self-organization of brain and behavior is important, I will re-read his descriptions of skillful coping in the light of recent ideas on neurodynamics. Affective processes play a crucial role in evaluating the motivational significance of objects and contribute to the individual's prereflective responsiveness to relevant affordances.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 341-363 |
Number of pages | 23 |
Journal | Theory & Psychology |
Volume | 18 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Jun 2008 |
Keywords
- Merleau-Ponty
- affordances
- cognitive neuroscience
- emotions
- expertise
- nonlinear dynamic systems theory
- performance monitoring
- phenomenology
- relevance
- self-organization
- significance