David Morris | Concordia University (Canada) (original) (raw)

Books by David Morris

Merleau-Ponty's Developmental Ontology shows how the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, from it... more Merleau-Ponty's Developmental Ontology shows how the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, from its very beginnings, seeks to find sense or meaning within nature, and how this quest calls for and develops into a radically new ontology.

David Morris first gives an illuminating analysis of sense, showing how it requires understanding nature as engendering new norms. He then presents innovative studies of Merleau-Ponty's The Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception, revealing how these early works are oriented by the problem of sense and already lead to difficulties about nature, temporality, and ontology that preoccupy Merleau-Ponty's later work. Morris shows how resolving these difficulties requires seeking sense through its appearance in nature, prior to experience—ultimately leading to radically new concepts of nature, time, and philosophy.

Merleau-Ponty's Developmental Ontology makes key issues in Merleau-Ponty's philosophy clear and accessible to a broad audience while also advancing original philosophical conclusions.

Reviews:

"Merleau-Ponty's Developmental Ontology is simply a great book. Morris's accounts of life and nature are creative and deeply philosophical. I might be exaggerating a little when I say this, but I think this is the best Merleau-Ponty book I have ever read." —Leonard Lawlor, author of Early Twentieth Century Continental Philosophy

"This book is unique both as a contribution to Merleau-Ponty scholarship and a renewed phenomenological ontology. Drawing mainly on contemporary life sciences and cosmology it presents us with an organic and dynamic view on how meaning and a factual order arise and appear in being, space and time. Hardly ever has the plea for a radical transcendental empiricism, instead of traditional forms of subjectivism, been made as concretely and convincingly." —Rudolf Bernet, author of Introduction to Husserlian Phenomenology

"This scintillating text offers two books for the price of one: not only does it offer an insightful and innovative reading of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, early and late, but it also establishes David Morris as an original voice to be heard in its own right. The reader is provided with a rich panoply of new ways of finding sense embedded in experience and in being, and all this in the context of a phenomenology of nature, a new model of 'development' of life and the cosmos, and an inaugural notion of “templacement” that surpasses earlier discussions of space and time and is shown to be the foundation of a radically new ontology. The result is a tour de force in which contemporary immunology and biology and cosmic theory join forces with Merleau-Ponty’s final search for 'wild being.' This is one of the most exciting, intellectually engaging, and profound books of our time." —Edward S. Casey, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, SUNY at Stony Brook; author of The World at a Glance and The World on Edge

“The rich and impressive essays in Time, Memory, Institution make a new and significant contribution to the field, dealing with works of Merleau-Ponty’s that have only recently become available in English.” Jack Reynolds, author of Merleau-Ponty and Derrida: Intertwining Embodiment and Alterity

This collection is the first extended investigation of the relation between time and memory in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s thought as a whole as well as the first to explore in depth the significance of his concept of institution. It brings the French phenomenologist’s views on the self and ontology into contemporary focus. Time, Memory, Institution argues that the self is not a self-contained or self-determining identity, as such, but is gathered out of a radical openness to what is not self, and that it gathers itself in a time that is not merely a given dimension, but folds back upon, gathers, and institutes itself.

Access to previously unavailable texts, in particular Merleau-Ponty’s lectures on institution and expression, has presented scholars with new resources for thinking about time, memory, and history. These essays represent the best of this new direction in scholarship; they deepen our understanding of self and world in relation to time and memory; and they give occasion to reexamine Merleau-Ponty’s contribution and relevance to contemporary Continental philosophy.

This volume is essential reading for scholars of phenomenology and French philosophy, as well as for the many readers across the arts, humanities, and social sciences who continue to draw insight and inspiration from Merleau-Ponty.

Contributors: Elizabeth Behnke, Edward Casey, Véronique Fóti, Donald Landes, Kirsten Jacobson, Galen Johnson, Michael Kelly, Scott Marratto, Glen Mazis, Caterina Rea, John Russon, Robert Vallier, and Bernhard Waldenfels

Read Chapter 1, "The Moving Schema of Perception, here: http://www.sunypress.edu/pdf/60983.pdf . ... more Read Chapter 1, "The Moving Schema of Perception, here: http://www.sunypress.edu/pdf/60983.pdf .

Available in paperback, hardback, and Kindle and GooglePlay editions.

The Sense of Space brings together space and body to show that space is a plastic environment, charged with meaning, that reflects the distinctive character of human embodiment in the full range of its moving, perceptual, emotional, expressive, developmental, and social capacities. Drawing on the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and Bergson, as well as contemporary psychology to develop a renewed account of the moving, perceiving body, the book suggests that our sense of space ultimately reflects our ethical relations to other people and to the places we inhabit.

"I like the combination of sober scholarship with imaginative thought and writing. David Morris is fully at home in phenomenology, while being quite knowledgeable of existing and pertinent scientific literature. Having mastered both, he creates a dynamic tension between them, showing how each can fructify the other, albeit in very different ways. The result is truly impressive.

"This is a very rare book in many ways. First, it directly engages scientific literature that treats the experience of space; not since Merleau-Ponty himself has there been a comparable engagement. Second, it institutes a lively debate with this literature that shows how a different model from that of science—including ecological science as practiced by J. J. Gibson and dynamics systems theory—is required in order to avoid positing a ready-made world taken for granted, or else an infinite regress of models. Third, Morris draws in everyday experiences of space and place in order to elucidate the deep problem of depth—a problem that heretofore has not been elucidated so intelligently and imaginatively resolved. Fourth, he adopts a developmental perspective on perception and motion that makes his work virtually unique and that brings additional light to bear on the question of depth. Fifth, Morris explores the implications of his model of depth for the experience of place in human experience—a bold undertaking that succeeds remarkably well. In sum, this is a groundbreaking work." — Edward S. Casey, author of Imagining: A Phenomenological Study, Second Edition

Papers by David Morris

Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology, 2024

Hendren’s What Can a Body Do? How We Meet the Built World (2020) shows how clocks are crucial to ... more Hendren’s What Can a Body Do? How We Meet the Built World (2020) shows how clocks are crucial to the design of the built world and its ways of disabilizing bodies that do not move according to societal clocks. Critical disability work on crip time similarly shows how time sediments normate presumptions about bodies. The paper contributes to these efforts by arguing that time cannot be understood as a fixed, transcendental framework or hypernom that stands above changes that “‘happen in time.”’ Rather, time arises out of deep change: an an-archic change, that is not necessarily ordered by a sequencing principle. The argument proceeds by studying the metrology and phenomenology of our access to clocks and time, revealing how time always is accessed as formed in and out of change. The paper concludes with observations about consequences for thinking about ability, disability, and debility—and for philosophy itself.

“Assembling some of the most important Merleau-Ponty scholars working today, Time, Memory, Instit... more “Assembling some of the most important Merleau-Ponty scholars working today, Time, Memory, Institution may be the most important volume on Merleau-Ponty published in many, many years.” Leonard Lawlor, author of Early Twentieth-Century Continental Philosophy “The rich and impressive essays in Time, Memory, Institution make a new and significant contribution to the field, dealing with works of Merleau-Ponty’s that have only recently become available in English.” Jack Reynolds, author of Merleau-Ponty and Derrida: Intertwining Embodiment and Alterity This collection is the first extended investigation of the relation between time and memory in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s thought as a whole as well as the first to explore in depth the significance of his concept of institution. It brings the French phenomenologist’s views on the self and ontology into contemporary focus. Time, Memory, Institution argues that the self is not a self-contained or self-determining identity, as such, but is gathered out of a radical openness to what is not self, and that it gathers itself in a time that is not merely a given dimension, but folds back upon, gathers, and institutes itself. Access to previously unavailable texts, in particular Merleau-Ponty’s lectures on institution and expression, has presented scholars with new resources for thinking about time, memory, and history. These essays represent the best of this new direction in scholarship; they deepen our understanding of self and world in relation to time and memory; and they give occasion to reexamine Merleau-Ponty’s contribution and relevance to contemporary Continental philosophy. This volume is essential reading for scholars of phenomenology and French philosophy, as well as for the many readers across the arts, humanities, and social sciences who continue to draw insight and inspiration from Merleau-Ponty. Contributors: Elizabeth Behnke, Edward Casey, Véronique Fóti, Donald Landes, Kirsten Jacobson, Galen Johnson, Michael Kelly, Scott Marratto, Glen Mazis, Caterina Rea, John Russon, Robert Vallier, and Bernhard Waldenfels

Body Schema and Body Image: New Directions, 2021

his chapter contributes to conceptual debates about the body schema and body image by studying th... more his chapter contributes to conceptual debates about the body schema and body image by studying the body schema’s role in shaping our sense of lived space. Contra “body-in-brain” or representational views of the body schema as a centralized controller, the chapter supports “body-in-world” views by showing how the body schema is itself of space, founded and actualized in schematizing movements of a body in the world. This suggests that capacities for, and divergences between, a body schema versus a body image emerge when body-schematizing activity runs into resistances or demands from environmental supports, including other perceiving bodies and the social sphere, over various time-scales, e.g., of evolution, development, skill and habit acquisition, as well as cultural formations. The chapter draws on phenomenological and psychological results concerning our sense of space in cases of directly touching and moving with things, but also in cases where movements coupled with surroundings through light (via our eyes or technological devices) yield a sense of distal things. These are complemented by conceptual insights from recent evolutionary-comparative approaches to the philosophy of mind and body, which give a new perspective on just where movement control arises in bodies.

Chiasmi International: Trilingual Studies Concerning Merleau-Ponty’s Thought, 2019

Movement is crucial to Merleau-Ponty’s effort to comprehend sense, meaning as generated within be... more Movement is crucial to Merleau-Ponty’s effort to comprehend sense, meaning as generated within being. This requires a new concept of movement, not as a dislocation within an already determinate space- or time- frame, but as a deeper, more fundamental change that first engenders space and time as determinate contexts in which movement can follow a sensible course. This poses a novel challenge: conceptualizing determinate space and time as contingently arising from a deeper sort of change, which I call templacement. I address this challenge by turning to the Mexica/Aztecs because the most basic term of their ontology is motion-change, and it is obvious to them that motion-change does not occur in an abstract space-time container. Instead, time-place is woven out of ‘prior’ motion-change. This study leads to a deeper lesson for phenomenology, regarding ‘obvious’ presuppositions about what time and philosophy obviously are—and how these presuppositions go hand in hand.

Continental Philosophy Review, 2019

Scholars such as Renaud Barbara and Bernhard Waldenfels and Regula Giuliani have emphasized time’... more Scholars such as Renaud Barbara and Bernhard Waldenfels and Regula Giuliani have emphasized time’s central role in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, and Michael Kelly has shown how the Phenomenology’s “Temporality” chapter already broaches his later ontological concerns. I deepen our understanding of this temporal–ontological nexus by showing how Merleau-Ponty’s temporal ontology in fact erupts even earlier in the Phenomenology, as an underlying theme that unifies part two, on “The Perceived World,” as leading into the “Temporality” chapter. I do this via a close study of the chapter, “The Thing and the Natural World,” first explicating some profound but easily overlooked points about time implied in Merleau-Ponty’s initial remarks on the constancy of form and size. I then closely analyze his study of color constancy in relation to his central source, David Katz’s The World of Colour, to show how color leads him to conceptualize things as what I call “time-things”—and more generally to conceptualize things, the world, and nature, as being in such a way that temporality is ingredient in their being. This leads to some implications for his temporal ontology.

In Continental Realism and Its Discontents, Edited by Marie-Eve Morin, 155-174, 2017

After Finitude’s project of returning philosophy to the ‘great outdoors’ hinges on a critique of ... more After Finitude’s project of returning philosophy to the ‘great outdoors’ hinges on a critique of subject-object correlation as central to phenomenology (what Meillassoux terms, ‘correlationism’). However, the critique of phenomenology presented in After Finitude is all too schematic, missing important phenomenological resources that suggest critical responses and alternatives. For example, Merleau-Ponty’s continual struggle with phenomenology’s beginnings, via his concepts of radical reflection and passivity, lead him to grasp correlation as rooted in the non-human, and eventually in ‘wild being’ as a radically contingent pre-phenomenological beginning, an opening to being at once anterior to manifestation, yet indicated in its depths. Merleau-Ponty thus exposes methodological and ontological presumptions of Meillassoux, whilst Meillassoux provokes a deepening of Merleau-Ponty’s ontology.
The first section of this paper lays out Meillassoux’s argument in After Finitude. This section also serves to frame the second section, which traces Merleau-Ponty’s route to passivity and his methods of radical reflection and indirect ontology. In turn, this leads to a critique of Meillassoux as taking the activity of thinking for granted, without attending to its passivity, or the ontological implications thereof. One such implication is that we should not confuse being with determinate being—a confusion crucial to Meillassoux’s ancestrality problem. Together, these results show how Meillassoux overlooks indications of radically contingent being within correlation itself. The third section clarifies and supports this claim via physics. Although Meillassoux invokes mathematics and science to advance his position, his treatment of science is schematic and neglects the problem of how mathematics and being connect in the first place. I take up this problem by turning to contemporary cosmology and the difficulties associated with measurement in quantum mechanics, showing how these echo Merleau-Ponty’s concept of an invisible of the visible—of there being something less than determinate being within manifestation.
The chapter suggests perhaps surprising convergences between Meillassoux and Merleau-Ponty around the necessity of contingency, since Merleau-Ponty’s ontology implies that phenomenology, temporality, and being can never have been guaranteed in advance, since being is not determinate. But they sharply diverge on the ontological location of the necessity of contingency: whereas Meillassoux leaps to mathematisable hyper-Chaos, Merleau-Ponty detects it in the invisible depths of being’s contingent manifestation—what I call radical contingency.

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2017

[NB click the URL link on this page to see the paper] This introduction to a special section of ... more [NB click the URL link on this page to see the paper]
This introduction to a special section of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences reviews some historical and contemporary results concerning the role of development in cognition and experience, arguing that at this juncture development is an important topic for research in phenomenology and the cognitive sciences. It then suggests some ways in which the concept of development is in need of rethinking, in relation to the phenomena, and reviews the contributions that articles in the section make toward this purpose.

The special issue has contributions from: Gillian Barker, Noah Moss Brender, Donald Landes, Kym Maclaren, Eva Simms, Talia Welsh

In Perception and its Development in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology, eds. Kirsten Jacobson and John Russon (Forthcoming)

This chapter aims to give insight into meaning as an inherently temporal phenomenon. It does so t... more This chapter aims to give insight into meaning as an inherently temporal phenomenon. It does so to shed light on Merleau-Ponty’s later concept of institution, which names an event that generates meaning without, however, being an act of constitution anchored in an already given subject or concepts. Institution thus undoes any full presence behind meaning. It does so precisely by conceptualizing meaning in temporal terms, as in Merleau-Ponty’s formula that institution designates “those events in an experience which endow the experience with durable dimensions, in relation to which a whole series of other experiences will make sense.” (IP 124/77) The chapter clarifies these issues by tracing the linkage between temporality and meaning across Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, to show how meaning eventuates in a peculiar gap between the present and past, in which the past is not present but is nonetheless operative as orienting or weighing down the present so as to enable meaning. The chapter’s strategy is synthetic: it digs behind oft-cited terms and moments across Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy so as to gradually lay bare the concepts and lines of argument that bind them together in relation to temporality and meaning.

Place, Space and Hermeneutics, ed. Bruce Janz, 2017

This chapter first provides a brief map of Edward S. Casey’s work, as a guide to its relevance to... more This chapter first provides a brief map of Edward S. Casey’s work, as a guide to its relevance to the hermeneutics of place. It then articulates two of Casey’s distinctive contributions to this topic: his study of moving, bodily implacement as key to the determinate appearance of things in places, places and place itself; his highly innovative work on what he calls periphenomena. Periphenomena, such as glances and edges, are peripheral to phenomena, yet guide our moving, bodily implacement, and are ingredient in our encountering places, and things in places, as determinate phenomena. Periphenomena, though, are beneath direct notice and inherently escape clear determination or delimitation—they are what I call subliminal. These two contributions together imply a third, underlying point that I draw out of Casey, namely that a hermeneutics of place and indeed all hermeneutics turns on a hermeneutics of place, that is, an account of hermeneutical activity as itself arising from and granted by place—yet the place that grants meaning is not some already fully given and determinate foundation, but is subliminal. This has ethical implications.

Merleau-Ponty’s radical reflection conceptualizes the transcendental and the empirical as intertw... more Merleau-Ponty’s radical reflection conceptualizes the transcendental and the empirical as intertwined, emerging only via an écart. I advance this concept of transcendental-empirical écart by studying the problem of measurement in science, in both general and quantum mechanical contexts. Section one analyses scientific problems of measurement, focusing on issues of temporality, to show how measurement entails a transcendental that intertwines/diverges with the empirical. Section two briefly interprets this result via Merleau-Ponty’s concept of depth, to indicate how measurement reveals a temporality that is not an already given ground that would guarantee the transcendental in advance: temporality is instead ‘deep’, it is itself engendered via an écart of transcendental and empirical operations. Section three briefly indicates how these results challenge Meillasoux’s claims about correlationism and ancestrality. (Use first file link above to read online.)

Phenomenology and Science: Confrontations and Convergences, 2016

The distinction between activity and passivity has a deep and fundamental role in scientific and ... more The distinction between activity and passivity has a deep and fundamental role in scientific and philosophical conceptual frameworks, going back to ancient Greek thinking about society and nature. I briefly indicate the importance of the activity-passivity distinction in the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, in relation to Husserl. I then advance a transcendental phenomenological argument that the distinction is, however, not as simple or obvious as it might appear, specifically that it cannot be wholly and determinately defined via a purely abstract, conceptual-discursive procedure, since specifying which of two interacting terms is the active one entails (I argue) an implicit reference to pre scientific, affective experience. But, as I argue, specifying this distinction is nonetheless conceptually fundamental for scientific thinking about nature, especially in biology, despite scientific efforts to abstract from it. Together these arguments amplify, within science itself, Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s point that life, as intrinsically involving affect, is a transcendental condition of science.

I suggest how Merleau-Pontian sense hinges on an ontology in which passivity and what I call “dev... more I suggest how Merleau-Pontian sense hinges on an ontology in which passivity and what I call “development” are fundamental. This means, though, that the possibility of philosophy cannot be guaranteed in advance: philosophy is a joint operation of philosophers and being, and is radically contingent on a pre-philosophical field. Merleau-Ponty thus transforms philosophy, revealing a philosophy of tomorrow: a new way of doing philosophy that, because it is grounded in pre-reflective contingency, has to wait to describe its beginnings, and so has to keep studying its beginnings tomorrow. This does not destroy Husserl’s project of a transcendental philosophy, it just accepts that the transcendental conditions of philosophy cannot be constituted or even revealed via wholly active or autonomous reflection. Merleau-Ponty thus brings phenomenology down to earth by expanding it into a phenomenology of life and earth that describes the concrete beginnings of phenomena and phenomenology. (Use SPECTRUM link above to retrieve Open Access version.)

Merleau-Ponty: Space, Place, Architecture, eds. Rachel McCann and Patricia Locke, 109-126, 2016

This chapter pursues a phenomenological account of the way that memory extends into places beyond... more This chapter pursues a phenomenological account of the way that memory extends into places beyond us and thence an account of architecture’s role in memory. I study Merleau-Ponty’s lectures on passivity to explicate his argument that memory involves a peculiar sort of passivity that is not wholly passive and that challenges classical dualisms of activity and passivity. This argument entails some deep ontological points about temporality and spatiality. I briefly tackle these and flesh them out in terms of a passivity granted by bodily levels and habits. This leads me to propose that place is intrinsic to such passivity, since place grants an “I already can move” that is kin to a habit—but outside us. In the conclusion I suggest that architecture works to actively articulate this passivity of place as integral to habit, and thereby cultivates memory.

in Normativity in Perception, ed. Maxime Doyon & Thiemo Breyer, Palgrave Macmillan, pp 75-90, 2015

This chapter challenges the view that perceptual illusions are mistakes, by first of all emphasiz... more This chapter challenges the view that perceptual illusions are mistakes, by first of all emphasizing how the concept of illusions-as-mistakes relies on perspectives unavailable within illusory experiences and introduces norms fixed outside such experiences. A study of ‘rubber hand illusions’ suggests how illusions are not mistaken perceptions, but cases in which perceived objects makes a different kind of sense—in virtue of a norm that is not a fixed, objective standard but is ongoingly engendered within the dynamics of living, perceptual behaviour. This leads to the view that perception is not founded on readymade norms that stand as a past fixed outside living dynamics. Rather, norms are rather a past that ongoingly emerges within living behaviour—they are what I call temporal spandrels of living temporality.

Exploring the Work of Edward S. Casey: Giving Voice to Place, Memory, and Imagination, 2013

HUA XI 3.5 "The perceived world is the always presupposed foundation of all rationality, all valu... more HUA XI 3.5 "The perceived world is the always presupposed foundation of all rationality, all value and all existence. This thesis does not destroy either rationality or the absolute. It only tries to bring them down to earth." Merleau-Ponty, "The Primacy of Perception and its Philosophical Consequences", 13

Chiasmi International

I argue that something more is at stake in Merleau-Ponty’s engagement with science than a mere d... more I argue that something more is at stake in Merleau-Ponty’s engagement with science than a mere dialectic with another discipline. This is because his methodological commitments end up positioning science as a special resource for pursuing deep ontological concerns that increasingly haunt his philosophy. I show this by connecting points in the Phenomenology’s “Phenomenal Field” chapter to his methodological challenge to the view that philosophy begins from a wholly active, autonomous, reflective consciousness. I link this to issues of passivity in a way that reveals science as a potential resource for grasping reflection not as autonomous, but as an operation of and within the phenomenal field—as radical reflection. Via critical analysis of recent results about the regulatory genome, I then show how current embryology can help us conceptualize life as a phenomenal field that implicitly engenders the sorts of revelatory operations distinctive of phenomenality. This lets us position phenomenology not merely as a reflection on phenomena from above, but as a radical reflection that operates through an ‘older’ phenomenality of life. This also give insights into some difficult issues in Merleau-Ponty’s later philosophy, by suggesting a new route to them through combining his earlier philosophy with recent science. (Use SPECTRUM link above to retrieve Open Access version.)

I argue that reconciling nature with human experience requires a new ontology in which nature is ... more I argue that reconciling nature with human experience requires a new ontology in which nature is refigured as being in and of itself meaningful, thus reconfiguring traditional dualisms and the ‘hard problem of consciousness’. But this refiguring of nature entails a method in which nature itself can exhibit its conceptual reconfiguration—otherwise we get caught in various conceptual and methodological problems that surreptitiously reduplicate the problem we are seeking to resolve. I first introduce phenomenology as a methodology fit to this task, then show how life manifests a field in which nature in and of itself exhibits meaningfulness, such that this field can serve as a starting point for this phenomenological project. Finally, I take immunogenesis as an example in which living phenomena can guide insights into the ontology in virtue of which meaning arises in nature. (Use SPECTRUM link above to retrieve Open Access version.)

Merleau-Ponty's Developmental Ontology makes key issues in Merleau-Ponty's philosophy clear and accessible to a broad audience while also advancing original philosophical conclusions.

Reviews:

Available in paperback, hardback, and Kindle and GooglePlay editions.

Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology, 2024

Body Schema and Body Image: New Directions, 2021

Chiasmi International: Trilingual Studies Concerning Merleau-Ponty’s Thought, 2019

Continental Philosophy Review, 2019

In Continental Realism and Its Discontents, Edited by Marie-Eve Morin, 155-174, 2017

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2017

The special issue has contributions from: Gillian Barker, Noah Moss Brender, Donald Landes, Kym Maclaren, Eva Simms, Talia Welsh

In Perception and its Development in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology, eds. Kirsten Jacobson and John Russon (Forthcoming)

Place, Space and Hermeneutics, ed. Bruce Janz, 2017

Phenomenology and Science: Confrontations and Convergences, 2016

Merleau-Ponty: Space, Place, Architecture, eds. Rachel McCann and Patricia Locke, 109-126, 2016

in Normativity in Perception, ed. Maxime Doyon & Thiemo Breyer, Palgrave Macmillan, pp 75-90, 2015

Exploring the Work of Edward S. Casey: Giving Voice to Place, Memory, and Imagination, 2013

Chiasmi International

The problem of ontology includes the problem of how being is determinate and has sense, i.e., ori... more The problem of ontology includes the problem of how being is determinate and has sense, i.e., orientations, meanings, differences that make a difference. This paper explores the thought that being’s sense stems from an ‘ontological chirality,’ a kind of ontological difference with characteristics kin to differences between left and right hands. The paper first shows how Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of reversibility leads to issues of chirality. Results in chemistry, biology and geometry are then discussed to illuminate the importance of chiral differences and to develop a definition of ontological chirality that connects with an ontology of sense.

This article pursues overlapping points about ontology, philosophical method, and our kinship wit... more This article pursues overlapping points about ontology, philosophical method, and our kinship with and difference from nonhuman animals. The ontological point is that being is determinately different in different places not because of differences, or even a space, already given in advance, but in virtue of a negative in being that is regional and rooted in place, which Merleau-Ponty calls the “hollow.” The methodological point is that we tend to miss this ontological point because we are inclined to what I call transportable thinking, which conceives of things and spatial determinacy itself as being what they are independent of where they are. I argue that we are inclined this way because, in contrast to other animals, we have a weak sense of where we are. We are lost animals. To compensate for lostness, we abstract ourselves from place and conceptualize ourselves and things by way of a transportable, Cartesian “view from above.”

AI & Society, 2023

An opinion piece on AI, download via link, here is the first paragraph The danger of general, gen... more An opinion piece on AI, download via link, here is the first paragraph
The danger of general, generative AI is not the technology itself. The danger is that we, and especially the leaders of the AI industry, have already taken thinking to be the sort of ‘intelligence’ that can be generatively stockpiled by AIs. To paraphrase Voltaire, human thinking created AI and AI, in kind, reinvented human thinking as a stockpile of information to be strip-mined for valuable, entrancing, or deceptive and dangerous, information patterns. These patterns are marketed in products that steal and eviscerate human labour. The patterns are circulated as completed end results abstracted from their origins in human dialogue and community; this contributes to the erosion of two capacities crucial to processes of thinking: attention and questioning.

CBC Spark, 2022

See podcast link, An radio interview with me and two other interviewees on the possible effects o... more See podcast link, An radio interview with me and two other interviewees on the possible effects of technology on our sense of space and time. I’m talking about the way communication, travel, and other technologies have long effects our spatial and temporal relations with others, the way that an immersive Metaverse might impact our anchorage in local daytime, and the general way that the way content is served up in attentionally driven ways can alter our sense of the resistance of things, and thus our sense of spaces of encounter, e.g., encountering pages with content altered according to an algorithms prediction of what will attract your attention.

AI & Society, 2018

Some critical observations on Bitcoin's design and its implications regarding energy, computation... more Some critical observations on Bitcoin's design and its implications regarding energy, computation, and climate change costs. The focus is on the Proof of Work step as at once beautifully elegant in achieving decentralized trust, but a terrible waste of electrical energy, computational resources (and a generator of waste heat). The design also run counter to progress in information technology, which increases the efficiency of recording and changing information, whereas in this case security entails deliberately wasting energy and time--transaction delays are in effect a feature. Overall a contrast is drawn with approaches that might try to solve problems via building institutions of human trust, vs. create solutions to problems we might not need to have.

Paper is linked above..

An exposition in graphic novel form of key concepts and methodological steps in Husserl's Second ... more An exposition in graphic novel form of key concepts and methodological steps in Husserl's Second Cartesian Meditation. Introduces: the natural attitude vs. the transcendental attitude, transcendentally reduced experience (the 'transcendental field') vs Cartesian doubt, cogito-cogitatum, intentionality, synthesis, horizons, and real vs. imaginary object types. I developed this during remote teaching to substitute for in-person studies of phenomena. The passage on horizons is a study for subsequent philosophical work I intend to present in graphic novel format. (The file is in two versions, the one with a gray background for online viewing, the one with a light background for printing. To download the second file, click on the Files drop down above.)

Merleau-Ponty’s institution lectures advance the insight that genuine actions achieve something n... more Merleau-Ponty’s institution lectures advance the insight that genuine actions achieve something new only by not being already contained in their past conditions. Action paradoxically entails passivity. I contextualize this point via Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s radicalizations of transcendental philosophy, showing how this turns phenomenology to radical reflection on conditions accessed only from within embodiment and thereby nature. But nature turns out to confront us with two dimensions of unsurpassable passivity. I then deepen this via the ‘hyper-transcendental’ argument, that the transcendental condition… of the appearing of transcendental conditions for phenomenological study… is radical passivity, what I call the transcendentality of passivity.

Movement is central to Merleau-Ponty’s effort to find a sense, meaning, right within being. This ... more Movement is central to Merleau-Ponty’s effort to find a sense, meaning, right within being. This effort turns him to a study of perceived movement, which leads him to challenge views that flatten movement into an abstract dislocation between already determinate locations A and B, in an already determinate spatiotemporal framework. Instead, perceived movement first engenders the spatiotemporal context in which it contingently comes to follow a determinate course. Later, he detects this sort of movement in nature itself, especially life. The movement of nature does not simply manifest dislocation within an already determinate space- or time- frame, rather, it indicates a ‘prior’ engendering of space and time as determinate. This indirectly reveals that being itself is not fully determinate, but is an internally deep, open, field. But how are we to understand the peculiar temporality of a movement ‘prior’ to time, that engenders time?
I first lead this problem out of Merleau-Ponty. Next I critically engage with physicist Julian Barbour’s recent concept of time as emerging from dynamics, versus time being a fixed background of dynamics. This provides a helpful conceptual model for the sort of temporality in question here—and fits with and is complemented by Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the invisible and the visible. Barbour leads us into key problems in quantum mechanics, regarding probabilistic, indeterminate being, and measurement. I explore these problems and connect them to time via a model from cryptography, and discussion of how quantum computer programs work (on IBM’s Quantum Experience platform). Linking this with Barbour’s time model lets me suggest a concept of time as a contingent phenomenon that would also be a first norm of sense that fits Merleau-Ponty’s ontology.

Phenomenology, as radical empiricism, cannot presume that being necessitates the determinate char... more Phenomenology, as radical empiricism, cannot presume that being necessitates the determinate characteristics of beings through which phenomenology now accesses being. Being could have appeared otherwise. This motivates a thought experiment: ‘replaying being’s tape,’ seeing if being would ‘repeat’. The experiment cannot be conducted, but prompts study of the temporality in which time becomes manifest, what Merleau-Ponty calls “time as ontogenesis.” I draw on recent quantum mechanics and cosmology to suggest this leads to an affective ontology. Being is not fixed, closed, self-activating, or acted on in an already given timeframe, but is incomplete, affected…by ‘itself’, thus lapsing into time.

Merleau-Ponty’s radical reflection conceptualizes the transcendental and the empirical as intertw... more Merleau-Ponty’s radical reflection conceptualizes the transcendental and the empirical as intertwined, emerging only via an écart. I advance this concept of transcendental-empirical intertwining/écart by studying the problem of measurement in science, in both general and quantum mechanical contexts. Section one analyses measurement, focusing on issues of temporality, to show how measurement entails a transcendental that intertwines/diverges with the empirical. Section two briefly interprets this result via Merleau-Ponty’s concept of depth, showing how measurement reveals temporality as not being an already given ground guaranteeing the transcendental in advance: temporality is instead ‘deep’, itself involving an écart of transcendental and empirical operations.

Phenomenology, as radical empiricism, depends on encountering generality in things themselves, wh... more Phenomenology, as radical empiricism, depends on encountering generality in things themselves, what Merleau-Ponty calls “existent generality”. An enigmatic note from Merleau-Ponty reveals how it is possible to encounter such generalities via the movement and development of things. I clarify this by conceptualizing generalities as what I call “familials.” I defend this view against charges of nominalism by emphasizing that we access generalities only through the reality of a temporality we share with them. Phenomenology’s transcendental condition, to which phenomenology is responsible, is thus what I call a deep temporality that is radically contingent and beyond the temporality of constituting subjectivity.

Scientific advances challenge the reduction of genetic material to information that stands as det... more Scientific advances challenge the reduction of genetic material to information that stands as determinate in advance of organisms and fully determines development. By critically analyzing recent insights about information and genes, I develop a new concept, of the genome not as given information, but an informative past that the organism itself engenders within temporally ongoing dynamics. Where autopoiesis conceives the organism as a material reciprocity of parts and wholes, I conceptualize it as reciprocally engendering temporalities of past, present and future. The informative genomic past thus hinges on the organism’s ongoing dynamics and history operating as what Merleau-Ponty calls institution.

A spreadsheet that contains page lookup functions and a concordance of page numbers in the follow... more A spreadsheet that contains page lookup functions and a concordance of page numbers in the following editions of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit:

M = Paragraph # in Miller’s English translation
B = Page # in Baillie’s English translation
WC = page #.line # in Wessel and Clairmont’s edition, from Felix Meiner
KE = page # in the German critical edition, as given in WC

The lookup function lets you enter a page number or page range in your Source edition, and displays equivalent pages in all other editions. It also shows several citation forms combining these. The citation forms can be customized.

v02 improves the interface, and lets you customize the separator

If you click the link, you can find a version with a macro that will let you specify a citation form that will be automatically copied to the clipboard each time the page numbers change, you will need to enable macros on this file, as a security measure.

-in English, RKP (editions prior to the Routledge Classics 2002), RC (Routledge Classics 2002 edition, with new pagination), RL (Routledge 2013 edition, trans Landes, with NG pagination in margin)
-in French, G (Gallimard, prior to 2005), NG (2e edition from Gallimard, from 2005 on, with new pagination)

v02 improves the interface, and lets you customize the separator

Click link below to go to the bibliography.

This provides a concordance of page numbers in the following editions of the Phenomenology of Per... more This provides a concordance of page numbers in the following editions of the Phenomenology of Perception: English editions prior to the Routledge Classics 2002; Routledge Classics edition, with the new pagination; Routledge 2013 edition, newly translated by Landes (with NG pagination in margin); the French edition from Gallimard, prior to 2005; the 2e edition from Gallimard, 2005, with new pagination.

Given a page number in one edition, the concordance will help you find the corresponding page number in other editions.

Sadly, as scholars know, there are three different paginations in the English editions, and now, even worse, there are two different paginations in the French.

Launching 11 December 2020: register at http://merleauponty.org/php75launch Film by Morgane Blain... more Launching 11 December 2020: register at http://merleauponty.org/php75launch
Film by Morgane Blain & René Clerc (France)

In 1945, Maurice Merleau-Ponty published his dissertation Phenomenology of Perception. This year is particularly rich for the philosopher. We focus on the stages of the publication and reception of his thesis, from Paris to Lyon, where he takes up his post as lecturer in psychology. Using unpublished archival material, our research aims to shed light on the “Lyonnaise Period” and the way in which the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty is constituted within the intellectual circles of Lyon. The reconstruction of these intellectual constellations and of these receptions of his research sheds light on lesser-known aspects of Merleau-Ponty’s work.