The Meaning of Life: A Merleau-Pontian Investigation of How Living Bodies Make Sense

291 Pages·2015·3.92 MB·English

The Meaning of Life: A Merleau-Pontian
Investigation of How Living Bodies Make
Sense
Author: Noah Moss Brender
Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/bc-ir:103615
This work is posted on
Boston College

The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Department of Philosophy

THE MEANING OF LIFE:
A MERLEAU-PONTIAN INVESTIGATION OF
HOW LIVING BODIES MAKE SENSE

a dissertation

by

NOAH MOSS BRENDER

submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

May 2013
© copyright by NOAH MOSS BRENDER
2012
THE MEANING OF LIFE:
A Merleau-Pontian Investigation of How Living Bodies Make Sense
By Noah Moss Brender
Supervisor: Jeffrey Bloechl

This dissertation takes up Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s unfinished project of
developing an ontology of nature whose concepts are drawn from the phenomenon of
life, rather than from human techne. I argue that the question of life has been hopelessly
obscured by the collapse, in the Modern era, of the distinction between nature and
artifice. We cannot hope to understand the difference between life and non-life until we
understand the difference between the living body and the machine.
Merleau-Ponty's constant aim was to show that the living body is not a blind
mechanism, and that the body has its own endogenous sense which is not projected onto
it by a disembodied consciousness. Central to these efforts were the phenomena of
learning and development, and the concept of form or Gestalt. Development is what
distinguishes the living body, which is an open-ended process of becoming, from the
machine, whose possibilities are determined in advance by its creator. In order to
conceptualize the phenomenon of development, Merleau-Ponty appropriated from
psychology the concept of form (Gestalt): a dynamic, self-organizing whole that cannot
be decomposed into independent parts. Where the conception of nature as mechanism
implies that everything is determined in advance, Merleau-Ponty’s conception of nature
as Gestalt allows for the genesis of genuinely new phenomena through nature's own self-
organizing movement. We would thus be able to understand the genesis of sense in
nature as a process of morphogenesis—the genesis of form.
However, Merleau-Ponty struggled to clarify the ontological status of form. He
lacked the conceptual resources to explain form in its own terms, rather than by contrast
with the decomposable wholes of human artifice. This dissertation attempts to locate
these conceptual resources in the science of complexity that has emerged since Merleau-
Ponty’s death, and whose descriptions of complex systems are uncannily anticipated in
Merleau-Ponty’s writings. I take from this new science the conception of form as
asymmetry or difference, and of morphogenesis as symmetry-breaking or self-
differentiation. In order to investigate how meaning emerges out of form, I turn to recent
work in biology and psychology that applies the concept of symmetry-breaking to the
phenomena of anatomical growth and motor development. By studying the development
of the living body and its behavior, I show how nature articulates itself into perceiver and
perceived. In the movement of the living body, form folds back upon itself, giving rise to
a new kind of meaning: a pre-reflective, motor significance that is neither mechanism nor
mental representation.
In Chapter One, I distinguish the living body from a machine or artifact by
distinguishing between manufacturing and growth. This distinction, which seemed
obvious to the Ancients, has been obscured by Modern science's pivotal decision to treat
nature as if it were a product of human artifice. This decision has committed us to an
atomistic ontology, which takes nature to be a synthetic whole composed of mutually
indifferent parts. However, this ontology faces a basic problem, which I call the problem
of form: how to explain the synthesis of indifferent atoms into the complex, harmonious
wholes we observe in nature, without appealing to an intelligent designer. Nowhere is
this problem more acute than in the phenomenon of anatomical development or
embryogenesis. I argue that biology has been unable to explain this phenomenon in
mechanical or atomistic terms: the Neo-Darwinist view of the living body as a synthetic
whole determined in advance by a genetic blueprint or program has succeeded not by
explaining development, but rather by ignoring it.
In Chapter Two, I argue that the problem of form—and of living form in
particular—can only be resolved by abandoning our atomistic ontology, and with it our
synthetic understanding of form as a shape imposed on an indifferent material. Recent
developments in the science of complexity have yielded a new definition of form as
asymmetry or difference. On this view, the genesis of form in nature is not the synthesis
of wholes out of pre-existing parts, but the self-differentiation of wholes into parts
through symmetry-breaking. In order to understand how natural wholes become less
symmetrical over time, I introduce three further concepts from the science of complexity:
nonlinearity, stability, and instability. With these concepts in hand, I return to the
problem of embryogenesis, in order to show how complex living forms can develop
reliably and robustly without being determined in advance by a design or program.
In Chapter Three, I turn from anatomical development to the development of
behavior, in order to see how the genesis of form becomes a genesis of sense. I begin by
criticizing three mechanistic theories of behavior—Behaviorism, Cognitivism, and
Connectionism—which suffer from the same problem of form that plagues mechanistic
theories of anatomical development. Behavior grows like an organ: by symmetry-
breaking, not by synthesis. Learning is not a matter of association, but of differentiation:
the perception of increasingly subtle asymmetries in the body's environment through
increasingly asymmetrical movements. It is the world that teaches the organism how to
move—but a world that is only revealed to the organism by its own movements. Thus the
living body and its world grow together dialectically, each driving the other to become
more determinate through its own increasing determinacy.
Table of Contents
Analytic Table of Contents ................................................................................................. ii
ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................................... iv
PREFACE ........................................................................................................................... v
INTRODUCTION: Returning to life .................................................................................. 1
CHAPTER ONE: Is the living body a machine? .............................................................. 12
CHAPTER TWO. How does form arise in nature? .......................................................... 54
CHAPTER THREE: How do living bodies make sense? ............................................... 110
CONCLUSION: The meaning of life ............................................................................. 190
APPENDIX A. Dynamic systems theory: A different kind of scientific model ............ 205
WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................. 239

i
Analytic Table of Contents
ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................................... iv
PREFACE ........................................................................................................................... v
INTRODUCTION: Returning to life .................................................................................. 1
CHAPTER ONE: Is the living body a machine? .............................................................. 12
1. What are living bodies made of? ............................................................................ 13
2. What is the difference between manufacturing and growth? .................................. 15
3. Atomism and the problem of form .......................................................................... 23
4. The paradox of development .................................................................................. 31
A. Epigenesis vs. preformation ............................................................................. 32
B. Darwinism, genetics, and the Modern Synthesis in biology ............................. 34
C. DNA and the return of development ................................................................. 39
D. The concept of a genetic program .................................................................... 45
5. Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 48
CHAPTER TWO. How does form arise in nature? .......................................................... 54
1. What is form? .......................................................................................................... 55
2. Form as asymmetry ................................................................................................. 59
3. Symmetry-breaking as the genesis of form ............................................................ 64
A. Symmetry-breaking bifurcations in nonlinear dynamic systems ...................... 65
B. Stability and instability ..................................................................................... 75
C. Limit cycles and Hopf bifurcations .................................................................. 84
D. Nonlinearity, indecomposability, and unpredictability .................................... 88
4. The genesis of living form ...................................................................................... 92
A. Division ............................................................................................................. 94
B. Differentiation and the role of DNA in development ........................................ 98
C. Morphogenesis ............................................................................................... 103
D. Summary ......................................................................................................... 105
5. Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 106
ii
CHAPTER THREE: How do living bodies make sense? ............................................... 110
1. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 111
2. Mechanistic theories of behavior .......................................................................... 115
A. The reflex theory of behavior ......................................................................... 115
B. Cognitivism ..................................................................................................... 120
C. Connectionism ................................................................................................ 127
3. Learning to move .................................................................................................. 129
A. The view from above and the view from below .............................................. 129
B. The moving body as a dynamic system ........................................................... 132
C. Motor development as morphogenesis ........................................................... 139
4. Learning to perceive ............................................................................................. 147
A. Perception and the self-organization of behavior .......................................... 147
B. Motor programs vs. sensorimotor habits ....................................................... 162
C. Perception and motor development ................................................................ 168
D. Learning as differentiation ............................................................................ 178
5. Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 187
CONCLUSION: The meaning of life ............................................................................. 190
APPENDIX A. Dynamic systems theory: A different kind of scientific model ............ 205
WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................. 239

iii
ABBREVIATIONS
Works by Maurice Merleau-Ponty:
SB The Structure of Behavior. (A. Fisher, Trans.). Duquesne UP, 2006.
La structure du comportement (3rd ed.). Quadrige/puf, 2006 [1942].

PP Phenomenology of Perception. (D. Landes, Trans.). Routledge, 2012.
Phénoménologie de la Perception. Gallimard, 2008 [1945].

SN Sense and Non-Sense. (H. L. Dreyfus & P. A. Dreyfus, Trans.). Northwestern
UP, 1964.
Sens et non-sens. Nagel, 1961 [1948].

TT "Titres et travaux — Projet d'enseignement." In Parcours deux: 1951-1961.
Verdier, 2001.

VI The Visible and the Invisible. (A. Lingis, Trans.). Northwestern UP, 1968.
Le visible et l’invisible. Gallimard, 1964.

IS The Incarnate Subject. (P. B. Milan, Trans.). Humanity Books, 2001.
L'Union de l'âme et du corps chez Malebranche, Biran et Bergson. J. Vrin,
1968.

N Nature. (R. Vallier, Trans.). Northwestern UP, 2003.
La nature. Éditions du Seuil, 1995.

Works by other authors:
AT Oeuvres de Descartes, 11 vols. (C. Adam & P. Tannery, Eds.). Librairie
Philosophique J. Vrin, 1983
CSMK The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 3 vols. (J. Cottingham, D.
Murdoch, R. Stoothoff, & A. Kenny, Trans.). Cambridge UP, 1991.

iv
PREFACE
Thus, on the one hand it is necessary to follow the spontaneous development of the positive
sciences by asking whether man is really reduced to the status of an object here, and on the other
hand we must reconsider the reflexive and philosophical attitude by investigating whether it really
gives us the right to define ourselves as unconditioned and timeless subjects. It is possible that
these converging investigations will finally lead us to see a milieu which is common to philosophy
and the positive sciences, and that something like a third dimension opens up, this side of the pure
subject and the pure object, where our activity and our passivity, our autonomy and our
1
dependence no longer contradict one another.

[M]y general aim is always to… confront the concepts which we are accustomed to using, and
2
which I am accustomed to using, with the realities they are supposed to designate.

The phenomenological method is founded on Husserl's ideal of a
"presuppositionless science": an inquiry that would not prejudge the phenomena it is
investigating by deciding on the terms of this investigation in advance. Instead, a
phenomenological inquiry would allowt he phenomena themselves to generate the
concepts we use to think about them. This would be a thoroughlyem pirical philosophy:
rather than trying to deducea priori truths from first principles, phenomenology would
return "to the things themselves" and alolw them to speak for themselves. To understand
the meaning of the phenomena, however, we must learn to speak their language.
Phenomenology thus sets itself the task of learning thelo gos of the phainomena—letting
the phenomena teach us their native tongue ,rather than forcing them to speak in terms
that we already understand .
However, phenomenology does not fall into the typical Modern error of trying to
wipe the slate clean, to rid ourselves all at once of the concepts and presuppositions we
have inherited and start fresh from a new foundation. Nor does phenomenology follow

1
TT 13 (translation from Waldenfels 1980, p. 21).
2
Merleau-Ponty, "Les voyages du philosophe," eleventh interview with Georges Charbonnier, R.T.F., first
broadcast July 31, 1959. (Citation and translation from Noble 2011, p. 93.)
v