Motor Intentionality

The Integrative Field Model of Consciousness (IFM) is a developing interdisciplinary framework
that approaches consciousness not as an isolated neural product, but as an emergent process of
coordinated integration across neural, bodily, affective, temporal, relational, and environmental
systems. Across several connected publications, the project advances from foundational
phenomenology and metaphysics to theoretical synthesis, methodological clarification, and empirical
testability.
Because the papers were written for different audiences and levels of analysis, new readers may
benefit from a structured reading order. The sequence below is intended to provide a gradual
progression from the philosophical foundations of the framework to its neuroscientific and
empirical implications.

Background: Disturbance in movement is widely observed in autism and differences have been measured at the level of movement kinematics. Anzulewicz et al (2016) showed that gesture patterns from smart-tablet gameplay can distinguish between children with autism (ASD) and typically developing children (TD) with high accuracy using a machine learning algorithm, but a limitation of the data-driven approach used is that distinguishing features included in the algorithm may not be grounded in theory. It has been suggested that prospective control of movement is disrupted in autism, and this may result from impairments in using sensory feedback as the movement unfolds, despite intact control of internally generated movements. Furthermore, movement kinematics variables which are influenced by task difficulty and change with motor development have been identified to indicate prospective motor control. Objectives: The objective of the analysis is to explore differences between ASD and TD chi...

The present study seeks to investigate what in Goldstein's organismic theory can bring the Gestalt notion, proposed by the Psychologists of Form, closer to the notion of intentionality, as Merleau-Ponty reads it. It is about understanding how, insofar as it reveals the power of centering that operates in the concreteness of the existence of organisms in the surroundings, the notion of figure-background corresponds to the phenomenological notion of operative intentionality. In the same way, it is a matter of showing in what sense, as a form of operative intentionality, the power of centering of organisms does not need to be based on the presupposition of an "I think".

Most theoretical and empirical discussions about the nature of consciousness are typically couched in a way that endorses a tacit adult-centric and vision-based perspective. This paper defends the idea that consciousness science may be put on a fruitful track for its next phase by examining the nature of subjective experiences through a bottom-up developmental lens. We draw attention to the intrinsic link between consciousness, experiences and experiencing subjects, which are first and foremost embodied and situated organisms essentially concerned with self-preservation within a precarious environment. Our paper suggests that in order to understand what consciousness is, one should first tackle the fundamental question: how do embodied experiences arise from square one? We then highlight one key yet overlooked aspect of consciousness studies, namely that the earliest and closest environment of an embodied experiencing subject is the body of another human experiencing subject. We pre...

The present study seeks to investigate what in Goldstein's organismic theory can bring the Gestalt notion, proposed by the Psychologists of Form, closer to the notion of intentionality, as Merleau-Ponty reads it. It is about understanding how, insofar as it reveals the power of centering that operates in the concreteness of the existence of organisms in the surroundings, the notion of figure-background corresponds to the phenomenological notion of operative intentionality. In the same way, it is a matter of showing in what sense, as a form of operative intentionality, the power of centering of organisms does not need to be based on the presupposition of an "I think".

The present study seeks to investigate what in Goldstein's organismic theory can bring the Gestalt notion, proposed by the Psychologists of Form, closer to the notion of intentionality, as Merleau-Ponty reads it. It is about understanding how, insofar as it reveals the power of centering that operates in the concreteness of the existence of organisms in the surroundings, the notion of figure-background corresponds to the phenomenological notion of operative intentionality. In the same way, it is a matter of showing in what sense, as a form of operative intentionality, the power of centering of organisms does not need to be based on the presupposition of an "I think".

Most theoretical and empirical discussions about the nature of consciousness are typically couched in a way that endorses a tacit adultcentric and vision-based perspective. This paper defends the idea that consciousness science may be put on a fruitful track for its next phase by examining the nature of subjective experiences through a bottom-up developmental lens. We draw attention to the intrinsic link between consciousness, experiences and experiencing subjects, which are first and foremost embodied and situated organisms essentially concerned with self-preservation within a precarious environment. Our paper suggests that in order to understand what consciousness 'is', one should first tackle the fundamental question: how do embodied experiences 'arise' from square one? We then highlight one key yet overlooked aspect of human consciousness studies, namely that the earliest and closest environment of an embodied experiencing subject is the body of another human experiencing subject. We present evidence speaking in favour of fairly sophisticated forms of early sensorimotor integration of bodily signals and self-generated actions already being established in utero. We conclude that these primitive and fundamentally relational and co-embodied roots of our early experiences may have a crucial impact on the way human beings consciously experience the self, body and the world across their lifespan.

In this paper I explore the relationship between skill and sensitivity to reasons for action. I want to know to what degree we can explain the fact that the skilled agent is very good at performing a cluster of actions within some domain in terms of the fact that the skilled agent has a refined sensitivity to the reasons for action common to the cluster. The picture is a little bit complex. While skill can be partially explained by sensitivity to reasons – a sensitivity often produced by rational practice – the skilled human agent, because imperfect, must navigate a trade-off between full sensitivity and a capacity to succeed.

This paper argues that consciousness science may be put on a fruitful track for its future evolution by endorsing a bottom-up developmental perspective. Specifically, we propose to go back to 'square one' and to examine the nature of subjective experiences as they emerge in early human life, in utero. We build upon the observation that current theories of consciousness tacitly endorse an adult-centric and vision-biased approach in tackling the problem of subjective experiences. Indeed, one basic yet overlooked aspect of current discussions on consciousness is that in humans, experiences and experiencing subjects first develop within another human body. Hence, this observation must be taken into account and incorporated by current theories of consciousness. We propose to zoom out from the classical conundrum of the relationship consciousness and its neural correlates. Rather we see consciousness necessarily related to experiences and from there to embodied experiencers. Given that experiencers are subjects actively engaging with an environment in order to maintain self-organisation and self-preservation, consciousness cannot be addressed in isolation from self-consciousness. We make use of the 'iceberg' metaphor to argue that in order to understand the nature of the visible 'tip' of our conscious experiences one needs to go back to its pre-reflective and bodily roots. This is because the basis of the 'experiential iceberg' is conceptually and ontologically prior to its 'tip'. Examining the primitive and prereflective basis of the iceberg may teach us something essential not only about its visible accessible side (i.e. the contents of conscious experiences that we can explicitly attend to and report), but also about its entire structure as a whole. We conclude with some implications of our hypothesis for future research for consciousness studies.

During recent decades various researchers from health and social sciences have been debating what it means for a person to be disabled. A rather overlooked approach has developed alongside this debate, primarily inspired by the philosophical tradition called phenomenology. This paper develops a phenomenological model of disability by arguing for a different methodological and conceptual framework from that used by the existing phenomenological approach. The existing approach is developed from the phenomenology of illness, but the paper illustrates how the case of congenital disabilities, looking at the congenital disorder called cerebral palsy (CP), presents a fundamental problem for the approach. In order to understand such congenital cases as CP, the experience of disability is described as being gradually different from, rather than a disruption of, the experience of being abled, and it is argued that the experience of disability is complex and dynamically influenced by both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Different experiential aspects of disability-pre-reflective, attuned and reflective aspects-are described, demonstrating that the experience of disability comes in different degrees. Overall, this paper contributes to the debates about disability by further describing the personal aspects and experience of persons living with disabilities.

Can infants use auditory information to guide their movements adequately in space, and if so, to what degree? Perceptual development has mostly been considered through the visual system. Similar to vision, audition provides us with spatial information over extended distances. There is generally little research about the use of auditory information for guided movement in the environment, and the similarity between vision and hearing is narrowly attached to a theoretical framework. Effective action is prospective and supposes the pickup of predictive perceptual information, so as to prepare the body how, when, and where a movement is to be performed. Studies on the use of auditory information for action are rare. This chapter will describe two studies with young infants where it will be shown that the auditory system is equally important as the visual system to the performance of prospective action in the environment. It will be concluded that the auditory system is best conceived as a functional listening system where auditory information is used as a perceptual source for guiding behaviour in the environment.

Movement is prospective. It structures self-generated engagement with objects and social partners and is fundamental to children's learning and development. In autistic children, previous reports of differences in movement kinematics compared to neurotypical peers suggest that its prospective organisation might be disrupted. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

In two recent papers, I introduced the idea of embodied Rilkean movement knowledge and perception into the current philosophical debate on sports knowledge. In this paper, I offer a new analysis of how embodied movement knowledge and perception help us to identify and define movement consciousness. I develop a phenomenological account of embodied movement consciousness and show how it is closely linked to self-consciousness by generating anticipations and affordances that implicate pre-reflective self-awareness. I also expand Rowlands' Rilkean memory notion to include affective phenomenological properties that rely on the constitutive fault-lines between bodily material sensations and the ingrained recollections they are based on. From this perspective, embodied movement consciousness comprises empirical sensations that phenomenologically unfold as physical acts grounded in materiality.

Merleau-Ponty’s explication of concrete or practical movement by way of the Schneider case could be read as ending up close to automatism, neglecting its flexibility and plasticity in the face of obstacles. It can be contended that he already goes off course in his explication of Schneider’s condition. Rasmus Jensen has argued that he assimilates a normal person’s motor intentionality to the patient’s, thereby generating a vacuity problem. I argue that Schneider’s difficulties with certain movements point to a means of broadening Merleau-Ponty’s account of concrete movement, one that he broaches without exploiting. What could do more work is his recognition of a transposition capacity - and hence of a plasticity - in the healthy body’s skill schema. As well as avoiding vacuity, he could forestall the appearance of a dichotomy between practical coping and creativity.

[In French] This paper outlines Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of higher-order cognition as a fundamentally embodied process that is enacted by motor subject situated in natural and cultural environment. More specifically, I exemplify Merleau-Ponty’s interdisciplinary approach to cognition on his interpretations of motor intentionality, operative speech, and mathematical reasoning, which are based on neuropathology, linguistics, and gestalt psychology, respectively. In this analysis, I aim to show that the body is involved in cognition as an operator of the phenomenal structuration of the environment even at the level of linguistic, rational, and abstract experience.

What makes an event an action rather than a mere happening? What makes us agents rather than non-agents? What does being in control amount to? And in virtue of what are our actions skilled? These are among the deepest and hardest questions in the philosophy of action. They are also particularly timely, as the field is revisiting them both in connection with a study of intentional action and with a renewed interest in skilled action. In The Shape of Agency, Joshua Shepherd aims to offer a novel, and mostly original, perspective on these questions. My discussion will cover three crucial components of Shepherd's views: his theory of controlled behavior (§1), his view of intentional action (§2) and his view of skills (§3).

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We tested whether the observation of motor action encoding social motor intention would cause the spontaneous processing of a complementary response when performed by a humanoid robot. We designed the robot's arm and upper body movements to manifest the kinematic profiles of human individual and social motor intention and designed a simple task that involved robot and human placing blocks on a table sequentially. Our results show that the behavior of the human can be modulated by human kinematics as encoded in a robot's movement. In several cases human subjects reciprocated movement that displayed social motor intention with movements showing a similar kinematic profile while attempting to make eye contact and engaging in turn-taking behaviour during the task. This suggests a novel approach in the design of HRI based in motor processing that promises to be ecologically valid, cheap, automatic, fast, resilient, intuitive, and computationally simple.

This paper clarifies Merleau-Ponty's original account of "higher-order" cognition as fundamentally embodied and enacted. Merleau-Ponty's philosophy inspired theories that deemphasize overlaps between conceptual knowledge and motor intentionality or, on the contrary, focus exclusively on abstract thought. In contrast, this paper explores the link between Merleau-Ponty's account of motor intentionality and his interpretations of our capacity to understand and interact productively with cultural symbolic systems. I develop my interpretation based on Merleau-Ponty's analysis of two neuropathological modifications of motor intentionality, the case of the braininjured war veteran Schneider, and a neurological disorder known as Gerstmann's syndrome. Building on my analysis of Schneider's sensorimotor compensatory performances in relation to his limitations in the domains of algebra, geometry, and language usage, I demonstrate a strong continuity between the sense of embodiment and enaction at all these levels. Based on Merleau-Ponty's interpretations, I argue that "higher-order" cognition is impaired in Schneider insofar as his injury limits his sensorimotor capacity to dynamically produce comparatively more complex differentiations of any given phenomenal structure. I then show how Merleau-Ponty develops and specifies his interpretation of Schneider's intellectual difficulties in relation to the ambiguous role of the body, and in particular the hand, in Gerstmann's syndrome. I explain how Merleau-Ponty defends the idea that sensorimotor and quasi-representational cognition are mutually irreducible, while maintaining that symbol-based cognition is a fundamentally enactive and embodied process.

This chapter presents an account of Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of the body schema as an operative intentionality that is not only opposed to, but also complexly intermingled with, the representation-like grasp of the world and one’s own body, or the body image. The chapter reconstructs Merleau-Ponty’s position primarily based on his preparatory notes for his 1953 lecture ‘The Sensible World and the World of Expression’. Here, Merleau-Ponty elaborates his earlier efforts to show that the body schema is a perceptual ground against which the perceived world stands out as a complex of perceptual figures. The chapter clarifies how Merleau-Ponty’s renewed interpretation of the figure-ground structure makes it possible for him to describe the relationship between body schema and perceptual (body) image as a strictly systematic phenomenon. Subsequently, the chapter shows how Merleau-Ponty understands apraxia, sleep, and perceptual orientation as examples of dedifferentiation and subtler differentiation of the body-schematic system. The last section clarifies how such body-schematic differentiating processes give rise to relatively independent superstructures of vision and symbolic cognition which constitute our body image. It, moreover, explains how, according to Merleau-Ponty, the cognitive superstructures always need to be supported by praxic operative intentionality to maintain their full sense, even though, in some cases, they have the power to compensate for praxic deficiencies.

Efficient voluntary action requires postural adjustments that compensate for potential balance disturbances before they occur. These anticipatory postural adjustments have been widely investigated in adults, but relatively little is known about their development, especially during infancy. This study examined the early development of anticipatory postural activity in support of pulling action while standing. A total of 34 infants between 10 and 17 months were tested. The task required infants to open a cabinet drawer to retrieve toys while a force resisting the pulling action was applied to the drawer. The experiment included between 9 and 13 pulling trials. The force resisting the pull was doubled after the first 4 initial trials and returned again to its original value after another 4 trials. Electromyographic activity from the gastrocnemius and biceps brachii muscles was recorded. The proportion of pulls involving anticipatory activity in the gastrocnemius muscles progressively increased between 10 and 17 months. In addition, Requests for reprints should he sent to

. It is not our intention to argue that the former amounts to new wine in old bottles, but rather to show counterfactually (since we offer no new scientific data and assume the conclusions of the experiments) that Merleau-Ponty's ontology provides a theoretical framework which explains the experimental data obtained by Libet et al., and provides further speculative confirmation of the work stemming from neuro-physical research and emerging theories on the adaptive unconscious.

Recently, important steps have been made in trying to better understand a word of daily use as 'mind'. It now seems to be widely recognized by anyone, even by the definitions provided in the dictionaries, that this term does not refer to a single entity, but rather to a set of cognitive faculties. However, there are still some very widespread conceptions that tend to contrast the mind with the brain or in general the body and the physical world, and these are sometimes reflected even in the fields of research. In this article I will try to clarify the concept of mind, arguing that we do not need any 'marks of the mental' because this notion is just one of the many consequences of the tendency to unity that characterizes human reasoning and in some cases, like this, deflects research from empirical evidences. First I will introduce the Searle's distinction between basic facts and social phenomena, arguing that mind, according to this distinction, turns out to be an abstract social entity, since it is a set of states enclosed in a single concept through human language. Having done this, the attempt to make the mental phenomenon homogeneous under a single mark seems to lose meaning. Studying phenomena such as consciousness and intentionality without having the imperative to encapsulate under them all mental phenomena, allows us to see them for what they are: one of the many characteristics that constitute the umbrella-term 'mind'. In the third part of this work, I will just try to clarify the notion of consciousness, show how a concept like this can be studied according to the notion of agency, even if not all mental states require agency. Finally I will show how this clarification can provide a useful basis for future works on neuroscience, that until now has too often suffered from unclarities, inadequacies, and conflations. The philosophy of mind must carry out a theoretical work of clarification in order to prepare the field for the various empirical discoveries.

This paper argues that consciousness science may be put on a fruitful track for its future evolution by endorsing a bottom-up developmental perspective. Specifically, we propose to go back to 'square one' and to examine the nature of subjective experiences as they emerge in early human life, in utero. We build upon the observation that current theories of consciousness tacitly endorse an adult-centric and vision-biased approach in tackling the problem of subjective experiences. Indeed, one basic yet overlooked aspect of current discussions on consciousness is that in humans, experiences and experiencing subjects first develop within another human body. Hence, this observation must be taken into account and incorporated by current theories of consciousness. We propose to zoom out from the classical conundrum of the relationship consciousness and its neural correlates. Rather we see consciousness necessarily related to experiences and from there to embodied experiencers. Given that experiencers are subjects actively engaging with an environment in order to maintain self-organisation and self-preservation, consciousness cannot be addressed in isolation from self-consciousness. We make use of the 'iceberg' metaphor to argue that in order to understand the nature of the visible 'tip' of our conscious experiences one needs to go back to its pre-reflective and bodily roots. This is because the basis of the 'experiential iceberg' is conceptually and ontologically prior to its 'tip'. Examining the primitive and pre-reflective basis of the iceberg may teach us something essential not only about its visible accessible side (i.e. the contents of conscious experiences that we can explicitly attend to and report), but also about its entire structure as a whole. We conclude with some implications of our hypothesis for future research for consciousness studies. 2

What role does habit formation play in the development of sport skills? We argue that motor habits are both necessary for and constitutive of sensorimotor skill as they support an automatic, yet inherently intelligent and flexible, form of action control. Intellectualists about skills generally assume that what makes action intelligent and flexible is its intentionality, and that intentionality must be necessarily cognitive in nature to allow for both deliberation and explicit goal-representation. Against Intellectualism we argue that the habitual behaviours that compose skilful action are accompanied by their specific, non-cognitive form

What role does habit formation play in the development of sport skills? We argue that motor habits are both necessary for and constitutive of sensorimotor skill as they support an automatic, yet inherently intelligent and flexible, form of action control. Intellectualists about skills generally assume that what makes action intelligent and flexible is its intentionality, and that intentionality must be necessarily cognitive in nature to allow for both deliberation and explicit goal-representation. Against Intellectualism we argue that the habitual behaviours that compose skilful action are accompanied by their specific, non-cognitive form of intentionality: this is motor intentionality, which is purposive and adaptive while involving no explicit deliberation or goal representation. Our account of habit based on Motor Intentionality explains why the formation of motor habits can sometimes act as the sole basis of skill acquisition: Motor Intentionality is inherently purposeful because it is an embodied source of sensorimotor anticipation, pre-reflective motivation, and pragmatic know-how. Skill development through exercise always builds on a motor intentional component even when it is guided by Deliberate Practice to the point that, pace Intellectualism, Deliberate Practice is disclosed, not constrained, by habit formation. As suggested by the fact that repetitive exercises can play a major role in the development of flexible and intelligent sport skills, automatism is not a drawback for strategic control and improvisation but rather their pragmatic foundation.

Cerebral Palsy (CP) is one of the major conditions that prevent subjects suffering from having free control over their limbs, currently the use of electroencephalography (EEG) signals to control rehabilitation devices is a very useful alternative. However, these EEG signals are susceptible to noise and a filtering preprocessing is necessary before the feature extraction and classification. There are very good algorithms detecting motor intensities in the upper limbs such as Least Squares Support Vector Machine (LS-SVM) with spectral density characteristics. However, in the present work we propose to determine the algorithms of extraction of characteristics and classification that allow to detect satisfactorily the motor intensities in lower limbs.

I develop an interpretation of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept of motor intentionality, one that emerges out of a reading of his presentation of a now classic case study in neuropathology—patient Johann Schneider—in Phenomenology of Perception.  I begin with Merleau-Ponty’s prescriptions for how we should use the pathological as a guide to the normal, a method I call ‘triangulation’.  I then turn to his presentation of Schneider’s unusual case.  I argue that we should treat all of Schneider’s behaviors as pathological, not only his abstract movements (e.g., pointing), as is commonly acknowledged in the secondary literature, but also crucially his concrete movements (e.g., grasping).  Using these facts of Schneider’s illness, I reconstruct a ‘fundamental function’ of consciousness, as Merleau-Ponty called it, in which there are two kinds of bodily agency: the power of the body to be solicited by a situation and the power of the body to project a situation.  I propose that these powers became dissociated in Schneider’s case, as evidenced by his abstract and concrete movements, while in the normal case, these powers comprise a dynamic unity, enacted as motor intentionality.  I also discuss how my interpretation complements Merleau-Ponty’s assertions that motor intentions exist between mind and matter.

Aron Gurwitsch, through Gelb and Goldstein, understands the " categorial " and " concrete " as two separate powers of constitution, as two wholly distinct ways of being in the world. 1) The initial problem and ground for all to follow, stems from the requirements of an all-or-nothing logic. Following this: 2) This reification into separate powers follows the assumption that the " sick " patient's behavior is a diminution or subtraction of the " normal " person's. 3)This establishes a hierarchy where the sick have a world wholly different from the normal person. 4) Intertwined with diminution and hierarchy is the supposed discovery of a " level " of behavior. In the behavior of the " sick " is found a " primordial level, " a universal ground or a base-line of human behavior. As a non-thematic concrete dispersal bound up in, and confined to a 'pure being.' 5) All or nothing logic cleaving in twain the world of the sick and the world of the normal person, the impossible matter of their connection must be posed: Can the thematizing " categorial attitude " understand the utterly non-thematizing " concrete attitude? " Beginning here with The Structure of Behavior, we demonstrate that Merleau-Ponty does not appropriate the " categorial " and " concrete " attitudes at all. Further, Merleau-Ponty does not use these discrete 'attitudes' to describe behavior, but only as part of a refutation of reductionism. We argue that this reading of Merleau-Ponty, which he himself makes clear, has been missed because of a tradition that already knows what it will find there. We cannot continually begin with the death of philosophy and the philosopher and the victory of the first accusers. It is true that the pursuit of our current point does not present circumstances as dire as those that Socrates faced. What is kin to our inquiry are the assumptions that determined Socrates' guilt in advance of his apology. The " first accusers " provided the ground that informed and motivated the current accusers – Anytus, Meletus, and Lycon; 1 this is the same ground that determined the verdict in advance. Socrates cannot defend himself against these first accusers as they are too many and too dispersed. 2 Though the phrase " first accusers " seems to imply some specific people in the past, it does not. The dead do not make accusations. The first accusers have their home in Socrates' contemporaries-the gentlemen of Athens – including, of 1 Apology 18 – 19d. 2 18d, save for the writer of comedies, or course a reference to Aristophanies and his play " The Clouds. "

In this paper we aim to show that motor intentionality, as the underlying ground for social cognition, can be explained through the predictive engagement model. Sensorimotor processes seem to play central roles in social interaction, cognition and language. We question the phenomenologi-cal role of the body in social cognition and further investigate a causal neural explanation. We will adopt a different perspective by linking the role of the body and intercorporeality with recent findings in philosophy of neuroscience under the predictive brain hypothesis. In fact, the living body seems to entertain a dialogical and enactive relationship with the surrounding context, as well as with neural circuits actively responding to external stimuli. The body is thus configured as a living organism, and not as a mere biological substratum, offering to phenomenology and empirical sciences further confirmations of the possibility-and need-for a cooperation.

Efficient voluntary action requires postural adjustments that compensate for potential balance disturbances before they occur. These anticipatory postural adjustments have been widely investigated in adults, but relatively little is known about their development, especially during infancy. This study examined the early development of anticipatory postural activity in support of pulling action while standing. A total of 34 infants between 10 and 17 months were tested. The task required infants to open a cabinet drawer to retrieve toys while a force resisting the pulling action was applied to the drawer. The experiment included between 9 and 13 pulling trials. The force resisting the pull was doubled after the first 4 initial trials and returned again to its original value after another 4 trials. Electromyographic activity from the gastrocnemius and biceps brachii muscles was recorded. The proportion of pulls involving anticipatory activity in the gastrocnemius muscles progressively increased between 10 and 17 months. In addition, Requests for reprints should be sent to David C. Witherington,

This paper discusses Husserl's theory of intentionality and compares it to contemporary debates about intentionalism. I first show to what extent such a comparison could be meaningful. I then outline the structure of intentionality as found in Ideas I. My main claims are that -in contrast with intentionalismintentionality for Husserl (i) covers just a region of conscious contents; that it is (ii) essentially a relation between act-processes and presented content; and that (iii) the side of act-processes contains non-representational contents. In the third part, I show that Husserl also (iv) offers resources against intentionalism's exclusive concern with propositional content.

The idea of 'philosophy from the outside' was deployed in various though related ways by Merleau-Ponty throughout his work. One explicit and particularly significant instance can be seen in the volume that he edited, published in 1956, entitled Les philosophes célèbres. 1 This volume was just the philosopher-version of a large series of deluxe encyclopedias published by Lucien Mazenod, 2 and as such the book itself is not integral to the Merleau-Pontian corpus. Nonetheless, as Merleau-Ponty scholars are aware, the overall organization of the book, including the decisions as to who is (and who is not) a philosophe célèbre and how they are parsed out historically and thematically, along with the introductory material that Merleau-Ponty wrote for divisions and chapters, as well as many of the individual entries that he himself wrote (most were delegated to others), much of this does incorporate noteworthy philosophical substance. In particular, then, there is a final chapter entitled "Philosophes 'du dehors'," in which Merleau-Ponty "wanted to acknowledge some authors who, without intending to be 'philosophers', played or are playing a role" -and given the nature of the volume, Merleau-Ponty presumably meant a major role -"in the recent history of philosophy." 3 The main figures here are (in order of appearance): Einstein, Goldstein, Saussure, Mauss, Freud, and Koffka. The composition of this particular sextet is obviously significant, and it leaves a distinctively Merleau-Pontian signature on the volume. But my present concern is solely with Goldstein, the upshot of the entry for whom, written by Merleau-Ponty, was that Goldstein's holistic conception of biology had radical and sweeping epistemological implications-that "with Goldstein, the classical split between a philosophy of the transcendental subject and a psychology of the empirical subject is done away Please do not cite without permission.

Background: Newborns come into the world wired to socially interact. Is a propensity to socially oriented action already present before birth? Twin pregnancies provide a unique opportunity to investigate the social pre-wiring hypothesis. Although various types of inter-twins contact have been demonstrated starting from the 11 th week of gestation, no study has so far investigated the critical question whether intra-pair contact is the result of motor planning rather then the accidental outcome of spatial proximity.

My task in this chapter is a discussion of the issue of automaticity in Kotarbiński aided by some analysis of his stance concerning the know-how question. I shall also try to investigate the impact of this discussion on the philosophical framework of action theory which has been accepted in Chapter 1 under the umbrella of intentionalism. My overall stipulation is that, as in the case of many other important issues explored by Kotarbiński, the praxiological approach to automation and the know-how question appears not only as pioneering but also, in several respects, as still attractive and fresh. The basic praxiological intuition that automaticity economizes our actions and thus makes much sense in the context of our limited mental resources is at heart of the contemporary problems in philosophy and cognitive psychology.

The better quality pdf is downloadible from here: "http://www.leoalmanac.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/LEAVol19No3-Mailman.pdf
Through recent artistic practices and technology of interactive systems for music, composition and improvisation have more and more blended and interconnected with each other – a sui generis situation now called comprovisation. The concept of comprovisation applies equally well to the spontaneous generation and manipulation of computer graphics, especially as such graphics are systematically coordinated audio-visually, while being subject to spontaneous manipulation by a performer.
This is explained in terms of the Fluxations and FluxNoisations Human Body Interfaces, interactive dance systems that generate music and graphics spontaneously in response to hand and body movement. They enable spontaneous expressive shaping of coherent complexity and variety. Thus a multi-layered multimodal experience arises. The aesthetic experience of this multimedia spectacle relates to experiences of various prior music and visual art of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, as well as to hypothetical physical realities. Thus a kind of cybernetic phenomenology of art is pursued and enacted through an embodied cybersynthesis of art with simulated alternate reality. Call it a pragmatic speculative realism, an adventurous technoetic ‘what if.’ As compared to more traditional forms of improvisation, the opportunities for risk-taking and aesthetic exploration rise to a new level of uncertainty, as the reactions of the improviser simultaneously draw from and target both visual and aural modalities, such that the intentions toward each fuse together."

Efficient prospective motor control, evident in human activity from birth, reveals an
adaptive intentionality of a primary, pre-reflective, and pre-conceptual nature that we identify here as sensorimotor intentionality. We identify a structural continuity between the emergence of this earliest form of prospective movement and the structure of mental states as intentional or content-directed in more advanced forms. We base our proposal on motor control studies, from foetal observations through infancy. These studies reveal movements are guided by anticipations of future effects, even from before birth. This implies that these movements, even if they are simple and discrete, are the actions of an intentional agent. We develop this notion to present a theory of the developing organisation of a core feature of cognition as embodied agent action, from early single actions with proximal prospectivity to the complex serial ordering of actions into projects to reach distal goals. We claim the prospective structural continuity from early and simple actions to later complex projects of serially-ordered actions confirms the existence of an ontogenetically primary form of content-directedness that is a driver for learning and development. Its implications for understanding autism are discussed.

Efficient prospective motor control, evident in human activity from birth, reveals an adaptive intentionality of a primary, pre-reflective, and pre-conceptual nature that we identify here as sensorimotor intentionality. We identify a structural continuity between the emergence of this earliest form of prospective movement and the structure of mental states as intentional or content-directed in more advanced forms. We base our proposal on motor control studies, from foetal observations through infancy. These studies reveal movements are guided by anticipations of future effects, even from before birth. This implies that these movements, even if they are simple and discrete, are the actions of an intentional agent. We develop this notion to present a theory of the developing organisation of a core feature of cognition as embodied agent action, from early single actions with proximal prospectivity to the complex serial ordering of actions into projects to reach distal goals. We claim the prospective structural continuity from early and simple actions to later complex projects of serially-ordered actions confirms the existence of an ontogenetically primary form of content-directedness that is a driver for learning and development. Its implications for understanding autism are discussed.

Mark Solms's hypothesis holds that two main body representations are housed in the brain: the sensorimotor body and the autonomic body. These two body representations would be associated with two different types of consciousness: cognitive consciousness and affective consciousness, respectively. According to Solms, cognitive consciousness is secondary and depends on the primary, brainstem-located, affective consciousness. The consequence of this is that Freud's id would be conscious, while the ego would be unconscious. In my commentary, while praising Solms for his emphasis on the inseparable relation between affect and consciousness, I challenge his rigidly dichotomous account of consciousness. In so doing, I vindicate the role played by the cortex and, in particular, the cortical motor system in generating the varieties of phenomenal self-awareness we entertain.

The discovery of so-called ‘mirror neurons’ - found to respond both to own actions and the observation of similar actions performed by others - has been enormously influential in the cognitive sciences and beyond. Given the self-other symmetry these neurons have been hypothesized as underlying a ‘mirror mechanism’ that lets us share representations and thereby ground core social cognitive functions from intention understanding to linguistic abilities and empathy. I argue that mirror neurons are important for very different reasons. Rather than a symmetric ubiquitous or context- independent mechanism, I propose that these neurons are part of broader sensorimotor circuits, which help us navigate and predict the social affordance space that we meet others in. To develop both the critical and positive project I analyze the interpretive choices and the debate surrounding the mirror neuron research and show how the field is marred by highly questionable assumptions about respectively motor and social cognition. The discovery of mirror neurons - and the sensorimotor circuits of which these neurons are a part – actually empirically challenge many of these tacit assumptions. Findings of sensorimotor goal representations at levels of abstraction well beyond actual sensory information and kinetic movements challenge the idea of motor cognition as primarily output production. Additionally, the focus on 3rd person mindreading of hidden mental states is misguiding the field of social cognition. Much ‘mind-reading’ seems rooted in sensorimotor representations and a developmentally primary 2nd person understanding of actions and the mental lives of others, which precisely breaks the assumed dichotomy between mind and behavior. I propose a Social Affordance model where parallel fronto-parietal sensorimotor circuits support representations not just of other people’s actions but of the overall social affordance space. It is a process that monitors concrete goals and teleological possibilities that the environment affords respectively oneself and other present agents. With this model I hypothesize that the complex spectrum of sensorimotor integrations are indeed essential not only to normal action choice calibration but also to social cognitive abilities, as the sensorimotor teleological representations let us relate to others and understand their action choices in a shared pragmatic and intentional context.