Maurice Merleau-Ponty And The Philosophical Basis Of Embodied Cognition

The study of embodied cognition is one of the most popular topics in contemporary psychology.The concept of embodiment originated from the thoughts of the ancient Greek philosophers.Until now,it is slowly defined.The thoughts of embodiment is the thinking of the relationship between the human body and mental.In the process from the determination of Descartes’ mind-body dualism to Husserl’s road to the phenomenology,people have different understandings on the relationship between body and mind.After the establishment of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s theory system of perceptual phenomenon,more and more psychologists and philosophers have a relatively mature theoretical system.Therefore,they begin to carry out new exploration based on the segmentation and close relationships between human body and mind.Maurice Merleau-Ponty is one of the most important Franch philosophers and thinkers in twentieth Century.Phenomenology of perception,written by him,is a fashion landmark of phenomenological movements.Deeply influenced by Husserl’s phenomenology,he formed his own set of philosophical theories.Maurice Merleau-Ponty thought that perception is to experience all kinds of things in the world,even the human beings.From a series of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concepts about perception,it shows that he believed that the body and the mind is inseparable,as well as the world.Meanwhile,Maurice Merleau-Ponty also believed that perception is fundamental to our human movements and there is no one who is in internal existence.People always exist in this world and understand themselves in the world.Moreover,the world is actuallygoing through rather than existing in the traditional sense.According to the phenomenology of perception,they are inseparable,which include the subject and the world,subjectivity and objectivity,subject and object,and so on.However,human beings are neither the sole subject nor the mere object to the world.Instead,it is the subject-object,and also the main body able to think.The study of Maurice Merleau-Ponty has provided the most direct philosophical enlightenment to research embodiment.At the same time,it also creates a new era of embodied cognition.After the concept of embodiment,put forward by Maurice Merleau-Ponty systematically and with philosophy,many empirical philosophers begin to think about embodiment in the combination of the positivism and philosophy,such as James and Dewey.Gradually,embodiment has begun to enter the field of cognitive science.Therefore,embodied cognition research has become a boom.Then,with the increasingly advanced technology,psychologists put forward various physical meanings of embodiment through various empirical researches and neurobiological methods.Finally,the mirror neurons were found,which provided the most direct neurobiological basis for the meaning of embodiment.Embodiment is gradually coming from philosophy to cognitive neuroscience,which provides inspiration to the relationship between philosophy,psychology and the development of natural positivist science.In addition,it also guides the way of future researches.