Dear thinkers about thinking,
Every time this topic comes up, I go into the proximal state or intentional arc described by Merleau-Ponty. Is design thinking a peculiar kind of "maximal grip"? Is the "intentional arc" of one design thinker much the same as the "intentional arc" of another design thinker?
cheers
keith
See below for a snip from:
http://www.class.uh.edu/cogsci/dreyfus.html
>>>>>>>
Merleau-Ponty's Critique of Mental Representation:
The Relevance of Phenomenology to Scientific Explanation
Intelligence Without Representation
Hubert L. Dreyfus
I. The Relation between Phenomenology and Neuro-Science
Today I want to show that two important components of intelligent behavior, learning, and skillful action can be described and explained without recourse to mind or brain representations. To do this I will explain two central concepts in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception --the intentional arc and getting a maximal grip. The intentional arc names the tight connection between the agent and the world, viz. that, as the agent acquires skills, those skills are "stored", not as representations in the mind, but as dispositions to respond to the solicitations of situations in the world. Maximum grip names the body's tendency to respond to these solicitations in such a way as to bring the current situation closer to the agent's sense of an optimal gestalt. Neither of these abilities requires mental or brain representations. Rather, simulated neural networks exhibit crucial structural features of the intentional arc. Moreover, Walter Freeman's account of the brain dynamics underlying perception and action is structurally isomorphic with Merleau-Ponty's account of the way a skilled agent moves towards obtaining a maximum grip.
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