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Phenomenology for Consciousness Studies
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Module 3 · Lesson 1

Others, Language, Art: Intercorporeality

This lesson explains Merleau-Ponty's account of how we perceive other people. We don't infer minds from behavior; one body-subject responds directly to another, a relation later called intercorporeality. You'll be able to explain his critique of the argument from analogy, his example of the infant who opens its mouth when an adult pretends to bite its finger, and the limits he places on our access to others. These ideas underlie current "direct perception" and interaction theories of social cognition.

What you will be able to do

  • Explain Merleau-Ponty's account of intercorporeality and the perception of other people

0% of this lesson · 9 items · 1h 3m total · 48m without the optional journal

Contents of this lesson9 items
  1. ReadingInference, Simulation, and Direct Perception in Social Cognition3 min
  2. ReadingCultural Objects and Merleau-Ponty's Critique of the Argument from Analogy4 min
  3. ReadingBodily Coupling, Intercorporeality, and the Limits of Access to Others4 min
  4. ReadingIntercorporeality Compared with Husserl's Pairing and Sartre's Look4 min
  5. ReadingInteraction Theory, Neonatal Imitation, and the Evidence Disputes4 min
  6. Guided ReadingGuided Close Reading: The Infant and the Pretend Bite in Phenomenology of Perception7 min
  7. Guided ConversationPerceiving Others12 min
  8. Journal · optionalJournal Entry on Intercorporeality15 min
  9. Knowledge CheckIntercorporeality10 min

Reading 3 min

Inference, Simulation, and Direct Perception in Social Cognition

You see anger in a colleague's face before she says a word. You hear a friend hesitate on the phone, and you know something's wrong. In neither case does it feel as if you've reasoned your way to a conclusion about a hidden mental state. The anger is in the face. The trouble is in the hesitation.

Much of the science of social cognition has nonetheless assumed that understanding others is a matter of getting at something hidden. Two families of theory have dominated. Theory-theory holds that we understand others by applying a tacit folk-psychological theory: we attribute beliefs and desires to explain and predict their behavior. Simulation theory holds that we understand others by modeling them with our own minds: we imagine ourselves in their situation and see what we'd think or feel. The two disagree about the method, but agree that others' minds are hidden and must be reached indirectly. Both have generated large experimental programs, and both shape how social difficulties, such as those in autism, have been studied.

Phenomenologists have pressed a third view. Shaun Gallagher argues that in ordinary interaction, we often perceive others' intentions and emotions directly, in their expressive behavior, without inference or simulation (Gallagher 2008). Dan Zahavi argues that empathy, properly understood, is a distinctive form of experiential access to others: not a feeling-with, but a way in which another's mind is given in their expressions (Zahavi 2014). On these views, minds aren't hidden behind behavior. They're partly visible in it.

The debate has a developmental edge. Infants respond to faces, voices, and gestures very early, well before they could plausibly apply a theory of mind or run a simulation. If understanding others required inference, how could infants understand them so soon? Defenders of inference and simulation have answers. But the question remains a pressure point.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception is a major source of the direct-perception alternative. He argued that one body-subject responds directly to another, before any inference, and he criticized the classical argument that we know other minds by analogy with our own (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, pt. 2, ch. 4). His account doesn't say we have complete access to others. It says our first access is bodily and perceptual. That gives you a principled alternative to inference-based models of social understanding, and a way to ask what those models assume before they begin.

References

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Reading 4 min

Cultural Objects and Merleau-Ponty's Critique of the Argument from Analogy

Introduction

Philosophy has long treated other minds as a problem: I have direct access to my own mind, but only to others' behavior. Merleau-Ponty argues that the problem is posed wrongly. Others are present to us before we ever ask whether they have minds.

This reading explains his account of cultural objects and his critique of the argument from analogy, from Part Two, chapter 4, "Others and the Human World." Citations to Phenomenology of Perception give the part and chapter. Landes's translation prints the French page numbers, so learners using Colin Smith's translation (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2002) can follow along.

Cultural Objects

Merleau-Ponty begins not with other people but with things (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, pt. 2, ch. 4). The world I perceive is full of things made and shaped by people. Each is a cultural object: a thing that bears the traces of human action and purpose, such as a tool, path, building, or village. A path through a field shows where people walk. A spoon is shaped for a hand and a mouth. A village is laid out for a way of life.

In each cultural object, I sense the presence of others, though not of particular people. I sense others as an anonymous "someone": the people who made the path, use the spoon, and live in the village. Merleau-Ponty calls this the anonymous presence of others: the way others are present in cultural objects as a general "someone," not as particular individuals.

The perceived world is therefore a human world, in Merleau-Ponty's sense: the world as shaped by human action and meaning, in which others are always already present. I don't begin alone, with a world of physical things, and then discover other people in it. The world I live in is already a shared, human one.

The Argument from Analogy

The classical solution to the problem of other minds is the argument from analogy: the inference that because another body behaves as mine does, it must be animated by a mind like mine. I know, from my own case, that when I'm angry, my face and voice change in certain ways. I see another face and voice change in the same ways. By analogy, I conclude that the other person is angry.

Merleau-Ponty argues that the analogy can't even get started. It requires comparing my own expression with the other's. But I don't see my own face when I'm angry. I feel my anger from within, and I see the other's anger from without. My inner experience and the other's outer appearance are given in completely different ways. There's nothing to compare, so no analogy can be drawn.

The argument's deeper problem is that it presupposes what it's meant to explain. To recognize another's behavior as "the same as mine," I must already perceive it as expressive behavior, the conduct of a body like my own. That perception is exactly the recognition of another person that the argument was meant to produce. The analogy, if it worked at all, would work only because the other had already been perceived as another.

Conclusion

For Merleau-Ponty, the perceived world is a human world, full of cultural objects in which others are anonymously present. The argument from analogy fails because I don't perceive my own expressions as I perceive others', so there's nothing to compare, and because it presupposes the perception of others it's meant to explain.

Key Terms

  • Cultural object: In Merleau-Ponty, a thing that bears the traces of human action and purpose, such as a tool, path, building, or village.
  • Anonymous presence of others: In Merleau-Ponty, the way others are present in cultural objects as a general "someone," not as particular individuals.
  • Human world: In Merleau-Ponty, the world as shaped by human action and meaning, in which others are always already present.
  • Argument from analogy: The inference that because another body behaves as mine does, it must be animated by a mind like mine.

References

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Reading 4 min

Bodily Coupling, Intercorporeality, and the Limits of Access to Others

Introduction

If we don't infer others by analogy, how do we perceive them? Merleau-Ponty's answer is that one body-subject responds directly to another. He also insists that this direct response has limits: the other remains, in part, beyond my reach.

This reading explains the infant example, bodily coupling, the concept of intercorporeality, and the limits Merleau-Ponty places on our access to others. Citations give the part and chapter or essay.

The Infant Example

Merleau-Ponty's key example concerns a young child (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, pt. 2, ch. 4). If an adult playfully takes a 15-month-old's finger between the teeth and pretends to bite it, the child opens its own mouth. Yet the child has hardly ever seen its own face, and couldn't compare the adult's jaws with an image of its own. So the child's response can't come from comparing images. The adult's biting intention is grasped directly, through the child's own body. The lesson's close reading works through this example.

The Body-Subject and Coupling

The example illustrates a general view. The body-subject, in Merleau-Ponty's account, is the lived body as the subject of perception and action, rather than an object inhabited by a mind. When I perceive another person, I don't perceive an object and infer a subject behind it. I perceive another body-subject: a body that's itself perceiving, acting, and expressing.

My body and the other's form a system. Merleau-Ponty describes them as two sides of one phenomenon. Coupling, in this sense, is the direct, bodily attunement of two body-subjects, in which each responds to the other's conduct as meaningful, without inference. When someone reaches toward me, my body is already responding. When someone yawns, I feel the pull to yawn.

The contrast with the argument from analogy can be set out in a table, rendering the outline's diagram.

Inference by analogyBodily coupling
Starting pointTwo separate minds, each hiddenTwo body-subjects, each visible in its conduct
How the other is reachedBy reasoning from behavior to mindBy responding directly to expressive conduct
Role of my bodySupplies a model to compare withResonates with and answers the other's body
Example"His face looks like mine when I'm angry, so he's angry"Opening one's mouth as the adult pretends to bite

Intercorporeality

Merleau-Ponty didn't use the word "intercorporeality" in Phenomenology of Perception. It appears in his later essay "The Philosopher and His Shadow" (Merleau-Ponty [1960] 1964). Intercorporeality is his later term for the relation between body-subjects in which one lived body perceives and responds to another directly, as belonging to a common bodily and perceptual life.

The term names what the infant example showed: that the perception of others is rooted in a shared bodily life, not in a relation between isolated minds.

The Limits of Access

Merleau-Ponty doesn't claim that we're transparent to one another. The other's experience, as lived, remains the other's. When a friend is grieving, I can perceive the grief in her face and posture. I can respond, and even be moved. But I don't live her grief as she does. It isn't mine.

Lived solitude, in Merleau-Ponty's account, is the irreducible fact that each person lives their own experience, so that the other's experience, as they live it, is never fully mine. It isn't a return to the problem of other minds. The other is perceived directly. But what's perceived is someone whose life exceeds what I perceive of it.

Merleau-Ponty also acknowledges conflict. He discusses Sartre's claim that the other's look turns me into an object (Sartre [1943] 2018, pt. 3, ch. 1). Merleau-Ponty argues that objectification happens only when both parties withdraw from communication into a detached, observing stance. It's a real possibility, but a derivative one, a breakdown of the more basic bodily relation.

Conclusion

The infant who opens its mouth shows the other grasped directly through one's own body. Body-subjects are coupled: each responds to the other's conduct without inference. Merleau-Ponty later called this relation intercorporeality. Its limits include lived solitude, since the other's experience is never fully mine, and the possibility of conflict when communication breaks down.

Key Terms

  • Body-subject: In Merleau-Ponty, the lived body as the subject of perception and action, rather than an object inhabited by a mind.
  • Coupling: In Merleau-Ponty, the direct, bodily attunement of two body-subjects, in which each responds to the other's conduct as meaningful, without inference.
  • Intercorporeality: Merleau-Ponty's later term for the relation between body-subjects in which one lived body perceives and responds to another directly, as belonging to a common bodily and perceptual life.
  • Lived solitude: In Merleau-Ponty, the irreducible fact that each person lives their own experience, so that the other's experience, as they live it, is never fully mine.

References

  • Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. (1945) 2012. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Donald A. Landes. London: Routledge.
  • Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. (1960) 1964. "The Philosopher and His Shadow." In Signs, translated by Richard C. McCleary, 159–81. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
  • Sartre, Jean-Paul. (1943) 2018. Being and Nothingness: An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology. Translated by Sarah Richmond. London: Routledge.

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Reading 4 min

Intercorporeality Compared with Husserl's Pairing and Sartre's Look

Introduction

Merleau-Ponty's account of others didn't come from nowhere. He developed it in dialogue with Husserl, whose analysis of empathy he admired, and against Sartre, whose account of the look he found one-sided.

This reading places intercorporeality between these two predecessors. Citations give the section, part and chapter, or essay.

Intercorporeality in "The Philosopher and His Shadow"

In a late essay on Husserl, "The Philosopher and His Shadow," Merleau-Ponty draws the term intercorporeality from his reading of Husserl's unpublished work (Merleau-Ponty [1960] 1964). He defines it as the relation between body-subjects in which one lived body perceives and responds to another directly, as belonging to a common bodily and perceptual life.

His starting point is Husserl's analysis of one hand touching the other (Husserl [1952] 1989, §36). When my left hand touches my right, my body is given both as touching and as touched. Merleau-Ponty extends the idea to others. When I shake another person's hand, I perceive it not as a thing, but as a hand like mine, sensitive as mine is. The other's body enters the same circuit of touching and being touched that my own body forms with itself. Intercorporeality is that shared circuit.

Husserl's Pairing

In the fifth Cartesian Meditation, Husserl explains how another person is given (Husserl [1931] 1960, §51). Empathy (Einfühlung), in Husserl, is the basic experience of another person as another experiencing subject. It doesn't mean emotional sympathy. It rests on pairing (Paarung): a passive, associative linking in which another body, similar to one's own lived body, is apprehended as a lived body too.

Merleau-Ponty's intercorporeality is close to pairing. Both are passive, bodily, and prior to inference. The difference is one of emphasis. Husserl's analysis starts from the ego's own sphere and asks how the other is constituted from it. Merleau-Ponty starts from a shared bodily life, and treats the self and the other as differentiated within it.

Sartre's Look

For Sartre, the other is given in the look (le regard): in Sartre, the other's presence as a subject for whom I am an object (Sartre [1943] 2018, pt. 3, ch. 1). When I'm looked at, I become an object, and I feel my freedom escape me. Relations with others, on this view, involve conflict at their core.

Merleau-Ponty accepts that the look can objectify. But he argues that it does so only when communication has already broken down (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, pt. 2, ch. 4). The more basic relation is one of coupling, in which bodies answer each other. Objectification is a possibility within that relation, not its foundation.

Three Accounts Compared

Husserl's pairingSartre's lookMerleau-Ponty's intercorporeality
How the other is givenAs a lived body, paired with mineAs a subject who objectifies meAs a body-subject coupled with mine
Starting pointThe ego's own sphereMy freedom, challenged by anotherA shared bodily life
Basic toneConstitution and understandingConflictCommunication, with conflict as a breakdown

Conclusion

Merleau-Ponty's term "intercorporeality" comes from his late reading of Husserl, extending the touching-touched hands to the handshake. It's close to Husserl's pairing, but it starts from a shared bodily life rather than the ego's sphere. Against Sartre, Merleau-Ponty treats the objectifying look as a breakdown of a more basic coupling.

Key Terms

  • Intercorporeality: Merleau-Ponty's later term for the relation between body-subjects in which one lived body perceives and responds to another directly, as belonging to a common bodily and perceptual life.
  • Empathy (Einfühlung): In Husserl, the basic experience of another person as another experiencing subject. It doesn't mean emotional sympathy.
  • Pairing (Paarung): A passive, associative linking in which another body, similar to one's own lived body, is apprehended as a lived body too.
  • The look (le regard): In Sartre, the other's presence as a subject for whom I am an object.

References

  • Husserl, Edmund. (1931) 1960. Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology. Translated by Dorion Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
  • Husserl, Edmund. (1952) 1989. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution. Translated by Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer. Collected Works 3. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
  • Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. (1945) 2012. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Donald A. Landes. London: Routledge.
  • Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. (1960) 1964. "The Philosopher and His Shadow." In Signs, translated by Richard C. McCleary, 159–81. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
  • Sartre, Jean-Paul. (1943) 2018. Being and Nothingness: An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology. Translated by Sarah Richmond. London: Routledge.

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Reading 4 min

Interaction Theory, Neonatal Imitation, and the Evidence Disputes

Introduction

Merleau-Ponty's account of others has found new life in cognitive science. It has also been caught up in an empirical dispute about what very young infants can do.

This reading summarizes current interaction and empathy theories, presents the evidence dispute over neonatal imitation neutrally, compares three accounts of social understanding, and gathers the lesson's core terms.

Current Uptake

Two phenomenologically informed theories carry Merleau-Ponty's approach into current debates.

  • Shaun Gallagher's interaction theory holds that social understanding is primarily achieved through embodied interaction and direct perception of others' intentions and emotions, rather than through theoretical inference or simulation (Gallagher 2008). On this view, we mostly understand others by engaging with them: following their gaze, answering their gestures, and joining their actions.
  • Dan Zahavi defends an account of empathy as a distinctive form of experiential access to others' minds, given in their expressive behavior (Zahavi 2014). Empathy, for Zahavi, isn't inferring or feeling-with, but perceiving another as another subject.

Both draw on Merleau-Ponty's claim that minds are visible, in part, in bodily conduct (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, pt. 2, ch. 4).

The Neonatal Imitation Dispute

The infant example raises an empirical question: how early can infants respond to others' bodily expressions? A famous study by Andrew Meltzoff and M. Keith Moore reported that infants only two to three weeks old imitated adult facial gestures, such as tongue protrusion and mouth opening (Meltzoff and Moore 1977). Neonatal imitation, the reported ability of newborn infants to imitate facial gestures they see, seemed to show an innate link between perceiving another's body and moving one's own. Gallagher and others cited it in support of an early, bodily form of intersubjectivity (Gallagher 2005).

A later large longitudinal study tested over a hundred infants repeatedly across their first nine weeks, and found no evidence of imitation for any of the gestures tested (Oostenbroek et al. 2016). Its authors concluded that the evidence for neonatal imitation doesn't hold up. Others have disputed the study's methods, and the debate continues.

Two points follow for Merleau-Ponty. First, his infant example involves a 15-month-old, not a newborn (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, pt. 2, ch. 4), so it doesn't depend on neonatal imitation. Second, his example is a phenomenological illustration, not an experimental finding. Its point is that the child's response can't come from comparing images, not that a certain behavior appears at a certain age.

Three Accounts of Social Understanding

Argument from analogySimulationIntercorporeality
How others are understoodBy inferring a mind from behavior like one's ownBy modeling the other with one's own mindBy direct bodily response to expressive conduct
Are others' minds hidden?YesYes, reached by imaginationPartly visible in conduct
Role of the bodySupplies behavior to compareSupplies the simulating systemThe medium of understanding itself

Core Terms at a Glance

TermWhat it is
Cultural objectIn Merleau-Ponty, a thing that bears the traces of human action and purpose, such as a tool, path, building, or village.
Argument from analogyThe inference that because another body behaves as mine does, it must be animated by a mind like mine.
IntercorporealityMerleau-Ponty's later term for the relation between body-subjects in which one lived body perceives and responds to another directly, as belonging to a common bodily and perceptual life.
CouplingIn Merleau-Ponty, the direct, bodily attunement of two body-subjects, in which each responds to the other's conduct as meaningful, without inference.
Lived solitudeIn Merleau-Ponty, the irreducible fact that each person lives their own experience, so that the other's experience, as they live it, is never fully mine.

Conclusion

Gallagher's interaction theory and Zahavi's account of empathy carry Merleau-Ponty's view into current social cognition. The evidence for neonatal imitation, once taken to support an early bodily link to others, is disputed, though Merleau-Ponty's own example doesn't depend on it. Intercorporeality differs from analogy and simulation in treating others' minds as partly visible and the body as the medium of understanding.

Key Terms

  • Interaction theory: Gallagher's view that social understanding is primarily achieved through embodied interaction and direct perception of others' intentions and emotions, rather than through theoretical inference or simulation.
  • Neonatal imitation: The reported ability of newborn infants to imitate facial gestures they see, such as tongue protrusion. Its existence is disputed.
  • Cultural object: In Merleau-Ponty, a thing that bears the traces of human action and purpose, such as a tool, path, building, or village.
  • Argument from analogy: The inference that because another body behaves as mine does, it must be animated by a mind like mine.
  • Intercorporeality: Merleau-Ponty's later term for the relation between body-subjects in which one lived body perceives and responds to another directly, as belonging to a common bodily and perceptual life.
  • Coupling: In Merleau-Ponty, the direct, bodily attunement of two body-subjects, in which each responds to the other's conduct as meaningful, without inference.
  • Lived solitude: In Merleau-Ponty, the irreducible fact that each person lives their own experience, so that the other's experience, as they live it, is never fully mine.

References

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Guided Reading 7 min

Guided Close Reading: The Infant and the Pretend Bite in Phenomenology of Perception

Introduction

One of the shortest examples in Phenomenology of Perception carries one of its biggest claims. An adult pretends to bite a child's finger, and the child opens its mouth. From this, Merleau-Ponty argues that we perceive others' intentions directly, through our own bodies, and not by inference. This reading works through the example in four moves, notes how it serves the critique of analogy, and ends with a model paraphrase of the argument.

Locating the Passage

The passage is in Part Two, chapter 4, "Others and the Human World" (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, pt. 2, ch. 4), in the discussion of how the other's body is perceived. Landes's translation prints the French page numbers in the margin, so learners using Colin Smith's translation (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2002) can follow along. Key phrases below are given in French, with typical English renderings under Key Considerations.

No free English translation is available. The free Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Merleau-Ponty (Toadvine 2023) covers his account of others in its section on Phenomenology of Perception.

Before you start, note the setting. Merleau-Ponty has argued that the argument from analogy can't get started, because I don't perceive my own expressions as I perceive others'. He now needs a positive example of how others are perceived.

Walking Through the Argument

Step 1: The infant has hardly seen its own face

The example begins with a fact about the child. A 15-month-old has barely seen its own face, and certainly not its own mouth in the act of biting. It may have glimpsed itself in a mirror, but it has no store of images of its own jaws in motion.

This detail is the example's foundation. It rules out, in advance, any explanation that depends on the child comparing what it sees with a picture of itself.

Step 2: It responds by opening its mouth

The adult playfully takes one of the child's fingers between the teeth and pretends to bite. The child responds by opening its own mouth.

Notice what the response is. It isn't a withdrawal of the finger, a cry, or a laugh, though those might follow. It's a matching movement: the child's jaws do what the adult's jaws are doing. The child's body answers the adult's bodily intention.

Step 3: So its response can't come from comparing images

Now the argument. If the child understood the adult by analogy, it would need to compare the adult's biting mouth with an image of its own biting mouth, recognize the similarity, and infer the meaning. But Step 1 showed that it has no such image. So the response can't come from comparing images. The analogy has nothing to work with.

Step 4: The adult's jaws are perceived through the infant's own body schema

What, then, explains the response? Merleau-Ponty's answer is that the child perceives the adult's jaws through its own body schema. It doesn't see a visual object and then translate it into a movement. It perceives the biting as a bodily intention, one that its own body can take up. "Biting" has a meaning for the child's body, as a possible action of its own. So when the child perceives the adult's jaws, it perceives them as biting, and its own body answers.

The child's body and the adult's form a single system. The adult's intention is lived in the child's body before any thought about it.

How the Example Serves the Critique of Analogy

The example is chosen to break the argument from analogy at its weakest point. The analogy needs a comparison between my inner experience and the other's outer appearance. The infant has neither a detailed outer image of itself nor the capacity for such reasoning. Yet it responds appropriately and at once. If understanding others required analogy, the infant couldn't do what it does.

The general lesson is that perceiving others is, at its root, a bodily capacity. My body schema isn't only a sense of my own body. It's also the means by which I perceive other bodies as bodies like mine: as biting, reaching, or smiling.

Key Considerations

Terms and translations.

FrenchTypical EnglishWhat it names
schéma corporelbody schema (Landes); sometimes "body image" (Smith)The means by which the child perceives the adult's jaws
intentionintentionThe bodily meaning of the adult's movement
autruithe other, othersAnother person
un seul systèmea single systemThe child's and adult's bodies taken together

A common misreading. The most common misreading treats the example as an empirical study: a claim that infants of 15 months reliably open their mouths when adults pretend to bite. Read that way, it looks anecdotal and untested.

  • It's a phenomenological illustration. Its point is structural: the child's response can't come from comparing images, whatever the exact age or frequency.
  • It doesn't depend on neonatal imitation. The child is 15 months old. Later empirical work on imitation by newborns is contested (Oostenbroek et al. 2016), but that dispute concerns a different claim.
  • It isn't meant to stand alone. It illustrates a general analysis of how the body schema opens us to others.

Summary

The passage moves from the infant who has hardly seen its own face, through its answering mouth, to the conclusion that its response can't come from comparing images, and finally to the claim that the adult's jaws are perceived through the child's own body schema. Here is a model paraphrase to check your reading against:

A 15-month-old has hardly ever seen its own face. Yet when an adult pretends to bite its finger, it opens its own mouth. It can't be comparing the adult's jaws with an image of its own, because it has no such image, so its response can't come from analogy. Instead, it perceives the biting through its own body schema, as an intention its body can take up. The child's body and the adult's form a single system, and the other's intention is grasped directly, before any inference. This is Merleau-Ponty's positive alternative to the argument from analogy (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, pt. 2, ch. 4).

References

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Guided Conversation 12 min

Perceiving Others

This conversation asks you to recall a moment when you understood someone's mood or intention immediately, test whether you inferred it or perceived it, and recall a time when another's experience felt inaccessible. It ends by planning a journal entry on which account of social understanding fits your experience best.

You'll have this conversation with Claude, using your own Claude account. The link opens a new chat with the prompt already filled in; press send to start. If the chat opens empty, copy the prompt below and paste it in.

Run this conversation in whichever assistant you already use:

Open in ClaudeOpen in ChatGPT
Claude desktop app

To use another LLM, simply copy and paste the prompt into its chat window.

Show the full prompt (it lists misreadings to watch for, so skip it if you would rather come to the conversation fresh) 
Hands-on Activity: Perceiving Others (about 12 minutes)

Note to the learner: press send to start. Everything below is facilitator guidance for Claude. It lists misreadings to watch for, so skip it if you'd rather come to the conversation fresh.

Claude, please facilitate a reflective dialogue with me. I'm a graduate-level learner studying Merleau-Ponty's account of how we perceive other people. Follow this guidance for the whole conversation.

GOAL
Help me explain Merleau-Ponty's account of intercorporeality and the perception of other people by examining a recent encounter for direct bodily understanding vs. inference, and by identifying a limit on my access to another person.

HOW TO RUN THE CONVERSATION
- Ask one question at a time, then wait for my reply. Keep each of your turns under about 120 words.
- Don't lecture. Explain a point only when I need it to continue, then return to my encounter.
- Be patient, curious, and collegial. Respect my privacy: I can use a hypothetical encounter. Define terms of art briefly on first use.
- Plain conversation only: no web search, files, or artifacts.
- Aim for about 12 minutes. If I can't recall an encounter, suggest noticing a stranger's hurry on a street, or a colleague's face in a video call. If I seem uncertain, shorten the conversation to 5-7 minutes. Always reach topic 4.
- Start now. Open with one or two warm sentences: this is an exploratory conversation, not a test; any ordinary encounter works, and I can use a hypothetical one if I prefer. Then ask me to recall a recent interaction.

TOPICS, IN ORDER
1. Understanding at once. Ask me to recall a recent moment when I understood someone's mood or intention immediately, and how it showed up. Help me describe where the mood or intention appeared: in a face, a posture, a tone of voice, or a pause. Encourage concrete bodily detail.
2. Inference or perception? Ask whether I inferred it from evidence, or saw it in their body and responded with mine. Help me notice my own bodily response as part of the understanding: a softening, a stepping back, or a matching smile. Introduce the critique of the argument from analogy, coupling, and intercorporeality.
3. Limits. Ask when another person's experience has felt genuinely inaccessible to me. Help me describe a limit without collapsing it into the problem of other minds. Introduce lived solitude: the other is perceived directly, but their experience, as they live it, isn't mine. Don't press for personal disclosure.
4. Closing reflection. Ask which account (inference, simulation, or intercorporeality) fits my experience best, and have me note it for a journal entry. Accept any reasoned answer.

POSITIONS TO KEEP ACCURATE
- The perceived world is a human world, full of cultural objects in which others are anonymously present.
- The argument from analogy can't get started, because I don't perceive my own expressions as I perceive others'. It also presupposes the perception of others.
- The infant example shows the other's intention grasped through one's own body schema.
- Body-subjects are coupled: each responds to the other's conduct directly.
- Merleau-Ponty later called this relation intercorporeality.
- Lived solitude limits access: the other's experience, as lived, is never fully mine.
- Current interaction and empathy theories draw on this view. The evidence on neonatal imitation is disputed.

MISREADINGS TO CORRECT GENTLY
Keep every point tied to my own encounter. When a misreading appears, name the accurate position briefly, then return to my experience.
- Intercorporeality as empathy in the sense of feeling-with. It's a direct bodily perception of the other, not sharing their feeling.
- Direct perception as full access. Lived solitude remains: we perceive others directly, but not completely.
- The infant example as an experiment. It's a phenomenological illustration.
- Merleau-Ponty as denying conflict. He accepts the objectifying look as a real possibility, arising when communication breaks down.
- Simulation and intercorporeality as the same. Simulation uses one's own mind as a model, while coupling is a direct bodily response.

LIMITS
- Respect my privacy. A hypothetical encounter is acceptable at any point, and you shouldn't press me for personal disclosure, especially when I describe a limit on my access to someone.

TO FINISH
After I name the account that fits best, close in one short turn:
- Affirm one precise observation I made, in my own words where possible.
- Suggest one or two next steps that fit how the conversation went. Possible steps: review the argument from analogy, coupling, and intercorporeality as terms; revisit the infant example and what it shows about the body schema; review how lived solitude limits access to others; look into Gallagher's interaction theory and the neonatal imitation debate; compare Merleau-Ponty's account with Husserl's pairing; try the conversation again with a simple example, such as a yawn.
- Restate the account I chose and my reason on its own line, labeled "Journal note," so I can copy it as the focus for a journal entry.

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Journal 15 minOptional

Journal Entry on Intercorporeality

Overview

If you don't keep a phenomenology journal yet, start one now; any notebook or document works. This activity is optional, and your entry is for your own development.

You'll write a 300–500 word entry and keep it in your journal. The entry applies Merleau-Ponty's account of the perception of others to an encounter.

Writing Prompt

In 300–500 words, analyze one encounter in which you understood another person directly, using intercorporeality; contrast it with an inference-based account; and describe one limit on your access to the other's experience.

Steps

  1. Describe an encounter where you understood someone directly. Your scenario is an encounter, your own or a hypothetical or composite one. Say what you perceived, and how.
  2. Analyze it as intercorporeality. Describe the bodily coupling, including your own response.
  3. Contrast it with an inference-based account. Say how the argument from analogy or a theory-based account would describe it.
  4. Describe a limit on your access to the other. Say what remained beyond your reach.

Self-Check

Before you finish, check that your entry:

  • Describes the other's intention or mood as perceived in their bodily conduct
  • Analyzes the understanding as a bodily coupling, not an inference
  • Contrasts this with an inference-based or analogy-based account
  • Describes a limit on access to the other's experience

Nothing is uploaded. Write in your own notebook or document and keep it.

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Knowledge Check 10 min

Intercorporeality

This ungraded knowledge check assesses your understanding of Merleau-Ponty's account of other people. You'll be asked about cultural objects, the argument from analogy, the infant example, intercorporeality, and the limits of access to others.

Note: Use this to test yourself, review the feedback on any questions you miss, and retry until you feel confident before moving forward.

5 questions · ungraded · retry as often as you like

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