Can Embodied Cognition Deny Representation and Still Account for Intentionality?

With its historical roots in the phenomenological perspective of philosophers such as Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, embodied cognition has been able to address classically problematic issues in cognitive science. In this paper I examine the model of visual consciousness put forth by Alva Noë and J. Kevin O’Regan, and the model of learning and skill acquisition put forth by Hubert Dreyfus. In each case the authors attempt to explain aspects of cognition and consciousness without recourse to mental representations. These accounts, and others, have been embraced by many philosophers of mind. I charge that while they provide a better explanation of aspects of cognition, they fail to address fundamental questions to do with the intentionality of our mental states towards the world. In rejecting representation, they keep pushing the fundamental question of intentionality further and further back. Can Embodied Cognition Deny Representation and Still Account for Intentionality? Introduction With its historical roots in the phenomenological perspective of philosophers such as Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, embodied cognition has recently been able to address classically problematic issues in cognitive science to do with perception, learning and skill acquisition. Embodied cognition has been so successful that rather than defend the general principles, most writings in the field jump right into the issues, focusing instead on in what ways, and to what degree, cognition is embodied (Morris 232). While many of these empirical findings have been embraced by philosophers of mind, to date, work in embodied cognition has yet to show how these embodied explanations of perception and learning can account for consciousness and subjective experience. I argue that a complete rejection of representationalism leaves us unable to explain the aboutness of our mental processes towards the world. An acknowledgment of certain phenomenological considerations, by those in embodied cognition, sheds light on these problematic aspects of the current state of embodied