Editing Maurice Merleau-Ponty (section)

===Anticognitivist cognitive science===
Merleau-Ponty's critical position with respect to science was stated in his Preface to the ''Phenomenology'': he described scientific points of view as "always both naive and at the same time dishonest". Despite, or perhaps because of, this view, his work influenced and anticipated the strands of modern psychology known as [[post-cognitivism]]. [[Hubert Dreyfus]] has been instrumental in emphasising the relevance of Merleau-Ponty's work to current post-cognitive research, and its criticism of the traditional view of cognitive science.

Dreyfus's seminal critique of cognitivism (or the computational account of the mind), ''What Computers Can't Do'', consciously replays Merleau-Ponty's critique of intellectualist psychology to argue for the irreducibility of corporeal know-how to discrete, syntactic processes. Through the influence of Dreyfus's critique and neurophysiological alternative, Merleau-Ponty became associated with neurophysiological, connectionist accounts of cognition.

With the publication in 1991 of ''The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience'', by [[Francisco Varela]], [[Evan Thompson]], and [[Eleanor Rosch]], this association was extended, if only partially, to another strand of "anti-cognitivist" or post-representationalist cognitive science: embodied or [[enactivism|enactive]] cognitive science, and later in the decade, to [[neurophenomenology]]. In addition, Merleau-Ponty's work has also influenced researchers trying to integrate neuroscience with the principles of [[chaos theory]].<ref>{{cite journal|last=Skada|first=Christine|author2=Walter Freeman|title=Chaos and the New Science of the Brain|journal=Concepts in Neuroscience|date=March 1990|volume=1|pages=275–285}}</ref>

It was through this relationship with Merleau-Ponty's work that cognitive science's affair with phenomenology was born, which is represented by a growing number of works, including
* [[Ron McClamrock]], ''Existential Cognition: Computational Minds in the World'' (1995)
* [[Andy Clark]], ''Being There'' (1997)
* [[:fr:Jean_Petitot_(philosophe)|Jean Petitot]] et al. (eds.), ''Naturalizing Phenomenology'' (1999)
* [[Alva Noë]], ''Action in Perception'' (2004)
* [[Shaun Gallagher]], ''How the Body Shapes the Mind'' (2005)
* Franck Grammont, Dorothée Legrand, and [[Pierre Livet]] (eds.), ''Naturalizing Intention in Action'' (2010)
* The journal ''[[Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences]]''