La parole operante comme specification de l’intentionnalite motrice chez Merleau-Ponty

"Operative Speech as a Specification of Motor Intentionality in Merleau-Ponty. This paper outlines Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of higher-order cognition as a fundamentally embodied process that is enacted by motor subject situated in natural and cultural environment. More specifically, I exemplify Merleau-Ponty’s interdisciplinary approach to cognition on his interpretations of motor intentionality, operative speech, and mathematical reasoning, which are based on neuropathology, linguistics, and gestalt psychology, respectively. In this analysis, I aim to show that the body is involved in cognition as an operator of the phenomenal structuration of the environment even at the level of linguistic, rational, and abstract experience. Keywords: Merleau-Ponty; phenomenology; embodied cognition; higher-order cognition; motor intentionality; philosophy of language; mathematical reasoning. "