‘Phenomenology’ is Blue: The Synaesthetic Dynamics of Being-in-the-World

Synaesthesia, where sensory or cognitive stimuli trigger additional sensations, is difficult to explain and challenges embodied accounts of cognition. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty's claim that "synaesthetic perception is the rule," this paper argues that synaesthesia and embodied sense-making illuminate each other because synaesthesia's strangeness reveals the complexity of normal sense-making. Unlike Heidegger's broken hammer, synaesthesia is not a failure of practical engagement but, like Cézanne's art, discloses and amplifies key dynamics of Being-in-the-world. Examining synaesthetic dynamics—especially the 'difference in union' of embodied sense-making—in motivation, temporality, and intersubjectivity enriches understanding of both general Being-in-the-world and the phenomenon called synaesthesia.

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Abstract

Synaesthesia, in which particular perceptual or cognitive stimuli trigger anomalous secondary sensations, has proven to be remarkably difficult to explain. The way it complicates linkages between perception and action is often taken to present a particularly interesting challenge for embodied accounts of cognition. Taking up Merleau-Ponty’s startling claim that “synaesthetic perception is the rule,” (2005 [1945]: 266), this paper will suggest that synaesthesia and the dynamics of embodied sense-making can shed light on each other precisely because the former’s puzzling strangeness reminds us just how complex the latter can be. Synaesthesia is the kind of illuminating disruption that is well-known within the phenomenological tradition. Unlike Heidegger’s broken hammer, however, it is not a case of practical engagement gone awry; instead, it functions more like the work of Cézanne as analysed in Merleau-Ponty’s essays, capable of disclosing, enacting, and amplifying key dynamics of our Being-in-the-world. Examining how these synaesthetic dynamics – especially the ‘difference in union’ of embodied sense-making, a synthesis that preserves distinctions – operate in the structures of motivation, temporality, and intersubjectivity can help enrich our understanding of, both, our Being-in-the-world in general and the phenomenon that we ordinarily call ‘synaesthesia’.