Searle, Merleau-Ponty, Rizzolatti – three perspectives on Intentionality and action in sport

Abstract

Actions in sport are intentional in character. They are directed at and are about something. This understanding of intentional action is common in continental as well as analytic philosophy. In sport philosophy, intentionality has received relatively little attention, but has more recently come on the agenda. In addition to what we can call ‘action intentionality,’ studied by philosophers like Searle, the phenomenological approach forwarded by Merleau-Ponty has opened up for a concept of ‘motor intentionality,’ which means a basic bodily attention and relatedness to the surrounding world. This conception is very relevant for the study of bodily actions as we find them in sports. However, there may be even deeper layers. The identification of mirror neurons in the brain has opened up for a type of almost ‘muscular intentionality’ whereby a simple bodily movement like grasping a cup to drink seems to be intentionally controlled and orchestrated. My goal in this paper is to discuss the relation between different levels of intentionality, such as a) ‘action intentionality’ operating at a conscious cognitive level, as for instance, when a player shoots a goal in football, b) the ‘motor intentionality’ directing the bodily movements when kicking the ball, and c) the muscular ‘mirror neuron intentionality’ of the goal keeper which is in operation when the keeper is seeing how the kicker’s foot hits the ball. How are these different layers of intentionality related and how can they give a more nuanced and integrated picture of the body–mind in action in sports?

Key words:

• Sport
• action
• intentionality
• motor intentionality
• mirror neurons

Notes

1. Brentano writes: ‘There is no hearing unless something is heard, no believing unless something is believed; there is no hoping unless something is hoped for … and so on, for all other psychological phenomena.’ Brentano RW 14 cited from Moran (2000, 48).

2. In the section about Searle, I use the distinction between Intentionality and intentionality to a certain extent. This is not done in the sections about motor and neuronal intentionality.

3. Enactivism is a theory developed by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch (1991) in their book The Embodied Mind. The key ideas are: (1) ‘Living beings are autonomous agents that actively generate and maintain themselves ….,’ (2) ‘the nervous system is an autonomous dynamic system …’, (3) ‘cognition is the exercise of skillful know-how in situated and embodied action …’, (4) ‘a cognitive being’s world is not a prespecified, external realm, represented internally by the brain, but a relational domain …’, (5) ‘experience is not an epiphenomenal side issue, but central to any understanding of the mind …’ (Thompson 2007, 13). Especially, the fourth idea brings enctivism close to Heidegger’s and the phenomenological tradition’s views.

4. Sweden is the Big Brother and it is especially important for Norway to beat Sweden. As the slogan goes ‘The most important thing is not to win but to beat the Swedes.’ The humor and jokes are abundant on both sides, mostly good-natured. Norwegians say: We must admit that the Swedes have something we don’t have: They have good neighbors!

5. Suits (1973) distinguishes between the prelusory act of crossing a line and the lusory act of crossing the line as part of a competitive and rule-governed race. While Dreyfus concentrates on how bodily acts are performed according to attractions and invitations by the environing world Searle is focused on bodily acts as parts of artificial rule-governed sporting contests.

6. Birch (2016) argues that mirror neurons combined with motor knowledge make us able to understand a motor action at an incredible early stage: ‘Without mirror neurons, the tennis ball served by Djokovic would probably be way behind you (or Federer) before your arm began to move. Thanks to the mirror neuron system, already in the throw up we begin to understand where the ball is coming and start a countermove’ (Birch 2016, 13). But the problem is when something unforeseen suddenly happens, what then?

7. Even if there is a connection between mirror neurons, vocabularies of acts and intentional actions we do not know the exact nature of this connection. Rather than being like a simple chain of connections, it may be a chain of chains, like a rhizome.