Merleau-Ponty analyzes the phantom limb experience using a framework

that consists of physiological and psychological forces. Physiological facts, which

he defines as those in space, and psychological facts cannot account for the

phenomenon of phantom limbs on their own, instead the two must be fused

together and work with other theories in order to formulate the true experience

of the phantom limb.

When diving into the exploration of the phantom limb experience,

Merleau-Ponty discovers one of the most vital parts of non-personal, or pre-

personal dimensions, of our existence. He starts his paper of by discussing how

after an amputation, the patient will continue to experience the missing limb as if

it were still a part of …show more content…
In order to explain this, Merleau-Ponty begins with the physiological,

mechanistic approach, but soon reveals its shortcomings. He believes that the

phenomenon of phantom limb can be understood in a better light if we are able

to understand a similar phenomenon, that of anosognosia.

Anosognosia is the phenomenon that arises when a patient retains a limb,

but refuses to acknowledge its presence. However, this phenomenon cannot be

understood simply as a grouping of the psychic and the physical forces; instead,

it must be understood in terms of the individual, as the living body rising

towards the world with its numerous schemes in mind as it does so. Merleau-

Ponty believes that this phenomenon must be understood as the association

between the subjective person and the objective world.

Ash Oberoi

Phenomenology

Paper 2

He goes on to further state that the phantom limb is not the simple effect

of an objective causality, nor is it a cogitation. He believes that “it can only be a

mixture of the two if we discovered the means of joining the one with the other

(the “psychical” and the “physiological”, the “for-itself” and the “in-itself”)