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Philosophy Professor JC Berendzen Wins Marquette Fellowship

JC Berendzen has won a Marquette Fellowship for his project in which he will argue that contrary to what is commonly held by scholars, the early 20th Century French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty does not reject the concept of mental representation.  Representations are putative inner mental entities that convey information about elements of the external world.  Because representation is a core concept in the contemporary study of the mind, Merleau-Ponty’s supposed anti-representationalism is taken to be a fringe view, and leads to his overall work being underappreciated.  Berendzen's project work will set the scholarship straight on this score, and pave the way for a larger work on Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of mind.