Phenomenology and experimental psychology have been largely interested in the same thing when it comes to attention. By building on the work of Aron Gurwitsch, especially his ideas of attention and restructuration, this paper attempts to articulate common ground in psychology and phenomenology of attention through discussion of a new way to think about multistability in some phenomena. What psychology views as an attentionality-intentionality phenomenon, phenomenology views as an intentionality-attentionality phenomenon. The proposal is that an awareness of this restructuring of (...) attentionality and intentionality can benefit both approaches to attention. After reviewing Husserl’s position on attentionality and intentionality, this paper examines multistable phenomena, redefines the attentional transformation called restructuring, discusses disciplinary perspectives on attention and gives an example using common ground. (shrink)

This paper presents an account of empathy as the form of experience directed at embodied unities of expressive movement. After outlining the key differences between simulation theory and the phenomenological approach to empathy, the paper argues that while the phenomenological approach is closer to respecting a necessary constitutional asymmetry between first-personal and second-personal senses of embodiment, it still presupposes a general concept of embodiment that ends up being problematic. A different account is proposed that is neutral on the explanatory role (...) of the first-person sense of embodiment, which leads to an emphasis on the transformative nature of empathy and a broadening of the scope of possible targets of empathic awareness. (shrink)

: This paper aims to situate the roles of attention and habit in contemporary approaches to embodied cognition with particular regard to the conceptualisation of affordances. While Chemero has argued that affordances have a relational character that rules out dispositions, Rietveld and Kiverstein have suggested that engaging with affordances amounts to exercising skills. By critically reconsidering the distinction between dispositions and abilities proposed by Chemero, as well as the standard theory of habit that underpins accounts of skilful coping, I propose (...) to disambiguate habit from skill and to reassess the phenomenology of dispositions. Dispositions are motivational factors that depend on two elements: sensitivity to context clues, which is regulated by habit and attention, and the positionality of the subject, which is inseparable from context-awareness. Drawing on Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s insights, I argue that both and can accommodate a dispositional view of affordances. Keywords: Habit; Attention; Affordances; Dispositions; Phenomenology; Embodied Cognition Situare attenzione e abitudine nel panorama delle affordance Riassunto: L’articolo mira a situare i ruoli svolti dall’attenzione e dall’abitudine negli approcci contemporanei all’ embodied cognition, con particolare attenzione alla concettualizzazione delle affordance. Se, un da un lato, Chemero ha sostenuto che l’ affordance ha un carattere relazionale, che esclude le disposizioni, Rietveld e Kiverstein, dall’altro lato, mantengono che il coinvolgimento nell’ affordance corrisponde all’esercizio di abilità pratiche. Nel riconsiderare criticamente la distinzione fra disposizioni e abilità avanzata da Chemero, così come la concezione standard dell’abitudine che è alla base delle teorie di skilful coping, propongo di disambiguare l’abitudine dalle abilità e di rivalutare la fenomenologia delle disposizioni. Queste ultime sono elementi motivazionali che dipendono da due fattori: sensibilità verso il contesto, che è governata dall’abitudine e dall’attenzione, e la posizionalità del soggetto, la quale è inseparabile dalla consapevolezza del contesto. Basandosi su Husserl e Merleau-Ponty, l’articolo difende l’ipotesi che sia che possono soddisfare una concezione disposizionale dell’ affordance. Parole chiave: Abitudine; Attenzione; Disposizioni; Fenomenologia; Cognizione incarnata. (shrink)

Attention has a role in much of perception, thought, and action. On the erotetic theory, the functional role of attention is a matter of the relationship between questions and what counts as answers to those questions. Questions encode the completion conditions of tasks for cognitive control purposes, and degrees of attention are degrees of sensitivity to the occurrence of answers. Questions and answers are representational contents given precise characterizations using tools from formal semantics, though attention does not depend on language. (...) The erotetic theory proposes an integrated account of attention in cognitive control and of attentional focus in perception. The functional role of attentional focus on objects, properties, and locations has to do with picking out something that corresponds to what a task is ‘about’. The erotetic theory of attention opens new avenues in theorizing about the relationship between attention, representational content, phenomenal character, and practical reason. A novel representationalist account of salience is proposed. The theory also provides an account of distraction that suggests when distraction is a defect in practical reasoning. (shrink)

Ever since the 1960s, media and communication studies have abounded in heated debates concerning the psychological and social effects of fictional media violence. Massive empirical research has first tried to tie film violence to cultivating either fear or aggressive tendencies among its viewership, while later research has focused on other media as well (television, video games). The present paper does not aim to settle the factual question of whether or not medial experiences indeed engender real emotional dispositions. Instead, it brings (...) into play the resources of genetic phenomenology in order to ask how the formation of such dispositions would be generally possible. Thus, it aims to further the discussion by overtly employing the framework of Husserl’s later genetic phenomenology to the field of emotional experience. By posing questions with regard to how fictional emotional experiences contribute to the formation of apperceptions and to the specificities of emotional sedimentation, it also points out some shortcomings in Husserl’s account by drawing from Freud’s dynamic theory of drives and emotions. (shrink)

In a late notation from 1932, Husserl emphasizes the fact that a broad concept of “apperception” should also include, alongside his usual examples, the apprehension of objects as bearers of an individual or inter-subjective past, specifically “indicated” with them; thus, he distinguishes between apperceptions “appresenting” a simultaneous content (co-presentations), anticipatory apperceptions pointing to future incidents, and retrospective apperceptions referring to “ad-memorized” ( hinzuerinnert , ad - memoriert ) features and events. The latter sort of apperceptions are involved not only in (...) our apprehension of historical traces and relics, but also in that of causal relations, familiar objects, and cultural objects in general. Following several later notations of Husserl concerning the topic of “apperceptions,” this paper outlines the specific intentional structure of retrospective or evocative apperceptions, analyzing their various possible forms. (shrink)

Adorno’s intensive criticism of phenomenology is well known, his entire early period during the 1920s and 1930s being marked by various polemical engagements with Husserl. This engagement finds its peak during his work at his second dissertation project in Oxford, a dissertation that was supposed to systematicaly expose the antinomies of phenomenological thinking while particularly focusing on Husserl’s concept of “eidetic intuition” or “intuition of essences”. The present paper will take this criticism as its starting point in focusing on two (...) highly specific aspects of Adorno’s interpretation: the opposition between eidetic intuition and the traditional theories of abstraction and its relationship to genetic phenomenology. In light of this criticism I subsequently show: 1. that, in his later work, Adorno’s understanding of eidetic intuition undergoes a significant revaluation; 2. that he reappropriates key elements of the eidetic method in his own procedure of physiognomic analysis, and 3. that his account of physiognomics is relevant for addressing the aforementioned incongruities of phenomenological eidetics itself. (shrink)