In this article, I argue that consciousness is a unique way of processing information, in that: it produces information, rather than purely transmitting it; the information it produces is meaningful for us; the meaning it has is always individuated. This uniqueness allows us to process information on the basis of our personal needs and ever-changing interactions with the environment, and consequently to act autonomously. Three main basic cognitive processes contribute to realize this unique way of information processing: the self, attention (...) and working memory. The self, which is primarily expressed via the central and peripheral nervous systems, maps our body, the environment, and our relations with the environment. It is the primary means by which the complexity inherent to our composite structure is reduced into the “single voice” of a unique individual. It provides a reference system that (albeit evolving) is sufficiently stable to define the variations that will be used as the raw material for the construction of conscious information. Attention allows for the selection of those variations in the state of the self that are most relevant in the given situation. Attention originates and is deployed from a single locus inside our body, which represents the center of the self, around which all our conscious experiences are organized. Whatever is focused by attention appears in our consciousness as possessing a spatial quality defined by this center and the direction toward which attention is focused. In addition, attention determines two other features of conscious experience: periodicity and phenomenal quality. Self and attention are necessary but not sufficient for conscious information to be produced. Complex forms of conscious experiences, such as the various modes of givenness of conscious experience and the stream of consciousness, need a working memory mechanism to assemble the basic pieces of information selected by attention. (shrink)

Straipsnis nagrinėja, kaip Shaunas Gallagheris sprendžia fenomenologijos ir natūralizmo suderinamumo klausimą. Pirmoje dalyje aptariamas Gallagherio tyrimų atspirties taškas: fenomenologinės kūno schemos sampratos pritaikymas interpretuojant trečiojo asmens prieiga gautus duomenis. Antroje dalyje aptariamas bendras Gallagherio fenomenologijos natūralizavimo projektas: argumentai už tai, kad į natūralistinę programą būtų įtrauktos ne paskiros fenomenologų įžvalgos, bet metodiškas pirmojo asmens prieigos taikymas. Trečioje dalyje aptariami argumentai prieš fenomenologijos natūralizavimą. Teigiama, kad pagrindinė problema fenomenologiją ir natūralizmą derinančiam filosofui – mąstymo fenomenologijos natūralizavimas. Galiausiai bandoma apibrėžti fenomenologijos natūralizavimo (...) projekto perspektyvas. (shrink)

In recent years, the phenomenological approach to empathy becomes increasingly influential in explaining social perception of other people. Yet, it leaves untouched a related and pivotal question concerning the unique and irreducible intentionality of empathy that constitutes the peculiarity of social perception. In this article, I focus on this problem by drawing upon Husserl’s theory of image-consciousness, and I suggest that empathy is characterized by a “seeing-in” structure. I develop two theses so as to further explicate the seeing-in structure in (...) question: first, empathy as a phenomenologically sui generis act is an intentional fusion of both presentation and re-presentation; and second, empathic intentionality is in essence twofold in that it is at once directed at both the other’s sensuously given body and the other’s non-sensuously given mentality. In this light, I argue that empathy is better conceived as a quasi-perceptual act that is fundamentally different from external perception simpliciter and other complex acts such as signitive, recollective and imaginative intention. (shrink)

In the last forty years, significant developments in neuroscience, psychology, and robotic technology have been cause for major trend changes in the philosophy of mind. One such shift has been the reallocation of focus from entirely brain-centered theories of mind to more embodied, embedded, and even extended answers to the questions, what are cognitive processes and where do we find such phenomena? Given that hypotheses such as Clark and Chalmers‘ (1998) Extended Mind or Hutto‘s (2006) Radical Enactivism, systematically undermine the (...) organism-bound, internal, and static pictures of minds and allow instead for the distribution of cognitive processes among brains, bodies, and worlds, a worry that arises is that the very subject of cognitive science, the ‗cognizer‘ will be hopelessly opaque, its mind leaking out into the world all over the place, thereby making it impossible to rein in and properly study. A seemingly unrelated and yet parallel trend has also taken place in feminist theorizing about the body over the last forty years. Whereas feminism of the 1970s and early 1980s tended to view ‗the body‘ as the site and matter of biological sex, while gender was a more fluid and socially constituted mode of existence, more recent feminist theory has questioned the givenness of bodies themselves. In other words, rather than seeing gender categories as manifestations of the already given sexed body, thinkers such as Butler (2000) and Lorber (1992) argue that the very notion of a body is often a product of scientific inquiry, which is itself a product of the power structures aiming to maintain a rigid binary between feminine and masculine gender roles. If the world at large plays such a constitutive role in determining who we are, then this implies that the tools we use, the language we speak, and the power relationships in which we are enmeshed are components of what it means to be embodied in any genuine sense. For thinkers like Haraway (1988) the image of the cyborg is most fitting for this new understanding of embodied subjects, as the cyborg is a coupling of machine and human. Gender and even biological sex will always be a technologically hybridized ‗monster‘ consisting of matter, machine, and mind. The overall aim of my project is thus to bring the two concurrent developments in theorizing about embodied subjects into discourse. As the cyborg features largely in recent feminist thought about embodiment, so too has it been a prominent metaphor in philosophy of mind, ever since Clark (2003) claimed that we ought to think of our ‗selves‘ more appropriately as Natural-Born Cyborgs. I therefore focus on this imagery as I go on to make the argument that this distributed account of cognition as well as of sexual identity is more fruitful for making progress in understanding ‗the human‘ more generally. Likewise, I argue that bringing the discussion of sex and gender into the arena of an otherwise asexual philosophy of mind, will shed light on some important facets of embodiment that have been overlooked but that ought to be addressed if we are to have an adequate account of ‗the proper subject of cognitive science.‘ My chapters include 1) a survey of the discourse between science and philosophy of mind leading to these embodied and extended approaches, 2) a first attempt at defending the extended mind thesis, 3) a discussion of how even the supposed resolution to the objections raised against extended cognition fails to properly take into account just how problematic subjectivity is, regardless of its being defined entirely organismic or not, as organisms themselves are highly malleable and socially constituted, 4) an explanation concerning how the same problematization of embodied subjectivity is ongoing in feminist theory, especially considering the phenomenology of transgendered embodiment, intersex, and technologically mediated bodies, 5) further elaboration on technologically enhanced bodies, exposing what I see as a continuum between bodies modified by ‗hard‘ technologies, such as implants, prostheses or surgeries, and those modified by ‗soft‘ technologies, such as gender norms, the social gaze, and technologically mediated metacognition, and last, 6) an argument for the image of the cyborg to replace ‗organism‘ in cognitive science, along with the corollary argument that cyborgs ought to represent not just embodied minds, but should also be the metaphor in attempting to understand ‗embodiment‘ more generally, which must, at its roots, be underpinned by gender and sexual identity. I argue that the imagery is fitting for the proper study of cognitive subjects as well as sexed and gendered bodies, but moreover, that just as the cyborg suggests a blending and hybridizing of seemingly unrelated elements, so too should the two areas of inquiry, philosophy of mind and feminist theory, pay heed to one another‘s use of this imagery and themselves begin to be more integrative in their approaches. (shrink)

This paper discusses possible correspondences between neuroscientific findings and phenomenologically informed methodologies in the investigation of kinesthetic empathy in watching dance. Interest in phenomenology has recently increased in cognitive science (Gallagher and Zahavi 2008 ) and dance scholars have recently contributed important new insights into the use of phenomenology in dance studies (e.g. Legrand and Ravn (Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 8(3):389–408, 2009 ); Parviainen (Dance Research Journal 34(1):11–26, 2002 ); Rothfield (Topoi 24:43–53, 2005 )). In vision research, coherent neural (...) mechanisms for perceptual phenomena were uncovered, thus supporting correlation of phenomenology and neurophysiology Spillmann (Vision Research 49(12):1507–1521, 2009 ). Correspondingly, correlating subjects’ neurophysiological data with qualitative responses has been proposed as a means to research the human brain in the study of consciousness (Gallagher and Zahavi 2008 ), with similar issues in clinical psychology Mishara (Current Opinion in Psychiatry 20(6):559–569, 2007 ) and biology Kosslyn et al. (American Psychologist 57:341–351, 2002 ). Yet the relationship between neuroscience and qualitative research informed by phenomenology remains problematic. How qualitative research normally handles subjective experiences is difficult to reconcile with standard statistical analysis of objective data. Recent technological developments in cognitive neuroscience have inspired a number of researchers to use more naturalistic stimuli, outside the laboratory environment, such as dance, thereby perhaps helping to open up the cognitive sciences to more phenomenologically informed approaches. A question central to our research, addressed here, is how the phenomenal experiences of a dance audience member, as accessed by qualitative research methods, can be related to underlying neurophysiological events. We outline below some methodological challenges encountered in relating audiences’ first-person accounts of watching live dance performance to neurophysiological evidence of their experiences. (shrink)

Many philosophers and cognitive scientists claim that our everyday or "folk" understanding of mental states constitutes a theory of mind. That theory is widely called "folk psychology" (sometimes "commonsense" psychology). The terms in which folk psychology is couched are the familiar ones of "belief" and "desire", "hunger", "pain" and so forth. According to many theorists, folk psychology plays a central role in our capacity to predict and explain the behavior of ourselves and others. However, the nature and status of folk (...) psychology remains controversial. (shrink)

Why would decision makers adopt heuristics, priors, or in short “habits” that prevent them from optimally using pertinent information—even when such information is freely-available? One answer, Herbert Simon’s “procedural rationality” regards the question invalid: DMs do not, and in fact cannot, process information in an optimal fashion. For Simon, habits are the primitives, where humans are ready to replace them only when they no longer sustain a pregiven “satisficing” goal. An alternative answer, Daniel Kahneman’s “mental economy” regards the question valid: (...) DMs make decisions based on optimization. Kahneman understands optimization not differently from the standard economist’s “bounded rationality.” This might surprise some researchers given that the early Kahneman, along with Tversky, have uncovered biases that appear to suggest that choices depart greatly from rational choices. However, once we consider cognitive cost as part of the constraints, such biases turn out to be occasional failures of habits that are otherwise optimal on average. They are optimal as they save us the cognitive cost of case-by-case deliberation. While Kahneman’s bounded rationality situates him in the neoclassical economics camp, Simon’s procedural rationality echoes Bourdieu’s “habitus” camp. To abridge the fault line of the two camps, this paper proposes a “two problem areas hypothesis.” Along the neoclassical camp, habits satisfy wellbeing, what this paper calls “substantive satisfaction.” Along the Bourdieu camp, habits satisfy belonging, love, and bonding with one’s environment, what this paper calls “transcendental satisfaction.”. (shrink)

The contact hypothesis has dominated work on prejudice reduction and is often described as one of the most successful theories within social psychology. The hypothesis has nevertheless been criticized for not being applicable in real life situations due to unobtainable conditions for direct contact. Several indirect contact suggestions have been developed to solve this “application challenge.” Here, we suggest a hybrid strategy of both direct and indirect contact. Based on the second-person method developed in social psychology and cognition, we suggest (...) working with an engagement strategy as a hybrid hypothesis. We expand on this suggestion through an engagement-based intervention, where we implement the strategy in a theater performance and investigate the effects on prejudicial attitudes toward people with physical disabilities. Based on the results we reformulate our initial engagement strategy into the Enact hypothesis. To deal with the application challenge, this hybrid hypothesis posits two necessary conditions for prejudice reduction. Interventions should: work with engagement to reduce prejudice, and focus on the second-order level of attitudes formation. Here the aim of the prejudice reduction is not attitude correction, but instead the nuancing of attitudes. (shrink)

In an earlier paper, I set out to apply to animal mimicry the definition of the sign, and, more specifically, of the iconic sign, which I originally elaborated in the study of pictures, and which was then extended by myself and others to language, gesture, and music. The present contribution, however, while summarizing some of the results of those earlier studies, is dedicated to the demonstration that animal mimicry, as well as phenomena of the human Lifeworld comparable to it, are (...) in a sense the opposite of signs. It has often been observed, not only within speech act philosophy, but also by the semiotician Luis Prieto, that as sign can only function as such once it is recognized to be a sign. Animal mimicry, camouflage, and the like, in contrast, only work as such, to the extent that they are not perceived as signs. Unlike what speech act philosophy claims, nevertheless, the “difference which makes a difference” is not the recognition of a purpose attributed to the subject producing the sign. A footprint, for example, has to be recognized as a sign in order to function as such. Nevertheless, to the extent that a purpose is attributed to the subject setting the sign, it may be considered a sign, but one that hides its nature, a fake footprint. Mimicry and camouflage, however, are similar to such “natural meanings” as footprints in entertaining a different relation to the agent initiating the act and the agent perceiving it. Classical studies of mimicry distinguish its varieties according to what is rather vaguely called function. In this paper, we will investigate whether these classifications can be recuperated from a semiotic point of view, or whether a semiotically valid classification should start from scratch. (shrink)

In this paper I shall attempt to give an enactive account of the dynamic qualities of music. Starting from Krueger’s account of musical experience, I will highlight how music’s qualities of movement are constituted in the horizon of an embodied consciousness – that is, an embodied subject who can virtually or actually bodily entrain with music and then follow the musical profile. I will argue that the common rythmòs-structure of both music and movement makes such an enactive constitution possible. In (...) this sense, the perception of music’s rythmòs – that is, the perception of its teleological tendency – will turn out to be the condition of possibility for the enaction of music dynamic qualities. But if so, music’s quality of being teleologically-structured will remain unexplained by the discussed enactive account and will need another description of how it is constituted in the horizon of consciousness. (shrink)

Various kinds of observations show that the ability of human beings to both consciously relive past events – episodic memory – and conceive future events, entails an active process of construction. This construction process also underpins many other important aspects of conscious human life, such as perceptions, language and conscious thinking. This article provides an explanation of what makes the constructive process possible and how it works. The process mainly relies on attentional activity, which has a discrete and periodic nature, (...) and working memory, which allows for the combination of discrete attentional operations. An explanation is also provided of how past and future events are constructed. (shrink)

In this article I argue that Zahavi's Sartre-inspired combination of the experiential and narrative self entails an unnecessary duplication of selves. Sartre himself accused Husserl of the same mistake in The Transcendence of the Ego. He claims that Husserl's combination of the transcendental I and the Me is unnecessary, and that we can do without the first. I try to show that Sartre's critique of Husserl also applies to Zahavi. Sartre's critique is based on his idea of impersonal consciousness, which (...) I explain by comparing it to Armstrong's example of the long-distance truck-driver. Furthermore, I explicate how the alternative notion of self that Sartre proposes in the same work avoids unnecessary duplications of selves, and thereby evades further problems concerning how the two selves relate to one another. (shrink)

One moon shows in every pool; in every pool, the one moon. (Zen Saying)1Thirty spokes converge on a hub/but it’s the emptiness/that makes the wheel work/pots are fashioned from clay/but it’s the ho...

The standard reply to the critique that narrative theories of the self are either chauvinistic or trivial is to “go implicit”. Implicit narratives, it is argued, are necessary for diachronically structured self-experience, but do not require that such narratives should be wholly articulable life stories. In this paper I argue that the standard approach, which puts forward a phenomenological conception of implicit narratives, is ultimately unable to get out of the clutches of the dilemma. In its place, I offer an (...) alternative approach that does avoid the dilemma, by construing implicit narrativity as an enabling condition for experiences, rather than as something that is itself present in experience. According to this constitutive account, the coherence and intelligibility of our experiences is due to the fact that they are anchored in a larger, diachronic context. This context, I argue, takes a fundamentally embodied and narrative dimension. (shrink)

The present paper sets out to counter the claim put forward by British philosopher of mind, Robert Kirk, according to which Sartre's notion of consciousness as for-itself, while offering some valuable insights regarding human existence, nonetheless fails to engage with the problem of how to establish the existence of such conscious beings on philosophical grounds. To the extent that it succeeds in meeting the challenge raised by Kirk's comment, the reading of Being and Nothingness offered here could be considered as (...) fulfilling a twofold aim. Firstly, it offers an answer to the problem of other minds which is construed on the basis of Sartre's ontological work, thus contributing to a still open debate in the scholarly literature devoted to Sartre's thought. Secondly, it illustrates one way in which a specific problem which is amply discussed among contemporary philosophers of mind could be tackled from within a conceptual framework rooted in the continental tradition of philosophy. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s reflection on the constitution of human subjectivity is an essential moment of his philosophy. As historical and academic conditions change, distinct interpretations of this reflection often contradict each other. This review essay aims to offer an insight into this situation. The anthology edited by Dries, which focuses on the concepts of “consciousness” and the “embodied mind,” presents innovative readings from the perspective of the philosophy of mind. However, this collection is marred by an insufficient comparison with the embodiment debate. (...) Second, Benne and Müller’s volume shows how the concepts of “person” and “personality” are used by Nietzsche to describe the complexity of human subjectivity after the dissolution of the metaphysical subject. Third, Papparo’s monograph denotes with clarity the positive and productive aspects of the concept of soul in Nietzsche, but it is unsatisfactory from a scientific point of view. Finally, Scandella’s book succeeds on the contrary in highlighting some significant themes that have been overlooked in previous contributions. From a theoretical point of view, this review points out some shortcomings of the naturalistic interpretations of Nietzsche, which seem inadequate not only to grasp the complexity of his conception of human subjectivity, but also to show its actuality. (shrink)

The main aim of this article is to offer a systematic reconstruction of Husserl’s theory of minimal mind and his ideas pertaining to the lowest level of consciousness in living beings. In this context, the term ‘minimal mind’ refers to the mental sphere and capacities of the simplest conceivable subject. This topic is of significant contemporary interest for philosophy of mind and empirical research into the origins of consciousness. I contend that Husserl’s reflections on minimal mind offer a fruitful contribution (...) to this ongoing debate. For Husserl, the embodied character of subjectivity, or consciousness, is essential for understanding minimal mind. In his view, there is an a priori necessary constitutive connection between the subjective and objective aspects of the body, between _Leib_ and _Körper_, and this connection is especially important for exploring minimal mind from a phenomenological perspective. Thematically, the essay has three main parts. In Sect. 2, I present an overview of how minimal mind is framed in contemporary philosophy of mind and empirical research. I then analyse Husserl’s conception of embodiment with regard to the problem of minimal mind in Sect. 3. Finally, I present a more detailed investigation into Husserl’s account of minimal mind, highlighting features from his descriptions of animal mind and consciousness in early infancy (Sects. 4 and 5 ). (shrink)

In this paper, I will focus on the process of constitution of oneself as an embodied being and, more precisely, on the specific way in which one can experience oneself not just as an embodied self, but rather as the actual embodied person he/she is. I will start by describing the most basic way in which our embodied self is constituted, that is as a felt-feeling body and as the zero-point of orientation of all our sensations and perceptions. Then, I (...) will show how our body can be constituted for us also as an instrument for action, leading to the experience of what Husserl called “I-can”. I will argue that, even though in this latter form of body awareness we can experience some traits of our own personality, a further dimension of our embodied life – that is, the expressive one – allows us to have a more defined experience of the specific embodied persons we are. I will describe what “person” specifically means in my framework and, on this basis, I will show how the expressive dimension of our body can account for my experience of myself not just as an embodied self, but as the embodied person I am. (shrink)

It is common to find depictions of behaviorist approaches to the mind as approaches according to which mental events are “dispositions for behavior.” Moreover, it is sometimes said that for these approaches the dispositions are for publicly observable behaviors, or even “purely physical movements,” thereby excluding from being constitutive of mental events any internal bodily happening, besides any movement not taken as “purely physical.” In this paper I aim to pinpoint problems in such widespread depictions of behaviorism about the mind, (...) by arguing that they turn out to be too restrictive or too broad, as the case may be. In addition, I put forward an alternative, more balanced characterization, which wards off such problems. Based upon this alternative characterization, I attempt to classify some of the embodied mind theories as behavioral, non-behavioral, or borderline cases between behavioral and non-behavioral perspectives. (shrink)

Keskityn siihen miten Leibnizilla yksittäiset mielihyvän tai mielipahan tiedostamattomat havainnot voivat kasautua tai tiivistyä ja muodostaa vähitellen tunteita, joista tulemme tietoisiksi.

The aim of this paper is to discuss in the light of phenomenological philosophy, whether it can be argued that men and women have different lifeworlds and how this may legitimize the segregation of men and women in empirical nursing research. We analyzed peer-reviewed papers from 2003-2012 and scrutinized the arguments used for dividing men and women into separate groups in empirical nursing studies based on phenomenology. We identified 24 studies using gender segregation and posed the following questions: 1. What (...) is the investigated phenomenon as explicated by the authors? 2. What arguments do the authors use when dividing participants into gender specific groups? The analysis showed that a variety of phenomena were investigated that were all related to a specific medical condition. None appeared to be gender-specific, though the authors argued for a sole focus on either women or men. The most common argument for segregating men and women were reference to earlier studies. A few studies had references to methodology and/or philosophy as argument for a segregation of men and women. Arguments for gender segregation in empirical nursing studies based on a phenomenological approach tend to build on the conviction that experiences of health related phenomena are gendered. However, it seems to be difficult to identify conclusive arguments for this division within phenomenological philosophy. Therefore we recommend that segregation should be used with caution. Otherwise other research approaches may be more suitable. (shrink)

E-approaches to the mind stress the embodied, embedded and enactive nature of mental phenomena. In their more radical, non-representational variants these approaches offer innovative and powerful new ways of understanding fundamental modes of intersubjective social interaction: I-approaches. While promising, E and I accounts have natural limits. In particular, they are unable to explain human competence in making sense of reasons for actions in folk-psychological terms. In this paper I outline the core features of the 'Narrative Practice Hypothesis' (NPH), showing how (...) it might take up that burden in a way which complements non-representationalist E and I accounts. I conclude by addressing a new-order eliminativist challenge from Ratcliffe that questions, inter alia, the very idea that there is anything like a well-defined folk-psychological competence that needs explaining, thereby rendering the NPH otiose. Additionally, I respond to Ratcliffe's claim that the relevant structures needed for the development of that competence do not reveal themselves in relevant narratives, rendering the NPH's developmental story impossible. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this study, the learning experiences of four elementary school teachers who were basketball coaches were explored. Specifically, the learning experiences gained through observing professional basketball coaches’ sessions were examined by employing van Manen’s hermeneutic-phenomenological approach, which focuses on the thematic analysis of lived experiences. Previous coaching studies that have focused on the professional development of coaches have revealed that observing elite coaching sessions could be a major source of practical coaching knowledge because coaches could learn from experienced coaches. (...) Quantitative studies of this learning effect have revealed that observers learn new coaching methods from a general perspective. However, this study revealed that teachers give specific meaning and value to observed phenomena from the perspective of personal interest based on their coaching or teaching beliefs. This learning was interpreted from a multifaceted perspective, which was evident from their coaching interests and questions. This study disclosed that teachers reflect on their coaching philosophy, methods and attitude. Furthermore, even if teachers generally tend to highlight their coaching methods, this has a qualitatively complex nature because the meaning and value given to coaching methods varied in each teacher’s reflection. The perspective of problem-solving highlighted how to answer their personal questions based on practical coaching problems by observing a coaching session. Discovering the methodological differences between the observation session and the daily coaching session were highlighted. (shrink)

In this paper, I compare the original version of the enactive view—autopoietic enactivism—with Husserl’s phenomenology, regarding the issue of the relationship between consciousness and nature. I refer to this issue as the “problem of naturalism.” I show how the idea of the co-determination of subject and object of cognition, which is at the heart of autopoietic enactivism, is close to the phenomenological form of correlationism. However, I argue that there is a tension between an epistemological reading of the subject-object correlation (...) that renounces to search for its metaphysical ground, and the enactivist focus on the biological basis of cognition, which seems to imply a view of nature as the metaphysical ground of the conscious mind. A similar problem arises in Husserl’s phenomenology in the contrast between the idea of the fundamental subject-object correlation, the concept of nature as a correlate of transcendental constitution, and the investigation of the corporeal and material grounding of consciousness. I find a way out of this problem by drawing on the distinction between static and genetic phenomenology. I argue that the investigation of the temporality of experience in genetic phenomenology leads us to investigate the metaphysical ground of the subject-object correlation, understood dynamically as co-constitution and co-origination. Then I propose to complement phenomenology and enactivism with a form of neutral monism, which conceives of the co-constitution of subject and object as grounded in a flow of fundamental, pre-phenomenal qualities. (shrink)

In this paper, I make a consideration about the relationship between phenomenology and empirical sciences about conscious experience. Recently, it has been suggested by proponents of 'naturalized phenomenology' that phenomenology and cognitive sciences should exchange with each other. This proposal prompts us to abandon the 'puristic' conception of phenomenology, according to which phenomenology is independent from empirical sciences. I show that, though abandoning purism and exchanging with cognitive sciences is fruitful for phenomenology, proponents of naturalized phenomenology underemphasize an important feature (...) of phenomenology -- its autonomy of a certain kind. (shrink)

Habit and Embodiment in Merleau-PontyIntroductionMerleau-Ponty (French phenomenological philosopher, born in 1908 and deceased in 1961) refers to habit in various passages of his Phenomenology of Perception as a relevant issue in his philosophical and phenomenological position. Through his exploration of this issue he explains both the pre-reflexive character that our original linkage with the world has, as well as the kind of “understanding” that our body develops with regard to the world. These two characteristics of human existence bear a close (...) relation with the vision of an embodied mind sustained by Gallagher and Zahavi in their work The Phenomenological Mind: An Introduction to Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science. Merleau-Ponty uses concepts like those of the lived or own body and of lived space in order to emphasize, from a first-person perspective, the co-penetration that exists between subject and world.Gallagher and Zahavi have regained the experience of phenomenology, especially that of Merleau-Ponty and Sartre, to contribute to the development of the cognitive sciences. Via the phenomenological approach to the reality of habit, a new understanding of the body becomes possible for us, such that it becomes characterized “as subject, as experiencer, as agent”, and at the same time we can understand “the way the body structures our experience” (Gallagher and Zahavi, 2008). Additionally, the idea of a pre-reflexive understanding is conceived of by these authors... (shrink)

Recent debates concerning the abolition of the schizophrenia label in psychiatry have focused upon problems with the scientific status of the concept. In this article, I argue that rather than attacking schizophrenia for its lack of scientific validity, we should focus on the conceptual history of this label. I reconstruct a specific tradition when exploring the conceptual history of schizophrenia. This is the concern with the question of the sense of life itself, conducted through the confrontation with schizophrenia as a (...) form of life that does not live, or as Robert Jay Lifton termed it ‘lifeless life’ (1979: 222—39). I conclude by arguing that the contemporary attempt to deconstruct or abolish the schizophrenia concept involves a fundamental shift in concern. The attempt both to normalize psychotic experiences, and to conceive them purely in terms of cognitive processes that can be mapped onto brain function, results in a fundamental move away from the attempt to understand the experience of madness. (shrink)

In this article, we inquire into Maxine Sheets-Johnstone and Michele Merritt’s descriptions and use of dance improvisation as it relates to “thinking in movement.” We agree with them scholars that improvisational practices present interesting cases for investigating how movement, thinking, and agency intertwine. However, we also find that their descriptions of improvisation overemphasize the dimension of spontaneity as an intuitive “letting happen” of movements. To recalibrate their descriptions of improvisational practices, we couple Ezequiel Di Paolo, Thomas Buhrmann, and Xabier E. (...) Barandiaran’s enactive account of the constitution of agency with case studies of two expert performers of improvisation: a dancer and a musician. Our analyses hereof show that their improvisations unfold as a sophisticated oscillation of agency between specialized forms of mental and bodily control and, indeed, a more spontaneous “letting things happen.” In all, this article’s conclusions frame thinking in movement concerning improvisational practices as contextually embedded, purposively trained, and inherently relational. (shrink)

Using the film the Wizard of Oz, an illustrative comparison is made between the Scarecrow's learning experiences and our own. Like we often do, the Scarecrow reduces his potential learning and thinking abilities to nothing more than the formal operations presumably at work in the brain. Ostensibly lacking this brain, the Scarecrow solves nearly all the problems encountered in the journey to Oz. A neurophenomenological description of the Scarecrow's experiences reveals his prereflective, situated learning, and embodied cognition. These ways of (...) learning are often ignored and devalued in our educational system. Can this same method reveal our own subjugated knowledges? Herein, neurophenomenology is demonstrated as a critical pedagogy that critiques and liberates subjugated knowledge and supports a richer assessment of human learning and thinking. (shrink)

The ‘mineness’ of thoughts has often been accepted as indubitable in philosophy. However, the symptom of thought insertion in schizophrenia seems to be an empirical counterexample to the dictum that every introspected thought is one's own. We present a thorough conceptual analysis of mineness of thought, distinguishing between ownership and authorship . We argue that it is indeed a conceptual truth that introspected thoughts are owned by the introspector. However, there are everyday and pathological cases of thoughts, for which we (...) do not ascribe authorship to ourselves. To explain inserted thoughts, however, we need an additional factor which is constituted by the lack of control over inserted thoughts . We present a review of empirical data on thought control and thought insertion in the light of the conceptual analysis. We conclude with a summary of the most important future direction of research. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe aim of this paper is to bring a phenomenological perspective to bear on a specific problem: how to understand the diminished sense of reality that is often reported by persons who have suffered severe and prolonged interpersonal trauma. For this purpose I turn to resources from two traditions. First, I present a phenomenological account of the intersubjective constitution of objective experience, which is then complemented by a developmental account of how the very small child comes to inhabit a world (...) of shared mind-independent things. On this basis, I aim to show how the sense of reality, as the clear and dependable sense of the difference in experience between inner life and external reality, is an interpersonal developmental achievement that goes hand in hand with the development of the sense of self. I will in particular draw on Husserlian phenomenology and Winnicott’s psychoanalytic perspective on developmental psychology. (shrink)

While there is a great diversity of treatments of other minds and inter-subjectivity within both analytic and continental philosophy, this article specifies some of the core structural differences between these treatments. Although there is no canonical account of the problem of other minds that can be baldly stated and that is exhaustive of both traditions, the problem(s) of other minds can be loosely defined in family resemblances terms. It seems to have: (1) an epistemological dimension (How do we know that (...) others exist? Can we justifiably claim to know that they do?); (2) an ontological dimension that incorporates issues having to do with personal identity (What is the structure of our world such that inter-subjectivity is possible? What are the fundamental aspects of our relations to others? How do they impact upon our self-identity?); and (3) A conceptual dimension in that it depends on one's answer to the question what is a mind (How does the mind – or the concept of 'mind'– relate to the brain, the body and the world?). While these three issues are co-imbricated, I will claim that analytic engagements with the problem of other minds focus on (1), whereas continental philosophers focus far more on (2). In addition, this article will also point to various other downstream consequences of this, including the preoccupation with embodiment and forms of expressivism that feature heavily in various forms of continental philosophy, and which generally aim to ground our relations with others in a pre-reflective manner of inhabiting the world that is said to be the condition of reflection and knowledge. (shrink)

In the present article, I introduce Husserl’s analyses of ‘natural causality’ and ‘volitional causality’, which are collected in the volume ‘Wille und Handlung’ of the Husserliana edition Studien zur Struktur des Bewußtseins. My aim is to show that Husserl’s insight into these phenomena enables us to understand more clearly both the specificity of, and the relation between, the motivational nexus belonging to the sphere of the will in contrast with the causal laws of nature. In light of this understanding, in (...) the last part of the article I reflect on whether and to what extent there is, in fact, an ontological and epistemological compatibility between volitional causality and natural causality. (shrink)

The essay examines Robin Cook’s Coma and Priscille Sibley’s The Promise of Stardust that dramatize the reified and disposable status of the brain-dead patients who are classified as nonpersons. The essay argues that the man-machine entanglement as depicted in the novels constructs a deterritorialized and entangled form of subjectivity that intervenes in the dominant biomedical understanding of personhood and agency that we notionally associate with a conscious mind. The essay concludes its arguments by discussing Alexander Beliaev’s Professor Dowell’s Head which (...) depicts human subjectivity as an essentially embodied and distributive phenomenon and interrogates the Cartesian mind body dualism embedded in the dominant biomedical narratives. (shrink)

The World We Live In contains private lectures given by Alexandru Dragomir spanning a period from 1985 to 1998. Some lectures are graceful examples of ‘live’ philosophical thinking, where phenomenological investigation and philological skill are combined to probe issues concerning time, space, and technology. Other lectures are less polished and should perhaps not have been published. Almost all the lectures engage with classic philosophical texts, primarily by Plato and Aristotle, and, to a lesser degree, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche. Dragomir’s (...) mentor Heidegger is more often than not present in the background, through the method of analysis. (shrink)

This article addresses the semiotic problem of how meaning is agentially grounded: how actual meaning is possible and is justifiably supported by agents’ capabilities and purposes. This article is particularly focused on human agential grounding; however, to a great degree, insights presented here can be extended to other living beings. Specifically, agential meaning is examined here inside the framework of agentive semiotics and embodied, situated and enactive cognition theories, in line with the mind-life continuity general thesis. To offer clarity and (...) methodological precision about agential grounding, three explanation categories are proposed: phylogenetic recurrence, the evolutionary basis for corporal/embodied grounding; ontogenetic recurrence, the developmental basis for individual meaning grounding; and collective recurrence, the basis for meaning recognized, attributed and assigned inside social contexts. These recurrences are conceived as three types of general processes that constantly enclose possibilities for purpose and meaning emergence in humans. As a result of these types of recurrences, two categories of human agendas or purposes are also proposed: individual and collective. Finally, remarks about how these categories can be useful for semiotic analysis and further research are suggested. (shrink)

This dissertation proposes the central elements of a Social Enactive Theory of Perception. According to SEP, perception consists in sensory-based practices of interaction with objects, events, and states of affairs that are socially constituted. I oppose the representational view that perception is an indirect contact with the world, consists of the passive receiving and processing of sensory input, is in need of constant assessment of accuracy, and is a matter of individuals alone. I share the basic enactivist insight that perception (...) is a type of activity, but I depart from standard enactivism on the grounds of its individualistic bias and its limited conception of activity. Instead of motor actions, I formulate the concept of perceptual practices as the appropriate framework to understand perception. Perception is woven into socially informed, contextual, sensory-based everyday activities, such as food, dance, and dress, and even seemingly independent, basic perceptual activities and concepts are constituted by such practices. Perceptual individual interactions instantiate social perceptual practices but are not just repetitions of a script. We perceive objects in virtue of perspectives or appearances, not in spite of them, and on this basis I offer SEPâs take on experience, properties, and contents. I conceive perceptual experience as finely grained interactions between subjects and objects, both of which are spatially, temporally, and pragmatically situated. Objects and their sensory properties are perceived dynamically and always in multiple appearances. Perceptual content offers a pragmatic specification of the perceptual objects in the specific ways they appear to subjects. For SEP, perception is normatively structured. SEPâs perceptual normativity is not a worry about a supposed constant threat that our perceptions be nonveridical, but about the placement of perceptual things in a system of possibilities and expectations, cast in terms of degrees of fulfillment of expectations and in a horizon of pragmatic significance, both of which are functions of the socially constituted interactions between a perceiver and a rich theory of appearances. (shrink)

This article argues for a view on languaging as inherently affective. Informed by recent ecological tendencies within cognitive science and distributed language studies a distinction between first order languaging (language as whole-body sense making) and second order language (language as system like constraints) is put forward. Contrary to common assumptions within linguistics and communication studies separating language-as-a-system from language use (resulting in separations between language vs. body-language and verbal vs. non-verbal communication etc.) the first/second order distinction sees language as emanating (...) from behavior making it possible to view emotion and affect as integral parts languaging behavior. Likewise, emotion and affect are studied, not as inner mental states, but as processes of organism-environment interactions. Based on video recordings of interaction between (1) children with special needs, and (2) couple in therapy and the therapist patterns of reciprocal influences between interactants are examined. Through analyzes of affective stance and patterns of inter-affectivity it is exemplified how language and emotion should not be seen as separate phenomena combined in language use, but rather as completely intertwined phenomena in languaging behavior constrained by second order patterns. (shrink)

The phenomenological understanding of empathy as the direct experiencing of the mental states of others eschews the identification of empathy with caring. At the same time, it leaves open the possibility of sadistic pleasure, indifference, or malice as consequences of empathic experience. In this paper, I intend to defend the place of caring as an inseparable part of the empathic experience, specifically when understood as direct perception. My defense relies on conceiving of attentive concern as a perceptual predisposition, and understanding (...) the caring responsiveness of the empathizer as embedded in her direct perception of the empathee's mental states. My claim proceeds by three steps. Firstly, I will present the need to include caring within empathy through the problem that arises from excluding it. Secondly, I will argue for the presence of active responsiveness, inherent in the phenomenological concept of perception and expressed more explicitly in its Gibsonian understanding. Thirdly, I will propose my understanding of attentive concern as a predisposition, which together with the intentionality attributed to the other forms the pre-perceptual basis for identifying empathy with caring. (shrink)

El artículo reconoce los aportes que la Dra. Julia V. Iribarne realizó en torno a la ética en perspectiva fenomenológica, especialmente en su obra De la ética a la metafísica. Con base en estas contribuciones se responden tres preguntas: ¿cómo la generatividad y la temporalidad se convierten en estructuras de la eticidad? ¿Cómo hay, fenomenológicamente, una metafísica en cuanto se conoce la mismidad y la alteridad trascendentalmente? ¿Es Dios para la ética un fictum o un factum? A modo de colofón (...) se alude a la centralidad de la mente y el esclarecimiento de los estados mentales como avance en el fundamento y despliegue de la ética.This article identify the contributions that Dra. Julia V. Iribarne made around ethics in phenomenological perspective and especially her work Ethics in the way of metaphysics. According to her contributions we could answer these three questions: How generativity and temporality becomes structures of the ethics? How is possible, phenomenologically, a metaphysics if we know self-hood and otherness transcendentally? Is God a fictum or factum for the ethics? As a final reference, we will talk about the centrality of mind and we will try to clarify the rationale and mental states like a development of the ethics. (shrink)