Over the past decades there has been increasing interest in the idea that Heidegger was a “transcendental philosopher” during the late 1920s. Furthermore, a consensus has started to emerge around the idea that Heidegger must be thought of as a transcendental thinker during this time. For the most part this means to first experience how Heidegger's work inherits this term from Kant or Husserl so that one can then experience how Heidegger creatively adapts this inheritance. The aim of this paper (...) is to show that such an approach is unhelpful. The aim of this paper is instead to show that transcendental philosophy bears a wholly renewed meaning in Heidegger's fundamental ontology and that this meaning must be understood in an intrinsic connection with the fundamental-ontological problem of transcendence. Articulating this connection will show how Heidegger makes transcendental philosophy properly phenomenological. Over the past decades there has been increasing interest in the idea that Heidegger was a “transcendental philosopher” during the late 1920s. Furthermore, a consensus has started to emerge around the idea that Heidegger must be thought of as a transcendental thinker during this time. For the most part this means to first experience how Heidegger's work inherits this term from Kant or Husserl so that one can then experience how Heidegger creatively adapts this inheritance. The aim of this paper is to show that such an approach is unhelpful. The aim of this paper is instead to show that transcendental philosophy bears a wholly renewed meaning in Heidegger's fundamental ontology and that this meaning must be understood in an intrinsic connection with the fundamental-ontological problem of transcendence. Articulating this connection will show how Heidegger makes transcendental philosophy properly phenomenological. For a brief time during the late 1920s Heidegger speaks of his philosophical vision in “transcendental” terms; indeed, the title for the whole first part of Being and Time even speaks of winning a specifically “transcendental horizon” for the question of being. Conversely, the past few decades have seen an increasing interest in transcendental philosophy. Indeed, one might even say that there has been a renewed desire for the transcendental – for its rationality, for its metaphysical power and loftiness, for its epistemological armour or for its power to unify traditions – and this desire has lead to all sorts of “transcendental interpretations of … ” Accordingly, while under other circumstances Heidegger's talk of the transcendental might have been brushed under the rug as a “metaphysical” embarrassment it has instead become increasingly commonplace for scholars to thematically engage with this aspect of Heidegger's work. Properly speaking, there is no getting around the way that Heidegger positions his work in transcendental terms during the late 1920s. But language is a mercurial thing; so if there is no getting around the idea that there is something “transcendental” about Heidegger's work from the late 1920s, there is equally no getting around the question concerning the meaning of this ascription. What does it mean to be transcendental? What does it mean for Heidegger to be transcendental? These are questions which remain for us, and how we respond to these questions will have a significant effect on our reading of Heidegger. In fact, as this paper will demonstrate by example, how we respond to these questions has a significant effect on our understanding of the meaning and demands of the “task of thinking” as presented to us by Heidegger's work from the late 1920s. The question about the meaning of the term “transcendental” in Heidegger's late 20s philosophy is both modest and immodest. On the one hand it is a very small topic – perhaps, one might even suspect, a merely pedantic one – but on the other hand it aims at the highest question, namely, the Seinsfrage. In order to investigate these questions I will begin by presenting the most common contemporary interpretations of Heidegger's transcendental philosophising in connection with some reflections on the history of the concept of the transcendental. Secondly, I will demonstrate the formal meaning of the word “transcendental” in Heidegger. Thirdly, working from this foundation I will more fully clarify the meaning of a Heideggerian transcendental philosophy through an investigation of the concepts, problems and phenomena arising from the preceding analysis. Here, in §3, the significance of Heidegger's concept of the “transcendental” is explicitly grappled with. (shrink)

This work proposes that pain meets the requirements of being characterized as a secondary quality, as it covers, like a color, a determined extension. The argument seeks to establish a literal pain-color analogy through an inquiry into the intensity and location of the pain. From the classic intensity/location relationship reported by patients with acute appendicitis, three degrees of pain are distinguished: mild, moderate, and severe. The objective is only achieved by examining the Body’s extensional determinations (primary quality) insofar as each (...) of these degrees of pain covers three particular measures. Once these three measures have been explored according to the perforation process (tissue damage), the work ends by identifying pain as a transcendent moment. (shrink)

Countless scholars have wrestled with the ambiguities and complexities in determining the role of the noema in Husserl’s theory of intentionality since his transcendental turn, and consequently converted what was intended to be a structural solution to a problem into a contested problem itself.1 Shifting emphasis from the ‘whatness’, or ontological concerns of the correlate noesis—noema to the ‘howness’, or methodological force of phenomenology, allows me to discuss two things. The first is theological. Before and since Janicaud’s pronouncement of the (...) ‘theological turn’ in phenomenology, the intentionality thesis has been rejected as a means to account for certain experiences given differently to object-phenomena (Janicaud, 2000). In accounting for religious experience as a complex movement between faith and doubt, my work reaches not for the ‘essence of phenomenality’ (Marion), or a givenness beyond intuition made invisible, nor does it seek to describe a transcendence beyond immanence, or proof in the existence of a god/gods, rather it concerns itself with the processes and underlying structures of belief. Arguably by focusing upon the noetic and noematic structure of intentional acts, intentional analysis is revitalised for delineating the belief modalities of faith and doubt in religious experiences. (shrink)

The present paper intended to present a proposal for division of phenomenological psychology in two separate areas but interconnected with each other, based respectively on a static and genetic phenomenology. The former is more appropriate for a research field of human psychology, based on the concept of intentionality is presented as an eidetic psychology that can be applied to different subjects of study of psychological research and have as a research field on major issues of psychology, as perception, memory, language, (...) imagination. Phenomenological Psychology II, based on a genetic phenomenology is applied on the psychotherapeutic space because its object of inquiry is a self that has a story based on sedimentations generated in part by passive syntheses that operate at a pre-reflexive level. The genetic analysis is a phenomenological investigation of inter-subjective facticity in a therapeutic context. (shrink)

The background concern of this paper is the well-rehearsed debate on the “theological turn” (or “veerings”) in French Phenomenology that was ignited by Dominique Janicaud some 25 years ago in his vociferous critique of several leading French thinkers. It also responds to subsequent contestations against Janicaud by numerous scholars defending these thinkers radicalising of phenomenology in their attempts to account for what Emanuel Levinas had “stirred up in the phenomenological field” by re-posing the question of the philosophical status of the (...) idea of God. What is pivotal to Janicaud in his exclusionary critique and drawing of phenomenological boundaries is to hold dearly to the method as Edmund Husserl intended. In doing so, only describable phenomena that appear (or are logically subtended to appear) provide the litmus for a bona fide phenomenology. In opening and broadening the method to include experiences of a transcendent, religious nature as the French thinkers do, orthodox Husserlian thinking places these projects into question. The purpose of this paper is to question these post-Husserlian thinkers with a more faithful reading of Husserl. I analyse three key areas to suggest a ‘divine limit’ to phenomena: first, the concept of “the phenomenon” as developed in Husserl’s project; second, the ‘status of the idea of God’ in Husserl’s writings; and third, the relevant philosophical discourse on God that emerges from the Janicaud-led debate through critical commentary on the phenomenology of the “inapparent”. As a consequence, God is argued to be a divine limit to Husserlian phenomenology, but not religious belief itself. (shrink)

This paper claims that there is an epistemological evidence of an unavoidable gap between purely formal sciences (sciences of essences) and the empirical sciences for which they provide the foundation. A second key theme is the way that all empirical sciences are grounded in a pure science of essences. At the same time, I endeavour to explain how the insights Weyl gleaned from Husserl played an important role in his scientific work, and to show how Einstein’s major work exhibit important (...) parallels to Weyl’s work, thereby establishing phenomenology both as an indirect historical influence and a systematic underpinning for Einstein’s work in theoretical physics. In so doing, this paper seeks to show how some of the most basic problems that Einstein addresses have a kinship not just to problems addressed in a completely different context by Husserl and his circle, but also to perennial problems in ontology and epistemology that go back to Kant, Hume and Leibniz. The conclusion highlights how phenomenology influenced Einstein, but also how Einstein’s work on relativity had an important influence on the work of the most important phenomenologist of the twentieth century, namely Husserl in his Crisis of European Sciences. (shrink)

Edmund Husserl is the founder of phenomenology and the Logical Investigations is his most famous work. It had a decisive impact on twentieth century philosophy and is one of few works to have influenced both continental and analytic philosophy. This is the first time both volumes have been available in paperback. They include a new introduction by Dermot Moran, placing the Investigations in historical context and bringing out their contemporary philosophical importance. These editions include a new preface by Sir Michael (...) Dummett. (shrink)

The kind of phenomenology that can be useful to theology will be a hermeneutical phenomenology, one that takes us beyond the Cartesian/Husserlian ideal of presuppositionless intuition. It will also be a phenomenology of inverse intentionality, one in which the constituting subject is constituted by the look and the voice of another. In light of these suggestions, the phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion is defended against three critiques, namely that it compromises the boundary between phenomenology and theology, that the theology it serves (...) is a bad one to boot, and that it has an inadequate account of the subject. At the heart of this defense is Marion's clear distinction between phenomenology as a description of possible experience, and theology as the claim that a certain kind of experience, namely revelation or epiphany, is not merely actual but veridical. Phenomenology says, If revelation occurs it will be in the form of a saturated phenomenon. Theology says, for example, the burning bush was an epiphany, or Jesus Christ is a revelation. The attentive reader should have no trouble distinguishing Marion's phenomenological analyses, which should be persuasive to believer and unbeliever alike, from his theological claims. Marion's account of the subject falls under the heading of inverse intentionality, and there are hints that vision is aufgehoben in the voice. The seer is first of all the one seen, but above all the one addressed, called forth into response-able being. (shrink)

This essay offers a new reading of Heidegger’s early “formally indicative” view of religious life as a broad critique of popular representations of religious life in the human sciences and public discourse. While it has frequently been understood that Heidegger’s work aims at the “enactment” of religious life, the logic and implications of this have been rather unclear to most readers. Presenting that logic, I argue that Heidegger’s point parallels that of Alfred Schutz in suggesting that typical academic discussions of (...) religion constitute a determinate, deficient way of relating to religious individuals and groups and their concerns. Those concerns appear to the researcher herself in a way that they would not if the theorist were actually entertaining them as states of affairs in the real world, leading her to attribute beliefs to a hypothetical “nobody.” Heidegger’s early notion of formal indication explains the logic behind our lack of “realism” toward certain topics of research, and his comments on the study of religious life are a paradigm case for the descriptive fallacies that phenomenology can help to address. (shrink)

Extra-marital affairs are common in theusand frequently result in difficulties for individuals, families, and society. The psychological literature, however, does not provide adequate client-centered treatment directions for those who have affairs and seek psychotherapy for this issue.In an attempt to begin to address this gap in the literature, a descriptive phenomenological psychological study, a method that has the goal of articulating the general structure of an experience, in a pretheoretical manner, was undertaken. Results suggest areas of further inquiry and may (...) imply directions for psychotherapeutic praxis with those who have had affairs. (shrink)

Quentin Meillassoux has recently launched a sweeping attack against ‘correlationism’. Correlationism is an umbrella term for any philosophical system that is based on ‘the idea [that] we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other’. Thus construed, Meillassoux' critique is indeed a sweeping one: It comprises major parts of the philosophical tradition since Kant, both in its more continental and in its more analytical outlooks. In light of (...) this critique, the aim of this paper is twofold: On the one hand, I shall defend phenomenology against Meillassoux' main argument, the ‘argument from ancestrality’. On the other hand, I will argue that this argument, albeit unsuccessful in its original form, can be modified to pose a more serious threat. Although this modified version can also be circumvented, it forces phenomenologists to clarify their stance towards the natural sciences. (shrink)

Zahavi and Gallagher’s contemporary direct perception model of intersubjectivity has its roots in the phenomenological project of Edmund Husserl. Some authors :731–748, 2010; Krueger in Phenomenol Cogn Sci 11:149–173, 2012; Bohl and Gangopadhyay in Philos Explor 17:203–222, 2014) have utilised, and criticised, Husserl’s model of direct empathic perception. This essay seeks to correct certain misunderstandings of Husserl notion of direct empathic perception and thus, by proxy, clarify the contemporary direct perception model, through an exegesis of Husserlian texts. In the first (...) half of this essay I clarify the analogy between the directness of regular material object perception and the directness of empathic perception via a clarification of Husserl’s notion of co-presence. I argue that contemporary renditions of Husserl’s account which stress the dis-analogy between these two types of perception are based on a superficial and incorrect rendering of Husserl’s notion of co-presence. In the second half of this essay I clarify the notion of verification. I argue that, for Husserl, behaviour does not verify mental life. Instead, empathic verification occurs via the relation between concepts and intuitions. In my conclusions I show how contemporary authors misunderstand the fundamental nature of Husserl’s account of empathy because of the downgraded status of psychic life within contemporary cognitive science. (shrink)

I aim to provide some evidence that Husserl’s description of perceptual updating actually fits very nicely into the Bayesian Brain paradigm, articulated by Karl Friston and others, and that that paradigm, in turn, can be taken as an excellent example of “Neurophenomenology”. The apparently un-phenomenological Helmholtzian component of the Bayesian Brain paradigm, according to which what one consciously seems to see is a product of unconscious causal reasoning to the best explanation of one’s sensory stimulations, can be finessed, I claim, (...) in a way that makes it compatible with a phenomenological orientation. I begin by roughly characterizing the Bayesian Brain paradigm as it relates to perceptual cognition. I then show how Husserl’s descriptions of the conscious perceptual process relate to the paradigm. I conclude with some considerations about how to understand the relation between conscious and unconscious brain process in the present case and in relation to Neurophenomenology generally. (shrink)

The kind of phenomenology that can be useful to theology will be a hermeneutical phenomenology, one that takes us beyond the Cartesian/Husserlian ideal of presuppositionless intuition. It will also be a phenomenology of inverse intentionality, one in which the constituting subject is constituted by the look and the voice of another. In light of these suggestions, the phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion is defended against three critiques, namely that it compromises the boundary between phenomenology and theology, that the theology it serves (...) is a bad one to boot, and that it has an inadequate account of the subject. At the heart of this defense is Marion's clear distinction between phenomenology as a description of possible experience, and theology as the claim that a certain kind of experience, namely revelation or epiphany, is not merely actual but veridical. Phenomenology says, If revelation occurs it will be in the form of a saturated phenomenon. Theology says, for example, the burning bush was an epiphany, or Jesus Christ is a revelation. The attentive reader should have no trouble distinguishing Marion's phenomenological analyses, which should be persuasive to believer and unbeliever alike, from his theological claims. Marion's account of the subject falls under the heading of inverse intentionality, and there are hints that vision is aufgehoben in the voice. The seer is first of all the one seen, but above all the one addressed, called forth into response-able being. (shrink)

This essay focuses on Husserl’s conception of the natural attitude, which, I argue, is one of his most important contributions to contemporary phenomenology. I offer a critical exploration of this concept’s productive explanatory potential for feminist theory, critical race theory, queer theory, and disability studies. In the process, I draw attention to the rich, multi-faceted, and ever-changing social world that can be brought to life through this particular phenomenological concept. One of the most striking features of the natural attitude, as (...) Husserl describes it, is that it is not natural at all, but rather, is a developmental phenomenon that is acquired through, and profoundly influenced by, specific socio-cultural practices. To de-naturalize the natural attitude, then, is to recognize that the natural attitude is not fixed or innate but relative to a particular time period and culture, and therefore always capable of being changed. (shrink)

This article critiques Husserl’s idea of grounding through an exploration of his notion of the lifeworld. First, it sketches different senses of the lifeworld in the Crisis and explains in what sense it is taken to be a universal foundation of all sense-formation. Second, it criticizes Husserl’s idea of grounding and shows that it fails because the alleged foundation—namely, the lifeworld as a perceptual world, or rather lifeworldly experience as perception—is inadequately determined. Perception cannot function as a universal foundation because (...) it is always already interpretation. “The groundlessness of sense” means that the process of sense-formation can in no way rest upon an ultimate ground because contingent presuppositions and historical circumstances influence it from the very beginning. The paper concludes by discussing the consequence of this view for the relation between philosophy and sciences. (shrink)

This paper develops a phenomenological defense of Ian Hacking's experimental realism about unobservable entities in physical science, employing historically undervalued resources from the phenomenological tradition in order to clarify the warrant for our ontological commitments in science. Building upon the work of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and Heelan, the paper provides a phenomenological correction of the positivistic conception of perceptual evidence maintained by antirealists such as van Fraassen, the experimental relevance of which is illustrated through a phenomenological interpretation of the 1974 discovery (...) of the J/ ψ particle generally regarded as evidence for the charmed quark. The argument then turns to address known problems in Hacking's account, demonstrating that his own instrumentalist criterion of the real is inadequately rooted in the phenomenology of perception, and as a result, passes over the true ontological significance of experimental phenomena. The paper maintains that the proper criterion, only indirectly related to instrumentality, is the distinctive style of the real encountered in perception: empirical pregnancy. With this notion and Merleau-Ponty's associated reversibility thesis, I show that the phenomenological tradition provides insights into the warrant for our realist commitments that have yet to be adequately acknowledged by philosophers of science. (shrink)

This paper offers a critique of the special issue of Human Studies on “Alfred Schutz and Religion”. Following a line similar to that of Dominique Janicaud I call into question the very phenomenological status of the “phenomenology of religion” developed across the various contributions. Appealing to the Husserlian principle of freedom from presuppositions my critique focuses on the way these phenomenologies of religion talk about “religion”. At their core, the failure contained within these contributions is the failure to properly consider (...) a question which begins any undergraduate Religious Studies program—what is “religion”? I charge that because these contributions take it as “self-evident” what religion “is” they allow a metaphysical assertion into their phenomenology which breaches the “neutrality” demanded of the principle of freedom from presuppositions. Drawing on the work of the Critical Religion project in Religious Studies I further highlight how this metaphysical assertion predicates an unavoidable ideological assertion, one which serves colonial mechanics of exclusion. (shrink)

The paper deals with the notion of synthesis and transcendental ego in Kant and Husserl. It will argue that the actual difference between Kant and Husserl’s notion of transcendental ego can be understood through their conception of time. Kant accepts transcendental ego as the kind of logical necessity for synthesizing the various temporal units which provides unity to the consciousness. However, Husserl discards the necessity of transcendental ego by giving the phenomenological interpretation of time as internal time consciousness. The interpretation (...) of time as the flow of protention and retention synthesizes the time without invoking the necessity of Kantian transcendental ego outside the flow. Husserl’s analysis of internal time consciousness will also help us in understanding the methodological differences between Kant’s transcendental philosophy and phenomenology. (shrink)

Edmund Husserl has argued that we can intuit essences and, moreover, that it is possible to formulate a method for intuiting essences. Husserl calls this method 'ideation'. In this paper I bring a fresh perspective to bear on these claims by illustrating them in connection with some examples from modern pure geometry. I follow Husserl in describing geometric essences as invariants through different types of free variations and I then link this to the mapping out of geometric invariants in modern (...) mathematics. This view leads naturally to different types of spatial ontologies and it can be used to shed light on Husserl's general claim that there are different ontologies in the eidetic sciences that can be systematically related to one another. The paper is rounded out with a consideration of the role of ideation in the origins of modern geometry, and with a brief discussion of the use of ideation outside of pure geometry. (shrink)

The last years’ achievements in neuroscience are key for a philosophical analysis focused on the mind-body problem, such as the phenomenological approach.The digital evolution, on the one hand, faces us with the interaction between the world of reality and the world of possibility. This means more than a mere coexistence between these two dimensions. Rather, a concrete feedback occurs among them, and this brings out unprecedented and unavoidable issues with regard to perceptual processes. On the other hand, the digital evolution (...) allows for analyzing data and monitoring environmental systems, thus reasoning in a predictive way, anticipating problems, and checking ex ante their evolution and outcomes.Neuroscience, for its part, with the experiments of Libet and their subsequent interpretations, has highlighted a consciousness of the unconscious made of ballistic and automatic processes, which constitutes the starting phase of our decisions and actions. This further confirmed that sequential and linear thinking is unable to address the brain-environment relationship that is key in understanding any cognitive process.This analysis confirms the relevance of different aspects of Husserl’s phenomenology. There is, however, a “but,” which significantly reduces the extent of adherence to his point of view. Husserl assumed that an implicit horizon precedes or accompanies the acts of conscience. This is the material, impressional, passive, receptive, and, in some way, tacit dimension, strictly connected to the issue of genesis, i.e. the process of constitution of the analyzed entities. Thus, he drew a clear dividing line between this dimension and the phases of the self-controlling, vigilant conscience and its activity. In fact, his approach to the phenomenological problem is mainly oriented toward these phases. (shrink)

The essay traces the double, phenomenological and psychological, background of Sartre’s theory of the imagination. Insofar as these two phenomenological and psychological currents are equally influential for Sartre’s theory of the imagination, his intellectual project is situated in an inter-disciplinary research area which combines the descriptive analyses of Edmund Husserl with the clinical reports and psychological theories of Pierre Janet. While Husserl provides the foundation for the prevailing theory of imagination as pictorial representation, Janet’s findings on obsessive behavior enrich an (...) alternative current in Sartre’s thinking about imagination as spontaneous and self-determined creativity. (shrink)

Philosophy since Nietzsche and Heidegger has been averse to essentialism and considered to be old-fashioned and outmoded in the mainstream flow of debates. And it is often understood that essentialism cannot get along well with freedom and creativity insisted in liberal education. In this article, I discuss three types of essentialism in Edith Stein’s essential strands of thought by explicating the universal structure of human person, the individuality of each person with reference to the inner core of each person, and (...) gender essentialism but always in consonant with the interests of liberal education. Though Stein is an essentialist, I argue that it is the spirit dimension of human person, which she delineates, that enables her to underscore freedom and indeterminism. I attempt to put Stein’s philosophical anthropology in the layout of epistemological and ontological settings paving the way for evolving integral education with huge consideration for her tripartite dimension of human beings namely the psychic, the spiritual and the transcendental. (shrink)

A new framework for phenomenological psychology is proposed based on Husserl’s static and genetic methods. Static phenomenology holds a eidetic psychology centred on the processes of noetic-noematic constitution and elaborates typologies and general notions about human beings in connection with the world. Genetic analysis is research into facticity, it focus on the personal history of a subject, which is constantly in the process of becoming. When the temporal dimension of consciousness is considered, the phenomenological method becomes ‘static’, as it excludes (...) the factitious dimension of self, its personal and individual history, sedimented in layers of meaning, which are in part pre-reflective, non-thematic and anonymous to the self, but which nevertheless continue to influence the experience of itself with the other and with the world. This paper aims to present some of the fundamental principals of genetic phenomenology and it’s application to existential-phenomenological psychotherapy. There are three main aspects underlying genetic-phenomenological analysis as it is being proposed: inner time-consciousness theory, the experiential self and the theory of passive geneses. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore how our experience of pain and suffering structure our experience over time. I argue that pain and suffering are not as easily dissociable, in living and in conceptual analysis, as philosophers have tended to think. Specifically, I do not think that there is only a contingent connection between physical pain and psychological suffering. Rather, physical pain is partially constitutive of existential suffering. My analysis is informed by contemporary thinking about pain and suffering as well as (...) Indian Buddhist philosophy. (shrink)

In this essay I consider the possible impact of thinking phenomenologically about faith in a postmodern/post-secular age. Following Merold Westphal’s encouragement that philosophy of religion should be more ‘personal’, I offer a phenomenological reflection on my own experience of the difficulties and complexities that accompany being a postmodern phenomenologist and a Pentecostal Christian. Working through the possible conflicts that can arise when these two identities are brought together, I propose an account of Kierkegaardian postmodernism that resolves the conflict without, thereby, (...) eliminating the existential and theological difficulties that accompany religious existence in a postmodern/post-secular world. Ultimately, then, I show that personal engagement with religious existence is not excluded by postmodern phenomenology, but is in fact crucial for an appropriately postmodern/post-secular approach to phenomenological philosophy of religion itself. I conclude by proposing a possible account of God that reflects both phenomenological rigor and existential awareness. (shrink)

In this essay, I provide an introduction to the so-called 'theological turn' in recent French, 'new' phenomenology. I begin by articulating the stakes of excluding God from phenomenology (as advocated by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger) and then move on to a brief consideration of why Dominique Janicaud contends that, by inquiring into the 'inapparent', new phenomenology is no longer phenomenological. I then consider the general trajectories of this recent movement and argue that there are five main themes that unite (...) the work of such varied thinkers as Levinas, Derrida, Marion, Henry, Chrétien, Lacoste, and Ricœur. I conclude by outlining points of overlap between new phenomenology and contemporary analytic philosophy of religion and suggest that the two stand as important resources for each other. (shrink)

This article investigates the challenges posed by the reliability of knowledge in neurophenomenology and its connection to reality. Neurophenomenological research seeks to understand the intricate relationship between human consciousness, cognition, and the underlying neural processes. However, the subjective nature of conscious experiences presents unique epistemic challenges in determining the reliability of the knowledge generated in this research. Personal factors such as beliefs, emotions, and cultural backgrounds influence subjective experiences, which vary from individual to individual. On the other hand, scientific knowledge (...) aims to uncover universal truths based on empirical observations and objective principles. Reconciling the subjective and objective realms presents a significant challenge in determining the reliability of knowledge generated through neurophenomenological research. This article aims to examine the inherent limitations and challenges of neurophenomenological research to shed light on the complexities involved in understanding the nature of knowledge itself. This article highlights that the ontological implications of the reliability of knowledge in neurophenomenology arise from the question of how subjective experiences relate to objective reality. Understanding the neural correlates and mechanisms behind subjective experiences can provide insight into the underlying ontological nature of consciousness. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article considers the relationship of Heidegger's metaphysics of Being-toward-death to what Heidegger describes as “the enigma of motion,” that is, to Dasein's “historicality.” In doing so, the article confronts a series of questions concerning fundamental realities of animate life, realities centering on angst in the face of death, but including curiosity and fear, for example, all such realities being what Heidegger terms “states-of-mind” or “moods.” Thus, the article basically questions Heidegger's elision of a Leibkörper, not only in terms of (...) feelings but in terms of an exaltation of language, an insular notion of Dasein's historicality, and a narrow and deficient depiction of animals in his “philosophical biology.” Through a critical examination of the phenomenological disclosure that Heidegger seeks in his metaphysics of Being-toward-death, the article shows that death and the very concept of death hinges on being a body, a temporally finite animate body. Thus, however metaphysical its exposition, Being-toward-death is existentially anchored in being a body. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article considers the relationship of Heidegger's metaphysics of Being-toward-death to what Heidegger describes as “the enigma of motion,” that is, to Dasein's “historicality.” In doing so, the article confronts a series of questions concerning fundamental realities of animate life, realities centering on angst in the face of death, but including curiosity and fear, for example, all such realities being what Heidegger terms “states-of-mind” or “moods.” Thus, the article basically questions Heidegger's elision of a Leibkörper, not only in terms of (...) feelings but in terms of an exaltation of language, an insular notion of Dasein's historicality, and a narrow and deficient depiction of animals in his “philosophical biology.” Through a critical examination of the phenomenological disclosure that Heidegger seeks in his metaphysics of Being-toward-death, the article shows that death and the very concept of death hinges on being a body, a temporally finite animate body. Thus, however metaphysical its exposition, Being-toward-death is existentially anchored in being a body. (shrink)

This paper takes five different perspectives on kinesthesia, beginning with its evolution across animate life and its biological distinction from, and relationship to proprioception. It proceeds to document the historical derivation of “the muscle sense,” showing in the process how analytic philosophers bypass the import of kinesthesia by way of “enaction,” for example, and by redefinitions of “tactical deception.” The article then gives prominence to a further occlusion of kinesthesia and its subduction by proprioception, these practices being those of well-known (...) phenomenologists, practices that exemplify an adultist perspective supported in large part by the writings of Merleau-Ponty. Following this extended critical review, the article shows how Husserl’s phenomenology enlightens us about kinesthesia and in doing so offers us substantive clues to the phenomenology of learning as it takes place in the development and acquisition of skillful movement. It shows further how phenomenological methodology contrasts markedly with existential analysis, most significantly in its recognition of, and its ability to set forth a developmental history, a veritable genetic phenomenology that is basically a phenomenology of learning anchored in kinesthesia. After showing how that phenomenology of learning finds mutual validation in a classic empirical study of infant movement, the article ends by highlighting how human “I cans” are grounded in “I move,” specifically, in the pan-human ability to learn one’s body and learn to move oneself. (shrink)

In developing a theory of consciousness, one of the main problems has to do with determining what distinguishes conscious states from non-conscious ones—the delimitation problem. This paper explores the possibility of solving this problem in terms of self-awareness. That self-awareness is essential to understanding the nature of our conscious experience is perhaps the most widely discussed hypothesis in the study of consciousness throughout the history of philosophy. Its plausibility hinges on how the notion of self-awareness is unpacked. The idea that (...) consciousness involves self-awareness has been understood in two different ways: either as awareness of oneself—the subject of experience—or as awareness of the conscious episode itself. In this paper I argue (i) that every experience concerns the subject in a very specific way, involving what I will call ‘perspectival de se representation’, and (ii) that there is no need to appeal to the experience itself in order to characterize the awareness within that experience. The view I articulate explains the subjective nature of experience without over-intellectualizing it, accommodates the phenomenology of experience, and dispels any doubt about the need to find the self in introspection. (shrink)

Schizophrenia, like other pathological conditions of mental life, has not been systematically included in the general study of consciousness. By focusing on aspects of chronic schizophrenia, we attempt to remedy this omission. Basic components of Husserl’s phenomenology (intentionality, synthesis, constitution, epoche, and unbuilding) are explicated and then employed in an account of chronic schizophrenia. In schizophrenic experience, basic constituents of reality are lost and the subject must try to explicitly re-constitute them. “Automatic mental life” is weakened such that much of (...) the world that is normally taken-for-granted cannot continue to be so. The subject must actively re-lay the ontological foundations of reality. (shrink)

Jay Garfield’s Engaging Buddhism admirably shows the relevance of Indian philosophy to the interests of mainstream analytic Anglophone philosophers. Garfield deploys the Indian tradition to critique phenomenal realism, the view that there really are qualia or phenomenal properties—that there really is ‘something it’s like’ to be undergoing the experience you are undergoing right now. I argue that Garfield’s critique probably turns on a false dilemma that omits the possibility of introspection as a fallible tool for getting at a real stream (...) of experience that may or may not be accurately reported. Garfield also argues that if we are phenomenal realists, metaphysical idealism remains a philosophical possibility, whereas if we join him in rejecting phenomenal realism then we can also justifiably reject metaphysical idealism. I accept this conditional but reverse its valence: One advantage of phenomenal realism, and also of engaging with the Indian philosophical tradition, is that it opens up wonderful possibilities, like metaphysical idealism, that mainstream analytic Anglophone philosophers tend to too swiftly dismiss. (shrink)

The present paper attempts to accomplish the following: (1) to clarify and critically discuss the phenomenology of “belief” as we find it in Husserl’s Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book (1913) (henceforward, Ideas I); (2) to clarify and critically discuss the manner in which the phenomenological method treats beliefs; (3) to clarify and critically discuss the manner of belief justification as described by the phenomenological method; and (4) to argue that, just as the (...) phenomenological method can be used to validate scientific hypotheses, it can likewise be practised in our everyday worldly comportment to justify our everyday, commonsense beliefs. The paper proceeds from the idea that the phenomenological method is not the static descriptive method some make it out to be, but, rather, a living method at the service of life. The author begins with some preliminary remarks about Husserl’s concerns with unfounded or presupposed beliefs and their necessary “suspension” as dictated by the phenomenological reduction and epoche (“the method”). He then engages the text of Ideas I, especially sections 101 to 106, where Husserl presents a phenomenological conception of the character of belief. The paper concludes by treating the nature of belief justification, or “rational positing”, and puts forward the view that the phenomenological method in everyday practice can aid us in the realization of responsible epistemic conduct and, ultimately, lead toward responsible conduct towards ourselves and, hence, authentic being. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 7, Edition 2 September 2007. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that self-awareness is intertwined with one's awareness of possibilities for action. I show this by critically examining Dan Zahavi's multidimensional account of the self. I argue that the distinction Zahavi makes among 'pre-reflective minimal', 'interpersonal', and 'normative' dimensions of selfhood needs to be refined in order to accommodate what I call 'pre-reflective self-understanding'. The latter is a normative dimension of selfhood manifest not in reflection and deliberation, but in the habits and style of a person’s (...) pre-reflective absorption in the world. After reviewing Zahavi's multidimensional account and revealing this gap in his explanatory taxonomy, I draw upon Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Frankfurt in order to sketch an account of pre-reflective self-understanding. I end by raising an objection to Zahavi’s claim for the primitive and foundational status of pre-reflective self-awareness. To carve off self-awareness from the self’s practical immersion in a situation where things and possibilities already matter and draw one to act is to distort the phenomena. A more careful phenomenology of pre-reflective action shows that pre-reflective self-awareness and pre-reflective self-understanding are co-constitutive, both mutually for each other and jointly for everyday experience. (shrink)

According to Heidegger's Being and Time, social relations are constitutive of the core features of human agency. On this view, which I call a ‘strong conception’ of sociality, the core features of human agency cannot obtain in an individual subject independently of social relations to others. I explain the strong conception of sociality captured by Heidegger's underdeveloped notion of ‘being-with’ by reconstructing Heidegger's critique of the ‘weak conception’ of sociality characteristic of Kant's theory of agency. According to a weak conception, (...) sociality is a mere aggregation of individual subjects and the core features of human agency are built into each individual mind. The weak conception of sociality remains today widely taken for granted. I show that Christine Korsgaard, one of the most creative contemporary appropriators of Kant, operates with a weak conception of sociality and that this produces a problematic explanatory deficiency in her view: she is unable to explain the peculiar motivational efficacy of shared social norms. Heidegger's view is tailor made to explain this phenomenon. I end by sketching how Heidegger provides a social explanation of a major systematic concern animating Korsgaard, the concern with the importance of individual autonomy and answerability in human life. (shrink)

This paper recaps the position of the Bern school of Husserl interpretation, namely the work of Iso Kern and Eduard Marbach. Kern and Marbach have provided detailed accounts in English as to how to read the key issues in Husserl regarding the philosophical and psychological positions and the methods used to create a theoretical practice that goes before empirical work. When it comes to teaching, there is nothing more useful than a demonstrable technique that shows the evidence to which the (...) scholarship refers. This paper notes the meditation technique of mindfulness that calms the mind, aids acceptance and provides a sense of well-being in a direct way. Despite that application, mindfulness also provides an opportunity for the spontaneous experiences of the phenomena of consciousness to show themselves. In this way, direct personal experience of phenomena can be followed by the interpretation of Husserlian phenomenology. Mindfulness is a parallel which makes the words of Husserl, and Heidegger for that matter, come alive. Mindfulness, as a lived experience, is a foil for teaching in order to set students on the track of what Husserl did in order to get to the conclusions that he provided. This return to the phenomena sets the scene for understanding the difference between Husserl and Heidegger and the understanding of phenomenology in general in qualitative psychology. (shrink)

A formal and idealised understanding of intentionality as a mental process is a central topic within the classical Husserlian phenomenological analysis of consciousness. This paper does not define Husserl’s stance, because that has been achieved elsewhere (Kern, 1977, 1986, 1988; Kern & Marbach, 2001; Marbach, 1988, 1993, 2005; Owen, 2006; Zahavi, 2003). This paper shows how intentionality informs therapy theory and practice. Husserl’s ideas are taken to the psychotherapy relationship in order to explain what it means for consciousness to have (...) intentionality in various ways. The role of intentionality in psychopathology and its treatment within cognitive behavioural therapy is explained as a way of showing how understanding intentionality creates a medum for the delivery of care. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 7, Edition 1 May 2007. (shrink)

The implications of commonalities in the contributions of five key thinkers in twentieth century phenomenology are discussed in relation to both original aims and contemporary projects. It is argued that, contrary to the claims of Husserl, phenomenology can only operate as hermeneutic phenomenology. Hermeneutics arose within German idealism. It began with Friedrich Ast and Heinrich Schleiermacher and was further developed by, among others, Wilhelm Dilthey and Martin Heidegger. Hermeneutics claims that current understanding is created on the basis of the prior (...) understanding taken to any new situation, in that what is initially understood or believed determines the direction and scope for inquiry or action. Subsequent action and conclustions are similarly based on what has been previously understood and believed. As a consequence, however, what may, in some cases, result is the confirmation of prior inaccurate understanding. For these reasons, it is important to be clear about how initial understandings are formed and how they inform a discipline, be it the Husserlian phenomenology of intentionality or any empirical phenomenological approach. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 8, Edition 1 May 2008. (shrink)

Taking the problem of perception and illusion as a leading clue, this article presents a new phenomenological approach to perception and the world: holism of experience. It challenges not only Husserl’s transcendentalism, but also what remains of it in Heidegger’s early thought, on the grounds that it is committed to the skeptical inference: Since we can always doubt any perception, we can always doubt perception as a whole. The rejection of such an implicit inference leads to a relational paradigm of (...) Being-in-the-World that differs from Heidegger’s on many points. (shrink)

The unity of consciousness has so far been studied only as a relation holding among the many experiences of a single subject. I investigate whether this relation could hold between the experiences of distinct subjects, considering three major arguments against the possibility of such ‘between-subjects unity’. The first argument, based on the popular idea that unity implies subsumption by a composite experience, can be deflected by allowing for limited forms of ‘experience-sharing’, in which the same token experience belongs to more (...) than one subject. The second argument, based on the phenomenological claim that unified experiences have interdependent phenomenal characters, I show to rest on an equivocation. Finally, the third argument accuses between-subjects unity of being unimaginable, or more broadly a formal possibility corresponding to nothing we can make sense of. I argue that the familiar experience of perceptual co-presentation gives us an adequate phenomenological grasp on what between-subjects unity might be like. (shrink)