In his book, Aurelien Djian investigates the history of the concept of horizon in the evolution of Husserl’s thought. Addressing the most fundamental concerns of phenomenology, Djian redefines the horizon considering themes such as coherence of experience, the reality of the world, and motivation. He suggests an approach to exploring the horizon grounded in a detailed analysis of Thing and Space lectures. A significant conclusion of Djians’s book is that the origin of the horizon should not be attributed to Ideas (...) I, but to these lectures. This discovery is not only of historical significance, but also opens up a new perspective on relations between the world, the incompleteness of external experience, and the fluidity of attention. Djian denies Saulius Geniusas’ interpretation of “halo” and “background” as psychological opposites of the horizon, which functions in the domain of ontology. These phenomena are given as elements of experience temporarily left by attention, connected with actual ones. The consciousness of unfulfilled potentialities of experience ensures the coherence of experience, making the transition from actual to potential seamless. This paper covers Djian’s conclusions and part of his work that goes beyond the content of the book. We also try to contextualize Djian’s research and show the history of studies of the horizon in the philosophy of Edmund Husserl. (shrink)

In his late works Husserl interprets the crisis of European sciences as the loss of their meaning for life. The diagnosis seems to suggest therapeutic strategy: to overcome the crisis, phenomenology must return to the evidences of the life-world. The article argues that the husserlian strategy of overcoming the crisis consists not in the elimination of the break with the prescientific evidences of the natural attitude, but, on the contrary, in the radicalization of the breach. Thus, I want to show (...) that Husserl seeks to overcome the crisis of sciences by means of more radical crisis of phenomenology. In Husserl’s view, phenomenology must become the only science, which does not presuppose the life-world, since it problematizes it. I am going to argue also, that the counterintuitive strategy is not just of the historico-philosophical interest, but is meaningful for the actual philosophical understanding of the life-world. To justify those claims, I will proceed in three stages. In the first section of the article, I analyze the difference between the objective world and the life-world, which is the point of departure of husserlian interpretation of the crisis of sciences in Crisis. Bringing into correlation the difference between the objective world and the life-world in Crisis with the distinction of the ideal world and the real one in Ideas I, I disclose the ambiguity of husserlian interpretation of the crisis of European sciences. According to Husserl, the crisis arises, when science transcends the life-world through the idealizations, and, at the same time, presupposes the immediate prescientific evidences as something that is taken for granted. In the second section, I argue that the strategy of overcoming the crisis in Crisis is based on the phenomenological epoche, which allows for the porblematization of the life-world without presupposing it, Within this context I demonstrate the motivational unity of two reductions, performed by Husserl in Crisis—the reduction to the life-world, stripping the reality of the garb of ideas mistakingly taken to be the reality itself, and the reduction of the life-world, turning it into horizon and depriving phenomenologist of a right of relying on the life-worldly evidences, which is taken for granted in the natural science and renders it possible. The unity of the reductions indicates that phenomenological descent back down to the life-world is treated by Husserl as the radical break with the evidences of the natural life. The third section discusses the question, whether the problematical character of the life-world can be revealed only from the point of view of disinterested spectator, or it can be discovered, in a way, from within, in pretheoretical experience, which capacitates the life to problematizing itself and motivates phenomenological epoche. I argue that, although the question is not answered in a suitable way within husserlian analyses of the motivation for the epoche, the key to the solution of the problem is provided by the genetic phenomenology, since it thematizes the historicity of the life-world. I interpret the historicity as the ambivalent pretheoretical experience, constituting both the self-evidence and the problematical character of the life-world. (shrink)

Many philosophers regard the persistence of philosophical disputes as symptomatic of overly ambitious, ill-founded intellectual projects. There are indeed strong reasons to believe that persistent disputes in philosophy (and more generally in the discourse at large) are pointless. We call this the pessimistic view of the nature of philosophical disputes. In order to respond to the pessimistic view, we articulate the supporting reasons and provide a precise formulation in terms of the idea that the best explanation of persistent disputes entails (...) that they are pointless. We then show how to answer the pessimistic argument. Taking a well-known mathematical controversy as our paradigm example, we argue that some persistent disputes reflect substantive disagreements at the “meta-analytic” level, i.e., disagreements about the best way, among quite different candidates, to understand the topic at issue, and the best associated cluster of analytic truths one should accept concerning it. Moreover, our concrete example shows that such meta-analytic disagreements can in principle be settled and yield a genuine theoretical (as opposed to merely pragmatic) breakthrough. We conclude optimistically that persistent disputes can be an important means of fostering epistemic progress. (shrink)

The qualitative method of phenomenology provides a theoretical tool for educational research as it allows researchers to engage in flexible activities that can describe and help to understand complex phenomena, such as various aspects of human social experience. This article explains how to apply the framework of phenomenological qualitative analysis to educational research. The discussion within this article is relevant to those researchers interested in doing cross-cultural qualitative research and in adapting phenomenological investigations to understand students’ cross-cultural lived experiences in (...) different social educational contexts. (shrink)

I reconstruct the notion of significance [_Sinnhaftigkeit_] in the later Husserl, with attention to his conceptions of judgment and transcendental logic. My analysis is motivated by the idea that an account of significance can help to connect analytic, Anglo-American conceptions of meaning as a precise, law-governed phenomenon investigated via linguistic analysis and Continental European conceptions of meaning in a broader “existential” sense. I argue that Husserl’s later work points to a transcendental-logical conception of a founding level of _significance_ [_Sinnhaftigkeit_] prior (...) to language, and that this conception meets characteristically analytic demands for precision and governance by logical constraints. At the same time, since it is based in descriptions of perceptual intentionality at the level of essential possibility, it leaves room for an account of meaning as a partially undetermined phenomenon of lived experience, and not just of our language and concepts, and thereby meets the characteristically Continental demand to take at face value meaning’s vagueness and indeterminacy in everyday human life. (shrink)

This paper presents a version of neurophenomenology based on generative modelling techniques developed in computational neuroscience and biology. Our approach can be described as _computational phenomenology_ because it applies methods originally developed in computational modelling to provide a formal model of the descriptions of lived experience in the phenomenological tradition of philosophy (e.g., the work of Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, etc.). The first section presents a brief review of the overall project to naturalize phenomenology. The second section presents and evaluates (...) philosophical objections to that project and situates our version of computational phenomenology with respect to these projects. The third section reviews the generative modelling framework. The final section presents our approach in detail. We conclude by discussing how our approach differs from previous attempts to use generative modelling to help understand consciousness. In summary, we describe a version of computational phenomenology which uses generative modelling to construct a computational model of the inferential or interpretive processes that best explain this or that kind of lived experience. (shrink)

Metaphysical underdetermination arises when we are not able to decide, through purely theoretical criteria, between competing interpretations of scientific theories with different metaphysical commitments. This is the case in which non-relativistic quantum mechanics (QM) finds itself in. Among several available interpretations, there is the one that states that the interaction with the conscious mind of a human observer causes a change in the dynamics of quantum objects undergoing from indefinite to definite states. In this paper, we argue that there seems (...) to be also a metaphysical underdetermination concerning London and Bauer’s theory of measurement between two methods of phenomenological reduction: the eidetic and the transcendental approaches. Recently, Steven French argued that both methods can be combined in order to interpret London and Bauer’s formalism. However, in this paper we argue that the eidetic one is the only viable phenomenological way to interpret this particular theory of measurement in QM based on the formalism presented by London and Bauer, hence breaking this phenomenological underdetermination. (shrink)

In the article I discuss functionalist interpretations of Husserlian phenomenology. The first one was coined in the discussion between Hubert Dreyfus and Ronald McIntyre. They argue that Husserl’s phenomenology shares similarities with computational functionalism, and the key similarity is between the concept of noema and the concept of mental representation. I show the weaknesses of that reading and argue that there is another available functionalist reading of Husserlian phenomenology. I propose to shift perspective and approach the relation between phenomenology and (...) functionalism from a methodological perspective, specifically taking into account the functionalist explanatory strategy called functional analysis. I discuss the notion of function in Husserl’s works and Husserl’s idea of functional phenomenology. The key argument I develop is that in functional phenomenology we can find an explanatory strategy which is analogous to the strategy of functional decomposition used in functional analysis. I conclude that the proposed functionalist reading of phenomenology opens a new approach to the integration of phenomenology with cognitive sciences. (shrink)

The following paper is based on a broad understanding of communication that considers as text basically anything that has been created within the framework of a cultural interaction by an author and that is perceived by a recipient. The first part of the paper introduces, explains and follows mostly cases in which the author’s violations of the recipient’s expectations have a communication value, i.e. provoke, in the recipient, a communication effect that matches the author’s intentions. In such cases, this effect (...) results as a consequence of an violation of the communication „cooperative“ principles. This, at the recipient’s end, translates into an event of expectancy violation. Each of such violations provokes an arousal in the recipient, which further motivates him/her to search for its cause. Finding this cause, and being “confronted” with the related violation pertaining to it with the norm equals, for the recipient, getting to the meaning of the text, or identifying its communication value etc. As part of the conclusion, a commented scheme is presented which offers a spectrum of possible communication outcomes “positioned” between the predictability of each textual element and the stochasticity of choice. The effort to illustrate all the explained facts results, in the paper, in a rich set of examples stemming from miscellaneous spheres of human activity – from “high styles” to rather day-to-day activities, to pop-culture. The objective is to show that the described principles, if not valid in general, permeate at least all forms of interaction. (shrink)

The 'traditional philosophical prestige' of seeing and touching, as analyzed by Emmanuel Levinas, comes to dominate the qualities of the other three senses. An investigation of the roles of these prestigious senses, along with the resultant privileged sense-organs of the hand and the eye, within phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and gender- or queer-theory suggests that the part of the prestige of touch will have been related to its function in the phenomenality of feeling. Yet the sense of taste seems to be as (...) applicable, if not more so, to the phenomenal experience of selfhood based on feeling as theorized by Edmund Husserl and Jean-Luc Marion. The tongue, rather than the hand, is reconsidered as a sense-organ of touch in order to salvage the all but lost tang of the tangible. As such, the tongue and taste not only illuminate the shortcomings of binary gender theories based on either inner feeling or outer surface anatomy (or, either interior orifices or exterior appendages), but further discover a remarkable phenomenology of the body to be found in the writings of Hélène Cixous and Monique Wittig that moves beyond certain masculine tendencies lurking about the hand and observation (as described by Freud and Butler). The phenomenal experience of the other that yields either empathy (for Husserl), love/eros (for Marion), or hearing and heeding 'Thou shall not kill' (for Levinas) has much to learn from the orality of women's writing. The third body, as written by Cixous, can experience the self as selftaste (as considered by Derrida) and experiences the other as the taste of the other. It is, thereby, opened to a love or a justice (or an erotic justice) beyond the proclamation of Levinas that 'ethics is an optics' as well as any ethics as a mere haptics to be found in Husserl or Marion, where feeling seems always determined by the hand. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis essay explores the philosophical insights of Zhu Xi, Wang YangMing, Kant, and Husserl and therefore proposes a new epistemic constructivism. It demonstrates that a knowing mind is a co...

In higher education, scientists live and breathe their work every single day, providing the conditions for potential conflict between professional and family life. This phenomenological inquiry explores the question: “How do female university academics experience being between the family and work responsibilities in their daily activities?” Twelve male and female academics from different scientific/ research fields participated in the study. Phenomenological analysis of the interviews with female academics revealed the challenges they face in reconciling family and work commitments. The emerging (...) themes include experience of feeling guilty by prioritizing their research, aligning family holidays with academic conferences, automating activity, compelling the body and mind to work in a different mode, and doing housework alongside academic activity – all of which reveal the bodily presence of female academics between two important areas of life without having a clear focus on either one of them. This study showed that, while increasing equality in the work sphere has unified the opportunities of men and women, female academics still experience conflict between family and work, as well as a feeling of guilt, when they talk about significant moments in their own experience of the university environment. (shrink)

Empathy is a term used to denote our experience of connecting or feeling with an Other. The term has been used both by psychologists and phenomenologists as a supplement for our biological capacity to understand an Other. In this paper I would like to challenge the possibility of such empathy. If empathy is employed to mean that we know another person’s feelings, then I argue that this is impossible. I argue that there is an equivocation in the use of the (...) term ‘empathy’ which conditions the appropriation of the Other as we think that we know how the Other feels. To claim that we do know an Other’s feelings – or any kind of their intentional experience – means to appropriate their experience through our own. I will first reveal the equivocal use of the term ‘empathy’ and, then, I will explore Husserl’s use of the term. In Husserl, the understanding of an Other as empathy is only partial. I shall conclude by reiterating a thesis from philosophy of existence and feminist theory according to which to know another person comes from creating a community with them and not because we have a biological structure that can mirror each other’s feelings. (shrink)

Hegel and Heidegger are leading figures of modern philosophy, but their interpretation of being, metaphysics, truth, ontology, epistemology, dialectic, alienation and art, among other central questions of philosophy, are radically different. Taking these aspects into account, my paper tries to dismiss Heidegger’s critiques towards Hegel arguing that, from the point of view of 20th century phenomenology, and although using a dissimilar philosophical vocabulary, Hegel was rather a phenomenologist than a metaphysician. Not only that: in many respects, Heidegger’s Dasein toys with (...) metaphysic to an extent that Hegel’s spirit never did. (shrink)

This paper argues that through the conceptual distinctions between ‘immanence’ and ‘transcendence’ in The Idea of Phenomenology and The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, a proper understanding of transcendental idealism and ‘transcendence in immanence’ can avoid any metaphysical commitments of internalism or externalism, and reconfigure the debate on internalism and externalism by providing an alternative option. There are two interpretations towards whether Husserl is an internalist. The first one is that Husserl is an internalist as he employs the reduction method in (...) order to ‘returns to the inner mind’. The second interpretation, which is most welcomed by Husserlians, refutes the internalistic interpretation of Husserl and argues that neither internalism nor externalism can faithfully understand Husserl’s phenomenology because Husserl’s phenomenology does not tie to any tradition metaphysical commitment. Although I share this view, but an important text, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology is neglected by the previous debates. In the text, it does not only reexamine the two levels of ‘immanence’ and ‘transcendence’ in The Idea of Phenomenology, but also introduces one more level of ‘immanence’ and ‘transcendence’. I shall argue that by the reconsideration of the three levels of immanence and transcendence, Husserl does not disconnect ‘transcendence’, so he cannot simply be employed into internalism, on the one hand; his phenomenology provides an alternative option rather than internalism or externalism. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a comparison between the philosophies of Husserl and James in relation to their concepts of experience. Whereas various authors have acknowledged the affinity between James’ early psychology and Husserl’s phenomenology, the late development of James’ philosophy is often considered in opposition to Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. This is because James’ radical empiricism achieves a non-dual dimension of experience that precedes the functional division into subject and object, thus contrasting with the phenomenological analysis of the dual structure (...) of intentionality. However, I argue that the later “genetic” development of phenomenology converges with some central aspects of James’ radical empiricism. This is because genetic phenomenology leads us to conceive of the flow of primal impressions as a fundamental dimension of experience that precedes the subject-object duality and is at the base of the process of co-constitution of the subject and the object in reciprocal dependence. At the same time, Husserl conceives of the impressional core of experience as structured by formal conditions that depend on the concrete constitution of an embodied subject. For this reason, I argue that Husserl’s genetic phenomenology can complement James’ radical empiricism, thus leading to the development of the doctrine of pure experience as a form of empirical and not metaphysical realism. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper reconstructs and defends a Husserlian transcendental conception of intentionality. Initially, naturalistic conception of intentionality seems attractive, however, a naturalistic understanding conceals the true meaning of the puzzle and the nature of intentionality. Following Kant and primarily Husserl, this paper tries to determine the conditions a transcendental conception of intentionality must satisfy in order to be qualified as “transcendental”. Additionally, following Husserl, this paper argues that the alternative transcendental conception is not only possible, hence plausible; but also necessary, in (...) the sense that a thorough understanding of intentionality can only be achieved if a transcendental conception is adopted. (shrink)

The main goal of the paper is to present a putative role of consciousness in language capacity. The paper contrasts the two approaches characteristic for cognitive semiotics and cognitive science. Language is treated as a mental phenomenon and a cognitive faculty. The analysis of language activity is based on the Chalmers’ distinction between the two forms of consciousness: phenomenal and psychological. The approach is seen as an alternative to phenomenological analyses typical for cognitive semiotics. Further, a cognitive model of the (...) language faculty is described. The model is implemented in SNePS/GLAIR architecture and based on GATN grammar and semantic networks as a representation formalism. The model - reflecting traditionally distinguished linguistic structures - consists of phonological, syntactic, and semantic modules. I claim that the most important role in the phenomenon of language is played by psychological consciousness. Phenomenal consciousness accompanies various stages of language functioning, but is not indispensable in explanations of the language faculty. (shrink)

This paper argues for a Husserlian account of phenomenal intentionality. Experience is intentional insofar as it presents a mind-independent, objective world. Its doing so is a matter of the way it hangs together, its having a certain structure. But in order for the intentionality in question to be properly understood as phenomenal intentionality, this structure must inhere in experience as a phenomenal feature. Husserl’s concept of horizon designates this intentionality-bestowing experiential structure, while his concept of motivation designates the unique phenomenal (...) character of this structure as it is experientially lived through. The way experience hangs together is itself a phenomenal feature of experience. (shrink)

I argue that Husserl’s transcendental account of the role of the lived body in sense-making is a precursor to Alva Noë’s recent work on the enactive, embodied mind, specifically his notion of “sensorimotor knowledge” as a form of embodied sense-making that avoids representationalism and intellectualism. Derrida’s deconstructive account of meaning—developed largely through a critique of Husserl—relies on the claim that meaning is structured through the complication of the “interiority” of consciousness by an “outside,” and thus might be thought to lend (...) itself to theories of mind such as Noë’s that emphasize the ways in which sense-making occurs outside the head. But while Derrida’s notion of “contamination” rightly points to an indeterminateness of meaning in an outside, extended, concrete lived world, he ultimately reduces meaning to a structure of signification. This casts indeterminateness in terms of absence, ignoring the presence of non-linguistic phenomena of embodied sense-making central to both the contemporary enactivist program and to the later Husserl, who is able to account for the indeterminateness of meaning in lived experience through his distinction between sense and more exact linguistic meaning. Husserl’s transcendental theory of meaning also allows for a substantive contribution to sense-making from the side of the perceived object—an aspect missing from Noë’s account. Thus, in contrast to Derrida and to Noë, Husserl accounts for sense-making in terms of both the lived body and the lived world. (shrink)

Since Husserl, the task of developing an account of intentionality and constitution has been central to the phenomenological enterprise. Some of Merleau-Ponty's descriptions of ‘the flesh’ suggest that he gives up on this task, or, more strongly, that the flesh is in principle incompatible with intentionality or constitution. I show that these remarks, as in Merleau-Ponty's earlier writings, refer to the classical, early Husserlian interpretations of these concepts, and argue that the concept of the flesh can plausibly be understood to (...) advance a refined account of intentionality and constitution. Instead of a first-personal, unidirectional act or embodied motor project, intentionality is a latent openness to things, where the roles of subject and object are reversible. Whereas the view of constitution as meaning-bestowal is untenable, the flesh has a constitutive role, which is supported by a ‘constitutional passivity’ from the subject. On this reading, Merleau-Ponty's later work aims to develop basic tenets of his earlier thought, albeit at a critical distance, an attempt he thought was continuous with the central problems that Husserl claimed a phenomenological philosophy must grapple with, even if Merleau-Ponty's answers to these problems are not Husserl's. (shrink)

Background: The application of the philosophical mode of investigation called “phenomenology” in the context of sport. Objective: The goal is to show how and why the phenomenological method is very often misused in the sportrelated research. Methods: Interpretation of the key texts, explanation of their meaning. Results: The confrontation of concrete sport-related texts with the original meaning of the key phenomenological notions shows mainly three types of misuse – the confusion of phenomenology with immediacy, with an epistemologically subjectivist stance (phenomenalism), (...) and with empirical research oriented towards objects in the world. Conclusions: Many of the discussed authors try to take over the epistemological validity of phenomenology for their research, which itself is not phenomenological, and it seems that this is because they lack such a methodological foundation. The authors believe that an authentically phenomenological analysis of sport is possible, but it must respect the fundamental distinctions that differentiate phenomenology from other styles of thinking. (shrink)

This philosophical anthropology tries to explore the basic categories of man’s being in the worlds using a special quantum meta-ontology that is introduced in the book. Quantum understanding of space and time, consciousness, or empirical/nonempirical reality elicits new questions relating to philosophical concerns such as subjectivity, free will, mind, perception, experience, dialectic, or agency. The authors have developed an inspiring theoretical framework transcending the boundaries of particular disciplines, e.g. quantum philosophy, metaphysics of consciousness, philosophy of mind, phenomenology of space and (...) time, and ontological relativity. (shrink)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's approach to natural scientific research has unmistakable parallels to phenomenology. These parallels are clear enough to allow one to say confidently that Goethe's delicate empiricism is indeed a phenomenology of nature. This paper examines how Goethe's criticisms of Newton anticipated Husserl's announcement of the crisis of the modern sciences, and it describes how Goethe, at a critical juncture in cultural history, addressed this emerging crisis through a scientific method that is virtually identical to the method of (...) contemporary empirical-phenomenological research in the human sciences. Goethe's practice of science shares with phenomenology a participatory, morally-responsive, and holistic approach to the description of dynamic life-world phenomena. Delicate empiricism has its own version of the phenomenological epoché, and, like Husserl's technique of imaginative variation, it strives to disclose the essential or archetypal structure of the phenomenon through the endowment of human imagination. However, a close reading of Goethe suggests that the tendency amongst some scholars to distinguish phenomenology as human science from the natural sciences is actually a costly error which unwittingly falls prey to implicit Cartesian assumptions. Goethe, however, manages to avoid these problems by performing from the first a phenomenology of nature's sensibility. (shrink)

This paper argues that through the conceptual distinctions between 'immanence' and 'transcendence' in The Idea of Phenomenology and The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, a proper understanding of transcendental idealism and 'transcendence in immanence' can avoid any metaphysical commitments of internalism or externalism, and reconfigure the debate on internalism and externalism by providing an alternative option. There are two interpretations towards whether Husserl is an internalist. The first one is that Husserl is an internalist as he employs the reduction method in (...) order to 'returns to the inner mind'. The second interpretation, which is most welcomed by Husserlians, refutes the internalistic interpretation of Husserl and argues that neither internalism nor externalism can faithfully understand Husserl's phenomenology because Husserl's phenomenology does not tie to any tradition metaphysical commitment. Although I share this view, but an important text, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology is neglected by the previous debates. In the text, it does not only reexamine the two levels of 'immanence' and 'transcendence' in The Idea of Phenomenology, but also introduces one more level of 'immanence' and 'transcendence'. I shall argue that by the reconsideration of the three levels of immanence and transcendence, Husserl does not disconnect 'transcendence', so he cannot simply be employed into internalism, on the one hand; his phenomenology provides an alternative option rather than internalism or externalism. (shrink)

In a journal entry from 1906, Husserl complains of lacking "internal stability" and of his desire to "achieve" it. My claim in this paper is that the "phenomenological method," which he made public in his 1907 lectures "Die Idee der Phänomenologie" was, and is, a means to achieve the inner harmony that Husserl longed for. I do not provide an analysis of why Husserl might have felt the way he did; my aim is to show what internal stability might be (...) and how one might achieve it. I conclude that the phenomenological method is the means, the "how," to internal stability, which I characterize as "clarity" and "harmony" regarding our beliefs and, and ultimately, our authentic comportment. (shrink)

This is the most comprehensive book ever published on philosophical methodology. A team of thirty-eight of the world's leading philosophers present original essays on various aspects of how philosophy should be and is done. The first part is devoted to broad traditions and approaches to philosophical methodology. The entries in the second part address topics in philosophical methodology, such as intuitions, conceptual analysis, and transcendental arguments. The third part of the book is devoted to essays about the interconnections between philosophy (...) and neighbouring fields, including those of mathematics, psychology, literature and film, and neuroscience. (shrink)

Each thinker, according to Heidegger, essentially thinks one thought. Plato thinks the idea. Descartes thinks the cogito . Spinoza thinks substance. Nietzsche thinks the will to power. If a thinker does not think a thought, then he or she is not a thinker. He or she may be a scholar or a professor, a producer or a consumer, a fan or a fake, but he or she would not be a thinker. Thus, if Heidegger is a thinker, he essentially thinks (...) one thought. What is Heidegger’s one thought? It is neither life nor death, neither me nor you. It is neither technology nor art. It is neither spirit nor language. Heidegger’s one thought is being—or more precisely, the question of the meaning of being. And what is being? Neither presence nor absence--but rather, an ambiguous uncertainty. (shrink)

This article, published originally in French just after the 1989 release of Jean-Luc Marion’s book Reduction and Givenness, consists of a sustained critical study of the manner in which Marion advances from the basic principles of phenomenology. Henry outlines briefly three principles, “so much appearance, so much being,” “the principle of principles” of Ideas I, “to the things themselves!” before entering into a lengthy dialogue with Marion’s proposal of a fourth principle: “so much reduction, so much givenness.” Henry submits each (...) principle to critique, highlighting that they contain confusing premises. Henry is appreciative of Marion’s capacity to root the appearing of phenomena in givenness, but he ultimately finds problematic the gap between the call and response that is a fundamental structure of Marion’s fourth principle. Henry, in contrast, develops his own theme of pure givenness, expressed in the form of subjectivity he calls auto-affection, in the final pages of the article. (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)

Descartes was certain that he was thinking and he was accordingly certain that he existed. Like Descartes, we seem to be more certain of our thoughts and our existence than of anything else. What is less clear is the reason why we are thus certain. Philosophers throughout history have provided different interpretations of the cogito, disagreeing both on the kind of thoughts it characterizes and on the reasons for its cogency. According to what we may call the empiricist interpretation of (...) the cogito, I can only claim to be certain of having experiences, and this certainty, as well as that of my own existence, stems from their phenomenal and subjective character. According to rationalist interpretations, on the other hand, I am certain of having some self-reflexive propositional attitudes, and this certainty derives from their rational features. Psychiatric patients suffering from acute forms of depersonalization or of the Cotard syndrome often doubt that they think and exist, and might even believe that they don't. I argue that their study allows us to favor the empiricist interpretation of the cogito. (shrink)

My paper consists of five parts. In the first part I explain what I mean by the phenomenology of mind. In the second part I show that in contemporary analytic philosophy the prevailing metaphysical theories of the mind are typically not connected to the phenomenology of mind. Views on the nature of the mind are developed without considering the phenomenological facts. In the third part I outline a notion of metaphysics connected to the phenomenology of mind, then in the fourth (...) and fifth parts I give some examples to illustrate how I envision the nature of this connection. (shrink)

Phenomenology is a well‐founded qualitative methodology that is frequently used by nurse researchers and considered of value when addressing research questions in nursing practice and nurse education. However, at present, nurse researchers using phenomenology tend to divide phenomenological methodology into the descriptive and interpretive formats. The nursing literature suggests that there is a deep divide between researchers following the methodological underpinnings and basic precepts pertaining to these two camps. If we are to reach a clearer understanding of the theory underlying (...) phenomenological methods it would be more helpful if we started to recognise that there are also important associations between transcendental and interpretive phenomenology. One such association is that a paradigm of movement exists that is not unique to transcendental and interpretive phenomenology but is common to them, as well as being inherent within a variety of fields of study. If we consider the universality of such imagery, looking to examples through parallel texts, we can obtain insights into phenomenology and its transposition into a workable scientific method that can be of use to the nurse researcher. (shrink)

Although many still see Derrida as a thinker opposed to a unified systematic meaning, there has recently been growing recognition that Derrida, in his later years, suggested that his work is not averse to formalisation. In support of this view, this paper points out that, in 1990, Derrida himself told us that his first work of 1954 reveals a “law” which impels his career, and that some responses had arisen even there. Some benefits of adopting such a common pole are (...) set out, and an interrelated “system” developed to relate the law of 1954 to the later responses, in order to help find a common, systematic base for Derrida’s oeuvre. The need to accommodate approaches which are wary of a systematic approach is nevertheless acknowledged, and possible ways of reconciling the diverse readings of Derrida’s intent and collaboratively furthering the formalisation of Derrida’s oeuvre for posterity are outlined in closing. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, Volume 10, Edition 2, October 2010: 43-60. (shrink)

In the aftermath of a normalized Foucaultian world with an all encompassing web of biopower, one remaining hope is to cultivate nimbleness. Nimbleness is an embodied aesthetic sensitivity to the material presence. Cultivating nimbleness is a particular style of cultivation; it is to willfully gather together one’s self in the wake of a formative force far richer than the derivative web of living power relationships of human embeddness within a horizon of social, economical, political and historical subjectivating power relations; which (...) are chronicled and labeled by Michel Foucault as the normalizing practices of biopower. In other words to have freedom, one must start by rejecting the categories and labels normally internalized in order to relearn to learn from the material presence. Such a style of cultivation is a means of resisting normalizing power relations which co-opt cultivating practices to engross their own dominance which has had the by-product of an impotence to negate the gross material injustices present. This normalizing style of cultivation is a prevalent, corrupted, semblance which denies the importance of beauty for that of efficiency, rejects non-human purposiveness, and limits its measure of ethics to short term economical pragmatism. The thesis acknowledges that something is awry with the world and that giving care to beauty might help. The aim is to examine the event of Beauty as depicted by the philosopher Immanuel Kant and to apply this characterization to elective architectural spaces such that it may motivate individuals to cultivate their own nimbleness in relation to a formative force of nature. However given the revealed need for sensitivity to the particular material presence, the thesis can not be a rule book or catalog for beautiful design. Rather it is a rehabilitation for architects who are already heterospatially curious, with the desired outcome of architects cultivating their own nimbleness to reflectively judge as a ground up, multi-node, rhizomatic means of resistance to normalizing power practices as manifest in bad architecture. (shrink)

Husserl saw the Cartesian critique of scepticism as one of the eternal merits of Descartes’ philosophy. In doing so, he accepted the legitimacy of the very idea of a universal doubt, and sought to present as an alternative to it a renewed, specifically phenomenological concept of self-evidence, making it possible to obtain an unshakable foundation for the edifice of knowledge. This acceptance of the skeptical problem underlies his entire conceptual framework, both before and after the transcendental turn, and especially the (...) immanence/transcendence distinction, i.e., the very basis of intentionality. In taking as its starting point an analysis of perception, the article puts forth a certain number of phenomenological arguments in order to put into question the validity of the skeptical problem and, therefore, of the Husserlian conceptual framework; it defends, in the first place, a disjunctive conception of perception and, in the second place, a holism of experience. (shrink)

This essay explores the practical significance of Michel Henry’s “material phenomenology.” Commencing with an exposition of his most basic philosophical intuition, i.e., his insight that transcendental affectivity is the primordial mode of revelation of our selfhood, the essay then brings to light how this intuition also establishes our relation to both the world and others. Animated by a radical form of the phenomenological reduction, Henry’s material phenomenology brackets the exterior world in a bid to reach the concrete interior transcendental experience (...) at the base of all exteriority. The essay argues that this “counter reduction,” designed as a practical orientation to the world, suspends all traditional parameters of onto(theo)logical individuation in order to rethink subjectivity in terms of its transcendental corporeality, i.e., in terms of the invisible display of “affective flesh.” The development of this “metaphysics of the individual” anchors his “practical philosophy” as he developed it—under shifting accents—throughout his oeuvre. In particular, the essay brings into focus Henry’s reflections on modernity, the industry of mass culture and their “barbaric” movements. The essay briefly puts these cultural and political areas of Henry’s of thinking into contact with his late “theological turn,” i.e., his Christological account of Life and the (inter)subjective self-realization to which it gives rise. (shrink)

Although sexual difference is widely regarded as the concept that lies at the center of Luce Irigaray's thought, its meaning and significance is highly contested. This dissensus, however, attests to more than merely the existence of a recalcitrant conceptual ambiguity. That is, Irigaray's discussion of sexual difference remains fraught not because she leaves this concept undefined but because the centrality of sexual difference in fact marks a complex and unstable nexus of phenomena that shift throughout her work. Consequently, if Irigaray (...) is indeed the preeminent thinker of sexual difference, this is not in virtue of her recurrent appeal to a monolithic, readily digestible concept but rather somehow despite the absence of precisely this gesture. In this paper, I will attempt to elucidate the peculiar preeminence of sexual difference in Irigaray's work by identifying her persistent, though largely unexamined, commitment to transcendental phenomenology. Indeed, I attempt to show that the complex of phenomena of sexual difference emerges in L'oubli de l'air and The Way of Love as a modulation of Heidegger's own revision of transcendental phenomenology. In this sense, the peculiar preeminence of sexual difference does not mark the centrality of a concept but Irigaray's amplification of this Heideggerian gesture. (shrink)

Despite the fact that Chan, especially koan Chan is highly unconventional and perplexing, there are still some principles with which to interpret and appreciate the practice. Each of the five houses or lineages of Chan has its idiosyncratic hermeneutic rules. The Linji House has Linji si liao jian, si bin zhu and si zhao yong among others while the Yunmen House follows Yumen san ju as one of its house rules. Moreover, there is a general inner logic that seems to (...) apply to understanding Chan encounters across lineages. The opportune moment (Chan Ji) of responding swiftly and skillfully and yet always grounding oneself in the openness and flow of the mind highlights the inner logic of the cognition and behavior of Chan Buddhists. This paper attempts to read koans from The Blue Cliff Record in the light of Chan Buddhist hermeneutics. Some aspects and patterns of Chan encounters may appear as rituals that serve either as a provisional means for common people or as an embodiment of enlightened behaviors. Routinized ritualization of Chan life, however, runs counter to the fundamental spirit of freedom and spontaneity of Chan way of life. Much can and needs to be elucidated about the mystified koan Chan experience before we finally resort to the transpersonal experience of noble silence. (shrink)

Edmund Husserl, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology: From the Lectures, Winter Semester, 1910--1911. Translated by Ingo Farin and James G. Hart Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s10743-010-9073-7 Authors Colin J. Hahn, Department of Philosophy, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI 53201-1881, USA Journal Husserl Studies Online ISSN 1572-8501 Print ISSN 0167-9848 Journal Volume Volume 26 Journal Issue Volume 26, Number 3.

Utilizing the definition of phenomenology originally presented by Edith Stein, it is possible to understand Viktor Frankl's existential psychotherapy as falling well within the phenomenological movement. In this article, Frankl's approach to treatment, which utilizes an induced phenomenological struggle, is examined in detail around its relationship with time. Clinical material is presented to illustrate the described treatment approach.

This paper explores the emergence of the distinctions between the transcendental and the psychological and, correlatively, between phenomenology and psychology that emerge in The Idea of Phenomenology. It is argued that this first attempt to draw these distinctions reveals that the conception of transcendental phenomenology remains infected by elements of the earlier conception of descriptive psychology and that only later does Husserl move to a more adequate—but perhaps not yet fully purified—conception of the transcendental.

This paper argues that transcendental phenomenology (here represented by Edmund Husserl) can accommodate the main thesis of semantic externalism, namely, that intentional content is not simply a matter of what is ‘in the head,’ but depends on how the world is. I first introduce the semantic problem as an issue of how linguistic tokens or mental states can have ‘content’—that is, how they can set up conditions of satisfaction or be responsive to norms such that they can succeed or fail (...) at referring. The standard representationalist view—which thinks of the problem in first-person terms—is contrasted with Brandom’s pragmatic inferentialist approach, which adopts a third-person stance. The rest of the paper defends a phenomenological version of the representationalist position (seeking to preserve its first-person stance) but offers a conception of representation that does not identify it with an entity ‘in the head.’ The standard view of Husserl as a Cartesian internalist is undermined by rejecting its fundamental assumption—that Husserl’s concept of the ‘noema’ is a mental entity—and by defending a concept of ‘phenomenological immanence’ that has a normative, rather than a psychological, structure. Finally, it is argued that phenomenological immanence cannot be identified with ‘consciousness’ in Husserl’s sense, though consciousness is a necessary condition for it. (shrink)

The ‘Other’ can be near to us, or far from us. We are in-relation with both. Given that, we explore whether, from a moral philosophical perspective, the ‘near-other’ is in tension with the ‘far-other’. We argue that we find our relationship with the near-other through a transcendent metaphysical empathy derived from the noumenon, which is manifest in the phenomenon as compassion and justice. We then argue that perceived differences in the phenomenon mean that we do not reliably transfer this empathy (...) for the near-other, to the far-other. Further, empathic and constructive dialogue is made more difficult because of our proclivity to actively engage in ‘othering’ those not-like-us. Properly, moral decision-making is positioned in a space cognizant of the other. Near-otherness makes consensus in the decision-making process easier, while far-otherness makes consensus more difficult. In our post-modern, multicultural and multifaith era, we need to be alert to the other’s perspective, to find a way to have a meaningful dialogue and thus achieve consensus in our moral decision-making. (shrink)

Phenomenology has been described as a “non-argumentocentric” way of doing philosophy, reflecting that the philosophical focus is on generating adequate descriptions of experience. But it should not be described as an argument-free zone, regardless of whether this is intended as a descriptive claim about the work of the “usual suspects” or a normative claim about how phenomenology ought to be properly practiced. If phenomenology is always at least partly in the business of arguments, then it is worth giving further attention (...) to the role and form of phenomenological argumentation, how it interacts with its more strictly descriptive component, and the status of phenomenological claims regarding conditions for various kinds of experience. I contend that different versions of phenomenological reasoning encroach upon argument forms that are commonly thought to be antithetical to phenomenology, notably abductive reasoning, understood in terms of its role in both hypothesis generation and in terms of justification. This paper identifies two main steps to making this case. The first step takes seriously the consequences of the intrinsically dialectical aspect of phenomenology in intersection with other modes of philosophy, the natural attitude, and non-philosophy. The second step focuses on transcendental reflection and arguments about the conditions/structures they contain. Together, these two steps aim to rescue phenomenology from the objection that it has an “ostrich epistemology” with regard to the ostensible purity of description, the intuition of essences, or the “conditions” ascertained through transcendental reflection. (shrink)