This methodological article explores issues related to having the ontological ground for phenomenological empirical research present throughout the research process. We discuss how ontology needs to be taken into consideration regarding the phenomena to be studied and how ontological aspects of phenomena need to be highlighted during various data collection and analysis procedures. Here, we discuss how philosophical works can be used in the context of specific research projects. In illustrating our statements, we present four empirical examples connected to the (...) themes of life changes and learning processes with the purpose of exemplifying and discussing how general lifeworld ontology can be integrated as an active resource in empirical phenomenological research. (shrink)

In meetings between people in school our values are shown through, for example, our actions, our speech and body language. These meetings can be regarded as ethical situations, which can arouse strong emotional reactions that ordinary, everyday situations usually do not do. The aim of this paper is to illuminate, interpret and discuss students' lived experiences of ethical situations in their school. The participants in the study were students in a Swedish secondary school, and the empirical data consisted of written (...) reflections and interviews. The study is based on the lived experiences of students. The analysis of the empirical data resulted in two themes: response in speech and action , and power relations . The comprehensive understanding of the results is that healthy relationships play an important ethical role in the school. Finally, we discuss how ways of listening to students' voices and appreciating practice can develop an ethical school. (shrink)

On the face of it, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s views bear a strong resemblance to contemporary disjunctivist theories of perception, especially John McDowell’s epistemological disjunctivism. Like McDowell (and other disjunctivists), Merleau-Ponty seems to be a direct realist about perception and holds that veridical and illusory perceptions are distinct. This paper furthers this comparison. Furthermore, it is argued that elements of Merleau-Ponty’s thought provide a stronger case for McDowell’s kind of epistemological view than McDowell himself provides. Merleau-Ponty’s early thought can be used to (...) develop a unique version of epistemological disjunctivism that is worth consideration alongside contemporary views on perceptual knowledge. (shrink)

The history of pedagogics gives the impression that pedagogics has never had an identity of its own. Throughout history it has borrowed its identity from philosophy, theology, psychology and sociology. Against the background of this historical challenge, the article proposes pedagogical practice as an alternative identity to pedagogics, although not in the classical sense of an absolute and self‐sufficient identity, and it develops one particular ontological theory of pedagogical practice viewed from a life‐world approach with the ambition of suggesting a (...) theoretical point of departure for pedagogical research. (shrink)

The characteristic feature of phenomenology is the phenomenological constraint it exerts on its concepts: they should be embodied in concrete cases. Now, one might take that that possible match between concepts and the given would require some ontological foundation: as if the general determination provided by the concept should correspond to a particular piece of given to be found in the object itself as an abstract ‘moment’. Phenomenology would then call for an ontology of abstract particulars. Against such view, the (...) author advocates that such ontological foundation is flawed in principle, and that phenomenology as such does not call for any particular ontology: phenomenology rather introduces some kind of phenomenological constraint on the very way of ontological analysis. In order to determine what one can say to be in particular circumstances, one has to consider what one usually says to be in that kind of circumstances: on this alternative view, ontology rests on examples, as paradigmatic applications of concepts. The phenomenological move consists in disclosing how the very content of concepts depends on the ways they are applied, rather than what would be supposed to ‘correspond’ to them would depend on their alleged content—as if the latter was independent of any previous connection with the given. (shrink)

The intention of this article is to make an educational analysis of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of experience in order to see what it implicates for educational practice as well as educational research. In this way, we can attain an understanding what embodied experience might mean both in schools and other educational settings and in researching educational activities. The analysis will take its point of departure in Merleau-Ponty’s analysis and criticism of empiricist and neokantian theories of experience. This will be followed up (...) by an introduction of some central concepts in Merleau-Ponty’s own understanding of experience with emphasis on their relevance for educational analysis. This way of presenting the theory of embodied experience has the advantage of being able to indicate the difference it makes in the field of theories of experience. (shrink)

Philosophical Progress: In Defence of a Reasonable Optimism, by StoljarDaniel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. 186.

This paper argues that in foregoing the questions that emerge from the dialectical relationship between form and meaning, an intrinsic fallacy mistakes the relationship between the arts and education for a simplistic mechanism of signification—a false “ease”—where empty forms are supposedly given meaning by ethical and aesthetic givens as if the pedagogy of art were analogous to an empty room that was (or still needs to be) inhabited. Art’s false “ease” presents a tautology that presumes the relationship between the arts (...) and learning on assumptions that force a false equivalence between (a) the perception of implicit causes that constitute a number of externalised artistic attributes (such as creative, critical, and intuitive forms of thinking and making) by which the arts are instrumentalised, and (b) a number of desired effects that are seen as being equal to the relative value that an arts subject (or discipline) commands in a perceived relationship with the world in terms of its use and therefore function. To counter this distortion this paper makes a case for a pedagogical aesthetics that would unlearn—and thereby exit—the educationalist tautology of art’s false ease. While politically this would mean that the arts are recognized in their ability to think and act outside the traditional notion of schooling as a walled polis, philosophically this represents a challenge to move arts education away from the “spatial” concepts by which dialectical narratives, such as those of form and content, have been hitherto assumed as constructivist signifiers. (shrink)

Since the revolutionary mood of the 1960s, patient-centered mental health care and a research emphasis on service users as experts by experience have emerged hand in hand with a view of service users as consumers. What happens to knowledge derived from firsthand experience when mental health users become experts and actively choose care? What kind of perspective do service users pursue on psychological distress? These are important questions in a field where psychiatric expertise on mental illness is socially structured and (...) constrained as an intra-personal disturbance of the mind. We argue that experience experts have lost a coherent perspective on care and health. We illustrate this by rationally reconstructing how the interpersonal view of mental health first gained and then lost coherence between the conception of mental health, the practice of mental health care, and the user experience. Harry Stack Sullivan’s interpersonal theory was a paradigm case for such coherence. The inclusion of mental health consumers as ‘experts by experience’ in the mental health field took place at the cost of Sullivan’s coherent interpersonal theory. Service users who interact side by side with medical experts as experience experts are constrained by the evidence-based imperative and consumerism. Service users are caught up in a race among experts to gain knowledge about mental problems from a third-person perspective instead of from first-person experience. To make a contribution service users have more to gain from a research approach that appreciates that they are persons among persons rather than experts among experts. (shrink)

The dual-aspect monist conjecture launched by Pauli and Jung in the mid-20th century will be couched in somewhat formal terms to characterize it more concisely than by verbal description alone. After some background material situating the Pauli–Jung conjecture among other conceptual approaches to the mind–matter problem, the main body of this paper outlines its general framework of a basic psychophysically neutral reality with its derivative mental and physical aspects and the nature of the correlations that connect these aspects. Some related (...) approaches are discussed to identify key similarities to and deviations from the Pauli–Jung framework that may be useful for cross-fertilization. (shrink)

Body image and body schema refer to two different yet closely related systems. Whereas BI can be defined as a system of perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs pertaining to one's own body, BS is a system of sensory-motor capacities that functions without awareness or the necessity of perceptual monitoring. Studies have demonstrated that applying the concepts of BI and BS enables us to conceptualize complex pathological phenomena such as anorexia, schizophrenia, and depersonalization. Likewise, it has further been argued that these concepts (...) play a crucial role in our ability to grasp our bodily experiences in the socio-cultural world according to various factors, such as gender, social class, and ethnicity. Referring to the insights of Frantz Fanon, the author of Black Skin, White Masks, this paper suggests that under certain conditions the BI can take over and reshape the BS. Based on an examination of Fanon’s writings, the paper suggests that not only the BI can truly remold the BS but that the gaze of the other can directly influence the BI. (shrink)

This paper seeks to describe and analyze the traumatic experience through an examination of the sense of agency—the sense of controlling one’s body, and sense of ownership—the sense that it is my body that undergoes experiences. It appears that there exist two levels of traumatic experience: on the first level one loses the sense of agency but retains the sense of ownership, whilst on the second one loses both of these, with symptoms becoming progressively more severe. A comparison of the (...) traumatic experience with various modulations of the senses of agency and ownership, from cases involving prostheses to tools requiring greater or lesser extents of control, suggests that the harsher the traumatic event, the greater the damage is to the sense of ownership, resulting in the increasing sense of the body as a tool rather than an original organism. Likewise, the long-term ramifications become more severe according to the significance of the damage to the sense of ownership. (shrink)

Dissociation during trauma lacks an adequate definition. Using data obtained from interviews with 36 posttraumatic individuals conducted according to the phenomenological approach, this paper seeks to improve our understanding of this phenomenon. In particular, it suggesting a trade off model depicting the balance between the sense of agency and the sense of ownership : a reciprocal relationship appears to exist between these two, and in order to enable control of the body during trauma the sense of ownership must decrease. When (...) the relationship between the sense of agency and sense of ownership changes disproportionately to the constraints of the traumatic event, the dissociative mechanism becomes dysfunctional. By contrast, when the relations alter in accordance with the surrounding conditions, the dissociative mechanism functions properly. (shrink)

Asperger's syndrome is a pervasive developmental condition characterized by features of autism. As observed in clinical practice, individuals with Asperger's syndrome present an impairment related to inflexibility in their everyday routine, an immediate manner of experiencing and relating, and difficulties in estimating periods of time. Following a phenomenological perspective, this study is an attempt to examine these aforementioned aspects in terms of temporality. Thirteen participants with Asperger's syndrome, from 13 to 20 years old, were interviewed about their experience of periods (...) of time, personal history, their past, present and future; and their concept of time and finitude. After the interviews, it was possible to identify three general themes which emerged in the invariant aspects of their experience of time: factual experience of present and future dimensions, chronological time and the past experience. Moreover, participants' descriptions evidenced aspects of experience based on the specificity of lived facts and a sense of time specifically related to what was lived in the past. (shrink)

As plagiarism is a notion specific to a particular culture and epoch, and is also understood in a variety of ways by individuals, particular attention must be paid to the putting of the phenomenological question, What is plagiarism in its appearing? Resolution of this issue leads us to locate students' perceptions and opinions within the lifeworld, and to seek an initially idiographic set of descriptions. Of twelve interview analyses, three are presented. A student who took an especially anxious line, his (...) morality having to do with the fear of being shamed were he to be accused of plagiarism in his work. A student who saw academic development as the movement from dependence on respected authors such that the novice's work is near plagiaristic, to autonomy and self-assured originality. A student whose degree involved painting and art history—disciplines with very distinct understandings of plagiarism. To combat plagiarism, then, one must not assume that students have a prior grasp of the unequivocal meaning of the notion, but must accept that a process of acculturation is required. (shrink)

Though there are few more pervasive features of the social world than the ebb and flow of individual participation, the literature only provides hints as to its phenomenology. The phenomenological investigation of social participation presented in this paper indicates that it essentially entails: 1. Attunement to the others' "stock of knowledge at hand" . 2. Emotional and motivational attunement to the group's concerns. 3. Taking for granted that one can contribute appropriately. 4. Being able to assume that one's identity is (...) not under threat. Though the implications can only be touched on in this paper, the phenomenological clarification of participation is a valuable resource, grounding many lines of research of contemporary significance-for instance, in education and the other "person professions" and in social policy and political science-and suggesting fruitful new perspectives. (shrink)

Historically, the suspension of presuppositions arose as part of the philosophical procedure of the transcendental reduction which, Husserl taught, led to the distinct realm of phenomenological research: pure consciousness. With such an origin, it may seem surprising that bracketing remains a methodological concept of modern phenomenological psychology, in which the focus is on the life-world. Such a focus of investigation is, on the face of it, incompatible with transcendental idealism. The gap was bridged largely by Merleau-Ponty, who found it possible (...) to interpret Husserl's later work in an existentialist way, and thus enabled the process of bracketing to refer, not to a turning away from the world and a concentration on detached consciousness, but to the resolve to set aside theories, research presuppositions, ready-made interpretations, etc., in order to reveal engaged, lived experience. This paper outlines the history of the suspension of presuppositions and discusses the scope and limitations of bracketing in its new sense within existential phenomenology. The emphasis is on research practice and on the phenomenological quest for entry into the life-world of the research participant. It is argued that the bracketing of presuppositions throughout the process of research should be a cardinal feature of phenomenological psychology. Of equal importance is the investigator's sensitive awareness that the investigation of the life-world and the phenomena which appear within it is a thoroughly interpersonal process, necessarily entailing the taken-for-granted assumptions implicit in all social interaction. These presuppositions are not open to bracketing. (shrink)

Although a conventional environmentalism focuses on the health of ecological systems, Pope Francis’s 2015 environmental encyclical Laudato Sí invokes St. Francis of Assisi to emphasize God’s love for the individual organism, no matter how small. Decrying the tendency to regard other creatures as mere objects to be controlled and used, Pope Francis urges our enactment of a ‘universal communion’ governed by love. I suggest, however, that Laudato Sí’s animal ethic, as focused on ordering human and animal need, is inadequate to (...) its overarching vision of cross-species communion. This vision requires the sort of cross-species relational bridge implicit in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s view of agency as an irreducibly ‘animate’ expression of choice and afforded further definition in Kenneth J. Shapiro’s conception of a ‘kinesthetic empathy.’ As the phenomenological epistemology underlying both discourses makes possible a rough correspondence, I put these in conversation to demonstrate that a Merleau-Pontyan and reciprocal agency is a constitutive aspect of the fullest sort of cross-species relation, such that recognition of this agency can both deepen our understanding of ‘universal communion’ and foster engagement in its practice. (shrink)

The realm of intentionality is definitive of phenomenology as a reflective methodology. Yet it is precisely the focus on the intentionalgiventhat has been condemned recently.Speculative realism argues that phenomenology is unsatisfactory since the reduction to the intentional realm excludes the ‘external’, i.e. reality independent of consciousness. This criticism allows me to clarify the nature of intentionality.Material phenomenologyfinds, in contrast, that the intentional realm excludes the ‘inner’. This criticism allows me to discuss the way in whichipseityenters as an element of experience. (...) Intentionality, viewed psychologically, is rightly the distinct arena of phenomenological psychology. However, there is no doubting the difficulty of maintaining a research focus precisely on the realm of intentionality; there areaporiasof the reduction. I discuss some of the difficulties. (shrink)

The fact that psychic life is not merely given externally and as mutual externality, but is given in its nexus, given by self-knowledge, by internal experience, constitutes the basic difference between psychological knowledge and knowledge of nature.

This essay reflects on what it means to bring together the disciplines of Husserlian philosophy and psychology in light of current thinking about interdisciplinarity. Drawing from Allen Repko’s work on the interdisciplinary research process, aspects highlighted include justifying using an interdisciplinary approach, identifying conflicts between disciplinary insights, creating common ground between concepts, and constructing a more comprehensive understanding. To focus the discussion and provide an example, I use Aron Gurwitsch’s work of extending the concepts and theories of Gestalt psychology to (...) phenomenology. Gurwitsch’s writings can be seen as an attempt to first construct common ground for conflicting insights within psychology and within phenomenology, then create common ground for conflicting insights between psychology and phenomenology. Gurwitsch’s work can be taken as a kind of case study or adaptable model of how to find convergence. The ultimate goal is to bring interdisciplinary studies into productive conversation with phenomenological psychology. (shrink)

I argue that bodybuilding should not qualify as a sport, given that at the competition stage it lacks an essential feature of sports, namely, skillful activity. Based on the classic distinction between Leib and Körper in phenomenology, I argue that bodybuilding competition’s sole purpose is to present the Körper, whereas sports are about manifestations of Leib. I consider several objections to this analysis, after which I conclude that bodybuilding is an endeavor closer to both beauty competitions and classical sculpture rather (...) than to any other known sports. (shrink)

Part of teaching the descriptive phenomenological psychological method is to assist students in grasping their previously unrecognized assumptions regarding the meaning of “science.” This paper is intended to address a variety of assumptions that are encountered when introducing students to the descriptive phenomenological psychological method pioneered by Giorgi. These assumptions are: 1) That the meaning of “science” is exhausted by empirical science, and therefore qualitative research, even if termed “human science,” is more akin to literature or art than methodical, scientific (...) inquiry; 2) That as a primarily aesthetic, poetic enterprise human scientific psychology need not attempt to achieve a degree of rigor and epistemological clarity analogous to that pursued by natural scientists; 3) That “objectivity” is a concept belonging to natural science, and therefore human science ought not to strive for objectivity because this would require “objectivizing” the human being; 4) That qualitative research must always adopt an “interpretive” approach, description being seen as merely a mode of interpretation. These assumptions are responded to from a perspective drawing primarily upon Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, but also upon Eagleton’s analysis of aestheticism. (shrink)

There are non-governmental organizations that operate transnationally and there are those that operate within the boundaries of a nation. A third use of non-governmental organizations is articulated. We may call this third category an instrumental use of non-governmental organizations to facilitate the transfer of the work of third-party conflict resolution practitioners to the two previously feuding parties. Representative accounts are provided in Part I of this paper. In Part II, the instrumental use of the NGO to transfer knowledge from practitioners (...) to the indigenous and previously feuding parties is depicted as a means to fill a practice gap in the field of conflict resolution, where many praxes do not examine the transfer of knowledge in an experiential and discovery-oriented way. An alternative is presented where the process of appropriation is suggested as an object of study. In Part III, a conceptualization of how one may determine the phenomenology of a sense of ownership of the project by the previously feuding parties is provided. A phenomenological account of the journey from constituting subjectivity to a constituted objectivity is articulated to the point where we see a division of labour between Husserl’s transcendental project, that seeks universal and broader essences, and psychology, which is highly contextualized. Part IV constitutes the implementation of the praxis to answer the specific question, “What is the sense of ownership of the parties in conflict?” - and, derivatively, “What is the fate of the hitherto agonistic relation?” A conflict resolution model is consolidated or reconfigured using the lessons drawn from the results of the study and from a second look at the literature to see where changes in practice and reconceptualization may be required. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 6, Edition 2 August 2006. (shrink)

Within the Husserlian phenomenological philosophical tradition, description and interpretation co-exist. However, teaching the practice of phenomenological psychological research requires careful articulation of the differences between a descriptive and an interpretive relationship to what is provided by qualitative data. If as researchers we neglect the epistemological foundations of our work or avoid working through difficult methodological issues, then our work invites dismissal as inadequate science, undermining the effort to strongly establish psychology along qualitative lines. The first article in this two-part discussion (...) provides a Husserlian investigation of the meaning of ‘method’ for psychology as a human science. This investigation is undertaken in the light of some researchers’ appropriations of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics in the service of non-methodical praxes. The second article will address some implications of the attempt to structure qualitative psychological research along ‘Gadamerian’ lines, taking seriously the references to Gadamer’s work made by researchers such as Van Manen and Smith. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 11, Edition 1 May 2011, 69-85. (shrink)

In concept, an image has both verticality and horizontal dimensions. Saturated images within this space have a horizon and can exceed that horizon. Within that horizon where the image dwells something chances itself upon the observer and the observed. Into that public space between self and other, students bring an instrumental approach to how they plan to deploy their new fund of knowledge, only to discover that the setting itself has become an event where surprise and upheaval disrupt their illusion (...) of self-continuity and the façade of familiarity. Phenomenologically, upheaval shows itself when givenness both precedes and participates in the giving of phenomena such as medical students’ “before and after” images of psychoanalysis. They discover and reconfigure their erstwhile absolute positions and values into reconfigurations of self and prior commitments. The turning point from their instrumental use of knowledge to reconfigurations of how they situate themselves in the world decisively comes when teaching and learning become an event in se that disturbs their sense of order.Following Husserl, phenomenological psychological observation has required us to go from the events of history to a sense of history. Would, however, that we could stay at the level of events much longer to see images explode and exceed their horizons from the illusion of order, and patterned repetition disrupted by surprise, upheaval and indeterminacy in the spirit of Alain Badiou! (shrink)

According to Husserlian scholars such as Mohanty, description and interpretation coexist within Husserl’s work and are envisioned as complementary rather than mutually exclusive approaches to inquiry. This paper argues that exploring the implications of this philosophical complementarity for psychological research would require distinguishing between both the multiple meanings of “interpretation” and the differing modes of interpretation within qualitative data. Husserl’s model of passive and active intentionality and Ricoeur’s theory of narrativity are examined in order to explore their relevance for research. (...) It is argued that interview data can demonstrate both actively and passively intended dimensions, and that the psychological meaningfulness of this complexity points to the relevance of not only Husserl’s static analysis but also his genetic analysis. Likewise, it is argued that Ricoeur’s work on narrativity and narrative identity is invaluable in grasping ways in which narrative data is intrinsically self-interpretive, expresses self-identity, and is both situated within and responsive to the larger social horizon of the ineluctably relational interview context within which it is given. (shrink)

Hyppolite stresses his proximity to Merleau-Ponty, but the received interpretation of his “anti-humanist” reading of Hegel suggests a greater distance between their projects. This paper focuses on an under-explored dimension of their philosophical relationship. I argue that Merleau-Ponty and Hyppolite are both committed to formulating a mode of philosophical expression that can avoid the pitfalls of purely formal or literal and purely aesthetic or creative modes of expression. Merleau-Ponty’s attempt to navigate this dichotomy, I suggest, closely resembles Hyppolite’s interpretation of (...) Hegel’s “speculative” mode of expression. In particular, his emphasis on the “mediating” character of philosophical language, which moves between descriptive and creative expression, suggests a debt to Hyppolite. This reading provides more evidence to think that Hyppolite cannot be straightforwardly understood as an anti-humanist or post-phenomenological thinker, and paves the way for a _rapprochement_ between his work and the broader phenomenological tradition. (shrink)

This paper attempts to clarify Merleau-Ponty’s later work by tracing a hitherto overlooked set of concerns that were of key consequence for the formulation of his ontological research. I argue that his ontology can be understood as a response to a set of problems originating in reflections on the intersubjective use of language in dialogue, undertaken in the early 1950s. His study of dialogue disclosed a structure of meaning-formation and pointed towards a theory of truth (both recurring ontological topics) that (...) post-Phenomenology premises could not account for. A study of dialogue shows that speakers’ positions are interchangeable, that speaking subjects are active and passive in varying degrees, and that the intentional roles of subjects and objects are liable to shift or ‘transgress’ themselves. These observations anticipate the concepts of ‘reversibility’ and ‘narcissism’, his later view of activity and passivity, and his later view of intentionality, and sharpened the need to adopt an intersubjective focus in ontological research. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

Locke claims that a person’s identity over time consists in the unity of consciousness, not in the sameness of the body. Similarly, the phenomenological approach refuses to see the criteria of identity as residing in some externally observable bodily features. Nevertheless, it does not accept the idea that personal identity has to consist either in consciousness or in the body. We are self-aware as bodily beings. After providing a brief reassessment of Locke and the post-Lockean discussion, the article draws on (...) phenomenological arguments that show the body as lived, that is, lived as one’s own body, but also possibly as “other” or “strange.” Against what has been claimed in recent writing, especially in literature on Merleau-Ponty, the author argues that the “mineness” of the body and its “alterity” are not two mutually exclusive features. In the final part of the article, the author suggests that the becoming strange of one’s own body may legitimately be considered as a prominent experience of what it means to be a person. (shrink)

In several papers, Mark Wrathall argued that French phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, identifies a sui generis type of grounding, one not reducible to reason or natural causality. Following the Phenomenological tradition, Merleau-Ponty called this form of grounding “motivation,” and described it as the way in which one phenomenon spontaneously gives rise to another through its sense. While Wrathall’s suggestion has been taken up in the practical domain, its epistemic import has still not been fully explored. I would like to take up (...) the epistemic dimension of Wrathall’s thought in this paper. Following Wrathall, I explain how motivation can help us understand the manner in which perceptions ground singular, experiential judgments. But I extend this work in two ways. First, I suggest some additional considerations that support Wrathall’s view. Second, I argue that motivation can also help account for the way perceptions ground general judgments. My aim here will not be so much to rule out other answers to these longstanding epistemological questions, as to show that motivation carves out an attractive epistemological space. (shrink)

AI systems play an increasingly important role in shaping and regulating the lives of millions of human beings across the world. Calls for greater _transparency_ from such systems have been widespread. However, there is considerable ambiguity concerning what “transparency” actually means, and therefore, what greater transparency might entail. While, according to some debates, transparency requires _seeing through_ the artefact or device, widespread calls for transparency imply _seeing into_ different aspects of AI systems. These two notions are in apparent tension with (...) each other, and they are present in two lively but largely disconnected debates. In this paper, we aim to further analyse what these calls for transparency entail, and in so doing, clarify the sorts of transparency that we should want from AI systems. We do so by offering a taxonomy that classifies different notions of transparency. After a careful exploration of the different varieties of transparency, we show how this taxonomy can help us to navigate various domains of human–technology interactions, and more usefully discuss the relationship between technological transparency and human agency. We conclude by arguing that all of these different notions of transparency should be taken into account when designing more ethically adequate AI systems. (shrink)

Does the existence of body representations undermine the explanatory role of the body? Or do certain types of representation depend so closely upon the body that their involvement in a cognitive task implicates the body itself? In the introduction of this special issue we explore lines of tension and complement that might hold between the notions of embodiment and body representations, which remain too often neglected or obscure. To do so, we distinguish two conceptions of embodiment that either put weight (...) on the explanatory role of the body itself or body representations. We further analyse how and to what extent body representations can be said to be embodied. Finally, we give an overview of the full volume articulated around foundational issues (How should we define the notion of embodiment? To what extent and in what sense is embodiment compatible with representationalism? To what extent and in what sense are sensorimotor approaches similar to behaviourism?) and their applications in several cognitive domains (perception, concepts, selfhood, social cognition). (shrink)

Does the existence of body representations undermine the explanatory role of the body? Or do certain types of representation depend so closely upon the body that their involvement in a cognitive task implicates the body itself? In the introduction of this special issue we explore lines of tension and complement that might hold between the notions of embodiment and body representations, which remain too often neglected or obscure. To do so, we distinguish two conceptions of embodiment that either put weight (...) on the explanatory role of the body itself or body representations. We further analyse how and to what extent body representations can be said to be embodied. Finally, we give an overview of the full volume articulated around foundational issues (How should we define the notion of embodiment? To what extent and in what sense is embodiment compatible with representationalism? To what extent and in what sense are sensorimotor approaches similar to behaviourism?) and their applications in several cognitive domains (perception, concepts, selfhood, social cognition). (shrink)

What does Husserlian phenomenology have to offer feminist theory? More specifically, can we find resources within Husserl’s account of the living body ( Leib ) for the critical feminist project of rethinking embodiment beyond the dichotomies not only of mind/body but also of subject/object and activity/passivity? This essay begins by explicating the reasons for feminist hesitation with respect to Husserlian phenomenology. I then explore the resources that Husserl’s phenomenology of touch and his account of sensings hold for feminist theory. My (...) reading of Husserl proceeds by means of a comparison between his description of touch in Ideas II and Merleau-Ponty’s early appropriation of this account in the Phenomenology of Perception, as well as through an unlikely rapprochement between Husserl and Irigaray on the question of touch. Moreover, by revisiting the limitations in Husserl’s approach to the body—limitations of which any feminist appropriation must remain cognizant—I attempt to take Husserl’s phenomenology of touch beyond its initial methodologically solipsistic frame and to ask whether and how it can contribute to thinking gendered and racialized bodies. The phenomenology of touch, I argue, can allow us to understand the interplay between subjective, felt embodiment and social-historical context. In opening up Husserl’s account of touch to other dimensions—intersubjective and affective—sociality is revealed as residing within, and structuring of, touch. Such touch can allow us to think embodiment anew. (shrink)

What significance does the body have in the process of teaching and learning? In what way can the thoughts of a contemporary junior-level teacher in this regard be connected to the theory of the lived body formulated by the French phenomenologist philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and vice versa? The aim of this paper is to illuminate, enable understanding and discuss the meaning of the body in the learning process, with specific focus on the learning of writing as embodied experience. In the (...) process, the boundaries of learning are also explored. While understanding the significance both of learning as embodied experience and of the boundaries of learning is essential within the educational field, in this paper the discussion is limited to exploring how learning as embodied experience and the boundaries of learning can be viewed by taking Merleau-Ponty’s notions as theoretical starting points. In an attempt to answer the aim and connect the paper’s theoretical point of departure with a voice from a teacher, an interview with a junior-level teacher was conducted. The paper thus offers a theoretical contribution to the field of educational research, but one in which the theory is exemplified by, and connected to, a teacher’s voice. Accordingly, the paper concludes by summarising the common understandings of learning held theoretically by Merleau-Ponty and made real in the activities of the contemporary junior-level teacher. (shrink)