Airline pilots are attributed ultimate responsibility and final authority over their aircraft to ensure the safety and well-being of all its occupants. Yet, with the advent of automation technologies, a dissonance has emerged in that pilots have lost their actual decision-making authority as well as their ability to act in an adequate fashion towards meeting their responsibilities when unexpected circumstances or emergencies occur. Across the literature in human factor studies, we show how automated algorithmic technologies have wrestled control away from (...) airline pilots. The inter-related ethical and pragmatic consequences resulting from such a dissonance are presented. This includes pilots serving as ‘legal sponges’, being caught in ‘moral crumple zones’, as well as real impacts on safety and well-being of passengers and crew. One potential avenue presented in the literature involves a redistribution of responsibility towards all agential entities within the cockpit system. We discuss the possible pitfalls to this approach, including the reinforcement of pilot skills erosion as well as technology’s own limitations in adaptively dealing with unexpected circumstances. We justify our position by showing how algorithmic technology’s representational frames mask or severely limit the pilots’ natural reflex to ‘practically cope’ and gain an ‘optimal grip’ with a given context/situation at hand. Here, we present the concept of relevant or meaningful control, which pilots, when allowed to develop their natural brain-body reflexes, gain across gradual mastery of the aircraft. Finally, we propose a socio-technical design approach in which pilots can re-appropriate full human meaningful control of the aircraft, thus allowing them to meet their attributed responsibilities. (shrink)

The concept of experience by John Dewey revisited: conceiving, feeling and “enliving”. Dewey takes a few steps towards a differentiation of the concept of experience, such as the distinction between primary and secondary experience, or between ordinary (partial, raw, primitive) experience and complete, aesthetic experience. However, he does not provide a systematic elaboration of these distinctions. In the present text, a differentiation of Dewey’s concept of experience is proposed in terms of feeling, “enliving” (a neologism proposed in this paper) and (...) conceiving. Feeling refers to the basic mode of experience where action, emotion, cognition and communication constitute an original unity. Enliving, aesthetic experience, constitutes the lifeworld, as a person-in-world experience. Even though enliving is holistic and relational, a certain distance emerges between action, emotion and cognition which allows contemplation and choice. Conceiving, on the other hand, refers to the isolating and abstracting understanding of the world with even greater distance between action, emotion and cognition. Such a differentiation provides a clearer understanding of the scope of education. It avoids the risks of regressive tendencies in the concept of experience, and it helps to include conceiving within the realm of experience. (shrink)

The term "paradox'' signifies a contradiction of some sort. Modern health care appears to be rich in contradictions, and it is claimed to be paradoxical in a number of ways.In particular health care is held to be a paradox itself: it is supposed to do good, but is accused of doing harm. The objective of this article is to investigate whether the concept of paradox can serve as a framework for analysing pressing problems in modern healthcare. To pursue this, three (...) distinctive levels of paradox are identified: resolvable paradoxes, antinomies and aporias. The analysis reveals that when facing the challenges of modern health care the focus of attention should be to resolve the resolvable paradoxes,to acknowledge the antinomies and to learn to live with the aporias. (shrink)

The concepts of health and disease are crucial in defining the aim and the limits of modern medicine. Accordingly it is important to understand them and their relationship. However, there appears to be a discrepancy between scholars in philosophy of medicine and health care professionals with regard to these concepts. This article investigates health care professionals’ concepts of health and disease and the relationship between them. In order to do so, four different models are described and analyzed: the ideal model, (...) the holistic model, the medical model and the disjunctive model. The analysis reveals that each model has its pros and cons, and that health care professionals appear to apply more than one models. Furthermore, the models and the way health care professionals’ use them may be helpful for scholars in philosophy of medicine with regard to developing theories and communicating them to health care professionals. (shrink)

Cassirer's approach to symbolic mediation differs in some important ways from currently prevailing approaches to meaning and signification such as semiology and its more recent poststructuralist varieties. Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms offers a theory of symbols that does not amount to a sign theory or semiology. It sketches out, rather, a dynamic and nonrepresentational framework in which an alternative notion of difference takes centre stage. In order to make the original features of Cassirer's approach stand out, I will compare (...) it with the approach of the perhaps most influential differential thinker of our day, Jacques Derrida. The philosophy of symbolic forms explicitly prefigures a great many of the insights and concerns of poststructuralism. Yet, there are some critical differences. Rather than rejecting the concepts of objectivity, identity, and truth on the premises established by traditional metaphysics, Cassirer chooses to redefine these concepts through a radical conceptual reframing. The result is a doctrine that—in Derridean parlance—neither jumps beyond the oppositions of metaphysics, nor tries to resolve them in a Hegelian synthesis—a doctrine, that is, that even though it appeals to origins, cannot so easily be dismissed as yet another instantiation of the metaphysics of presence. (shrink)

The notion of the absolute time-constituting flow plays a central role in Edmund Husserl’s analysis of our consciousness of time. I offer a novel reading of Husserl’s remarks on the absolute flow, on which Husserl can be seen to be grappling with two key intuitions that are still at the centre of current debates about temporal experience. One of them is encapsulated by what is sometimes referred to as an intentionalist (as opposed to an extensionalist) approach to temporal experience. The (...) other centres on the thought that temporal experience itself necessarily unfolds over time. I show how some of Husserl’s more enigmatic-sounding remarks about the absolute flow become intelligible if they are read as attempts to accommodate both these intuitions at the same time. However, I also question whether Husserl ultimately provides good reasons for preferring his intentionalist approach to a rival extensionalist one. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to develop and defend an Attentional View of bodily awareness, on which attention is necessary for bodily awareness. The original formulation of the Attentional View is due to Marcel Kinsbourne. First, I will show that the Attentional View of bodily awareness as formulated by Kinsbourne is superior to other accounts in the literature for characterizing the relationship between attention and bodily awareness. Kinsbourne’s account is the only account in the literature so far which can (...) accommodate key neurological diseases such as personal neglect. Second, when I consider Kinsbourne’s view in more detail, I will argue that Kinsbourne’s Attentional View faces problems because it is too reductive. Kinsbourne deviates from the standard taxonomy on which there is a body schema and a body image. Instead he reduces the body image to the neural representation of the body in the somatosensory cortex, the body schema and attentional shifts. I will present two challenges to Kinsbourne’s view which demonstrate that Kinsbourne’s reduction of the body image is unsuccessful. Finally, I will present a revised version of the Attentional View that is both empirically adequate and philosophically satisfactory. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhy is Roger Federer a GOAT of tennis? I argue that the correct response goes beyond statistics and style of play; instead, it is due to the fact that Federer embodies the qualities that typify sporting genius. More than merely being a developed or refined form of expertise, sporting genius relies on the notion of performative fit; that is, the capacity to express viable ways of succeeding within a given sport in virtue of one’s cultivated history of biological and socio-cultural (...) existence. In other words, a genius such as Federer perfectly fits the requirements of his sport and, moreover, is able to safeguard and shape this fit through his unique disposition to perform in certain ways. Performative fit provides the foundations for received traits of genius such as creativity, self-belief and risk-taking. (shrink)

In this paper, we advance the thesis that music-making can be advantageously understood as an exploratory phenomenon. While music-making is certainly about aesthetic expression, from a phenomenological, cognitive, and even evolutionary perspective, it more importantly concerns structured explorations of the world around us, our minds, and our bodies. Our thesis is based on an enactive and phenomenological analysis of three cases: the first concerns the study of infants involved in early musical activities, and the two latter are phenomenologically inspired interviews (...) with an expert jazz improviser, and members of a prominent string quartet. Across these examples, we find that music-making involves a dual intentionality - one oriented towards the exploration of the sonic, material, and social environment, and one oriented toward the self, including the exploration of bodily awareness and reflective mental states. In enactivist terms, exploration is a fundamental way of making sense of oneself as coupled with the world. Understanding music-making as a pre-eminent case of exploration helps us explicate and appreciate the developmental, sensorimotor, and more advanced cognitive resources that exist in music-making activities. (shrink)

This essay identifies two kinds of awareness of one’s body that occur in a variety of literatures: awareness as psychologically or spiritually enabling or therapeutic, and awareness as undesirable self-consciousness of the body. Drawing on Foucault’s account of normalizing judgment, it argues that these two forms of awareness are impossible to separate, if that separation is into authentic versus extrinsic somatic experience. Nonetheless, awareness is an important component of embodied freedom, but a freedom understood with Spinoza and Nietzsche as grounded (...) in necessity rather than only in the will, and with Arendt and Foucault as a practice rather than an achievement of a sovereign subject. Somatic practices grounded in awareness and acceptance of the body’s necessities, along with attention to the I-can cultivate a form of embodied freedom that bridges care of the self and the political. (shrink)

In his recent works on daily face-to-face encounters, Zahavi claims that the phenomenon of sharing involves reciprocity. Following Zahavi’s line of thought, we wonder what exactly reciprocity amounts to and how the shared experience emerges from the dynamic process of interaction. By turning to the highly specialized field of elite sports dance, we aim at exploring the way in which reciprocity unfolds in intensive deliberate practices of movement. In our analysis, we specifically argue that the ongoing dynamics of two separate (...) flows of movement constitute a shared experience of dancing together. In this sense, moving together, in sports dance, is a practical way of understanding each other. In agreement with Zahavi, our analysis emphasizes the bi-directed nature of sharing. However, at the same time, we contribute to Zahavi’s ongoing endeavour as the special case of sports dance reveals how reciprocity can be deliberately shaped through the mutual coordination and affective bound dynamics of movement. Our article thus both pursues the methodological point that qualitative research of expert competences can constructively enrich phenomenological analysis and indicates how movement can be fundamental to the reciprocity of shared experience. (shrink)

In this article, we discuss some of the linguistic features of hermeneutic-phenomenological writing and, in so doing, we point to the close connection between lived experience and the ethical-aesthetic traits of writing the experience. Our exploration starts by contemplating texts written by the so-called Utrecht School. We reflect on their orientation as it has been understood, developed, and advocated by Max van Manen. The literary style of the Utrecht orientation is sometimes misunderstood and questioned. This article aims to explicate why (...) and how hermeneutic phenomenology needs an expressive language to "write the lived experience" rather than to simply write "about" the lived experience. Lived experiences are always past experiences that we try to bring into the present, and so the difference between recollections and memories are discussed in connection to writing the experience. We argue that what is being told and not seen is, metaphorically speaking, an event in sound, which can have ethical and aesthetic virtues of truth and beauty. Lived experiences, whether written as anecdotes or as other kinds of experiential accounts, can shine forth through the use of expressive language. But is this kind of language poetry? Can such an account be regarded as poetic writing? If it is poetic writing, exactly how does it differ from academic writing? Our exploration of questions like these leads us to the tentative conclusion that, as hermeneutic phenomenological researchers, we dwell in the borderland between a "poetic attitude" and a utilitarian writing style. (shrink)

This paper problematizes the analogy that Hubert Dreyfus has presented between phenomenology and cognitive science. It argues that Dreyfus presents Merleau-Ponty''s modification of Husserl''s phenomenology in a misleading way. He ignores the idea of philosophy as a radical interrogation and self-responsibility that stems from Husserl''s work and recurs in Merleau-Ponty''s Phenomenology of Perception. The paper focuses on Merleau-Ponty''s understanding of the phenomenological reduction. It shows that his critical idea was not to restrict the scope of Husserl''s reductions but to study (...) the conditions of possibility for the thetic acts. Merleau-Ponty argued, following Husserl''s texts, that the thetic acts rest on the basis of primordial pre-thetic experience. This layer of experience cannot, by its nature, be explicated or clarified, but it can be questioned and unveiled. This is the recurrent task of phenomenological philosophy, as Merleau-Ponty understands it. (shrink)

The primary goal of this essay is to provide a comprehensive overview and analysis of the various relations between material artifacts and the embodied mind. A secondary goal of this essay is to identify some of the trends in the design and use of artifacts. First, based on their functional properties, I identify four categories of artifacts co-opted by the embodied mind, namely (1) embodied artifacts, (2) perceptual artifacts, (3) cognitive artifacts, and (4) affective artifacts. These categories can overlap and (...) so some artifacts are members of more than one category. I also identify some of the techniques (or skills) we use when interacting with artifacts. Identifying these categories of artifacts and techniques allows us to map the landscape of relations between embodied minds and the artifactual world. Second, having identified categories of artifacts and techniques, this essay then outlines some of the trends in the design and use of artifacts, focussing on neuroprosthetics, brain-computer interfaces, and personalisation algorithms nudging their users towards particular epistemic paths of information consumption. (shrink)

In this article, I outline various ways in which artifacts are interwoven with autobiographical memory systems and conceptualize what this implies for the self. I first sketch the narrative approach to the self, arguing that who we are as persons is essentially our (unfolding) life story, which, in turn, determines our present beliefs and desires, but also directs our future goals and actions. I then argue that our autobiographical memory is partly anchored in our embodied interactions with an ecology of (...) artifacts in our environment. Lifelogs, photos, videos, journals, diaries, souvenirs, jewelry, books, works of art, and many other meaningful objects trigger and sometimes constitute emotionally-laden autobiographical memories. Autobiographical memory is thus distributed across embodied agents and various environmental structures. To defend this claim, I draw on and integrate distributed cognition theory and empirical research in human-technology interaction. Based on this, I conclude that the self is neither defined by psychological states realized by the brain nor by biological states realized by the organism, but should be seen as a distributed and relational construct. (shrink)

The main goal of this paper is to investigate whether humans are unique in using tools and artifacts. Non-human animals exhibit some impressive instances of tool and artifact-use. Chimpanzees use sticks to get termites out of a mound, beavers build dams, birds make nests, spiders create webs, bowerbirds make bowers to impress potential mates, etc. There is no doubt that some animals modify and use objects in clever and sophisticated ways. But how does this relate to the way in which (...) humans make and use objects to achieve their goals? To answer this question, this paper first presents a taxonomy of artifacts, identifying four overlapping categories, namely embodied, perceptual, cognitive, and affective artifacts. It then discusses definitions of animal tool-use, arguing that we need a more liberal approach, one that goes beyond the use of tools that are embedded in occurrent perception-action cycles. This paper ends by analysing how instances of animal tool and artifact-use can be classified according to the four identified categories, concluding that some animals use embodied, perceptual, cognitive, and affective artifacts. In this sense, humans are thus not unique in the kinds of tools and artifacts we use. What is unique, however, is our unprecedented flexibility and openness to deeply incorporate a large variety of complex tools and artifacts into our embodied, perceptual, cognitive, and affective systems. (shrink)

Though Bernard Lonergan is often counted among the so-called “Transcendental Thomists”, this article offers a re-appraisal of his theory of understanding with a renewed emphasis on its a posteriori, rather than a priori, approach. For Lonergan, because understanding is experienced, it can be investigated empirically. It is the further conviction of the author that the experience in which understanding gives itself is a bodily experience. This is the case both in how the experience emerges from biological processes, but also appears (...) within the “phenomenological body” of human conscious awareness. Lonergan’s cognitional theory is compared with Maurice Blondel’s theory of embodied reason to elucidate the former and with Eugene Gendlin’s notion of a bodily “felt-experience” to elucidate the latter. A few final, exploratory comments are made with regard to the dynamics of symbolization, formulation, and expression by linking Gendlin’s work with Lonergan’s Verbum articles. (shrink)

This article contributes to an ongoing discussion within sports philosophy concerning how to understand intentional movement in sporting activities. The operations of ‘representation intentionality...

The potential for mirror neuron research to explain various aspects of social cognition has received considerable attention over the past two decades. Initially, mirror neuron research may seem in accordance with a phenomenological understanding of intersubjectivity, but the work of Dan Zahavi will be used to highlight significant incompatibilities between the two. Likewise, the enactivists Thomas Fuchs and Hanne De Jaegher identify significant issues with current interpretations of mirror neuron research and provide an alternative description of intersubjectivity. This article will (...) assess whether the enactivists are able to provide a more phenomenologically consistent alternative to mirror neuron research alone, eventually determining that their enactive account overcomes Zahavi’s incompatibilities. Consequently, Fuchs and De Jaegher should acknowledge their relation to Husserlian descriptions of empathy in their account, and mirror neuron research should be contextualised within a broader, phenomenologically-compatible framework, as that of the enactivists. (shrink)

Will robots ever be able to learn like humans? To answer that question, one first needs to ask: what is learning? Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus had a point when they claimed that computers and robots would never be able to learn like humans because human learning, after an initial phase of rule-based learning, is uncertain, context sensitive and intuitive under contract F49620-C-0063 with the University of California) Berkeley, February 1980.. Washington, DC: Storming Media. https://www.stormingmedia.us/15/1554/A155480.html. Accessed 10 Oct 2017, 1980). I (...) would add that learning also builds on prior learning, and that from the outset, human learning is a socio-cultural materially grounded collective epistemology. This posthuman acknowledgement shifts the focus from the individual learner to learning within collective phenomena. Dreyfus and Dreyfus do not seem to emphasise the essentially social and cultural nature of the human condition. Learning theory, new materialism and postphenomenology have emphasised in different ways the materially based socio-cultural nature of human learning. They thereby point towards a ‘posthuman’ learning that is far from the machine-like or enhanced creature envisioned by singularists. Until robots are essentially social and ground their epistemologies in socio-cultural materiality, I suggest that human-like AI is not possible. (shrink)

In this article I propose that a postphenomenological approach to science and technology can open new analytical understandings of how material artifacts, embodiment and social agency co-produce learned perceptions of objects. In particle physics, physicists work in huge groups of scientists from many cultural backgrounds. Communication to some extent depends on material hermeneutics of flowcharts, models and other visual presentations. As it appears in an examination of physicists’ scrutiny of visual renderings of different parts of a detector, perceptions vary in (...) relation to social and bodily experiences. Vision in physics has seemingly allowed an objective perception at a convenient distance of the body. This article challenges this view and proposes that the variations can be analysed as cultural at two echelons with the help of a postphenomenological approach combined with cultural psychological theory of artifacts. A third echelon presumably constitutes the phenomenological limit to culture in science. Even this last resort of subjectivity can be embraced by a postphenomenological approach. The process of culturalization in physics can be defined as a process of situating knowledge in a body whose continuous learning of micro-and macro perceptions makes scientific renderings unstable. Taken together postphenomenology, following the distinctions between body one and body two, and combined with cultural psychological learning theory, enables new insight into what constitutes culture in science. (shrink)

Stroud has argued for many years that skepticism is conditionally correct. We cannot, he claims, both undergo a Cartesian-style examination of the extent of our knowledge as well as avoid skepticism. One reason Stroud's position appears quite plausible is the so-called "totality condition" imposed for this kind of examination: as inquiring philosophers we are called upon to assess all of our knowledge, all at once. However, in this paper I argue that Stroud's apparent understanding of the totality condition is mistaken. (...) Evidently, Stroud thinks that honoring the totality condition amounts to imposing the strong requirement that we initially assume that we don't know anything about external reality. However, there is a weaker requirement available: that we initially not assume that we know anything about external reality. I argue i) that the weaker conception of the totality condition is most suitable for the kind of philosophical examination that Stroud seems to have in mind; and ii) that according to this same conception skepticism is not conditionally correct. (shrink)

The phenomenological attitude is essential for practising phenomenology. Many refer to wonder and wonderment as basic attitudes and ways of being present with and listening to phenomena. In this article a critical view is placed on the typically psychologically-loaded language and tonality that is used by phenomenological researchers in the human sciences in order to describe the wonder and openness they try to be a part of when doing phenomenology. With reference to the difference between Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s views on (...) Socratic dialectics the author points to an ontological dimension in the phenomenology of wonder that cannot be reached by taking only an emotional-bodily-oriented approach (the psychological approach) or an aesthetical-intuitiveoriented approach (the late Heidegger poeticised philosophizing). Instead this dimension must be reached through a Socratic questioning and Community of Wonder. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 12, Special Edition July 2012. (shrink)

Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable. My reading of the situation is that our inability to come up with an intelligible conception of the relation between mind and body is a sign of the inadequacy of our present concepts, and that some development is needed. Mind itself is a spatiotemporal pattern that molds the metastable dynamic patterns of the brain.

Given the extraordinary influence of the DSM-III and its successors, the DSM-III-R and the DSM-IV, it behooves humanistically oriented practitioners to appraise these new manuals most carefully. Toward this end, we discuss the goals that have guided the manuals' development and provide an overview of their basic structure. This is followed by a phenomenologically based critique, evaluating the claim that these manuals are "descriptive" and "atheoretical." We conclude with a discussion of five guiding principles for phenomenological diagnosis and assessment.

The goal of our article is to review the widespread anthropological figure, according to which we can achieve a better understanding of humans by contrasting them with animals. This originally Herderian approach was elaborated by Arnold Gehlen, who characterized humans as “deficient beings” who become complete through culture. According to Gehlen, humans, who are insufficiently equipped by instincts, indirectly stabilize their existence by creating institutions, i.e., complexes of habitual actions. On the other hand, Maurice Merleau-Ponty shows that corporeal relationship to (...) the world is already indirect because it is based on preestablished and readjusted “standards” or “norms” of interaction with the environment. Merleau-Ponty then calls these norms “institutions” and views culture as readjustment of institutions which operate already on the level of corporeal existence. The anthropological figure of confronting humans and animals thus cannot produce, as in Gehlen, a contrast between an allegedly “direct” relationship to the world in animals and a supposedly “indirect” relationship to the world in humans. The Herderian approach can be meaningfully retained only if interpreted as an invitation to confront the norms of indirect interaction with the world in animals and in people, that is, if viewed as a comparison of their respective institutions. (shrink)

Phenomenological research is of great value to clinicians, policy makers, and ordinary persons because of its distinctive emphasis on making human behavior and experience intelligible with reference to the point of view of the actor. Unfortunately, the phenomenological tradition is not readily accessible to readers who are unfamiliar with it. This article discusses specific ways that researchers within this tradition can reach more of the readers who might benefit from their findings without compromising the integrity of their scholarship.

In this paper I address the question of what it is to be alienated from nature. The focus is alienation in the sense of estrangement, a ‘being cut off from’ a wider world. That we are so estranged is a claim associated with ecological critique of contemporary society. But what is it to be estranged from nature given that everything we are, do and produce, always remains within a wider nature? I explore the possibility that this might be understood with (...) reference to Merleau-Ponty’s notion of ‘flesh’. I set the scene for this with some discussion of Honneth’s recent account of reification as a ‘distorted praxis’ and then, drawing upon Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception and especially his later ontology of flesh, develop the idea of estrangement from the natural world as an inadequate participation in a ‘primordial’ perceptual relation. This idea of estrangement brings together various elements of ecological critique. However, I argue that although this idea of estrangement might inform and help to articulate such a critique, it cannot be the sole concern of an environmental political philosophy: other kinds of alienation within the humanised environmental context need to be considered too. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to specify the phenomenon of the actor’s presence onstage – to discuss its theoretical basis. The fact that the internally active body of the actor is gaining increasing precedence over the spoken word testifies to changes in the aesthetic sense of modern theatre. These changes, in turn, refer to paradigmatic changes in the Western way of thinking – the heretofore prevalent linear causality is gradually being replaced by a circular causality. An actor’s psychophysical presence (...) and corporal intensity plays an important role in the aesthetic currents of the contemporary theatre. On the stage, an actor (as a form) is positioned among other stage forms (lighting, music, setting/costumes, space and language) and, in such a community, the actor’s presence here and now becomes an important principle. His/her active condition of onstage presence requires wider kinaesthetic sensations and perceptions, which are achieved through specific psychophysical training. Important factors include the multi-levelled focus of attention, the sensitivity and activity of the actor’s organism and the sensing of the body as a transcendental and ontological unity. These keywords are taken from various phenomenological philosophies of the body (M. Merleau-Ponty, D. Leder, J. Gibson and A. Noë), and from P. Zarrill’s phenomenological model of the embodiment-experience of the contemporary actor, and I will try to relate them to my own analysis of the practical experience of onstage presence. In the analysis, I focus on evoking and maintaining onstage presence in the personal practice of acting and conclude that the psychophysical onstage presence is primarily based on the self-acknowledgment of one’s bodily movement. Theatrical acting is a practical way of thinking and acting which is always based on technique, no matter whether it involves bodily expression, working with the voice, imagination or text. The imaginary aspect of theatre and the actor’s work is secured by discipline (i.e. technique), which has a direct effect on the aesthetic formal aspirations of a production. Contemporary theatre prefers a more action-based, more ‘bodily’ and consciously psychophysical (self-) experience of the actor within the performance space. I believe that this situation indicates the need for developing a phenomenological theory of the presence of a human being that cannot directly be found in the works of the authors referred to in this article. In a narrower sense, the theory of the actor’s presence onstage could help to explain changes in the aesthetic aspirations of contemporary theatre. In the wider sense, the development of the theory of presence could be aimed at the interpretation of the processes active in the perception and way of thinking of humans. (shrink)

While the richness of Heideggerian philosophy is attractive as a healthcare research framework, its density means authors rarely utilise its fullest possibilities as an hermeneutic analytic structure. This article aims to clarify Heideggerian hermeneutic analysis by taking one discrete element of Heideggerian philosophy (Being-towards-death), and using it’s clearly defined structure to conduct a meta-synthesis of Heideggerian phenomenological studies on the experience of living with a potentially life-limiting illness. The findings richly illustrate Heidegger’s philosophy that there is either an inauthentic positioning (...) towards death, or an authentic positioning towards death with a proposition that (1) death is certain; (2) death is indefinite; (3) death is non-relational; and (4) death is not-to-be-outstripped. None of the 29 included studies on the experience of a confrontation with death fully utilised this framework, despite claiming a grounding in Heideggerian thought. This demonstrates the value in modelling how Heideggerian existential structures can be used proactively as analytical ‘hooks’ for data in research claiming a basis in this philosophy and/or method. By modelling the potential application of an important Heideggerian philosophical construct to published qualitative data, this meta-synthesis has revealed new domains and more nuanced understandings of the temporal structure of Being-towards-death. Such an approach helps to more fully unveil the existential concerns of people at the core of interpretative phenomenological enquiry and may provide a blueprint to map either primary or synthesised data to other key ontological existentials. (shrink)

Based mainly on research conducted as part of a doctoral thesis (Guimond-Plourde, 2004), this paper introduces an epistemological and methodological framework based on the foundations and characteristics of a qualitative/interpretative approach rooted in hermeneutic phenomenology as conducive to disclosing the meaning that healthy adolescents, aged 15 to 17, attribute to the stress they experience in school and to their coping behaviour. Moving from the empirical to the phenomenal makes it possible to evoke a return to dimensions of meaning which have (...) been set aside or forgotten in the lived experience of stress-coping. By thus bringing stress-coping into focus in a new way, it enables us to glimpse the phenomenon anew, with the prospect of revealing what we haven't yet appreciated. A dual philosophical approach is outlined: a phenomenological perspective apprehends stress-coping as an existential phenomenon, while the hermeneutic focus is on interpreting the links between lived experience and meaning. The kind of knowledge generated by means of this approach offers a new way of understanding that focuses on the unique and personal nature of healthy adolescents' daily life at school and, as such, provides educators with a sensitive account of adolescents' experiences of stress in the school context. (shrink)

What is the meaning of critique for critical phenomenology? Building on Gayle Salamon’s engagement with this question in the inaugural issue of Puncta: A Journal for Critical Phenomenology (2018), I will propose a six-fold account of critique as: 1) the art of asking questions, moved by crisis; 2) a transcendental inquiry into the conditions of possibility for meaningful experience; 3) a quasi-transcendental, historically-grounded study of particular lifeworlds; 4) a (situated and interested) analysis of power; 5) the problematization of basic concepts (...) and methods; and 6) a praxis of freedom that seeks not only to interpret the meaning of lived experience, but also to change the conditions under which horizons of possibility for meaning, action, and relationship are wrongfully limited or foreclosed. While the first two dimensions of critique are alive and well in classical phenomenology, the others help to articulate what is distinctive about critical phenomenology. (shrink)

This article critically explores the tension between perceptions of weight loss surgery as a last resort and as a tool. This tension stems from patients’ doubt and insecurity whether expectations for a healthy life will come through. Thus, even after surgery, traditional weight loss methods, including diets and exercise, are considered paramount. Drawing on a series of interviews with Norwegian women, we argue that the commercialization of weight loss surgeries as well as the moral stigmas attached to such operations serve (...) to perpetuate this tension. More specifically, the women were advised to leave their old habits behind, and embrace a healthier and more active lifestyle. In such a climate, we argue that undergoing surgery without subsequently embodying dietary and exercise norms is hardly an option. On the contrary, these become a moral obligation that modern women need to relate to—and perhaps negotiate—in order to repudiate stigmas attached to weight loss surgeries as a quick fix for those incapable of losing weight in the “proper” manner. (shrink)

Despite the growing literature on childhood obesity and lifestyle intervention programmes focusing on weight loss, few studies have examined young persons’ experiences of being identified as candidates for such programmes and of participating in them. This paper does so. Juxtaposing insights from phenomenology with an approach inspired by Foucault, the paper shows how teenage girls’ bodily self-perception and bodily self-awareness are shaped in intercorporeal assemblages comprising other people and specific features or elements of the lifestyle programme. Inspired by van Manen’s (...) hermeneutic-phenomenological approach, with its point of departure in lived experience, this paper draws on interviews with Norwegian teenage girls participating in the same lifestyle programme and identifies three core thematic aspects of the girls’ experiences: being identified as a candidate for a lifestyle programme and not wanting this; negotiating the lack of weight loss and the scales; and bodily situated agency – feeling good and being able. Permeating all three themes are two central, interrelated phenomena: agency and resistance. Furthermore, the paper shows how a combination of Foucauldian insights and a phenomenological understanding of intercorporeality can help to shed light on the power, affective, material and temporal dimensions of dys-appearance, as well as those of eu-appearance, and thus contribute to the understanding of the girls’ narrated lived experiences. On the basis of these findings, we argue that weight-related treatment goals are not necessarily compatible with the strengthening of adolescents’ body images and self-esteem. However, whilst being obliged to attend to their bodies while in the programme, the girls also encountered unexpected, positive bodily feelings and experiences. Such events, we suggest, offer a means of resisting the more troubling dys-appearing bodily situations our participants described so powerfully. (shrink)

While health care professionals advise those who have undergone weight loss surgery to increase their levels of physical activity, research suggests that often this is not achieved. This paper explores the experiences of ten Norwegian women as they engaged in physical activity several years after weight loss surgery. In contrast to the existing literature, which explores physical activity post-WLS largely in terms of quantitative data and measurable outcomes, the present study sought to explore women’s lived experiences of physical activity, including (...) the meanings they ascribed to different forms of activity and how such meanings changed over time. The research participants, all of whom had undergone WLS more than five years earlier, described the meanings they attached to becoming physically active, as well as the different activities and movement practices they engaged in, from interval training to mountain hiking and yoga. For all the women, maintaining and increasing their level of physical activity was challenging. On the one hand, engaging in exercise after weight loss improved their sense of joy and well-being and expanded their opportunities to move and act. On the other hand, during physical activity they needed to be constantly alert to symptoms of post-surgical side-effects, including variable energy levels, digestive problems and acute illness episodes. As the women explored their new capacities, it seemed to be important for them to explore various forms of physical activity in order to find the form of exercise which best suited them or which they most enjoyed. In some cases, they constructed new meanings around activities which, prior to surgery, had seemed onerous and bereft of pleasure. We argue that such insights will benefit health professionals who provide advice on physical activity at different post-surgical stages, sometimes to persons seriously concerned about regaining weight. (shrink)

In this study we explore how a selection of Norwegian women account for their decision to undergo weight loss surgery. We argue that women’s descriptions of their experiences leading up to this choice of action illuminate issues regarding social norms of bodily appearance and personal responsibility. The starting point is women’s own experiences within a cultural context in which opting for WLS often attracts moral scrutiny. Inspired by Merleau-Ponty’s notion of consciousness as embodied and de Beauvoir’s ideas concerning women’s situation, (...) we argue that bodily as well as socio-cultural aspects intertwine with women’s choice of surgery as a means of losing weight. Although society’s stigmatization of women with obesity has been well challenged by scholars in the field of critical fat studies, women with obesity still experience the bodily hindrances associated with being overweight in an intense and subjective way. The findings suggest that women confronting the option of WLS do so in a context of pain, dysfunction and social stigma, a combination which illuminates the intricate ambiguity of the obese body as both subject and object. (shrink)

In this article we explore women’s experiences of “dumping” following weight loss surgery. The empirical material is based on individual interviews with 22 Norwegian women. To further analyze their experiences, we build primarily on the phenomenologist Drew Leder`s notion of the “inner body.” Additionally, Simone de Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty’s perspectives of the lived body occupy a prime framework for shedding light on different dimensions of bodily changes. The following three core themes were identified: Experiences of illness in conjunction with eating; (...) Learning to relate to changes in the inner body and; Feelings of losing and regaining control. In different, though interconnected ways, these themes encompass an ongoing challenge in the women’s lives after the surgery: namely their efforts to establish new eating habits while at the same time working hard to relate to their changed and changing inner body, and especially to the phenomenon of “dumping”. The results points to a dilemma: namely that the gastric bypass procedure is an operation that irreversibly alters the anatomy and physiology of a healthy stomach, whereas the individual’s eating habits cannot be situated in or reduced to a particular organ, but are endemic to the lived body and its history. This insight might be of importance in the understanding of the complexity of the changes and challenges the women go through after weight loss surgery. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore bodily changes following weight loss surgery. Our empirical material is based on individual interviews with 22 Norwegian women. To further analyze their experiences, we build primarily on the phenomenologist Drew Leder`s distinction between bodily dis-appearance and dys-appearance. Additionally, our analysis is inspired by Simone de Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty and Julia Kristeva. Although these scholars have not directed their attention to obesity operations, they occupy a prime framework for shedding light on different dimensions of (...) bodily change. In doing so, we were able to identify two main themes: The felt “inner” body versus the visible “surface” body and the “old” body versus the “new” body. In different, though interconnected ways, these main themes encompass tensions between changes the women experienced as contributing to a more “normal” and active life, feeling more accepted, and changes that generated ambivalence. In particular, their skin became increasingly problematic because it did not “shrink” like the rest of the body. On the contrary, it became looser and looser. Moreover, badsmelling folds of skin that wobbled, sweated and chafed at the smallest movement, aprons of fat hanging in front of their stomachs, batwing arms, thick flabby thighs and sagging breasts were described as a huge contrast to the positive response they received to their changed body shape when they were out and about with their clothes on. At the same time, they expressed ambivalence with regards to removing the excess skin by means of plastic surgery. Through their own and other women`s experiences they learned removing the excess skin by means of surgery could be a double-edged sword. By illuminating the experiences of the ones undergoing such changes our article offers new insight in a scholarly debate predominated by medical research documenting the positive outcomes of weight loss surgery. (shrink)

In this paper I will try to systematically lay out and describe the multiple dimensions of the embodied experience of illness, which until recently has been the main focus within the field of the phenomenology of medicine. In order to do this, I will turn to analysis of the nature of embodiment in Husserl’s phenomenology. I will argue that based on Husserl’s phenomenology of the body, one can distinguish four ways of experiencing one’s body, or four dimensions of embodiment. I (...) will distinguish between experience of one’s body as 1) a bearer of sensations ; 2) a seat of free movement, characterized by the faculty of “I can” ; 3) a material thing in a causal relationship with the material world ; 4) a material thing embedded in a social context. I will then apply the proposed classification of dimensions of embodiment to the experience of illness, focusing on the various ways these dimensions have been used within the phenomenology of medicine. This serves two purposes. Firstly, it provides a framework for classification of the existing interpretations of the experience of illness; secondly, it opens up a way for a comprehensive analysis of the experience of illness which includes both individual and social aspects of embodiment as well as their mutual intertwining. (shrink)

The planet seems to be heading into an ecological catastrophe, in which the earth will become uninhabitable for many species, including human beings. At the same time we humans are beset by appalling injustices. The Rio Declaration which addressed both these sets of problems contains conceptual contradictions about ‘development and ‘nature’. This paper addresses the issue of whether it is logically possible to work for both global justice and ecological sustainability. The article proposes a way of responding to the spirit (...) of the Rio Declaration without reinstating its contradictions; considers a posthuman perspective on the issue; and proposes a phenomenological approach to ethics and justice which would include both the human and more-than-human parts of the world. In section the implications for education are drawn out, in terms of ‘learning to mind’. Finally, links are drawn to the Journal theme of translation. (shrink)

In his paper, in this journal, Sterelney claims that cases of extended mind are limiting cases of environmental scaffolding and that a niche construction model is a more helpful, general framework for understanding human action. He further claims that extended mind cases fit into a corner of a 3D space of environmental scaffolds of cognitive competence. He identifies three dimensions which determine where a resource fits into this space and suggests that extended mind models seem plausible when a resource is (...) highly reliable, individualised/entrenched and a single-user resource. Sterelney also claims that the most important cognition-enhancing resources are provided collectively by one generation to the next. In this paper, I argue that Sterelney is both right and wrong and this because he focuses primarily on external, physical resources and construes scaffolding as exclusively unidirectional and diachronic. Using examples of unfamiliar tool use, visual processing and human emotional ontogenesis, I argue, respectively, that extended mind cases include those which fail to meet Sterelney’s dimensional criteria; that the most important cognition—enhancing resources are those which actually build brains; that these are provided on a one-to-one basis in emotional ontogenesis; and, this depends on bidirectional and synchronic cognitive scaffolding. (shrink)

Many animal species use tools, but human technical engagement is more complex. We argue that there is coevolution between technical engagement and advanced forms of causal cognition in the human lineage. As an analytic tool, we present a classification of different forms of causal thinking. Human causal thinking has become detached from space and time, so that instead of just reacting to perceptual input, our minds can simulate actions and forces and their causal consequences. Our main thesis is that, unlike (...) the situation for other primate species, an increasing emphasis on technical engagement made some hominins capable of reasoning about the forces involved in causal processes. This thesis is supported in three ways: We compare the casual thinking about forces of hominins with that of other primates. We analyze the causal thinking required for Stone Age hunting technologies such as throwing spears, bow hunting and the use of poisoned arrows, arguing that they may serve as examples of the expansion of casual cognition about forces. We present neurophysiological results that indicate the facilitation of advanced causal thinking. (shrink)