Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) is one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. His influence, however, extends beyond philosophy. His account of Dasein, or human existence, permeates the human and social sciences, including nursing, psychiatry, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and artificial intelligence. In this chapter, I outline Heidegger’s influence on psychiatry and psychology, focusing especially on his relationships with the Swiss psychiatrists Ludwig Binswanger and Medard Boss. The first section outlines Heidegger’s early life and work, up to and including the (...) publication of Being and Time, in which he develops his famous concept of being-in-the-world. The second section focuses on Heidegger’s initial influence on psychiatry via Binswanger’s founding of Daseinsanalysis, a Heideggerian approach to psychopathology and psychotherapy. The third section turns to Heidegger’s relationship with Boss, including Heidegger’s rejection of Binswanger’s Daseinsanalysis and his lectures at Boss’s home in Zollikon, Switzerland. (shrink)

In the spring and summer of 2020, the world broke down. A worldly breakdown often gives rise to forms of moral breakdown, or those “moments” when some worldly event or occurrence forces a person or persons to critically reflect on their until then unquestioned way of being-in-the-world (Zigon 2007). From the persistence of the global pandemic, to the collapse of the economy, to the murder of George Floyd by police officers on camera, to the worldwide response to that injustice, the (...) world and its human inhabitants experienced a breakdown in those months and it became impossible to ever see, hear, understand, or be in the world in the same way again. This special issue of Puncta brings together anthropologists and philosophers who take up a critical phenomenological or hermeneutic approach for thinking the contemporary condition. From the possibility of inhabiting a world conditioned by a global pandemic, to the impossibility of dwelling in conditions of systemic racism, from the question of how to face a future that presents itself as looming, to a present that denies the very possibility of truth: this collection responds to these and more in the hope of showing not only the contemporary conditions of existence, but that other conditions always remain as an ever-present potentiality. (shrink)

A point made repeatedly over the last few years is that the Locked-in Syndrome offers unique real-life material for revisiting and challenging certain ingrained philosophical assumptions about the nature of personhood and personal identity. Indeed, the claim has been made that a closer study of LIS will call into question some of the traditional conceptions of personhood that primarily highlight the significance of consciousness, self-consciousness and autonomy and suggest the need for a more interpersonal account of the person. I am (...) skeptical about these claims and will in the following argue that the theoretical relevance of LIS for an understanding of selfhood and personhood has been exaggerated. (shrink)

Jennings and Nanay argue against my claim that action entails attention by providing putative counterexamples to the claim that action entails a Many–Many Problem. This reply demonstrates that they have misunderstood the central notion of a pure reflex on which my argument depends. A simplified form of the argument from pure reflex to the Many–Many Problem as a necessary feature of agency is given, and putative counterexamples of action without attention are addressed. Attention is present in every action. In passing, (...) the reply discusses how we should assess intuitive claims about attention and mental processing, with emphasis on learning and the automatization of attention in its development as a skill. (shrink)

This article offers a conceptual analysis of self-respect and self-esteem that informs the ethics of psychotherapy in palliative care. It is focused on Chochinov’s Dignity Therapy, an internationally recognized treatment offered to dying patients who express a need to bolster their sense of self-worth. Although Dignity Therapy aims to help such patients affirm their value through summarized life stories that are shared with their survivors, it is not grounded in a robust theory of self-respect. There is reason to be skeptical (...) about deathbed narratives, and Dignity Therapy can unintentionally encourage distorted representations at odds with the self-respect it aims to affirm. Dignity therapy can also encourage distortions of self-esteem that are in conflict with self-respect. Although Chochinov does not address it, the distinction between self-respect and self-esteem is relevant to deathbed accounts. Dillon’s feminist revisioning of self-respect can inform the practice of Dignity Therapy by encouraging honest life stories through a reckoning with one’s moral complexity, especially in moral generativity cases where patients seek forgiveness, relate atonement, or present their lives as examples to be followed. Her concept of self-esteem allows for therapeutic benefits that are less demanding, but no less significant, than those derived from a moral reckoning. Appropriate affirmations of self-esteem can provide much-needed solace when self-respect is damaged beyond adequate repair. Dillon’s account of self-respect and self-esteem enables a richer understanding of the kinds of personal evaluation and disclosure that Dignity Therapy accommodates. As such, their place in Dignity Therapy needs more critical evaluation than it has received. (shrink)

This paper defends a desire-based understanding of pleasurable and unpleasant experiences. More specifically, the thesis is that what makes an experience pleasant/unpleasant is the subject having a certain kind of desire about that experience. I begin by introducing the ‘Desire Account’ in more detail, and then go on to explain and refute a prominent set of contemporary counter-examples, based on subjects who might have ‘Reflective Blindness’, looking particularly at the example of subjects with depression. I aim to make the Desire (...) Account more persuasive, but also to clear up more widespread misunderstandings about depression in metaethics. For example, mistakes that are made by conflating two of depression’s most prominent symptoms: depressed mood and anhedonia. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss the illness and recovery of the depressed Moses Herzog, the protagonist of Saul Bellow’s novel _Herzog_ ( 1964 ). Using this novel as a case study, I criticize a one-sided (neuro)biological and drug-based approach to depression. Referring to the hermeneutic anthropology of philosophers like Paul Ricoeur and Marya Schechtman, I argue that the treatment of depression could benefit from a broader approach that takes into account existential and social-cultural factors as well as biological factors. I (...) suggest that narrative psychiatry offers a framework wherein various models of mental illness may be combined in ways that move beyond a pro/contra bio-psychiatry binary. By investigating depression using philosophical ideas and a literary text, this article aims to illustrate how the humanities may contribute to our thinking about depression. (shrink)

According to constitution views of persons, we are constituted by spatially coinciding human animals. Constitution views face an ‘overpopulation’ puzzle: if the animal has my brain, there is another thinker where I am. An influential solution to this problem distinguishes between derivative and non‐derivative property possession: persons non‐derivatively have their personal properties, while inheriting others from their constituters. I will show that this solution raises a new problem, by constructing a puzzle with the absurd result that we instantiate certain properties (...) incompatibly. In setting up the puzzle, I demonstrate the relevance of the bodily awareness and self‐awareness literatures to overpopulation puzzles. (shrink)

There is a need for inner recollection opposed to our everyday distraction. Our distraction is partly based on anthropological features and partly on social and cultural features. As well as feelings of distraction, we know experiences of being focussed from everyday life. As feelings in which distraction is absent, and as feelings in which we are partly and temporarily released from our own egocentric perspective, they remind us that a different kind of relation to ourselves and the world is possible. (...) Therefore, they can motivate a process of self-transformation aiming at a mystical state of mind, which is of a more profound and enduring kind than ordinary experiences of being focussed. The mystical state of mind is a state in which we transcend ourselves in the face of the universe and thereby relativize our own affective involvement. It is a feeling of an all-encompassing unity which ultimately concerns us; and it is a feeling of love, joy, and peace of mind. Mystical feelings thus shape and restrict spaces of possibilities, and they comprise an altered sense of what it means to be real. Therefore, they can be classified as existential feelings. Still, the mystical state of mind differs from prototypical existential feelings because it is a positive feeling, necessarily comprises active as well as passive moments, and presupposes an explicit way of attending to the world as world. (shrink)

According to the recovery model, mental healthcare should be aimed towards a conception of recovery articulated by a patient or service user in accord with his or her own specific values. The model thus presupposes and emphasises the agency of the patient and opposes paternalism. Recent philosophical work on the relations between respect, self-respect, self-esteem, shame, and agency suggests, however, two ways in which mental illness itself can undermine self-respect, promote shame and undermine agency, suggesting a tension within the recovery (...) model. I argue, however, that this is a tension rather than a fatal flaw by distinguishing between paternalist and non-paternalist clinical responses to this failure of agency. (shrink)

In this paper I explore health and illness through the lens of enactivism, which is understood and developed as a bodily-based worldly-engaged phenomenology. Various health theories – biomedical, ability-based, biopsychosocial – are introduced and scrutinized from the point of view of enactivism and phenomenology. Health is ultimately argued to consist in a central world-disclosing aspect of what is called existential feelings, experienced by way of transparency and ease in carrying out important life projects. Health, in such a phenomenologically enacted understanding, (...) is an important and in many cases necessary part of leading a good life. Illness, on the other hand, by such a phenomenological view, consist in finding oneself at mercy of unhomelike existential feelings, such as bodily pains, nausea, extreme unmotivated tiredness, depression, chronic anxiety and delusion, which make it harder and, in some cases, impossible to flourish. In illness suffering the lived body hurts, resists, or, in other ways, alienates the activities of the ill person. (shrink)

Currently, anomalous lived temporality is not included in the main diagnostic criteria or standard symptom checklists. In this article, we present the Transdiagnostic Assessment of Temporal Experience, a structured interview that can be used by researchers and clinicians without a comprehensive phenomenological background to explore abnormal time experiences in persons with abnormal mental conditions regardless of their diagnosis. When extensive data gathered by this scale are available, it will be possible to delineate well-defined anomalous lived temporality profiles for each psychopathological (...) disorder. This instrument may also prove useful for clinicians by providing a more refined assessment of relevant psychopathological symptoms and an in-depth understanding of the patient’s abnormal behaviour as related to specific types of time experience. In the first part of the article, we provide a brief overview of the phenomenological concept of temporality, including pre-phenomenal and phenomenal time, synthesis, conation and synchronization, and of abnormal time experiences in persons affected by psychopathological conditions. In the following part, we describe the basic structure of the interview that comprises seven categories corresponding to the abnormal features of lived temporality: anomalies of synchrony, of time structure, of implicit time flow, of explicit time flow, and anomalous experiences of the past, the present and the future. The paper also includes a section on administration and scoring of the TATE scale, the complete interview and a Likert table for quantifying the frequency, intensity and interference with daily life of the phenomena explored. (shrink)

There is a long tradition of employing a phenomenological approach to gain greater insight into the unique experience of psychiatric illness. Researchers in this field have shed light upon a distur...

Matthew Ratcliffe has argued that existential feelings form a distinct class of bodily and non-conceptual feelings that pre-intentionally structure our intentional experience of others, the world, and ourselves. In this article, I will identify and discuss three interrelated areas of concern for Ratcliffe’s theory of existential feelings. First, the distinct senses in which existential feelings are felt as background bodily feelings and as spaces of possibility calls for further clarification. Second, the nature of the suggested bi-directional relationship between existential feelings (...) and intentional experience remains ambiguous. Third, viewed in light of existential guilt, the categorically non-conceptual nature of existential feelings may not be as definite as presumed. The aim of the article is to draw critical attention to aspects of the theory that would benefit from further development, and therefore, to advance the ongoing discussion about existential feelings. (shrink)

This paper addresses the nature of sensed-presence experiences that are commonplace among the bereaved and occur cross-culturally. Although these experiences are often labelled ‘‘bereavement hallucinations’’, it is unclear what they consist of. Some seem to involve sensory experiences in one or more modalities, while others involve a non-specificfeelingorsenseof presence. I focus on a puzzle concerning the latter: it is unclear how an experience of someone’s presence could arise without a more specific sensory content. I suggest that at least some of (...) these experiences consist in a dynamic and non-localized experience of significant and salientpossibilities. This can amount to the sense of currentlyrelating toa particular individual and, by implication, a sense of that person’s presence. Where an experience of this kind also includes sensory qualities, they are inessential to the sense of relatedness and perhaps symptomatic of it. (shrink)

Is there a sense in which we can be said to empathize with a philosophical position and, if so, what does empathy consist of here? Drawing on themes in the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, I sketch an account of the relationship between philosophical language and philosophical thought, according to which the task of understanding, evaluating, and building upon an explicit philosophical position can involve engaging with the experiential world of its author. If accepted, this account has broader implications for how (...) we conceive of both empathy and philosophical thought. (shrink)

William James’s reputation in the field of emotion research is based on his early psychological writings where he defines emotions as ‘feelings of bodily changes’. In his later work, particularly in his study of mystic emotion, James comes up with what looks like a completely different approach. Here his focus is on positive feelings of inspiration and joy, but also on downbeat moods like melancholy and depression. He examines how these feeling states give meaning to an individual’s life. Theorists often (...) speculate about a gap between James’s early writings and his later work, and assume that the later James turned from an evolutionary-minded natural scientist into a metaphysical philosopher. In my paper, I follow Ratcliffe in his view that a sharply drawn line between the early and the late work is implausible and that James’s later study of mysticism fits nicely with his early psychology. Drawing on James, I show how in his later work, James develops a theory of embodied emotions that anticipates the role ascribed by twentieth century phenomenology to anxiety and other ‘bad moods’, as possibilities for philosophical reflection and self-understanding. (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)

According to several researchers, core affect lies at the foundation of our affective lives and may be characterized as a consciously accessible state combining arousal (activated-deactivated) and valence (pleasure-displeasure). The interaction between these two dimensions is still a matter of debate. In this paper we provide a novel hypothesis concerning their interaction, by arguing that subjective arousal levels modulate the experience of a stimulus’ affective quality. All things being equal, the higher the arousal, the more a given stimulus would be (...) experienced as pleasant (or unpleasant). While marshaling some preliminary evidence in favor of this hypothesis, we also show how it might be relevant in reframing our conception of depressive disorders (i.e., major and bipolar depression). (shrink)

Contemporary realities of global population movement increasingly bring to the fore the challenge of quality and equitable health provision across language barriers. While this linguistic challenge is not unique to immigration contexts and is likewise shared by health systems responding to the needs of aboriginal peoples and other historical linguistic minorities, the expanding multilingual landscape of receiving societies renders this challenge even more critical, owing to limited or even non‐existing familiarity of modern and often monolingual health systems with the particular (...) needs of new linguistic minorities. The centrality of language to health beliefs, attitudes, practices, cultural scripts, and conceptual frameworks emphasizes its pivotal role in the healthcare process, and consequently in the adverse effects of treatment that is language‐insensitive and unaware. Such an attitude on the part of medical authorities risks considerable epistemic injustice in the form of a (mis)judgement of patients’ intelligence, credibility, and rationality based on the language that they speak and the manner in which they speak it, consequently impacting the quality and equity of care provided. This danger, I argue, may be effectively countered by fostering among the participants in the healthcare process a sense of epistemic humility through greater metalinguistic awareness. Outlining a range of operative steps that can be used to facilitate this. I argue that the reality of language barriers in the healthcare process, while not entirely eliminable, may nevertheless be successfully addressed, in order to mitigate the challenge of quality and equitable healthcare provision in multilingual societies. (shrink)

Individuals suffering from depression consistently report experiencing a lack of connectedness with others. David Karp (2017, 73), in his memoir and study of depression, has gone so far to describe depression as “an illness of isolation, a disease of disconnectedness”. It has become common, in phenomenological circles, to attribute this social impairment to the depressed individual experiencing their body as corporealized, acting as a barrier between them and the world around them (Fuchs 2005, 2016). In this paper, I offer an (...) alternative view of the experience of social disconnectedness in depression, suggesting that rather than necessarily experiencing their body as object-like, the depressed individual’s bodily is saturated with experiences of lethargy, tiredness, heaviness, sadness, hopelessness and so on, to the exclusion of being able to bodily connect to others. I suggest that depression does not involve a complete social impairment but a specific impairment of affective forms of interpersonal experience. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the relationship between phenomenology and body dysmorphia. This is, to explain, a disorder in which the sufferer perceives, and is obsessed by, defects in appearance which are either non-existent or severely exaggerated. I will see how Husserl’s and Sartre’s analyses of embodiment can explain the radical uncertainty, and anxiety, about appearance that underscores this condition. Their accounts of the body-as-lived reveal first of all an essential intimacy between body and self that the “objective”, material, view of the (...) body covers over. Second, however, their analyses show that there is always also an essential elusiveness of the body before our attempts to grasp or know it. Taken together, these points indicate how body dysmorphia arises. If there is an essential project of the self to know the body, but this is necessarily frustrated, then we can see how an obsession and anxiety surrounding bodily appearance can emerge. (shrink)

Psychedelic-assisted Psychotherapy combines the use of psychedelic compounds, such as psilocybin, with psychotherapy. PAP has shown some promise as a novel treatment for Major Depressive Disorder, and empirical research suggests that its efficacy turns on the altered states induced by psychedelic compounds. In this paper we draw on the literature of phenomenology to explain the therapeutic potential of psychedelic experiences. Svenaeus characterises mental illness as a form of suffering that entails three distinct but related experiences of alienation or “unhomelike being-in-the-world”: (...) illness suffering, which relates to embodiment; existential suffering, which relates to self-narratives, and political suffering, which relates to social relationships. Ratcliffe further characterises the experience of MDD in phenomenological terms as a loss of pre-intentional possibility that manifests as excessive noematic feeling in the experience of embodiment, restrictive narratives in the construction of self, and disconnectedness in experience of the social world. We contend that PAP ameliorates the suffering associated with MDD by inducing and consolidating a state of broadened pre-intentional possibility—one that entails sudden, profound and enduring changes in embodiment, self-narratives, and social experience. We argue further that this phenomenological account is consistent with a bio-psycho-social model of mental health and illness, and we frame it as an argument supporting the plausibility of recent claims about treatment success. This helps to justify ongoing future empirical research in this setting. (shrink)

In 2020, M. Summa developed a promising approach to understanding the concept of illness. This approach combines a theory of organisms with Responsive Phenomenology to gain a concept of illness. Following on from this, the present article shows that the normative presuppositions can be further explicated and justified by drawing on the theoretical resources of Aristotelian naturalism as propounded by Michael Thompson. Aristotelian naturalism does provide a theoretical option to grasp the normative foundations of human life. However, this article argues (...) that Aristotelian naturalism requires another criterion besides human nature to make the concept of illness intelligible. Following John McDowell’s critique of Aristotelian naturalism, it will be shown that this criterion consists in the capacity for autonomy. From this a concept of illness is developed which describes an impairment of the self-regulated and autonomous realisation of the human form of life. (shrink)

This paper seeks to develop a phenomenological account of the disorientation of grief, specifically the relationship between disorientation and the breakdown in practical self-understanding at the heart of grief. I argue that this breakdown cannot be sufficiently understood as a breakdown of formerly shared practices and habitual patterns of navigating lived-in space that leaves the bereaved individual at a loss as to how to go on. Examining the experience of losing a loved person and a loved person-to-be, I instead propose (...) that this breakdown should be understood primarily in relation to a distinctive kind of futurity operative in disorientation,irrespectiveof the extent to which there is a breakdown of formerly shared practices and habitual patterns of navigating lived-in space. Drawing on the resources afforded by Heidegger’s phenomenology, I argue that it is acore characteristicof the experience of disorientation in grief that the grieving person can no longer meaningfully press ahead into aspecific futural self. This view comes with certain advantages over existing accounts of the temporality of grief for making sense of the disorientated relationship to futurity, which the appeal to Heideggerian resources makes possible. (shrink)

The DSM characterizes major depressive disorder partly in temporal terms: the depressive mood must last for at least two weeks, and also must impact the subject "most of the day, nearly every day." However, from the standpoint of phenomenological psychopathology, the long-lasting quality of the condition hardly captures the distinctiveness of depression. While the DSM refers to objective time as measured by clocks and calendars, what is especially striking about depression is the distortions to lived time that it involves. But (...) is there any relation between a) these disruptions to temporal experience and b) the tendency for depressive symptoms to persist and endure? To explore the connection between lived time and objective time, I investigate the embodied and enactive nature of intentionality among subjects suffering from depression. What I call 'affective framing' is a spontaneous, pre-reflective way of filtering information that involves bodily attunement and allows subjects to focus their attention on what they feel is important. I will argue that affective framing ordinarily has a forward-looking temporal structure and a "teleological direction" that is rooted in our embodiment. However, depression involves a distortion in future-directed intentionality, so that a subject becomes temporally desituated and cut off from the future. This contributes to many of the characteristic features of depression, including apparent lack of motivation, inability to imagine future possibilities, alterations in lived time, and a sense that one is "stuck." To gain a better understanding of this disruption to the futuredirected structure of affective framing in cases of depression, I look to concepts from complex dynamic systems theory and the notion of 'habit.' My proposed account aims to shed light on how a disruption to future-directedness impacts bodily attunement and reinforces depression as a long-term condition. (shrink)

This paper utilizes the enactivist notion of ‘sense-making’ to discuss the nature of depression and examine some implications for treatment. As I understand it, sensemaking is fully embodied, fundamentally affective, and thoroughly embedded in a social environment. I begin by presenting an enactivist conceptualization of affective intentionality and describing how this general mode of intentional directedness to the world is disrupted in cases of major depressive disorder. Next, I utilize this enactivist framework to unpack the notion of ‘temporal desituatedness,’ and (...) maintain that the characteristic symptoms of depression result from a disruption to the future-directed structure of affective intentionality. This can be conceptualized as a loss of “online intelligence” and a shrinking of the field of affordances. Then, I argue that two of the standard modes of treatments for depression, medication and cognitive behavioral therapy, are not fully sufficient means of restoring online intelligence, and that these limitations stem partly from the approaches’ implicit commitment to a brain-bound, overly cognitivist view of the mind. I recommend expressive arts interventions such as dance-movement therapy and music therapy as important supplementary treatment methods that deserve further consideration. Insofar as they revitalize subjects’ bodies and emotions, cultivate an openness to the future, and promote self-insight and social synchrony, these treatment modes not only reflect key insights of enactivism, but also offer great potential for lasting healing. (shrink)

In this paper, I wish to explore the contribution of the phenomenological reduction to a distinct form of empathy, which has been identified and called by Ratcliffe :473–495, 2012) radical empathy. This form of empathy brings to light the sense of reality experienced by the subject rather than a mere mental state. However, I shall consider whether and how the phenomenological reduction allows different interpretations of the same experience, thereby impacting on our understanding of another’s sense of reality. Far from (...) dismissing the role of the reduction, I propose a reconsideration of its relevance for radical empathy. In order to spell out my argument, I propose a case ex negativo that looks at Sartre’s and Merleau-Ponty’s different analyses of the sense of reality experienced by obsessive patients. I argue that this interpretative difference ultimately depends on two opposite uses of the reduction itself, and that Merleau-Ponty’s account offers a promising perspective to reintegrate and contextualize the phenomenological reduction into radical empathy. (shrink)

Depression has been widely studied by researchers from different fields, but its causes, and mechanism of action are still not clear. A difficulty emerges from the shifting from objective diagnosis or analysis to exploration of subjective feelings and experiences that influence the individuals' expression, communication and coping in facing depression. The integration of the experiential dimension of the first-person in studies on depression–and related methodological recommendations–are needed to improve the validity and generalizability of research findings. It will allow the development (...) of timely and effective actions of care. Starting from providing a summary of the literature on theoretical assumptions and considerations for the study of the mind, with particular attention to the experiential dimension of patients with depression, this contribution is aimed to provide practical suggestions for the design of research able to incorporate first- and third-person accounts. It is also aimed to review qualified phenomenological methods for the acquisition and interpretation of experiential data in patients with depression. Recognizing the first-person perspective in the study of depression is a major step toward a better understanding and treatment of this disorder. Theoretical constructs and technique suggestions that result from this review offer a valid starting point for the inclusion of the experiential dimension to common third-person research in the study of the mind. (shrink)

Affordances are action-possibilities, ways of relating to and acting on things in our world. They help us understand how these things mean what they do and how we have bodily access to our world more generally. But what happens when this access is ruptured or impeded? I consider this question in the context of psychopathology and reports that describe this experience. I argue that thinking about the bodily consequences of losing access to everyday affordances can help us better understand these (...) reports. An affordance-based approach to psychopathology can illuminate some of the causes, as well as the experiential character and consequences, of affective disorders and diminished spatial agency in self-world disturbances. It also highlights some under-explored ethical and political dimensions of these issues that need further attention. (shrink)

One popular description of current society is that it is a depressed society and medical evidence about depression’s prevalence may well make such an estimation plausible. However, such normative-critical assessments surrounding depression have to date usually operated with a one-sided understanding of depression. This understanding widely neglects the various ways depression manifests as well as its comorbidities. This becomes evident at the latest when considering one of depression’s most prominent and well-known comorbidities: chronic pain. Against this background, we aim in (...) this article to substantiate our leading claim that the phenomenal interconnection between depression and chronic pain must be acknowledged in the global diagnosis of a depressive society. Thus, we argue here for a complementation of the dominant interpretation of a depressed society. This would support the overcoming of oversimplified images and estimations about depression in current society and further, help to recognize chronic pain properly on the larger scale of assessments that address society as a whole. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose an existentialist-phenomenological model that conceives of mental illness through the terminology of Heidegger’s Being and Time. In particular, the concepts of existentiality, disturbance and the relation between ‘being-with’ and ‘the one’, will be implemented in order to reconstruct the experience of mental illness. The proposed model understands mental illness as a disturbance of a person’s existentiality. More precisely, mental illness is conceptualized as the disturbance of a person’s existential structure, the process of which leads to (...) a becoming explicit of the otherwise implicit dynamical structure that constitutes a person’s experience. In particular, the existential component of ‘being-with’ comes to play a central role in the disturbance of existentiality, thus, I will claim, that it enables a person’s structure of experience to be ‘open for normativity’. By adopting a pragmatist stance on Heideggerian phenomenology, the suggested model proves compatible with naturalist and normativist theories of mental illness while still offering a phenomenological description of the phenomenon. (shrink)

In this article, I examine stigmatizing and especially patronizing attitudes towards others’ depression that people who are well-intentioned produce. The strategy of the article is to consider the social experience of depression through two separate subfields of philosophy: epistemic injustice and phenomenology. The solution that I propose is a phenomenological account of empathy. The empathetic attitude that I argue for involves actively listening to the depressed individual and taking their depression testimony as direct evidence. The article has been written both (...) for those who seek to better support neurodiverse people in their lives and for depressives (and other neurodivergents) themselves in order to provide them with a better account for advocating for themselves against social stigma. (shrink)

According to pluralistic intuitionist theories, some of our moral beliefs are non-inferentially justified, and these beliefs come in both an a priori and an a posteriori variety. In this paper I present new support for this pluralistic form of intuitionism by examining the deeply social nature of moral inquiry. This is something that intuitionists have tended to neglect. It does play an important role in an intuitionist theory offered by Bengson, Cuneo, and Shafer-Landau (forth), but whilst they invoke the social (...) nature of moral inquiry in order to argue that ordinary moral intuitions are trustworthy, my argument focuses on what I will call the ‘frontiers’ of moral inquiry. I will show that inclusive and cooperative dialogue is necessary at moral inquiry’s frontiers, and that intuitionists can expect such dialogue to result in both a priori and a posteriori moral beliefs. (shrink)

Melancholia is an attunement of despair and despondency that can involve radical disruptions to temporal experience. In this article, I extrapolate from the existing analyses of melancholic time to examine some of the important existential implications of these temporal disruptions. In particular, I focus on the way in which the desynchronization of melancholic time can complicate the melancholic’s relation to death and, consequently, to the meaning and significance of their life. Drawing on Heidegger’s distinction between death and demise, I argue (...) that melancholic time leaves the melancholic in an impossible state of existing, where they are both unable to live and unable to die. Turning to the role of the physician, I consider the significant role that clinical interventions might have in resynchronizing the melancholic with time and examine these ideas further through a case study on physician-assisted suicide. In so doing, I demonstrate that the desynchronization of melancholic time should indeed be understood as a matter of life and death. (shrink)

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a mental health condition in which the experience of a traumatic event causes a series of psychiatric and behavioral symptoms such as hypervigilance, insomnia, irritability, aggression, constricted affect, and self-destructive behavior. This paper investigates two case studies to argue that the experience of PTSD is not restricted to humans alone; we have good epistemic reason to hold that some animals can experience genuine PTSD, given our current and best clinical understanding of the disorder in humans. I (...) will use this evidence to argue for two claims. First, because the causal structure of PTSD plausibly requires reference to a traumatic conscious experience in order to explain subsequent behaviors, the fact that animals can have PTSD provides new evidence for animal consciousness. Second, the discovery of PTSD in animals puts pressure on accounts which hold that animal behavior can be fully explained without reference to subjective experience. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Kyselo argues that an enactive approach to selfhood can overcome ‘the body-social problem’: “the question for philosophy of cognitive science about how bodily and social aspects figure in the individuation of the human individual self” ). Kyselo’s claim is that we should conceive of the human self as a socially enacted phenomenon that is bodily mediated. Whilst there is much to be praised about this claim, I will demonstrate in this paper that such a conception of (...) self ultimately leads to a strained interpretation of how bodily and social processes are related. To this end, I will begin the paper by elucidating the body-social problem as it appears in modern cognitive science and then expounding Kyselo’s solution, which relies on a novel interpretation of Jonas’s concept of needful freedom. In response to this solution, I will highlight two problems which Kyselo’s account cannot overcome in its current state. I will argue that a more satisfactory solution to the body-social problem involves a re-conception of the human body as irrevocably socially constituted and the human social world as irrevocably bodily constituted. On this view, even the most minimal sense of selfhood cannot privilege either bodily or social processes; instead, the two are ontologically entwined such that humans are biosocial selves. (shrink)

What it is about mood, as a specific type of affect, that makes it not easily amenable to standard models of rationality? It is commonly assumed that the cognitive rationality of an affective state is somehow depended upon how that state is related to what the state is about, its so called intentional object; but, given that moods do not seem to bear an intentional relation to an object, it is hard to see how they can be in the offing (...) for rational assessment. In the first part of the paper I outline three ways of attributing intentionality to moods, raising for each one of them a series of problems, thus casting doubt on the viability of an intentionalist grounding for the rationality of moods. I then move to an examination of the view of moods as background feelings, which are intimately related to how we perceive the world; however, in my view, that approach fails to provide standards of assessment that would permit appraising the mood itself as rational or irrational. Finally, I look at an account of moods as mechanisms whose function is to monitor the balance between environmental demands and one’s physical or psychological resources. That is a promising way to proceed in our exploration of mood states; it faces though some formidable phenomenological challenges. All in all, defending the rationality of moods calls for a rethinking of the assumptions that are prevalent in the current literature over the representational dimension of affective states. (shrink)

Being in a mood—such as an anxious, irritable, depressed, tranquil, or cheerful mood—tends to alter the way we react emotionally to the particular objects we encounter. But how, exactly, do moods alter the way we experience particular objects? Perceptualism, a popular approach to understanding affective experiences, holds that moods function like "colored lenses," altering the way we perceive the evaluative properties of the objects we encounter. In this essay, I offer a phenomenological analysis of the experience of being in a (...) mood that illustrates the limitations of the colored lens metaphor and demonstrates the basic inadequacy of the perceptualist account of moods. I argue that when we are in a mood, it is common to experience a kind of "emotional disconnection" in which we perceive evaluative properties that would normally elicit strong emotional reactions from us, but nonetheless we find that, in our present mood, we remain emotionally numb to these perceptions. Such experiences of "seeing but not feeling" are difficult to understand from within the perceptualist paradigm. Building on the work of Martin Heidegger, I sketch an alternative, phenomenological analysis of moods that can better account for experiences of emotional disconnection. On this alternative account, being in a mood does not merely alter the content of our perceptions but, rather, alters the way we interpret the overall significance of what we perceive, relative to a certain situational context. (shrink)

Abstract: The notion of a self-pattern, as developed in the pattern theory of self, which holds that the self is best explained in terms of the kind of reality that pertains to a dynamical pattern, acknowledges the importance of neural dynamics, but also expands the account of self to extra-neural (embodied and enactive) dynamics. The pattern theory of self, however, has been criticized for failing to explicate the dynamical relations among elements of the self-pattern; as such, it seems to be (...) nothing more than a mere list of elements. We’ll argue that the dynamics of a self-pattern are reflected in three significant and interrelated ways that allow for investigation. First, a self-pattern is reflectively reiterated in its narrative component. Second, studies of psychiatric or neurological disorders can help us understand the precise nature of the dynamical relations in a self-pattern, and how they can fail. Third, referencing predictive processing accounts, neuroscience can also help to explicate the dynamical relations that constitute the self-pattern. (shrink)

In this essay I address the question, “What is the subject matter of phenomenological research?” I argue that in spite of the increasing popularity of phenomenology, the answers to this question have been brief and cursory. As a result, contemporary phenomenologists lack a clear framework within which to articulate the aims and results of their research, and cannot easily engage each other in constructive and critical discourse. Examining the literature on phenomenology’s identity, I show how the question of phenomenology’s subject (...) matter has been systematically neglected. It has been overshadowed by an unending concern with phenomenology’s methodological identity. However, an examination of recent contributions to this literature reveals that a concern with articulating phenomenology’s subject matter has gradually increased, although such articulations remain preliminary. In light of this, I delineate, define, and illustrate three layers of phenomenological research, which I term “existentials,” “modes,” and “prejudices.” While the delineation of these layers is drawn primarily from classical phenomenological texts, they are defined and illustrated through the use of more contemporary literature. Following the articulation of this subject matter, I briefly consider some of the debates—both foundational and applied—that can be facilitated by the adoption of this framework. (shrink)

According to Thomas Metzinger, many human cognitive processes in the waking state are spontaneous and are deprived of the experience of epistemic agency. He considers mind wandering as a paradigm example of our recurring loss of epistemic agency. I will enrich this view by extending the scope of the concept of epistemic agency to include cases of depressive rumination and creative cognition, which are additional types of spontaneous cognition. Like mind wandering, they are characterized by unique phenomenal and functional properties (...) that give rise to varying degrees of epistemic agency. The main claim of this paper will be that the experience of being an epistemic agent within a certain time frame is a relational phenomenon that emerges from the organism’s capacity to interact with its cognitive niche. To explore this relation, I develop a new framework that integrates phenomenological considerations on epistemic agency with a functional account of the reciprocal coupling of the embodied organism with its cognitive niche. This account rests upon dynamical accounts of strong embodied and embedded cognition and recent work on cognitive niche construction. Importantly, epistemic agency and organism-niche coupling are gradual phenomena ranging from weak to strong realizations. The emerging framework will be employed to analyze mind wandering, depressive rumination, and creative cognition as well as their commonalities and differences. Mind wandering and depressive rumination are cases of weak epistemic agency and organism-niche coupling. However, there are also important phenomenological, functional, and neuronal differences. In contrast, creative cognition is a case of strong epistemic agency and organism-niche coupling. By providing a phenomenological and functional analysis of these distinct types of spontaneous cognition, we can gain a better understanding of the importance of organism-niche interaction for the realization of epistemic agency. (shrink)

Major depression is a prevalent mental disorder that leads to persistent negative mood and tremendous suffering in affected individuals. However, the biological realization of this disorder and associated symptom clusters remain poorly understood. Recently, phenomenological accounts of major depressive disorder and contributions to the emerging predictive processing account have provided valuable insights into the phenomenological and neuro-functional components that lead to manifestations of major depressive episodes. The purpose of this paper is to weave together these different strands of research to (...) develop a predictive processing account of major depressive disorder. In doing so, I will relate personal-level descriptions of associated phenomenal experiences to a sub-personal-level predictive processing account of the functional realization of major depression. I will argue that pervasive symptoms of the disorder, which include a diminished sense of agency, fatigue, social withdrawal, and rumination, are integrated by existential feelings of loss and impossibility. These phenomenal experiences, I will argue, are associated with dysfunctional processes of prediction error minimization, which are characterized by an overall decrease of the causal contributions of active inference and by distorted precision estimates. The emerging account promises to contribute to a better understanding of the complex processes that give rise to depressive experiences. (shrink)

Recent editions of diagnostic manuals in psychiatry have focused on providing quick and efficient operationalized criteria. Notwithstanding the genuine value of these classifications, many psychiatrists have argued that the operationalization approach does not sufficiently accommodate the rich and complex domain of patients’ experiences that is crucial for clinical reasoning in psychiatry. How can we increase the role of phenomenology in the process of diagnostic reasoning in psychiatry? I argue that this could be done by adopting a clinical staging approach in (...) diagnostic reasoning in psychiatry. The approach has the resources to include the progressive nature of patients’ experiences to a much greater degree than is currently practiced. It can address the recent plea for increasing the role of phenomenology in psychiatric diagnosis by offering a model for clinical reasoning that goes beyond the operationalized, static criteria of diagnostic manuals, without depriving us of their benefits. (shrink)