Les émotions ont souvent été considérées comme une menace pour la moralité et la rationalité ; dans la tradition romantique, les passions étaient placées au centre de l'individualité humaine et de la vie morale. Cette ambivalence a conduit à une ambiguïté entre les termes des émotions pour les vices et les vertus. Spinoza déclare que les systèmes éthiques fondés sur l'auto-préservation tiennent également compte des éléments sociaux et culturels. Spinoza nous dit que le bonheur est le pouvoir d'être libéré de (...) la tyrannie des émotions négatives. Le bonheur n'est pas une récompense pour la vertu : c'est la vertu elle-même. Les sentiments sont nécessaires étant une expression mentale des émotions. À ce niveau, il est possible pour les émotions, à travers les sentiments, de prendre soin de son soi. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.29121.07527. (shrink)

Emotions have often been considered a threat to morality and rationality; in the Romantic tradition, passions were placed at the center of both human individuality and moral life. This ambivalence has led to an ambiguity between the terms of emotions for vices and virtues. Epicureans and Stoics have argued that emotions are irrational. The Stoics believed that virtue is nothing but knowledge, and emotions are essentially irrational beliefs. Skeptics believed that beliefs were responsible for pain, recommending rejection of opinions of (...) any kind. These schools emphasized the general value of "ataraxia", the absence of mental disturbance, the philosophy being regarded as therapy for the cleansing of the emotions in the soul. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.27533.77282. (shrink)

Emoțiile au fost considerate adesea o amenințare pentru moralitate și raționalitate; în tradiția romantică, pasiunile au fost așezate atât în centrul individualității umane cât și al vieții morale. Această ambivalență a dus la o ambiguitate între termenii emoțiilor pentru vicii și virtuți. Epicureismul și stoicii au susținut că emoțiile sunt iraționale. Stoicii considerau că virtutea nu este altceva decât cunoașterea, iar emoțiile sunt în mod esențial credințe iraționale. Scepticii considerau că credințele sunt responsabile de durere, recomandând respingerea opiniilor de orice (...) fel. Aceste școli au subliniat valoarea generală a „ ataraxiei ”, absența perturbării mentale, filosofia fiind privită ca terapie pentru curățarea emoțiilor din suflet. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.25383.29608 . (shrink)

The investigation of the act of Sex protrudes an intricate analysis more so if thus should be justified as an activity of the Mind and not purely physical. This philosophical endeavor investigates on the matter of incorporating Passion in the assertion of Sex as such that will beget Pleasure. In order for the proper direction setting of this inquest, the opus posited a literature review that is akin to the variables of this research. It is therefore qualifiable to assert the (...) variables of Passion, Sex, and Pleasure. As such, these properties allow the rudiments which shall be tackled on the explication. The researcher delved on the investigation on anatomizing Sex and even the Passions involve for it to be protruded in a state that is occupied by the Mind. The very purpose of the opus is to intricately expose the inner workings of the activities that ought to be done in banality. There is also an explication of thought experiments to highlight the integration to the epistemological property of the variable exposed in this endeavor. In the canopy of this research, the highlight is on the ontological property of the faculties ascertained and the epistemological qualification of the properties that are seemingly isolated from the Mind. It is therefore, phenomenological since it protrudes the nature of the properties as they exist in the current circumstance, as such it is less existential simply because what it ascertains is the circumstance upon which the action attributes itself to. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper, I seek to challenge some contemporary accounts of collective affective intentionality by arguing for irreducibility of ontological autonomy of individual affective experiences. By elaborating on several requirements for reciprocal affective responses, I propose that instead of endorsing tendency of experiential unification, phenomenal fusion and token identity accounts and conceiving of single body of collectivity in terms of extended self, as the ontological bearer of affective intentionality, one has to maintain at least minimal asymmetry of self and other. (...) Moreover, I discuss the role of embodied interaffectivity and mutual incorporation accounts for collective affective experiences. (shrink)

Traumatic experiences do not merely impact on the individual’s body and psyche, they alter the way we experience others, our interpersonal relationships, and how we make sense of the world. In my dissertation, I integrate work in phenomenology, psychopathology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychiatry, and trauma studies, and draw on trauma testimonies ob- tained in an online questionnaire. I engage analytically with the question of what constitutes a trauma, whether psychological trauma is necessarily pathological, and what the causal and (...) im- plicatory relations between traumatising and post-traumatic experiences are. Informed by these preliminary elaborations, I focus on the intersubjective dimension of trauma, drawing on a qualitative study I conducted in 2020. I show that empathic abilities may be altered but are not necessarily diminished through traumatising experiences; I suggest a framework for under- standing feelings of alienation in the aftermath of trauma; and I demonstrate how feelings of belonging may be re-established. My dissertation is exemplary of how phenomenological frameworks can contribute to a better understanding of psychological trauma and that engaging with trauma can, in turn, inform and enrich philosophical thinking. (shrink)

This thesis investigates how recurrent face-to-face social interactions engender relatively invariant patterns of being together that cause those who instantiate them to act in ways that support their reproduction. Existing accounts within both cognitive science and sociology offer important insights into the consideration of patterns of being together. However, given their explanatory strategies, they struggle to integrate both ‘social’ and ‘individual’ levels of explanation. Herein a compatibilist account is developed, intended as a ‘third way’ that obviates the limitations of existing (...) accounts. This compatibilist account — by integrating insights from across disciplines and theoretical frameworks — develops a philosophical vocabulary with which to maintain explanatory consistency when articulating patterns of being together and moving between individual and social levels of explanation. It relies heavily on an extension of the enactive notion of autonomous habits to the social domain, redescribing patterns of being together as habituated participatory sense-making frames. Participatory sense-making frames result from processes of coenhabiting, i.e. processes of ongoing social habit making implicit in the dynamics of recurrent social interactions. Such processes are one primary means by which we produce and reproduce the relatively stable forms that characterise our shared worlds. These habituated frames embed much of the normativity of social life, and can serve our felicitous coordinations therein, allowing us to feel well situated, particularly in contexts within which we have some history of interacting. However, when they are not well aligned, they lead to tensions that result in either the production of novel frames or breakdowns in social interaction. The account developed has implications for many domains of human action, from psychotherapy to epistemology, and from critical studies to the development of political and ecological praxes. (shrink)

Husserlian phenomenology, as the study of conscious experience, has often been accused of solipsism. Husserl’s method, it is argued, does not have the resources to provide an account of consciousness of other minds. This chapter will address this issue by providing a brief overview of the multiple angles from which Husserl approached the theme of intersubjectivity, with specific focus on the details of his account of the concrete interpersonal encounter – “empathy.” Husserl understood empathy as a direct, quasi-perceptual form of (...) intentionality through which the sense of the Other is constituted. Furthermore, his account of empathy is holistically integrated with his overall theory of intersubjectivity, including his discussions of the objectivity of nature, and the social, historical, and communal aspects of subjectivity. Husserl’s theory of empathy continues to cast a long shadow, influencing both the analytic and continental approaches to the problem of other minds, as well as contemporary account of social cognition in the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

Perhaps the most central feature in Nietzsche’s philosophy is his effort to formulate a philosophy that would constitute a ”yes” to life. According to Nietzsche, this task presupposes a revaluation of all values. This is because philosophy from Socrates onwards is in his view a denial of life and Christianity, the other pillar of Western thought, is an even more insidious ”no” to life. I think that Nietzsche’s project of revaluating all values is a failure. The central ideas that guide (...) his criticism do not constitute any revaluation of Western, moral values. In the present paper my aim is to show in what sense the central elements in Nietzsche’s thought are firmly anchored in those very values that he took himself to have undermined. However, Nietzsche’s critique of our ”highest” values does reveal some deeply troubling features of these values. This becomes visible in Nietzsche’s struggle with his relationship to other human beings, more particularly with ”love for one’s neighbour”. His difficulties with love – and in question is not the Christian idea of love – produces an ethics of ”decency” that despite its unusually high pitch is still easily recognisable as a typical ethics of respect of a basically Kantian cut. Thus, I will also discuss Kant’s difficulties with love. The high pitch in Nietzsche’s thought is internally connected to the fact that Nietzsche makes explicit some moral ideas that form the repressed core of Western ethics but which are normally (no quotation marks needed) considered too embarrassing and too revealing to be touched upon. One could say that the repression that comes out in Nietzsche’s text drags so to speak with it issues that connect to ”shame” in a way that transcends the normal, social tolerance for shame. Thus, Nietzsche unwittingly reveals the fundamental shame-character of not only his own moral responses, but also of Western ethics in general. Nietzsche’s ethics is, then, not a revaluation but a revelation of Western values or, as I think: of value based ethics in general. (shrink)

The internet provides us with a multitude of ways of interacting with one another. In discussions about how technological innovations impact and shape our interpersonal interactions, there is a tendency to assume that encountering people online is essentially different to encountering people offline. Yet, individuals report feeling a sense of togetherness with one another online that echoes offline descriptions. I consider how we can understand people’s experiences of being together with others online, at least in certain instances, as arising out (...) of their feeling together as a we. Using Walther’s phenomenological framework of communality, I explore whether the following might take place online: habitual communal experiences and actual we-experiences. While neither of these sketches amount to a full account of how we find ourselves with others online, I suggest that they reveal how insights from the phenomenology of sociality can be used to deepen our understanding of online communality. What is more, I suggest that the strength of this approach is that in some cases it allows us to circumvent tricky questions about embodiment online and, in others, prompts us to ask to what extent a fully-embodied interaction is really required for we-experiences. (shrink)

Patients’ experience of symptoms does not follow the body–mind divide that characterizes the classification of disease in the health care system. Therefore, understanding patients in their entirety rather than in parts demands a different theoretical approach. Attempts have been made to formulate such approaches but many of these, such as the biopsychosocial model, are still basically dualistic or methodologically reductionist. In primary care, patients often present with diffuse symptoms, making primary care the ideal environment for understanding patients’ undifferentiated symptoms and (...) disease patterns which could readily fit both bodily and mental categories. In this article we discuss theoretical models that have attempted to overcome this challenge: The psychosomatic approach could be called holistic in the sense of taking an anti-dualistic stance. Primary care theorists have formulated integrative views but these have not gained a foothold in primary care medicine. McWhinney introduced a new metaphor, ‘the body–mind’, and Rudebeck advocated cultivating ‘bodily empathy’. These views have much in common with both phenomenological thinking and mentalization, a psychological concept for understanding others. In the process of understanding patients there is a need for the physician to enter an intersubjectivity that aims at understanding the patient’s experiences and sensations without initially jumping to diagnostic conclusions or into a division into mental and physical phenomena. Mentalization theory could form the basis of an approach to a more comprehensive understanding of patients. The success of such an approach is, however, dependent upon structural and organizational conditions that do not counteract it. (shrink)

What is it for two or more people to be with one another or together? And what role do empathic psychological processes play, either as essential constituents or as typical elements? As I define it, to be genuinely with each other, persons must be jointly aware of their mutual openness to mutual relating. This means, I argue, that being with is a second-personal phenomenon in the sense I discuss in The Second-Person Standpoint. People who are with each other are in (...) one another's presence, where the latter is a matter of second-personal standing or authority, as in the divine presence or in the king's presence. To be with someone is, therefore, to give the other second-personal standing, implicitly, to claim it for oneself and, thus, to enter into a relation of mutual accountability. Second-personal relating, I argue, requires a distinctive form of empathy, projective empathy, through which we imaginatively occupy others' perspectives and view ourselves as if from their point of view. Projective empathy is thus an essential constituent of “being with.” But it is not the only form of empathy that being with typically involves. Further, I discuss ways in which emotional contagion, affect attunement, as well as projective empathy typically enter into the complex psychological (and ethical) phenomenon of being with another person. (shrink)

This paper takes as its point of departure Merleau-Ponty’s assertion: “everything will have to begin again, in politics as well as in philosophy”. In pursuing his later work, Merleau-Ponty signalled the need for a reconfiguration of his philosophical vision, so it was no longer caught in Cartesianism and the philosophy of consciousness. This required a turn towards ontology through which he consolidated two key ideas: firstly, a pervasive interdependence articulated in his reversibility thesis and the ontology of ‘flesh’; secondly, a (...) radical contingency at the heart of existence. This paper interrogates the political implications of these ideas, and specifically regarding humanism and human progress. Relatedly, I address the question – how might recognitions of ontological interdependence and radical contingency support a flourishing democracy? Merleau-Ponty’s early political work concerned the issues of his day – Nazism, Marxism and the status of humanism – and did not engage extensively with these emerging onto-political concerns. Nonetheless, there are indicative reflections in the writings and interviews; the political implications of his ontological interrogations become more thematic in the later works. There is no rupture between the earlier and later works regarding his philosophical vision, although he later distanced himself from Marxism with revelations of the gulags under Stalin and the Korean War. The overarching claim of this paper – we need to rethink politics from the ground up beginning with ontology; ontology is political and the political is intrinsically ontologically informed. Getting the ontology ‘right’ is a matter of discovery and not theory choice. (shrink)

So far, the value dimension underlying affectivity disorders has remained out of focus in phenomenological psychopathology. As early as at the beginning of the 20th century, however, German phenomenologist Max Scheler examined in depth the relationship between affectivity and value dimension through the concept of valueception (Wertnehmung). In this sense, a recent noteworthy contribution has been provided by John Cutting, who has drawn attention to the importance of Scheler’s analyses for psychiatry. In this work I take into consideration only two (...) aspects of Cutting’s proposal: 1) the relationship between the impairments of valueception and the perception of certain value classes; and 2) the interpretation of Scheler’s phenomenological reduction and its juxtaposition with the modus vivendi of schizophrenia. According to Cutting, in the modus vivendi of schizophrenia the valueception impairment entails putting vital values in brackets and focusing on personal values, with a process that recalls Scheler’s phenomenological reduction. Regarding the first aspect, I share Cutting’s starting point, but then shift the focus on how important the valueception is for the intersubjective dimension. In particular, I maintain that rather than compromising the perception of vital values, valueception impairments in the modus vivendi of schizophrenia interfere with the intersubjective dimension and are interwoven with a process of disembodiment. My thesis is that the modus vivendi of schizophrenia involves a disturbance of the intersubjective dimension that arises from the level of valueception and that determines the person’s self-referential closure. With regard to the second point, by analyzing Scheler’s phenomenological reduction, I sustain that its main objective is to increase both the interaction with otherness and the openness to the world (Weltoffenheit). As a consequence, the modus vivendi of schizophrenia, in my opinion, is not comparable, as Cutting claims, with Scheler’s phenomenological reduction, but goes in a different direction. (shrink)

I discuss Husserl’s account of intersubjectivity in the fifth Cartesian Meditation. I focus on the problem of perceived similarity. I argue that recent work in developmental psychology and neuroscience, concerning intermodal representation and the mirror neuron system, fails to constitute a naturalistic solution to the problem. This can be seen via a comparison between the Husserlian project on the one hand and Molyneux’s Question on the other.

The problem of narrative validity is discussed in reference to psychologists' criticisms of verbal report data and in dialogue with Jean-Paul Sartre's understanding of self-knowledge in general and of self-deception in particular. Sartre's notion of "purifying reflection" is invoked as a way of seeing through the distortions and deceptions inherent in narrative accounts of lived experience. Excerpts from empirically-based phenomenological investigations of desire and sexual compliance will be used as illustrations of both the content and process of phenomenologically-based narrative research.

Preston & de Waal are understandably cautious in applying their model to autism. They emphasise multiple cognitive impairments in autism, including prefrontal-executive, cerebellar-attention, and amygdala-emotion recognition deficits. Further empirical examination of imitation ability in autism may reveal deficits in the neural and cognitive basis of perception-action mapping that have a specific relation to the empathic deficit.

O presente artigo tem como objetivo produzir um estudo sobre a empatia a partir da perspectiva fenomenológica. Para tanto, será feita uma distinção entre os vários sentidos e usos da palavra “empatia” na contemporaneidade. Logo após, serão analisadas as várias teorias e modelos explicativos da empatia a partir da investigação de “como” a consciência humana acessa o mundo externo. Dentre os modelos explicativos explorados, destacam-se o modelo Theory – Theory, o Simulation Theory, o Integrated Theory, o Graded Empathy Hypothesis e (...) o Reintegrated Theory. Feito isso, será explorada, mais detidamente, a proposta fenomenológica para a questão da empatia. Por fim, se buscará, à luz da perspectiva fenomenológica, avançar na reflexão sobre a empatia a partir de três ideias: a de ressonância, a de afetação e a de interimplicação, buscando desenvolver os primeiros passos para uma interintencionalidade imanente. Como limites e possibilidades, pode-se notar que é preciso explorar mais os processos de modalização da empatia no processo de constituição do ego, principalmente da vida pré-egótica. (shrink)

In the so-called “erotic dialogues”, especially the Symposium and the Phaedrus, Plato explained why erotic desire can play an epistemic function, establishing a strong connection between erotic desire and beauty, “the most clearly visible and the most loved” among the Ideas. Taking the erotic dialogues as a background, in this paper I elucidate Plato’s explanation in another context, the one of the Phaedo, for discussing the epistemic function of erotic desire in relation to the deficiency argument and the affinity argument. (...) My claim is that the erotic desire of the philosopher is activated by the recognition of traces of the Ideas as something that the material world lacks and that, nevertheless, his soul is familiar with. This desire for the Ideas triggers the process of recollection, and thus erotic desire acquires a decisive role in the acquisition of knowledge in the Phaedo. In the final section of the paper, I highlight the contemporary relevance of Plato’s epistemology of erotic desire. (shrink)

This article distinguishes between several modifications of perception and perspective-taking in order to grasp the relevance of phantasmatic and imaginatory consciousness for empathy. Drawing on insights from phenomenology, it tries to elucidate the complex process of empathically perceiving and understanding the other by looking at the structures of anticipation and fulfilment from the level of self-affection, to perceptual, personal, and narrative perspective-taking. Thereby, the problem of objectifying the personal background of the other in empathic transposition is addressed and the intertwinements (...) of expectation-driven and stimulus-driven components of the empathic process are reviewed. (shrink)

The present paper attempts to look at on the genealogy of both shared intentionality and collective intentionality, comparing Michael Tomasello’s concept with Max Scheler’s threedimensional concept of intentionality: ens amans, ens volens, ens cogitans, as affective, conative, and cognitive intentionality. I focus on various forms of affective collective intentionality — Schelerian forms of sympathy — to show collective subjectivity from the whole spectrum of emotional intentionality, presented by Scheler’s example of parents standing over the corpse of a child. Even though (...) Tomasello’s works seem to empirically corroborate Scheler’s intuitions about the emotional genealogy of collective intentionality, they will differ in the horizons within they locate intentionality. In the case of the evolutionary psychology of Tomasello, we can talk about the horizon of cooperation, in the case of Scheler’s Scheler’s phenomenology of acts about the horizon of responsibility or co-responsibility, which gives intentionality its unique character. The similarities of both concepts concern the following pillars: 1) genealogy of intentionality covering the dimension of affective intentionality, conative intentionality, and the level of cognitive intentionality; 2) Imitation or, as Scheler would say, following someone. Because a person is recognized by the author of Formalism as an act, or a bundle of acts, the way to understanding and communication with another person is the maieutic coperformance of their acts — i.e., imitation. The maieutic co-execution of acts of others triggers the constitution process of a person, both on an individual and community level. We can speak, in the case of Tomasello, about the ontho- and sociogenetic function of co-executing acts or imitating; however, in the case of Scheler, we are dealing with the clearly axiological nature of such a constitution of both the individual and collective subjectivity ; 3) collaborative engagement as a driving force behind collective intentionality in one case in form of co-responsibility, a nature of a collective person ; in the other case in form of collaboration developing intentionality to various units of community life. (shrink)

In the past three decades a number of narrative self-concepts have appeared in the philosophical literature. A central question posed in recent literature concerns the embodiment of the narrative self. Though one of the best-known narrative self-concepts is a non-embodied one, namely Dennett’s self as ‘a center of narrative gravity’, others argue that the narrative self should include a role for embodiment. Several arguments have been made in support of the latter claim, but these can be summarized in two main (...) points. Firstly, a logical one: without taking the body into account Dennett’s theory becomes self-refuting. Secondly, a more practical/phenomenological point: a disembodied self-concept overlooks how personal the body is, and as such should be considered part of the self. In this paper I endorse these criticisms of non-embodied narrative self-concepts, but I argue that the relationship between the narrative self and the body is far from sufficiently fleshed out. I claim that the narrative self and the body are much more interwoven than the above criticisms suggest. What I aim to show in this paper is that the relationship between the body and the narrative self is interactive rather than unidirectional: not only does our body shape our narrative self, but our narrative self also shapes our body. The upshot of this is a better conception of the self is as a dynamic interaction between its various aspects. (shrink)

The carer of the person with dementia is enjoined to maintain respect, and to reinforce this a bill of rights has been established . Of course, talk of rights does not guarantee respectful behaviour. In this paper it is argued that the discovery that the sufferer continues to be a person, with a unique lifeworld, can assist the carer to conform willingly to the demand that they act respectfully.The current research project makes central the idiographic description of the individual case.

There is a two-fold problem the phenomenologist must face: the first has to do with thinking like a phenomenologist given that one is always already steeped in the mundane sphere; the second has to do with the phenomenologist entering into dialogue with those scientists, psychologists, sociologists and other laypersons who still remain in the mundane sphere. I address the first problem by giving an Husserlian-inspired account of the movement from the mundane to the transcendental, and show that there are decent (...) prospects for getting life-world folks to start thinking like phenomenologists. I address the second problem by showing that Husserl has himself caught in a dilemma: either the reduction takes place and no communication is possible between phenomenologist and non-phenomenologist, or the reduction does not take place and the phenomenological method remains a psychological makeshift, supposedly accessible to Husserl and his esoteric followers. (shrink)

Rather than as a giving of permission to someone to transgress one’s bodily boundaries, I argue for defining sexual consent as feeling-with one’s sexual partner. Dominant approaches to consent within feminist philosophy have failed to capture the intercorporeal character of erotic consciousness by treating it as a form of giving permission, as is evident in the debate between attitudinal and performative theories of consent. Building on the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Ann Cahill, Linda Martín Alcoff, and others, I argue that (...) taking consent to be an intercorporeal and dynamic coexistence of desiring bodies opens up new ways of thinking about the role of consent in sexual ethics. I suggest that phenomenology’s theories of embodied consciousness, operative intentionality, and the direct perception of others provide a better groundwork for conceptualizing the role of ambiguity and subtle power dynamics in sexual encounters than attitudinal or performative accounts of consent. I also defend my view against Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa’s argument for doing away with the concept of consent in sexual ethics due to consent's stubborn and infelicitous presupposition of permission-giving. (shrink)

Kierkegaard's theory of pre-ethical, aesthetic, ethical, and religious spheres of moral reasoning was applied to the case of an individual rejected for promotion to full professor. The evaluators seemed to represent the public morality of the profession, assumed that they represented the highest level of moral reasoning, and judged that the candidate represented a private morality based on a lower level of moral reasoning. The article questioned the view that moral reasoning could be discerned from one's actions. It was paradoxical (...) that different spheres seemed to produce similar kinds of actions, though for differing reasons, making identification difficult. It was easy for the evaluators to confuse spheres representing private moralities and to conclude, based on the candidate's research record, that she/he was unsuitable for promotion. It was equally difficult for the candidate to discern whether the evaluators' moral reasoning represented the public morality of the profession, or a pre-ethical need by the evaluators to appear in solidarity with the public morality. This made it difficult for the candidate to know whether the evaluators' recommendations represented absolute standards that would be applied to any future re-application, or not. The article's contribution was the identification of different spheres of moral reasoning, the interactions between spheres, and the paradoxical indeterminacy of gauging moral reasoning from moral action. It supported Kierkegaard's view that the highest truth attainable by an individual was "an objective uncertainty" and that this truth was lost in self-deception when one claimed to have been able to solve the paradox. (shrink)

Contemporary literature includes a wide variety of definitions of empathy. At the same time, the revival of sentimentalism has proposed that empathy serves as a necessary criterion of moral agency. The paper explores four common definitions in order to map out which of them best serves such agency. Historical figures are used as the backdrop against which contemporary literature is analysed. David Hume’s philosophy is linked to contemporary notions of affective and cognitive empathy, Adam Smith’s philosophy to projective empathy, and (...) Max Scheler’s account to embodied empathy. Whereas cognitive and projective empathy suffer from detachment and atomism, thereby providing poor support for the type of other-directedness and openness entailed by moral agency, embodied and affective empathy intrinsically facilitate these factors, and hence are viewed as fruitful candidates. However, the theory of affective empathy struggles to explain why the experience of empathy includes more than pure affective mimicry, whilst embodied empathy fails to take into account forms of empathy that do not include contextual, narrative information. In order to navigate through these difficulties, Edith Stein’s take on non-primordial experience is used as a base upon which a definition of affective empathy, inclusive of an embodied dimension, and founded on a movement between resonation and response, is sketched. It is argued that, of the four candidates, this new definition best facilitates moral agency. (shrink)

Combines phenomenology with the "enactivist" approach to consciousness theory and recent emotion research to explore the way self-motivated action plans shape selective attention, exploration, and ultimately the mind's interpretation of reality - in philosophy, psychology, cultural awareness, and our personal lives.

I argue that we find the articulation of a problem concerning bodily agency in the early works of the Merleau-Ponty which he explicates as analogous to what he explicitly calls the problem of perception. The problem of perception is the problem of seeing how we can have the object given in person through it perspectival appearances. The problem concerning bodily agency is the problem of seeing how our bodily movements can be the direct manifestation of a person’s intentions in the (...) world. In both cases what, according to Merleau-Ponty, obscures a recognition of the phenomenon in question is a conception of our bodily capacities, i.e. our sensibility and our motility, which reduces these to the workings of mechanisms that are blind to meaning. I argue that both the problem concerning perception and the problem concerning bodily agency can be properly called transcendental. The problem of perception is transcendental because it concerns the very intelligibility of appearances and judgements with empirical content. The problem of bodily agency is transcendental in the sense that it concerns the very intelligibility of our bodily capacity to carry out intentions and by implication the intelligibility of our intentions as such. (shrink)

This thesis explores and discusses foundational issues concerning the relationship between phenomenological philosophy and the enactive approach to cognitive science, with the aim of clarifying, developing, and promoting the project of enactive phenomenology. This project is framed by three general ideas: 1) that the sciences of mind need a phenomenological grounding, 2) that the enactive approach is the currently most promising attempt to provide mind science with such a grounding, and 3) that this attempt involves both a naturalization of phenomenology (...) and a phenomenologization of the concept of nature. More specifically, enactive phenomenology is the project of pursuing mutually illuminative exchanges between, on the one hand, phenomenological investigations of the structures of lived experience and embodied existence and, on the other, scientific accounts of mind and life – in particular those framed by theories of biological self-organization. The thesis consists of two parts. Part one is an introductory essay that seeks to clarify some of enactive phenomenology’s overarching philosophical commitments by tracing some of its historical roots. Part two is a compilation of four articles, each of which intervenes in a different contemporary debate relevant to the dissertation’s project. (shrink)

This article explores the implications of what it means to moralize about future technological innovations. Specifically, I have been invited to comment on three papers that attempt to think about what seems to be an impending social reality: the availability of life-like sex robots. In response, I explore what it means to moralize about future technological innovations from a secular perspective, i.e., a perspective grounded in an immanent, socio-historically contingent view. I review the arguments of Nancy Jecker, Mark Howard and (...) Robert Sparrow, and Wang Jue and respond to their arguments concerning the permissible limits of human-robot sexual interaction. I argue that we are in a poor epistemic position regarding what the actual future human response will be towards sex robots and how it affects society generally. Given this poor epistemic position, I argue that moralizing about future trends like human-robot sex is difficult because we do not have the relevant facts to work with. Furthermore, I remain skeptical as to policy recommendations based on socio-historically contingent moral viewpoints both because they do not carry in principle moral authority to say what future others may or may not do with their property and they may not even appeal to future secular others, insofar as secular morality is plural and consistently develops anew. (shrink)

The objective of my paper is to present a psychopathological conception of psychopathy and compare it with the mainstream nosographic diagnosis. This theoretical essay is informed by clinical situations involving psychopaths who were interviewed in prison or in forensic centres. The method applied a phenomenological psychopathology analysis to the clinical material. I first compare Binswanger’s conception of mania with psychopathic functioning. Patients’ behaviour is similar but the difference relates to the dialectic between the ego and the alter ego. A patient (...) with mania has a fundamental crisis of the ego, which a psychopath does not have. A second finding concerns emotions and the adaptive dimension of psychopathy. An epistemological discussion of the concept of emotions reveals that psychopaths are competent at managing emotional stimuli, which confers a psychological advantage upon them. Finally, a reflection on empathy and sympathy clarifies the presentation of “psychopathic being-in-the-world”. Starting with the tension between clinical practice and critique of the dominant diagnostic scales, we can consider that the “essential characteristics” of the psychopathic disorder are reification of the alter ego without presenting an ego-related disorder, the adaptive benefits of emotional coldness, and empathic skills without sympathy. (shrink)

Recent work on empathy has focused on the phenomenon of feeling on behalf of, or for, others, and on determining the role it ought to play in our moral lives. Much less attention, however, has been paid to ‘feeling-with.’ In this paper, I distinguish ‘feeling-with’ from ‘feeling-for.’ I identify three distinguishing features of ‘feeling-with,’ all of which serve to make it distinct from empathy. Then, drawing on work in feminist moral psychology and feminist ethics, I argue that ‘feeling-with’ has unique (...) moral value over and above ‘feeling-for.’ I end by rebutting some likely objections to the claim that ‘feeling-with’ is morally valuable. (shrink)

A comprehensive account of human kindness.

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to elucidate Schopenhauer’s moral philosophy in terms of an ethics of virtue. This paper consists of four sections. In the first section I outline three major objections Schopenhauer raises for Kant’s moral philosophy. In section two I extract from these criticisms a framework for Schopenhauer’s own position, identifying how his moral psychology underpins a unified and hierarchical conception of virtue and vice. I then ascertain some strengths of this view. In section three I (...) focus in upon the issue of fixed character and moral education as at least one major point of divergence between Schopenhauer’s virtue ethics and typical trends within the tradition. In the fourth and final section, I consider and respond to this ethical framework’s possible susceptibility to the charge of egoism, and adjudicate among competing solutions in the secondary literature. I conclude that refined forms of Schopenhauer’s ethical views offer rich and plausible insights into both virtue and vice which have received less attention than they deserve. Hence, Schopenhauer warrants more serious concern in contemporary discussions of virtue ethics alongside the likes of Aristotle, Hume and Nietzsche. (shrink)

The book’s core argument is that an artificial intelligence that could equal or exceed human intelligence—sometimes called artificial general intelligence (AGI)—is for mathematical reasons impossible. It offers two specific reasons for this claim: Human intelligence is a capability of a complex dynamic system—the human brain and central nervous system. Systems of this sort cannot be modelled mathematically in a way that allows them to operate inside a computer. In supporting their claim, the authors, Jobst Landgrebe and Barry Smith, marshal evidence (...) from mathematics, physics, computer science, philosophy, linguistics, and biology, setting up their book around three central questions: What are the essential marks of human intelligence? What is it that researchers try to do when they attempt to achieve "artificial intelligence" (AI)? And why, after more than 50 years, are our most common interactions with AI, for example with our bank’s computers, still so unsatisfactory? Landgrebe and Smith show how a widespread fear about AI’s potential to bring about radical changes in the nature of human beings and in the human social order is founded on an error. There is still, as they demonstrate in a final chapter, a great deal that AI can achieve which will benefit humanity. But these benefits will be achieved without the aid of systems that are more powerful than humans, which are as impossible as AI systems that are intrinsically "evil" or able to "will" a takeover of human society. (shrink)

Une argumentation pour l'importance dualiste des émotions dans la société, individuellement et au niveau communautaire. La tendance actuelle à la prise de conscience et au contrôle des émotions grâce à l'intelligence émotionnelle a un effet bénéfique dans les affaires et pour le succès des activités sociales mais, si nous n'y prenons pas garde, elle peut conduire à une aliénation irréversible au niveau individuel et social. L'essai est composé de trois parties principales: Émotions (Modèles d'émotions, Le processus des émotions, La bonheur, (...) La philosophie des émotions, L'éthique des émotions), Intelligence émotionnelle (Modèles d'intelligence émotionnelle, L'intelligence émotionnelle dans la recherche et l'éducation, La philosophie d'intelligence émotionnelle, L'intelligence émotionnelle dans la philosophie orientale) et Intelligence émotionnelle dans les organisations (Travail émotionnel, La philosophie de l'intelligence émotionnelle dans les organisations, La critique de l'intelligence émotionnelle dans les organisations, L'éthique de l'intelligence émotionnelle dans les organisations). Dans les Conclusions, je présente un résumé des déclarations contenues dans le document. SOMMAIRE: Abstract 1. Émotions 1.1 Modèles d'émotion 1.2 Traitement des émotions 1.3 Bonheur 1.4 La philosophie des émotions 1.5 L'éthique des émotions 2. Intelligence émotionnelle 2.1 Modèles d'intelligence émotionnelle 2.1.1 Modèle d'habilités de Mayer et Salovey 2.1.2 Le modèle mixte de Goleman 2.1.3 Le modèle mixte de Bar-On 2.1.4 Modèle de traits de Petrides 2.2 Intelligence émotionnelle dans la recherche et l'éducation 2.3 La philosophie de l'intelligence émotionnelle 2.3.1 L'intelligence émotionnelle dans la philosophie orientale 3. Intelligence émotionnelle dans les organisations 3.1 Travail émotionnel 3.2 La philosophie de l'intelligence émotionnelle dans les organisations 3.3 Critique de l'intelligence émotionnelle dans les organisations 3.4 Éthique de l'intelligence émotionnelle dans les organisations Conclusions Bibliographie DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.28567.93600 . (shrink)

An argumentation for the dualistic importance of emotions in society, individually and at community level. The current tendency of awareness and control of emotions through emotional intelligence has a beneficial effect in business and for the success of social activities but, if we are not careful, it can lead to irreversible alienation at individual and social level. The paper consists of three main parts: Emotions (Emotional models, Emotional processing, Happiness, Philosophy of emotions, Ethics of emotions), Emotional intelligence (Models of emotional (...) intelligence, Emotional intelligence in research and education, Philosophy of emotional intelligence, Emotional intelligence in Eastern philosophy), Emotional intelligence in organizations (Emotional work, Philosophy of emotional intelligence in organizations, Criticism of emotional intelligence in organizations, Ethics of emotional intelligence in organizations). In the Conclusions I present a summary of the statements in the paper. CONTENTS: Abstract 1. Emotions 1.1 Models of emotion 1.2 Processing emotions 1.3 Happiness 1.4 The philosophy of emotions 1.5 The ethics of emotions 2. Emotional intelligence 2.1 Models of emotional intelligence 2.1.1 Model of abilities of Mayer and Salovey 2.1.2 Goleman's mixed model 2.1.3 The mixed model of Bar-On 2.1.4 Petrides' model of traits 2.2 Emotional intelligence in research and education 2.3 The philosophy of emotional intelligence 2.3.1 Emotional intelligence in Eastern philosophy 3. Emotional intelligence in organizations 3.1 Emotional labor 3.2 The philosophy of emotional intelligence in organizations 3.3 Critique of emotional intelligence in organizations 3.4 Ethics of emotional intelligence in organizations Conclusions Bibliography DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.32802.79041 . (shrink)

O argumentare a importanței dualiste a emoțiilor în societate, individual și la nivel de comunitate. Tendința actuală de conștientizare și control al emoțiilor prin inteligența emoțională are un efect benefic în afaceri și pentru succesul activităților sociale dar, dacă nu suntem atenți, poate duce la o alienare ireversibilă la nivel individual și social. Lucrarea se compune din trei părți principale: Emoții (Modele ale emoțiilor, Procesarea emoțiilor, Fericirea, Filosofia emoțiilor, Etica emotiilor), Inteligența emoțională (Modele ale inteligenței emoționale, Inteligența emoțională în cercetare (...) și educație, Filosofia inteligenței emoționale, Inteligența emoțională în filosofia orientală) și Inteligența emoțională în organizații (Munca emoțională, Filosofia inteligenței emoționale în organizații, Critica inteligenței emoționale în organizații, Etica inteligenței emoționale în organizații). În Concluzii prezint un rezumat al afirmațiilor din lucrare. CUPRINS: Abstract 1. Emoții 1.1 Modele ale emoțiilor 1.2 Procesarea emoțiilor 1.3 Fericirea 1.4 Filosofia emoțiilor 1.5 Etica emoțiilor 2. Inteligența emoțională 2.1 Modele ale inteligenței emoționale 2.1.1 Modelul de abilități al lui Mayer și Salovey 2.1.2 Modelul mixt al lui Goleman 2.1.3 Modelul mixt al lui Bar-On 2.1.4 Modelul de trăsături al lui Petrides 2.2 Inteligența emoțională în cercetare și educație 2.3 Filosofia inteligenței emoționale 2.3.1 Inteligența emoțională în filosofia orientală 3. Inteligența emoțională în organizații 3.1 Munca emoțională 3.2 Filosofia inteligenței emoționale în organizații 3.3 Critica inteligenței emoționale în organizații 3.4 Etica inteligenței emoționale în organizații Concluzii Bibliografie DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.32991.20640. (shrink)

This article investigates the relationship between emotional sharing and the extended mind thesis. We argue that shared emotions are socially extended emotions that involve a specific type of constitutive integration between the participating individuals’ emotional experiences. We start by distinguishing two claims, the Environmentally Extended Emotion Thesis and the Socially Extended Emotion Thesis. We then critically discuss some recent influential proposals about the nature of shared emotions. Finally, in Sect. 3, we motivate two conditions that an account of shared emotions (...) ought to accommodate: Reciprocal Other-awareness and Integration. Consideration of and discussion of relational accounts of joint attention lead us to the proposal that a construal of socially extended emotions in terms of a constitutive integration of the participating individuals’ experiences is more promising than proposals that simply appeal to various forms of social situatedness, embeddedness, or scaffolding. (shrink)

This article investigates the relationship between for-me-ness and sociality. I start by pointing out some ambiguities in claims pursued by critics that have recently pressed on the relationship between the two notions. I next articulate a question concerning for-me-ness and sociality that builds on the idea that, occasionally at least, there is something it is like ‘for us’ to have an experience. This idea has been explored in recent literature on shared experiences and collective intentionality, and it gestures towards the (...) question of the extent to which some social interactions make a difference in the phenomenal character of their participants’ experiences. Finally, I present a construal of for-us-ness that complements the received understanding of for-me-ness, by drawing on Alfred Schutz’ concept of the we-relationship, and on the idea of second-personal awareness, i.e. awareness of a ‘you’. The current proposal provides a suitable account of some basic forms of phenomenally manifest social connectedness, in a way that is cognitively undemanding and without incurring the costs of a sui generis plural pre-reflective self-awareness. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Wang Yangming is the founder of Chinese Enlightenment in the Ming-Qing period, in a similar way Descartes is for the European. The European Enlightenment thinkers such as Leibniz and Voltaire had been inspired by China about the human being’s ethical independence at the collective level, namely, the ability of a community to lead an ethical life independent of God’s revelation. Meanwhile, the Enlightenment thinkers failed to notice the Chinese intellectual resources that encourage human being’s ethical independence at the individual (...) level, namely, the belief that every human individual is equally capable of leading one’s ethical life purely relying on one’s own good judgment. For this point, Wang Yangming is the resources that the West could have drawn upon. Both Wang Yangming and Descartes assert the egalitarianism about every individual’s power of judgment. I label this similarity as the ‘Sino-European juncture of Enlightenment.’ Other similarities between these two thinkers lie, firstly, in their common strategy in defending egalitarianism: both give a psychological account of the sources of error by analyzing the relationship between will and reason; and secondly, in their methodology: both redefine the method of attaining knowledge, and both emphasize that one should start from the plain, simple and insignificant things and then ascend to the complex things at issue. (shrink)

One of the central questions within contemporary debates about collective intentionality concerns the notion and status of the we. The question, however, is by no means new. At the beginning of the last century, it was already intensively discussed in phenomenology. Whereas Heidegger argued that a focus on empathy is detrimental to a proper understanding of the we, and that the latter is more fundamental than any dyadic interaction, other phenomenologists, such as Stein, Walther and Husserl, insisted on the importance (...) of empathy for proper we-experiences. In this paper, I will present some of the key moves in this debate and then discuss and assess Husserl’s specific proposal, according to which reciprocal empathy, second-person engagement and self-alienation are all important presuppositions for group-identification and we-identity. (shrink)