As its title indicates, this article shows animation to be the fundamental, essential, and properly descriptive concept to understandings of animate life. A critical and constructive path is taken toward an illumination of these threefold dimensions of animation. The article is critical in its attention to a central linguistic formulation in cognitive neuroscience, namely, enaction ; it is constructive in setting forth an analysis of affectivity as exemplar of a staple of animate life, elucidating its biological and existential foundations in (...) animation. (shrink)

This paper explores how phenomenological notions of rhythm might accommodate a richer description of preverbal infant-caregiver dialogue. Developmental psychologists have theorized a crucial link between rhythm and intercorporeality in the emergence of intersubjectivity and self. Drawing on the descriptions of rhythm in the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Erwin Straus, Henri Maldiney and Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, the paper emphasizes the role of art and aesthetic processes proposing that they not only be considered as metaphorical or representational aspects of rhythm but as primary (...) resources that can enrich and deepen our understanding of self-emergence and intercorporeality in preverbal infant-caregiver dialogue. (shrink)

A critical assessment of Merleau-Ponty’s conception of phenomenology highlights singular differences between Husserl’s phenomenological methodology and existential analysis, between epistemology and ontology, and between essential and individualistic perspectives. When we duly follow the rigorous phenomenological methodology described by Husserl, we are confronted with the challenge of making the familiar strange and with the challenge of languaging experience. In making the familiar strange, we do not immediately have words to describe what is present, but must let the experience of the strange (...) resonate for some time, and even then, must return to it many times over to pinpoint its aspects, character, or quality in descriptively exacting ways. Moreover as Husserl points out, language can seduce us into thinking we know when we do not know. The methodology thus highlights the import of being true to the truths of experience, and in doing so, authenticates the basic value of a phenomenological methodology to the human sciences. (shrink)

In this short paper I will introduce an idea which, I will argue, presents a fundamental additional challenge to the machine consciousness community. The idea takes the questions surrounding phenomenology, qualia and phenomenality one step further into the realm of intersubjectivity but with a twist, and the twist is this: that an agent’s intersubjective experience is deeply felt and necessarily co-affective; it is enkinaesthetic, and only through enkinaesthetic awareness can we establish the affective enfolding which enables first the perturbation, and (...) then the balance and counter-balance, the attunement and co-ordination of whole-body interaction through reciprocal adaptation. (shrink)

This article begins with a summary phenomenological analysis of movement in conjunction with the question of “quality” in movement. It then specifies the particular kind of memory involved in a dancer’s memorization of a dance. On the basis of the phenomenological analysis and specification of memory, it proceeds to a clarification of meaning in dance. Taking its clue from the preceding sections, the concluding section of the article sets forth reasons why present-day cognitive science is unable to provide insights into (...) dance, notably because being largely tethered to happenings in the brain, it lacks foundational grounding in experience, specifically, the actual experience of movement, which is to say in kinesthesia. (shrink)

While interactions with other animate beings seem mostly to serve our own human interests, there are, at times, fugitive glimpses, passing contacts, momentary motions, and fleeting feelings of vital connection with other life forms. Life phenomenology attempts to realize these relational, interactive and intercorporeal possibilities. It challenges the language game of presuming the muteness and bruteness of non-human creatures and, at best, of speaking for them. It critiques the capture of non-human species within the inhibiting ring of human functions and (...) forms to reveal feelings and flows of interspecies commonality. It brings to expression the experiences of being moved to act and speak with others who do not share the human tongue. In part a critique of the logocentric, anthropocentric phenomenologies of intentionality, life phenomenology is more positively a means of coming to terms with the life-affirming kinetic, kinesthetic and affective dynamics of interspecies relationality. I take up the interrogation of this phenomenality, this humanimality, with the assistance of phenomenological scholarship that lends fuller credence to the experiences we have of moving in concert with other animate beings. In doing so, I aim to show the important insights that life phenomenology offers us in fostering not only greater appreciation of, responsivenss to and connection with other animals, but also in indicating the qualitative dynamics of relating with greater animate consciousness to one anotherof our own animal kind. (shrink)

This article attempts to develop further the conception of dynamics in Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO): its model of how objects develop and change. Objects are affected by relations between them, and have the potential both to produce and undergo effects, as realised in interaction with other objects. To elaborate on the change of objects in OOO, an idea is adopted from transcendental ontology. A key Hegelian question in this article is how the realisation of existing potential can produce new potential (Schelling: (...) potentialisation, going from the actual to the possible). Stated differently: how can objects change to the point of breaking their identity and generating a new object? One needs to consider that objects are nested at different levels, and that the degree of how radical change may be depends on the perspective of any given level. To address this issue, the article employs the notion of a script: a structure of nodes, each with its own subscripts. The analysis is applied and developed further through a comparative analysis of change in evolution, economics, a theory of discovery, and linguistics. The dual intention of this is to see if OOO can help us understand those phenomena, and to see in turn if those phenomena can inform the further development of OOO. (shrink)

This article identifies already existing theoretical and methodological commonalities between evolutionary biology and phenomenology, concentrating specifically on their common pursuit of origins. It identifies in passing theoretical support from evolutionary biology for present-day concerns in philosophy, singling out Sartre’s conception of fraternity as an example. It anchors its analysis of the common pursuit of origins in Husserl’s consistent recognition of the grounding significance of Nature and in his consistent recognition of animate forms of life other than human. It enumerates and (...) exemplifies five basic errors of continental philosophers with respect to Nature, errors testifying to a philosophical fundamentalism that distorts the intricate interconnections and relationships of Nature in favor of a preferred knowledge rooted in ontological reductionism. It shows that to discover and appreciate the common ground, one must indeed study “the things themselves.”. (shrink)

The problem that I present in this paper concerns the issue of ethical evaluation of algorithms, especially those used in social media and which create profiles of users of these media and new technologies that have recently emerged and are intended to change the functioning of technologies used in data management. Systems such as Overton, SambaNova or Snorkel were created to help engineers create data management models, but they are based on different assumptions than the previous approach in machine learning (...) and deep learning. There is a need to analyze both deep learning algorithms and new technologies in database management in terms of their actions towards a person who leaves their digital footprints, on which these technologies work. Then, the possibilities of applying the existing deep learning technology and new Big Data systems in the economy will be shown. The opportunities offered by the systems mentioned above seem to be promising for many companies and—if implemented on a larger scale—they will affect the functioning of the free market. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that a rich phenomenological description of ?sweet tension? is an important step to understanding how and why sport is a meaningful human endeavour. We introduce the phenomenological concepts of intersubjectivity and horizon and elaborate how they inform the study and understanding of human experience. In the process, we establish that intersubjectivity is always embodied, developing and ethically committed. Likewise, we establish that our horizons are experienced from an embodied, developing and ethically committed perspective that serves (...) as the possibility for new intersubjective engagement. What follows is a discussion of the explanatory role of intersubjectivity and horizon in elucidating experiences of sweet tension in and through sport. The phenomenological account of sweet tension provides insights into the significance of our sporting experiences. Indeed, taking phenomenology seriously represents a commitment to descriptively elucidate what makes such experiences of sport significant and why we long for them. Recognising that sweet tension is a form of intersubjective horizon opens up new avenues for addressing ethical issues in sport as well as in crafting well-balanced games. (shrink)