This essay accomplishes two goals. First, I explore Husserl’s study of “tension” from his 1893 manuscript, “Notes Towards a Theory of Attention and Interest,” to reveal that it comprises his de facto first analysis of instinct. Husserl there describes tension as the innate pull to execute ever new objectifications. He clarifies this pull of objectification by contrasting it to affective and volitional experiences. This analysis surprisingly prefigures a theory of drive-feelings and anticipates the idea that consciousness is both teleological and (...) autotelic. Second, I show how Husserl’s de facto account of instincts from 1893 inspires his robust philosophy of instincts from Studies concerning the Structures of Consciousness and other late manuscripts. While Husserl maintains many 1893 insights, he now claims that the instinct towards objectification comprises affective and volitional moments. Finally, I demonstrate that Husserl’s analyses of instincts throughout his life are united by the idea that consciousness possesses an essential structural lack. (shrink)

Some people have stressed that there is a close analogy between meaning experiences, i.e., experiences as of understanding concerning linguistic expressions, and seeing-in experiences, i.e., pictorial experiences of discerning a certain item – what a certain picture presents, viz. the picture’s subject – in another item – the picture’s vehicle, the picture’s physical basis. Both can be seen as fusion experiences, in the minimal sense that they are experiential wholes made up of different aspects. Actually, two important similarities between such (...) experiences may lead one to think that they are experiences of the same type. In this paper, however, I will try to show that notwithstanding such similarities, these experiences are typologically different. For there are two dissimilarities between such experiences that are more relevant on this typological concern than their similarities. Indeed, unlike meaning experiences, seeing-in experiences are first of all recognitional experiences of a sort that makes them perceptual experiences as well. Moreover, again unlike meaning experiences, seeing-in experiences are fusion experiences in the substantial sense that the experiential whole is more than the sum of its experiential parts taken in isolation, for when such parts figure in that whole, they interact with each other. In a nutshell, unlike meaning experiences, seeing-in experiences are proper fusion experiences. (shrink)

Though scholarship has explored Karin Costelloe-Stephen’s contributions to the history of psychoanalysis, as well as her relations to the Bloomsbury Group, her philosophical work has been almost completely ignored. This paper will examine her debate with Bertrand Russell over his criticism of Bergson. Costelloe-Stephen had employed the terminology of early analytic philosophy in presenting a number of arguments in defence of Bergson’s views. Costelloe-Stephen would object, among other things, to Russell’s use of an experiment which, as she points out, was (...) first conducted by Carl Stumpf. Russell appeals to Stumpf's experiment in his attempt to prove that sense data are terms in logical relations, a thesis presupposed by the project of logical analysis outlined in Our Knowledge of the External World. A reformulated version of Costelloe-Stephen's argument put forth by this paper shows that Russell's argument fails to provide adequate proof for his thesis. Further modifications of the argument can also address a reconstruction (based on contemporary reports) of Russell's reply to Costelloe-Stephen. In his reply, Russell would use, already in 1914, the term ‘analytic philosophy’ in contrasting his and Moore’s approach to a continental one, exemplified by Bergson and Costelloe-Stephen. (shrink)

Experimental phenomenology is the study of appearances in subjective awareness. Its methods and results challenge quite a few aspects of the current debate on consciousness. A robust theoretical framework for understanding consciousness is pending: current empirical research waves on what a phenomenon of consciousness properly is, not least because the question is still open on the observables to be measured and how to measure them. I shall present the basics of experimental phenomenology and discuss the current development of experimental phenomenology, (...) its main features, and the many misunderstandings that have obstructed a fair understanding and evaluation of its otherwise enlightening outcomes. (shrink)

How do we individuate the senses, what exactly do we do when we do so, and why does it matter? In the following article, I propose a general answer to these related questions based on Franz Brentano's views on the senses. After a short survey of various answers offered in the recent literature on the senses, I distinguish between two major ways of answering this question, causally and descriptively, arguing that only answers giving priority to description and to the classification (...) involved in it are on the right track for a general answer to the related questions. In the second part of the article, I argue that Brentano's descriptive psychology is an attractive candidate for such an answer. His descriptive psychology provides a plausible account of the classification involved in description, in particular regarding the classification of sensory qualities. I close the article by briefly explaining how Brentano spells out the priority of descriptive answers over causal ones. (shrink)

Height-pitch associations are claimed to be universal and independent of language, but this claim remains controversial. The present study sheds new light on this debate with a multimodal analysis of individual sound and melody descriptions obtained in an interactive communication paradigm with speakers of Dutch and Farsi. The findings reveal that, in contrast to Dutch speakers, Farsi speakers do not use a height-pitch metaphor consistently in speech. Both Dutch and Farsi speakers’ co-speech gestures did reveal a mapping of higher pitches (...) to higher space and lower pitches to lower space, and this gesture space-pitch mapping tended to co-occur with corresponding spatial words (high-low). However, this mapping was much weaker in Farsi speakers than Dutch speakers. This suggests that cross-linguistic differences shape the conceptualization of pitch and further calls into question the universality of height-pitch associations. (shrink)

Both through his own work and that of his students, Franz Clemens Brentano had an often underappreciated influence on the course of 20 th - and 21 st -century philosophy. _The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School_ offers full coverage of Brentano’s philosophy and his influence. It contains 38 brand-new essays from an international team of experts that offer a comprehensive view of Brentano’s central research areas—philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and value theory—as well as of the principal (...) figures shaped by Brentano’s school of thought. A General Introduction serves as an overview of Brentano and the contents of the volume and three separate bibliographies point students and researchers on to further avenues of inquiry. Systematic and detailed, _The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School_ provides readers with a valuable reference to Brentano’s work, and to his lasting importance in the history of philosophy and in contemporary debates. (shrink)

There are some complex experiences, such as the experiences that allow us to understand linguistic expressions and pictures respectively, which seem to be very similar. For they are stratified experiences in which, on top of grasping certain low-level properties, one also grasps some high-level semantic-like properties. Yet first of all, those similarities notwithstanding, a phenomenologically-based reflection shows that such experiences are different. For a meaning experience has a high-level fold, in which one grasps the relevant expression’s meaning, which is not (...) perceptual, but is only based on a low-level perceptual fold that merely grasps that expression in its acoustically relevant properties. While a pictorial experience, a seeing-in experience, has two folds, the configurational and the recognitional fold, in which one respectively grasps the physical basis of a picture, its vehicle, and what the picture presents, its subject, that are both perceptual, insofar as they are intimately connected. For unlike a meaning experience, in a seeing-in experience one can perceptually read off the picture’s subject from the picture’s vehicle. Moreover, this phenomenological difference is neurologically implemented. For not only the cerebral areas that respectively implement such experiences are different, at least as far as the access to those experiences’ respective high-level content is concerned. As is shown by the fact that one can selectively be impaired in the area respectively implementing the meaning vs. the seeing-in experience without losing one’s pictorial vs. semantic competence respectively. But also, unlike meaning experiences, the area implementing the seeing-in experiential folds is perceptual as a whole. For not only a picture’s subject can be accessed earlier than an expression’s meaning, but also the neural underpinnings of such folds are located in the perceptual areas of the brain. (shrink)

The most obvious varieties of mental phenomena directed to non- existent objects occur in our experiences of works of art. The task of applying the Meinongian ontology of the non-existent to the working out of a theory of aesthetic phenomena was however carried out not by Meinong by his disciple Stephan Witasek in his Grundzüge der allgemeinen Ästhetik of 1904. Witasek shows in detail how our feelings undergo certain sorts of structural modifications when they are directed towards what does not (...) exist. He draws a distinction between genuine mental phenomena and what he calls `phantasy-material', asserting that `the job of the aesthetic object, whether it is a work of art or a product of nature, is to excite and support the actualisation of phantasy-material in the experiencing subject'. We might think of such phantasy-material as a matter of Ersatz-emotions or emotional `slop'. We could then see Witasek's aesthetics as an elaborate taxonomy of the various different sorts of Ersatz-emotions which the subject allows to be stimulated within himself in his intercourse with works of art, and see works of art themselves as machines for the production of ever more subtle varieties of such phantasy-material in the perceiving subject. (shrink)

We assessed the automaticity of spatial-numerical and spatial-musical associations by testing their intentionality and load sensitivity in a dual-task paradigm. In separate sessions, 16 healthy adults performed magnitude and pitch comparisons on sung numbers with variable pitch. Stimuli and response alternatives were identical, but the relevant stimulus attribute (pitch or number) differed between tasks. Concomitant tasks required retention of either color or location information. Results show that spatial associations of both magnitude and pitch are load sensitive and that the spatial (...) association for pitch is more powerful than that for magnitude. These findings argue against the automaticity of spatial mappings in either stimulus dimension. (shrink)

Nineteenth century treatments of attention often argued that analysis (attention singles out an object) and synthesis (attention unifies some objects) are inseparable aspects of this activity. Subsequent philosophical work on attention concentrated on the analytic aspect and exploited William James's characterisation of attention as focussing on one object among others. The aim of this paper is to give a more balanced account of the history of philosophical work on attention as well as the activity theorised by highlighting the synthetic aspect (...) of attention. The paper is centred on Hermann Lotze's (1817–1881) work on attention. According to him, attention is constituted by comparing. I will motivate Lotze's main thesis and expound his supporting argument in detail by locating it in his work on vision. The paper will draw on George Dawes Hicks engagement with Lotze and assess Francis H. Bradley's criticism of Lotze's main thesis. (shrink)

Summary The article briefly introduces a path, that starts from the Franz Boas’ anthropological field research in British Columbia about sound, dance and motion among the Indians until the 1930s to the practice of dance and sound as a therapeutic issue in Franziska Boas’ work in New York.

This study aims at exposing the phenomenological description of attention as presented by Husserl in his 1904-05 Göttingen-lecture Principal Parts of the Phenomenology and Theory of Knowledge, in its relevance for the study of so-called “intuitive re-presentations”, that is, phantasy and image-consciousness. Starting with the exposition of the fundamental traits of the intentional theory of attention, this study discusses the definition of attention in the terms of meaning [Meinen] and interest, which allows it to become an encompassing modification of all (...) kinds of lived experiences that does not imply an alteration of their act-character (Husserl, 2004: 73). We refer to this character of attention as “plasticity”. In what follows, the study underlines these two definitions of attention and their importance for the understanding of phantasy and image-consciousness. Both kinds of re-presentations will be described stressing the role of attention in the “structuring” of the intentional act and in its affective basis. Finally, the study deals more specifically with the complex description of image consciousness from the viewpoint of the attentional meaning of the image subject. (shrink)

Reports of patients with schizophrenia show a fragmented and anomalous subjective experience. This pathological subjective experience, we suggest, can be related to the fact that disembodiment inhibits the possibility of intersubjective experience, and more importantly of common sense. In this paper, we ask how to investigate the anomalous experience both from qualitative and quantitative viewpoints. To our knowledge, few studies have focused on a clinical combination of both first- phenomenological assessment and third-person biological methods, especially for Schizophrenia, or ASD therapeutics (...) and diagnosis. We will thus attempt to bring forward a second-person scientific design, accounting for both the first-person subjective experiential aspects, and respective third-person neurobiological correlates of embodied aesthetics in anomalous experience. From this proposal, we further explore the consequences to clinical and research practice. (shrink)

In recent years phenomenology has attracted the interest of science, acquiring a role far beyond philosophy. Despite Husserl's clear denial of a possible naturalization of phenomenology, scientists from different fields have proposed its naturalization. To achieve this goal, different methodologies have been proposed. Most scientists seem to agree on the claim that phenomenology cannot be a science itself because it fails to respect one of the prerequisites of science, that is, the capacity to explain its phenomena. Phenomenology, thus, is forced (...) to remain a purely descriptive effort, preliminary to authentic scientific practice. I argue, instead, that the experimental development of phenomenology explains phenomena (that is, appearances and/or subjective experiences in first person account) and uses rigorous methods, conducts valid measurements, and can validate its results. The paper provides a variety of examples of how experimental phenomenology works. (shrink)

by Carl Stumpf. [467] ii When Zeller, iii in the lecture “On the meaning and mission of epistemology”, iv called for a renewed fostering of this science, he designated as its mission the study of t...

Summary During his prolific career, the German Jewish scientist Franz Boas (Minden, 1858 - New York, 1942) recognized as the founding father of American Cultural Anthropology – maintained assiduous contacts with the European scientific community, in a privileged way with that of the German area. The contribution addresses the Boasian correspondence with the two directors of the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv, the philosopher and psychologist Carl Stumpf, and the ethnomusicolo-gist Erich Moritz von Hornbostel. All three were united by a common scientific experimental (...) training and a solid musical education, typical of their Bildungsbu ü rgertum. With them, Boas consistently shared his fieldwork findings regarding music, sound, and language among the Indians of British Columbia: indeed, their epistolary exchanges intertwine epistemological reflections centered on the study of «exotische Musik» in context with technical problems, derived from the use of phonographic recordings and the relative shipments of wax cylinders by Boas to the Phonographic Archive. So far, the critical literature has not paid particular attention to their correspondence, that offer instead a privileged look in observing the birth of Ethnomusicology, at the time still defined as comparative Musicology (vergleichende Musikwissenschaft). Starting from a biographical contextualization and following the micro-history of the scientific and personal relationship of these scientists, the contribution aims to explore the hypothesis that the emerging Ethnomusicology significantly contributed to the definition of Cultural Anthropology as a discipline. In his painstaking research devoted to the Native Indian sounds and languages, Boas observed indeed what happens if a mind is exposed to a new sound, musical or linguistic context; he had therefore to rigorously deal with the phenomena of mishearing, sound-blindness and biasing filter related to the perception of «new sounds». Thanks to his fieldwork, Boas would endorse a relativistic and “in context” approach to perception and mental representations of sounds, fostering his eventual lifelong, hectic concern about a broaden antiracist theory of human mental functions. (shrink)

Was wir nicht bemerken können, das können wir auch nicht wahrnehmen: Diese im Rahmen der gegenwärtigen analytischen Philosophie des Geistes weitverbreitete Ansicht wurde neulich von M. Tye und A. Noë verteidigt. Wir werden uns hier mit einigen empirischen Beispielen auseinandersetzen, die u.E. mit dieser Idee kaum in Einklang zu bringen sind und stattdessen den Gedanken nahelegen, dass die Grenzen des Wahrnehmbaren über die Grenzen sowohl des primär Bemerkbaren als auch des sekundär Bemerkbaren hinausgehen. Auf diesem Weg gelangen wir dann zur (...) Verwerfung von Arvidsons Hypothese der Identität zwischen Bewusstseinsfeld und Feld der (im erweiterten Sinne gefassten) Aufmerksamkeit gelangen. (shrink)

Before one can talk about global arrays and multimodal detection, one must be clear about the concept of information: How is it different from energy and how is it detected? And can it come to specify a needed movement? We consider these issues in our commentary.

In the 1930s Otto Selz developed a novel approach to the psychology of perception which he called “synthetic psychology of wholes”. This “synthetic psychology” is based on a phenomenological description of the structural relationships between elementary items building up integral wholes. The present article deals with Selz’s account of spatial cognition within this general framework. Selz Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 114, 351–362 argues that his approach to spatial cognition delivers answers to the long-discussed question of the epistemological status of the laws (...) of geometry. More specifically he tries to derive the Euclidean axioms from the structural laws valid for phenomenal space. After a brief description of the discussion of the status of geometry in the 1920s/1930, the present article explains Selz’s understanding of “phenomenology”. Section 4 then deals with Selz’s attempt to derive the Euclidean laws from the structural phenomenological laws of space. Selz’s attempted derivation suffers from some formal shortcomings, which however can be repaired. The question arises, though, whether the necessary improvements do not rely upon more intricate geometric intuitions and thus render Selz’s attempt to base geometry upon the phenomenology of spatial cognition circular. (shrink)

Both American and European investigators have long searched for factors that contribute to musical proficiency. The present article considers several interpretations of musical talent that were advanced by persons who were themselves skilled musicians. Especial emphasis is afforded to the approach of Raleigh M. Drake, an American, who obtained his PhD in Europe, but opposed the most widely utilized early 20th-century American conception of musical talent. Drake also interacted with several early and eminent American psychologists in considering the underlying issue (...) of ‘special talents’. The scholarly contributions of Drake are assessed both in terms of their relationship to some early 20th-century conceptions of musical talent and as a prospective influence on other investigations of that ability. (shrink)

Je m’oppose ici à la théorie « structurale » de la sensation développée par Kurt Koffka dans les années 1920, et reprise notamment par Merleau-Ponty, qui en fait le centre théorique des analyses de la psychologie de la forme. Je commence donc par examiner cette théorie et les faits sur lesquels elle repose, en montrant notamment, à l’aide de la méréologie husserlienne, qu’ils ne peuvent paraître corroborer une théorie structurale de la sensation que si l’on confond « abstraire » et (...) « séparer réellement » une qualité de son contexte. Il s’agit par là plus largement de montrer l’impossibilité, en fait comme en droit, de toute philosophie de la perception qui chercherait à réduire les sensations ou « qualia » à des prédicats relationnels. Je convoque alors William James à l’appui de ces conclusions, en rappelant qu’il avait déjà montré contre les théories néo-hégéliennes de son époque l’illégitimité de leur prétention à se réclamer de faits psychologiques similaires, et qu’il avait soutenu contre eux une théorie de la connaissance par accointance et de l’absoluité ontologique des qualités sensorielles que je cherche à reprendre à mon compte. (shrink)

What is noise?Noise is a central concept of acoustics that distinguishes certain kinds of sounds from others. Beyond sound, notions of noise associated with the measurement process and information theory have moved to virtually all fields of science and engineering, and even the social sciences. Not surprisingly, we find not one but several different and even contradictory concepts of noise in science and engineering. How did this happen?Scientific concepts of noise have changed over time. But they have also varied in (...) relation to a respective research field or technical application. The history of acoustics is characterised by its distinct relation to human sensation and perception of hearing, music and speech. (shrink)