Discusses the differences between the metaphysical subject of the Meditations and the subject of Descartes' morale par provision, which is the embodied human being.

In his 1953 lectures at the College de France, Merleau-Ponty dedicated much effort to further developing his idea of embodied subject and interpreted fresh sources that he did not use in Phenomenology of Perception. Notably, he studied more in depth the neurological notion of "body schema". According to Merleau-Ponty, the body schema is a practical diagram of our relationships to the world, an action-based norm with reference to which things make sense. Merleau-Ponty more precisely tried to describe (...) the fundamentally dynamic unity of the body, i.e. the fact there are various possibilities how the practical "diagram" of body schema could be de-differentiated (in pathology) or further refined (via cognitive and cultural superstructures, symbolic systems). This chapter summarises Merleau-Ponty's interpretation of the notion, while contrasting it to the more traditional understanding of the body in phenomenology and recent philosophical texts dealing with body schema. (shrink)

In this article I critically re-examine Julia Kristeva's view that becoming a speaking subject requires psychical matricide: violent separation from the maternal body. I propose an alternative, non-matricidal conception of subjectivity, in part by drawing out anti-matricidal strands in Kristeva's own thought, including her view that early mother–child relations are triangular. Whereas she understands this triangle in terms of a first imaginary father, I re-interpret this triangle using Donald Winnicott's idea of potential space and Jessica Benjamin's idea of (...) an intersubjective space of thirdness. I argue that this space provides a maternal third term: a relation of connection and difference between two, a relation that inherits the affective, mobile, generative qualities of the maternal body as the infant (according to Kristeva) imagines it. This connecting space allows both mothers and children to emerge as subjects in their own right. I then suggest that potential-maternal space expands into language, so that language intrinsically allows the possibility of a speaking position of connection with the mother. Entrance into language need not entail separation or matricide: the problem is not language as such but the particular way that speech and logos have been defined historically. (shrink)

Martine Nida-Rümelin has argued recently for subject-body dualism on the basis of reflections on the possibility of survival in fission cases from the literature on personal identity. The argument focuses on the claim that there is a factual difference between the claims that one or the other of two equally good continuers of a person in a fission case is identical with her. I consider three interpretations of the notion of a factual difference that the argument employs, and (...) I argue that on each of them the argument either begs the question or is unsound. (shrink)

In “The Argument for Subject Body Dualism from Transtemporal Identity Defended” (PPR 2013), Martine Nida-Rümelin (NR) responded to my (PPR 2013) criticism of her (2010) argument for subject-body dualism. The crucial premise of her (2010) argument was that there is a factual difference between the claims that in a fission case the original person is identical with one, or the other, of the successors. I argued that, on the three most plausible interpretations of ‘factual difference’, the (...) argument fails. NR responds that I missed the intended, fourth interpretation, and that, in any case, with an additional assumption, the argument on the third interpretation goes through. I argue that the fourth interpretation, while insufficient as stated, reveals an assumption that provides an independent argument, namely, that in first person thought about future properties we have a positive conception of the self that rules out having empirical criteria of transtemporal identity. I argue that the considerations offered for this thesis fail to establish it, and that we do not bring ourselves under any positive conception in first person thought. I argue also that on the third interpretation, the first premise of the argument is inconsistent with the necessity of identity. (shrink)

Cartesian and Western religious and philosophical traditions distinguish the body from the mind, viewing the former as a prison or a burden. The mind (spirit, soul, rationality) is identified as good, while the body is devalued and associated with evil. Some philosophers restored the body's value: humans are not imprisoned spirits, but they are their bodies. Husserl, for example, claims that human beings are not an immaterial substance in a Körper, a physical body, but Leib, a (...) living body that solves within itself the two Cartesian res. Although the Cartesian legacy survives in the Existentialism in the distinction between In-itself (the passive Being) and For-itself (the human, transcendental freedom), the second does not use the object-body as the res cogitans did: "the very nature of the For-itself demands that it be body." Nevertheless, the body plays an ambivalent role, suspended between Körper's passivity and Leib's transcendence. The chapter's focus on Arkham's female characters is not random. Leder notices that "women have consistently been associated with the bodily sphere. They have been linked with nature, sexuality, and the passions, whereas men have been identified with the rational mind. This equation implicitly legitimizes structures of domination." By associating human categories like "lunatics," "savages," or women with the immanence of the body and nature, their transcendentality is denied, and, simultaneously, men's control and domination over them is justified. (shrink)

What does Husserlian phenomenology have to offer feminist theory? More specifically, can we find resources within Husserl’s account of the living body ( Leib ) for the critical feminist project of rethinking embodiment beyond the dichotomies not only of mind/body but also of subject/object and activity/passivity? This essay begins by explicating the reasons for feminist hesitation with respect to Husserlian phenomenology. I then explore the resources that Husserl’s phenomenology of touch and his account of sensings hold for (...) feminist theory. My reading of Husserl proceeds by means of a comparison between his description of touch in Ideas II and Merleau-Ponty’s early appropriation of this account in the Phenomenology of Perception, as well as through an unlikely rapprochement between Husserl and Irigaray on the question of touch. Moreover, by revisiting the limitations in Husserl’s approach to the body—limitations of which any feminist appropriation must remain cognizant—I attempt to take Husserl’s phenomenology of touch beyond its initial methodologically solipsistic frame and to ask whether and how it can contribute to thinking gendered and racialized bodies. The phenomenology of touch, I argue, can allow us to understand the interplay between subjective, felt embodiment and social-historical context. In opening up Husserl’s account of touch to other dimensions—intersubjective and affective—sociality is revealed as residing within, and structuring of, touch. Such touch can allow us to think embodiment anew. (shrink)

This book investigates the concept of body shame and explores its significance when considering philosophical accounts of embodied subjectivity, providing phenomenological reflections on how the body is shaped by social forces.

The view of embodied cognition believes that cognition is embodied in nature, only the dynamics involved in the interaction between cognitive activities and the nervous system, body and environment, only by closely linking the correct evaluation of time-dependent and relationship, then only can make a correct understanding of cognitive activities. The core concepts of body and environment involved in embodied cognition are different from the body and environment in the usual sense. In terms of research methods, dynamic (...) research methods that are different from traditional computer simulations are also adopted. The article first integrates and analyzes the basic position and general propositions in the discipline, then the embodied cognition are explained based on author's understanding. In addition, the suitability of dynamic research methods, its advantages and disadvantages is analyzed, and finally, a brief summary of the current status of embodied cognition research. (shrink)

Ideas about soul and body – about thinking or remembering, mind and life, brain and self – remain both diverse and controversial in our neurocentric age. The history of these ideas is significant both in its own right and to aid our understanding of the complex sources and nature of our concepts of mind, cognition, and psychology, which are all terms with puzzling, difficult histories. These topics are not the domain of specialists alone, and studies of emotion, perception, or (...) reasoning have never been isolated theoretical endeavours. As Francis Bacon described human philosophy or ‘the knowledge of ourselves’, within which he located the study of body, soul, and mind, it ‘deserveth the more accurate handling, by how much it toucheth us more nearly’ (1605/ 2000: 93). The history of ideas in these domains is particularly challenging given the practical dimensions and implications of theories of mind. Because theories of human nature and debates about body and mind do ‘touch us’ so ‘nearly’, they attract and can thus reveal, in specific historical contexts, interconnected discourses or associations which may be quite unlike our own. So there are no neat boundaries around a historical category of ‘seventeenth-century British philosophy of the soul’. The central topic of this chapter can be thought of either as pneumatology, the doctrine or science of spirits and souls, or as continuous with the ‘psychologia’ or psychology of Aristotelian traditions (Park and Kessler 1988; Hatfield 1995: 184-6). In neither case, however, should we expect any deep unity to be provided by history, geography, discipline, or subject-matter. (shrink)

Kosgaard claims that selves/agents self-constitute during actions by relying on principles such as Kant’s Categorical Imperative. This intellectualist approach neglects the body. Merleau-Ponty considers the “lived body” and its perceptual world as the source of the unity of action, an approach that I extrapolate to all biological organisms.

Dancers and dance philosophers report on experiences of a certain form of sense making and bodily thinking through the dancing body. Yet, discussions on expertise and consciousness are often framed within canonical philosophical world-views that make it difficult to fully recognize, verbalize, and value the full variety of embodied and affective facets of subjectivity. Using qualitative interviews with five professional dancers and choreographers, I make an attempt to disclose the characteristics of what I consider to be a largely overseen (...) state of consciousness: embodied reflection. Dancers are familiar with this attentive bodily presence, which constitutes their work mode and heightens their abilities as experts. Detailed descriptions of their daily work at the theatre help us grasp the qualities and understand the enigmas of the absorbed state of bodily thinking. Husserl’s theories on reflection and Merleau-Ponty’s work on motoricity support our understanding of the structures behind embodied reflection. I believe it is a common human resource, and that whether we are experts or not, we all have the ability to reflect non-conceptually through bodily and/or affective activity. (shrink)

Douglas Harding developed a unique first-person experimental approach for investigating consciousness that is still relatively unknown in academia. In this paper, I present a critical dialogue between Harding, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty on the phenomenology of the body and intersubjectivity. Like Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, Harding observes that from the first-person perspective, I cannot see my own head. He points out that visually speaking nothing gets in the way of others. I am radically open to others and the world. Neither does (...) my somatic experience establish a boundary between me and the world. Rather to experience these sensations as part of a bounded, shaped thing (a body), already involves bringing in the perspectives of others. The reader is guided through a series of Harding’s first-person experiments to test these phenomenological claims for themselves. For Sartre, the other’s subjectivity is known through The Look, which makes me into a mere object for them. Merleau-Ponty criticised Sartre for making intersubjective relations primarily ones of conflict. Rather he held that the intentionality of my body is primordially interconnected with that of others’ bodies. We are already situated in a shared social world. For Harding, like Sartre, my consciousness is a form of nothingness; however, in contrast to Sartre, it does not negate the world, but is absolutely united with it. Confrontation is a delusion that comes from imagining that I am behind a face. Rather in lived personal relationships, I become the other. I conclude by arguing that for Harding all self-awareness is a form of other-awareness, and vice versa. (shrink)

This book analyses three of the most prevalent illnesses of late modernity: anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s disease, in terms of their relation to cultural pathologies of the social body. Usually these conditions are interpreted clinically in terms of individualized symptoms and responded to discretely, as though for the most part unrelated to each other. However, these diseases also have a social and cultural profile that transcends their particular symptomologies and etiologies. Anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s are diseases related to disorders (...) of the collective esprit de corps of contemporary society. Multidisciplinary in approach, the book addresses questions of how these conditions are manifest at both the individual and collective levels in relation to hegemonic biomedical and psychologistic understandings. Rejecting such reductive diagnoses, the authors argue that anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s disease, as well as other contemporary epidemics, are to be analysed in the light of individual and collective experiences of profound and radical changes in our civilization. A diagnosis of our times, Late Modern Subjectivity and its Discontents will appeal to a broad range of scholars with interests in health and illness, the sociology of medicine and contemporary life. (shrink)

We experience our encounters with the world and others in different degrees of intensity – the presence of things and others is gradual. I introduce this kind of presence as a ubiquitous feature of every phenomenally conscious experience, as well as a key ingredient of our ‘feeling of being alive’, and distinguish explanatory agendas that might be relevant with regard to this phenomenon (1 – 3). My focus will be the role of the body-brain nexus in realizing these experiences (...) and its treatment in recent accounts of the bodily constitution of experience. Specifically, I compare a sensorimotor approach to perceptual presence that focuses on properties of the moving body (O’Regan 2011; Noë 2012) with a more general enactivism that focuses on properties of the living body (Thompson 2007). First, I develop and discuss a theory of access derived from sensorimotor theory that might be suited to explain the phenomenon of gradual presence. This is a theory that sees the mastery of sensorimotor, bodily engagements with the world as key elements in setting up a phenomenal experience space. I object that in current versions of sensorimotor theory the correlation posited between presence and changes in the subject’s physical relation to the environment is too rigid. Nevertheless I defend the claim that gradual presence is constituted by our temporally extended engagement with the environment (4 – 7). Second, I consider some objections stemming from enactivism with regard to self-regulatory properties of the living body and the phenomenological claim that the organism’s value-laden relations with its environment have to be included in the theory. I will show that the latter is a necessary amendment to sensorimotor theory and its concept of gradual presence (8-10). (shrink)

In this existential reading of Kim Kardashian-West's International Women's Day selfie of 2016, I focus on the rise of selfie culture and public discourse around emerging digital representations of women's bodies. The selfie is a relatively new phenomenon, and is particularly curious because of the subject/object paradox it creates; in taking a selfie, a person asserts control over their own image, but at the same time, becomes object in their own gaze. My argument is that selfies, like other assertions (...) of bodily subjectivity in digital spaces, are a threat to patriarchal structures that paint women as immanent, object, as reflected in public discourse around Kardashian-West's International Women's Day selfie. I draw on both Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir's work on subjectivity in existentialism and phenomenology, as well as Amy Shields Dobson's work on post-feminism and young women's projections of self, in order to delineate what it is about the selfie that creates this paradox. I also make reference to the work of Elisabeth Grosz and Frantz Fanon in relation to a colonial hierarchy that prioritises body over mind, as well as Laura Mulvey's work on the male gaze. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Mind consists of problems concerning aspects and properties of the human mind. The most important of these problems is that of the relation between mind and body, or, more generally, between mental and physical phenomena. Usually referred to as the "mind-body problem", this has been one of the fundamental problems in Philosophy since Descartes (1596-1650) and his critics introduced it four centuries ago. The mental seems, at first glance, completely different from the physical. Physical properties (...) are public, i.e. equally observable by everyone, but mental properties are not. It can be deduced that someone feels pain by his behaviour, but only that person can feel it directly. Conscious mental events are private in the sense that the subject has privileged access to them that no one has for the physical. Conscious experiences, such as the smell of jasmine, are completely different from the configurations and movements, however complex, of particles, atoms and molecules, or the physical changes of cells and tissues. Despite this, conscious phenomena do not seem to arise out of nothing, but from physical-biological processes in the body, especially from neural processes in the brain. But how can physical-biological systems have states such as thoughts, fears and hopes? (shrink)

Husserl’s philosophy of culture relies upon a person’s body being expressive of the person’s spirit, but Husserl’s analysis of expression in Logical Investigations is inadequate to explain this bodily expressiveness. This paper explains how Husserl’s use of “expression” shifts from LI to Ideas II and argues that this shift is explained by Husserl’s increased understanding of the pervasiveness of sense in subjective life and his increased appreciation for the unity of the person. I show how these two developments allow (...) Husserl to better describe the bodily expressiveness that is the source of culture. Husserl’s account of culture is thoroughly intentionalistic, but it does not emphasize thought at the expense of embodiment. Culture originates not in an abstract subjectivity, but by persons’ expressing themselves physically in the world. By seeing how Husserl develops his mature position on bodily expressiveness, we can better appreciate the meaningfulness and the bodily concreteness of cultural objects. (shrink)

From the perspective of perceptual ontology, Laozi criticizes the unnatural state in which the body is concealed in the perceptual social power and ethical relations, and advocates the perceptual liberation of the body. According to different subjects of the body, the covered body should be divided into people’s body and monarchs’ body. The body of the people is concealed in the rites and music, and could be liberated by resuming production; the body (...) of the monarchs is covered in the excessive exercise of power, and could be liberated in the restraint of power. The body is not only in the ethical relationship of the different order pattern, but also in the power relationship of the same structure of family and country. The power, body and ethics form the internal structure of trinity. The perceptual existence of the body is the basis of power and ethics, and the perceptual liberation of the body is the purpose of power and ethics. (shrink)

The mind-body problem is the problem of explaining how our mental states, events and processes—like beliefs, actions and thinking—are related to the physical states, events and processes in our bodies. A question of the form, ‘how is A related to B?’ does not by itself pose a philosophical problem. To pose such a problem, there has to be something about A and B which makes the relation between them seem problematic. Many features of mind and body have been (...) cited as responsible for our sense of the problem. Here I will concentrate on two: the fact that mind and body seem to interact causally, and the distinctive features of consciousness. A long tradition in philosophy has held, with René Descartes, that the mind must be a non-bodily entity: a soul or mental substance. This thesis is called ‘substance dualism’ (or ‘Cartesian dualism’) because it says that there are two kinds of substance in the world, mental and physical or material. One reason for believing this is the belief that the soul, unlike the body, is immortal. Another reason for believing it is that we have free will, and this seems to require that the mind is a non-physical thing, since all physical things are subject to the laws of nature. (shrink)

The concept of the subject relies on humanist presuppositions. Regardless of whether purported to be decentred and posthumanist, the subject conceived in poststructuralist and philosophical terms remains anthropocentric and anthropomorphic. There is something irrecuperably Cartesian in the poststructuralist idea of the subject. Physicality, both bodily and that of the materiality of the machinic prosthesis, is barred from the constitution of the Self, as the real is barred but also foreclosed to it. The subject, therefore, is yet (...) another philosophical phantasm, which in its material actuality is determined as an instance of the signifying automaton. I argue that the “posthumanist” self, if conceived in Marxian and non-philosophical terms, ought to be viewed as the radical dyad of the signifying automaton and the real. It renders Haraway’s notion of the Cyborg more radical and unravels its inhumanity rather than posthumanity. (shrink)

The recent call for a conceptual and intellectual decolonization in the humanities critiques the conventional, all-white, largely male philosophical canon. Its critique is directed at the centering of the experiences of this specific group in global knowledge transmission practices. Its proponents focus on the canon’s implicit claim, namely that only one social group is able to think thoroughly and accurately about all problems of philosophical significance across varying spatiotemporal contexts. In this short article, I will use two different debates to (...) make some aspects of this call more meaningful: the US-American discourse in academic philosophy on deracializing the knowing subject and the post-Holocaust German understanding of public intellectual spaces (sections 2 and 3 respectively). (shrink)

According to the biomedical model of medicine, the subject of the illness event is the pathology rather than the person diagnosed with the disease. In this view, a body-self becomes a ‘patient’ body-object that can be enrolled in a therapeutic protocol, investigated, assessed, and transformed. How can it be possible for cancer patients to make sense of the opposite dimensions of their body-self and their body-diseased-object? Could a creative embodied approach enable the coping with trauma (...) tied to the experience of illness? By applying a phenomenological approach and auto-ethnographic analysis to the experience of cancer, this visual exploration provides support for rethinking the cancer event through a performative perspective. This work previews images and video material collected over ten years of haematological treatments, video dance performances and physical explorations. This work displays how processes of healing can be set in motion by creative embodied practices, physical explorations and unexpected journeys. By resisting the biomedical model and allowing the emergence of new meanings, it illustrates how dance and performative practices offer ground for transformation. (shrink)

What forms of consciousness can the subject have of her body in action? This is a recurrent issue in contemporary research on skilled movement and expertise, and according to a widespread view, the body makes itself inconspicuous in performance in favour of the object or goal that the activity is directed to. However, this attitude to consciousness in bodily performance seems unsatisfying for an understanding of skilled action, and the work of several researchers can be seen as (...) responding to this view: Montero, Legrand, Ravn and others in the philosophy of expertise and of dance have developed various notions of consciousness and cognition to account for the mindful processes at play in performance. Two related questions can be distinguished here: 1. Is there an inherent conflict between skilled action and at least more than marginal awareness of that action, or is it possible – and even desirable – to reflect on our own performance without considerably impeding on it? 2. What forms of consciousness pertaining to the body in action must we distinguish in order to answer the first question? This paper gives an overview of this discussion, focusing on the second issue, although the first will come into play in so far as it is linked with the latter question. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s analyses of bodily reflection and on dancers’ descriptions, I show that there is, in phenomenological terms, a bodily level of reflection: a fully conscious and exploratory activity that is led by the skilled body, and that is explicitly aimed at by many performers. (shrink)

In this paper we characterize the body as constitutively open. We fi rst consider the notion of bodily openness at the basic level of its organic constitution. This will provide us a framework relevant for the understanding of the body open to its intersubjective world. We argue that the notion of “bodily openness” captures a constitutive dimension of intersubjectivity. Generally speaking, there are two families of theories intending to characterize the constitutive relation between subjectivity and intersubjectivity: either the (...) self is considered as being constituted prior to, and as a condition of, its potential relation to the outside world, or, contrastively, the self is considered as being constituted as a result of its relations with the outside world. Here, we pursue a conciliatory path, as we intend to show that these two positions are not necessarily in opposition to each other. But how can selfhood/subjectivity be both and at the same time primary and secondary, relative to otherness/ intersubjectivity? Stated thusly, the question seems to border on incoherence but our intention here is to reconsider it in a framework that allows for the dissolution of this opposition. In particular, we will characterize the relational autonomy of the self : neither fully enclosed “inside” nor fully dissolved in or determined by what’s “outside”, the bodily self is best characterized by its fundamental “openness”, which we will explore in a framework where autonomy and relationality are not contradictory but co-constitutive dimensions. (shrink)

Paper given at the 20th Biennial Meeting of the Hegel Society of America, University of South Carolina, October 24-26, 2008 -/- The local problem of the soul-body relation can be grasped only against the global background of the relation between Nature and Spirit. This relates to Hegel's naturalism: the idea that there is one single reality - living reality - and different levels of description of it. This implies, moreover, that it is possible to ascribe some form of naturality (...) also to the social body of institutionalized ethical life. Hegel’s position can thus be characterised as a kind of aristotelian social naturalism: this, at bottom, is the combined meaning of the Hegelian theses that soul is the substance of Spirit, and habit its universal form. (shrink)

The phenomenological point of view of the body is usually appreciated for having introduced the notion of the ‘lived’ body. We cannot merely analyze and explain the body as one of the elements of the world of objects. We must also describe it, for example, as the center of our perspective on the world, the place where our sensing is ‘localized’, the agens which directly executes our intentions. However, in Husserl, the idea of the body as (...) lived primarily complements his objectivism: the body (Leib) is an objective and mental reality, a ‘double unity’, as he writes. In contrast, Merleau-Ponty’s later considerations of the body in Phenomenology of Perception tend to the idea of a circular relationship between the objective and subjective dimensions of the body – between the objective and the lived. One of the means to overcome the idea of the body as a site of the correlation between two opposite and complementary realms is, for Merleau-Ponty, the philosophical interpretation of an early neurological notion of ‘body schema’. Body schema is neither an idea nor a physiological-physical fact, it is rather a practical diagram of our relationships with the world, an action-based norm in reference to which things make sense. In the recently published preparatory notes for his 1953 courses, Merleau-Ponty dedicates much effort to further developing the notion of body schema, and interprets fresh sources that he did not use in Phenomenology of Perception. Notably, he studies various possibilities of how this practical ‘diagram’ can be de-differentiated (pathology) or further refined (cognitive and cultural superstructures, symbolic systems), which shows the fundamentally dynamic unity of the body. This paper summarizes the basic elements of Merleau-Ponty’s 1953 renewed philosophical interpretation of the notion of body schema, while contrasting it to the more traditional understanding of the body in phenomenology and in recent philosophical texts dealing with body schema. (shrink)

This chapter considers the literature associated with explorations of consciousness in Indian philosophy. It focuses on a range of methodological and conceptual issues, drawing on three main sources: the naturalist theories of mind of Nyaya and Vaisesika, the mainly phenomenological accounts of mental activity and consciousness of Abhidharma and Yogacara Buddhism, and the subjective transcendental theory of consciousness of Advaita Vedanta. The contributions of Indian philosophers to the study of consciousness are examined not simply as a contribution to intellectual history, (...) but rather with a view to evaluating their relevance to contemporary issues, specifically to the mind-body problem. The presence of dualist positions with strong naturalist undercurrents in Indian philosophy, especially in the Nyaya and Samkhya traditions, rules out the possibility of treating the mind-body problem as an idiosyncratic feature of Cartesian metaphysics. (shrink)

With emotional motivation the organism prepares the body to obtain a goal. There is an anticipatory sensitization of the sensory systems in the body and the brain. Presynaptic facilitation of the sensory afference in the spinal cord is probably involved. In a second stage the higher centers develop an action image/plan to realize the goal, modifying the initial preparations in the body. The subject experiences the changes in the body as a feeling. Three empirical studies (...) supporting this description are summarized. This description of how feelings develop from emotion circuits is discussed from a phenomenological viewpoint. (shrink)

This age is characterized by the increasing humanization of a planet more and more subject to representation, visualization and prediction. The future, however, seems to herald the emergence of forces indifferent to this historical process. Our present is thus the time of this contradiction, as new forces affect all strata of our lives like a diffuse but deep trauma. Giovanbattista Tusa's text calls for a georealism that takes into account this time, a new form of planetary realism that assumes (...) that our time is emptied of all representable content and thus open to its own infinity, open to the encounter with what is not given, either as horizon or as memory. (shrink)

Though feminists are correct to note that conventional standards of sexiness are oppressive, we argue that feminism should reclaim sexiness rather than reject it. We argue for an aesthetic and ethical practice of working to shift from conventional attributions of sexiness to respectful attributions, in which embodied sexual subjects are appreciated in their full individual magnificence. We argue that undertaking this practice is an ethical obligation, since it contributes to the full recognition of others’ humanity. We discuss the relationship of (...) ethical to aesthetic considerations and argue that the respectful notion of sexiness is a genuinely aesthetic one, even though it does not involve assessment in relation to standards. (shrink)

Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is a complex disorder characterised by self-starvation, an act of self-destruction. It is often described as a disorder marked by paradoxes and, despite extensive research attention, is still not well understood. Much AN research focuses upon the distorted body image that individuals with AN supposedly experience. However, based upon reports from individuals describing their own experience of AN, I argue that their bodily experience is much more complex than this focus might lead us to believe. Such (...) research often presents an overly cognitive understanding of bodily experience in AN, underplaying the affective, felt experience of individuals with AN, as well as descriptions of empowerment, strength and control reported in the early stages of AN. This paper seeks to enrich our understanding of bodily experience in AN as it progresses throughout the various stages of the disorder. I show how the classical phenomenological distinction between the body-as-subject and the body-as-object, as well as Leder’s conception of the visceral body, can inform our understanding of bodily experience in AN. I suggest that the project of self-starvation is an attempt to overcome the noisy demands of the visceral body, which are experienced as threatening the body-as-subject, through a process of objectifying the body-as-object. By cashing out AN as a project of radical bodily control that, tragically, comes to control the individual, we can capture important aspects of the bodily experience of AN and the temporal progression of the disorder. -/- . (shrink)

Subjectivity theories of consciousness take self-reference, somehow construed, as essential to having conscious experience. These theories differ with respect to how many levels they posit and to whether self-reference is conscious or not. But all treat self-referencing as a process that transpires at the personal level, rather than at the subpersonal level, the level of mechanism. -/- Working with conceptual resources afforded by pre-existing theories of consciousness that take self-reference to be essential, several attempts have been made to explain seemingly (...) anomalous cases, especially instances of alien experience. These experiences are distinctive precisely because self-referencing is explicitly denied by the only person able to report them: those who experience them deny that certain actions, mental states, or body parts belong to self. The relevant actions, mental states, or body parts are sometimes attributed to someone or something other than self, and sometimes they are just described as not belonging to self. But all are referred away from self. -/- The cases under discussion here include somatoparaphrenia, schizophrenia, depersonalization, anarchic hand syndrome, and utilization behavior; the theories employed, Higher-Order Thought, Wide Intrinsicality, and Self-Representational. Below I argue that each of these attempts at explaining or explaining away the anomalies fails. Along the way, since each of these theories seeks at least compatibility with science, I sketch experimental approaches that could be used to adduce support for my position, or indeed for the positions of theorists with whom I disagree. -/- In a concluding section I first identify two presuppositions shared by all of the theorists considered here, and argue that both are either erroneous or misleading. Second, I call attention to divergent paths adopted when attempting to explain alienation experiences: some theorists choose to add a mental ingredient, while others prefer to subtract one. I argue that alienation from experience, action, or body parts could result from either addition or subtraction, and that the two can be incorporated within a comprehensive explanatory framework. Finally, I suggest that this comprehensive framework would require self-referencing of a sort, but self-referencing that occurs solely on the level of mechanism, or the subpersonal level. In adumbrating some features of this “subpersonal self,” I suggest that there might be one respect in which it is prior to conscious experience. (shrink)

The gist of the many-subjects argument is that, given physicalism, it’s hard to avoid the absurd result that there are many conscious subjects in your vicinity with more-or-less the same experiences as you. The most promising ways of avoiding this result have a consequence almost as bad: that there are many things in your vicinity that are in a state only trivially different from being conscious, a state with similar normative significance. This paper clarifies and defends three versions of the (...) many-subjects argument. One version poses the threat of conscious parts. Its key premise is that if physicalism is true, then not only you, but also certain parts of your body, are conscious. These parts might include your brain, your head, all-of-you-except-your-left-pinky, all-of-your-brain-except-one-neuron, or your left cerebral hemisphere. A second version poses the threat of conscious coinciders, things that currently occupy the same spatial region as you and share all your matter. Its key premise is that if physicalism is true, then not only you, but also some things that currently coincide with you, are conscious. These might include your body or the aggregate of particles of which you are currently composed. A third version poses the threat of conscious person candidates, the many human-body-shaped material objects in your vicinity that mostly overlap one another, differing only in a few peripheral atoms. This version claims that if physicalism is true, then there are many conscious person-candidates in your vicinity. -/- . (shrink)

Satisfaction or contentment is deficient in our intelligent world, for entropy is at its prodigality accompanying the egoistic human mind. The lesser beings are content with what is provided, seem more beholden of being created, rather than the selfish unsatisfied human, whose desire to gain has no limit leaving the body unsatisfied to deteriorate thy own soul and its existence and of the others. The cause of entropy is human intelligence and the falsified superiority of human consciousness that leaves (...) the body unsatisfied and the soul to writhe; for it creates a resistance in the flow of consciousness that makes the human loose its value of life and all that resides within. Egoism enhances superiority promotes an indestructible feeling; denies consciousness that flows within and across the system; a loss of revere to the cosmic bridge of consciousness that links the body, mind and soul to the universe. Satisfaction can be gotten when one clearly differentiates the subjectivity from the objectivity of consciousness; for the subjectivity of consciousness cannot be taken for granted over its trailing objectivity that ceaselessly deceives. (shrink)

Is the “act itself” of separating a pregnant woman and her previable child neither good nor bad morally, considered in the abstract? Recently, Maureen Condic and Donna Harrison have argued that such separation is justified to protect the mother’s life and that it does not constitute an abortion as the aim is not to kill the child. In our article on maternal–fetal conflicts, we agree there need be no such aim to kill (supplementing aims such as to remove). However, we (...) argue that to understand “abortion” as performed only where the death of the child is intended is to define the term too narrowly. Respect for the mother, the fetus, and the bond between them goes well beyond avoiding any such aim. We distinguish between legitimate maternal treatments simply aimed at treating or removing a damaged part of the woman and illegitimate treatments that focus harmfully on the fetal body and its presence within the mother’s body. In obstetrics as elsewhere, not all side effects for one subject of intervention can be outweighed by intended benefits for another. Certain side effects of certain intended interventions are morally conclusive. (shrink)

Background— Although one of the main characteristics of psychopaths is a deficit in emotion, it is unknown whether they show a fundamental impairment in appropriately recognizing their own body sensations during an emotion-inducing task. Method— Skin conductance and heart rate were recorded in 138 males during a social stressor together with subjective reports of body sensations. Psychopathic traits were assessed using the Psychopathy Checklist – Revised (PCL-R) 2nd edition (Hare, 2003). Results— Nonpsychopathic controls who reported higher body (...) sensations showed higher heart rate reactivity, but this verbal-autonomic consistency was not found in psychopathic individuals. This mind-body disconnection is particularly associated with the interpersonal-affective factor of psychopathy. Conclusions— Findings are the first to document this body sensations– autonomic mismatch in psychopaths, and suggest that somatic aphasia the inaccurate identification and recognition of one‘s own somatic states may partly underlie the interpersonal-affective features of psychopaths. (shrink)

Using hokku poet Basho’s aesthetics of wandering, as defined by Thomas Heyd, I argue that, by detailing the excruciating pointlessness of work undertaken according to commands that take little or no account of their feasibility, Richard Flanagan’s novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North (which takes its title from Basho's work) transforms the features of this aesthetics into the lived experience of prisoners of war on the ‘line’. In doing so, Flanagan transfers Basho’s aesthetics into a represented actuality through (...) the privileging of subjectivity over identity and the dissolution of the body on the line. The three prongs to Basho’s aesthetics are found in Flanagan’s novel. In this, Flanagan is identifying the complexity of meanings evident in the terminology of such aesthetics, rendering what appears positive in the context of Basho’s poetry negative in its practical application as this is articulated through the prisoners’ wartime experiences. Rather than being formative, Flanagan’s novel suggests wartime experience has a complexly ‘opposite’ effect. This is apparent in the complications of identity represented in post-war terms as a disunity (rather than a coherent unity), as articulated through the use of spatial metaphors that reverse the formative intensities of subjectivity and body through symbolic acts of dispersal and dissolution. (shrink)

Bodily sensations are mental states typically suitable to be reported in judgments in which a first-person indexical is used to qualify the felt body. In other words, subjects typically have a sense of bodily ownership for the body that they feel in bodily sensations. This paper puts forward, firstly, three desiderata that theories on the sense of bodily ownership should meet. Secondly, it assesses two views that account for the sense of bodily ownership in terms of the spatial (...) content of bodily sensations, appealing to a notion of a sense of boundedness, and argues that they do not meet the goals defined. (shrink)

Each well-known proposed solution to the mind-body problem encounters an impasse. These take the form of an explanatory gap, such as the one between mental and physical, or between micro-subjects and macro-subject. The dialectical pressure to bridge these gaps is generating positions in which consciousness is becoming increasingly foundational. The most recent of these, cosmopsychism, typically casts the entire cosmos as a perspectival subject whose mind grounds those of more limited subjects like ourselves. I review the dialectic (...) from materialism and dualism through to panpsychism, suggesting that explanatory gaps in the latter stem from assuming foundational consciousness to be perspectival. Its renunciation may yield the notion of an aperspectival, universal, “non-dual” consciousness that grounds all manifestation and is unstructured by subject, object or any differentia. Not only is such consciousness suggestive of a natural successor to cosmopsychism, but it has also been reported to be the direct experience of mystics who claim to have transcended the individual perspective. Their purported insight — that our aperspectival conscious nature is identical to the ground of all being — has been termed “the Perennial Philosophy”. Believing this Perennial Philosophy to offer the most promising way forward in the mind-body problem, I construct from it the foundations of a metaphysical system that I call “Perennial Idealism”. This attempts to account for manifestation in terms of dispositional, imagery-bound subjects. I then address an age-old “Parmenidean” conundrum that I refer to as “the problem of the one and the many”: How can an undifferentiated substratum ground differentia without the ground itself differentiating? The proposed solution takes its cue from mystico-philosophical writings in the Advaita Vedānta tradition, known as the ajāta doctrine. (shrink)

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz presents the idea of monads, as non-communicative, self-actuating system of beings that are windowless, closed, eternal, deterministic and individualistic. For him, the whole universe and its constituents are monads and that includes humans. In fact, any ‘body’, such as the ‘body’ of an animal or man has, according to Leibniz, one dominant monad which controls the others within it. This dominant monad, he often refers to as the soul. If Leibniz’s conception of monads is accepted, (...) it merely establishes human subjectivity, idiosyncrasies, biases, prejudices and individual points of view as the norm. How then do we ensure inter-subjectivity and the kind of social interaction requisite for the achievement of social order, since Leibniz’s system forecloses the possibility of interaction and communication among monads? In this essay, we argue that just as Leibniz’s monads synchronize only through the Supreme Monad (Monas Monadum), humans as social monads should also interact through a matrix of ideals like truth, honesty, sincerity, integrity, altruism, impartiality, compassion and trust. Since social order is actualised only within the context of linked social structures, relations and values, these utopian ideals would form the fulcrum through which humans relate and the very foundation that would anchor a viable social order. Our aim here is to establish a relationship between Leibniz’s metaphysics and the physical domains of life by showing that metaphysical constructs can impinge on human social relations and wellbeing. The study employed the qualitative method of research through critical analysis of texts, library and archival materials. (shrink)

The traditional approach in cognitive sciences holds that cognition is a matter of manipulating abstract symbols followingcertain rules. According to this view, the body is merely an input/output device, which allows the computationalsystem—the brain—to acquire new input data by means of the senses and to act in the environment following its com-mands. In opposition to this classical view, defenders of embodied cognition (EC) stress the relevance of the body inwhich the cognitive agent is embedded in their explanation of (...) cognitive processes. From a representationalist frameworkregarding our conscious experience, in this article, I will offer a novel argument in favor of EC and show that cognitionconstitutively—and no merely causally—depends upon body activity beyond that in the brain. In particular, I will arguethat in order to solve the problem derived from the empirical evidence in favor of the possibility of shifted spectrum,representationalist should endorse the view that experiences concern its subject: the content of experience isde se.Ishow that this claim perfectly matches the phenomenological observation and helps explaining the subjective characterof the experience. Furthermore, I argue that entertaining this kind of representation constitutively depends on bodilyactivity. Consequently, insofar as cognition depends on consciousness, it is embodied. (shrink)

[In Czech] Merleau-Ponty’s analyses of the pathology of perception show “objective” and “subjective” events have sense for the living body only in relation to its whole equilibrium, that is, to how it organises itself overall and how it thus “meets” those events. If we apply this conception to Husserl’s example of two mutually-touching hands of one body we must then state not that we perceive here a coincidence of certain subjective sensations with certain objective qualities, but rather that (...) my body, in the sense of an object, results from the restructuralisation of the whole field of the body accomplished by the the body as the performer of perceptual intentions. The body-object, and for the same reasons also the body-subject, is therefore the product of the analysis of the body in the sense of a field of structuralisation or polarisation, not its original phenomenological “stratum”, as in Husserl. If the body understands itself as perceptible only by a change of its own structure, inasmuch as it is a certain field of structuralisation, then the "external” thing, which is likewise a pole of such grasping, must belong to the same ontological “field” as the body. Merleau-Ponty’s “flesh”, that is the circularity between questioning of perception and answering of the perceived, is thus a phenomenon appearing beyond the boundary of the body as a singular being. This fact allows the concept of flesh to be extended and to be understood as an “element”, that is, as a dimension in which individual beings appear. [In Czech language.]. (shrink)

Architectural space has some triggers for unique experiences and one of them is its atmosphere. The atmosphere has an unstable structure so that it is difficult to define clearly. We are capable of immediate appreciation, such as being inside or outside. Thus, the threshold between bodily experiences and mental emergence becomes a blurred one, like a haze. It is sensed in bodily presence by human beings. The boundaries, such as subject and object, are transgressed through the atmosphere. The (...) class='Hi'>subject appears as a body and its movement in this discussion. Recognition of the existence of the body in space plays a significant role throughout the architectural design process. Theatrical dance or dance theatre (Tanztheater) practices provide new horizons for understanding the presence of the body in the space. Pina Bausch, as a choreographer, is one of the pioneers of this genre. The aim of the study is to point out the relations of body, space and atmosphere in Pina movie (2011). This study identifies choreographies with different aspects as follows: (1) In the atmospheric aspect; subject, object and their role in the atmosphere of choreographies by Pina Bausch were observed. (2) In the fictional space aspect; various spaces were examined in the sense of body-object-atmosphere interaction. (3) In the bodily aspect; space which is produced by the body and vice versa in dance theatre was investigated in the volumetric reflections of the body. This research contributes to bridging performative arts and architecture as understanding the space. It can be a guide for an architectural design studio to understand the role of the body through dance theatre. (shrink)

I argue for an idealist ontology consistent with empirical observations, which seeks to explain the facts of nature more parsimoniously than physicalism and bottom-up panpsychism. This ontology also attempts to offer more explanatory power than both physicalism and bottom-up panpsychism, in that it does not fall prey to either the ‘hard problem of consciousness’ or the ‘subject combination problem’, respectively. It can be summarized as follows: spatially unbound consciousness is posited to be nature’s sole ontological primitive. We, as well (...) as all other living organisms, are dissociated alters of this unbound consciousness. The universe we see around us is the extrinsic appearance of phenomenality surrounding—but dissociated from—our alter. The living organisms we share the world with are the extrinsic appearances of other dissociated alters. As such, the challenge to artificially create individualized consciousness becomes synonymous with the challenge to artificially induce abiogenesis. (shrink)

In my article "Controlling the noise," I present a phenomenological investigation of bodily experience in anorexia nervosa. Turning to descriptions of those who have suffered from AN, which repeatedly detail the experience of finding their bodies threatening, out of control and noisy, I suggest that the phenomenological conceptions of body-as-object, body-as-subject and visceral body can help us unpack the complex bodily experience of AN throughout its various stages. My claim is that self-starvation is enacted by a (...) bodily-subject who wishes to quell or reassert authority over a visceral body whose demands and needs she finds threatening to her autonomy.The relationship between body-as-object and... (shrink)

In this book, Alison Stone develops a feminist approach to maternal subjectivity. Stone argues that in the West the self has often been understood in opposition to the maternal body, so that one must separate oneself from the mother and maternal care-givers on whom one depended in childhood to become a self or, in modernity, an autonomous subject. These assumptions make it difficult to be a mother and a subject, an autonomous creator of meaning. Insofar as mothers (...) nonetheless strive to regain their subjectivity when their motherhood seems to have compromised it, theirs cannot be the usual kind of subjectivity premised on separation from the maternal body. Mothers are subjects of a new kind, who generate meanings and acquire agency from their position of re-immersion in the realm of maternal body relations, of bodily intimacy and dependency. Thus Stone interprets maternal subjectivity as a specific form of subjectivity that is continuous with the maternal body. Stone analyzes this form of subjectivity in terms of how the mother typically reproduces with her child her history of bodily relations with her own mother, leading to a distinctive maternal and cyclical form of lived time. (shrink)

The theory of information and Cybernetics allowed the transcendence of the material substrata of the human being by thinking it in terms of information units. The whole material world is reduced to information flows, which are encoded in various forms and which, by means of algorithms can be processed and reconfigured with a view to multiple simulation of the physical reality we live in. By applying these codes, communication and information technologies open the possibility of multidimensional reconstruction of the (...) class='Hi'>body in the virtual environment. With the assistance of technology, the body becomes a communication interface between the real and the virtual world. As a communication interface, the body‟s structure is broken down to the core functions and then telematically reconstructed in the virtual reality as tele-perception, telepresence, tele-kinaesthesia, etc. The virtual reconstruction of the body not only involves the transformation of its functions, but also the transformation of the approach of the human being which now is at the intersection between the real world and the various virtual worlds generated by technology. The conception of subject centred on selfconsciousness is thus cancelled, instead appearing the idea of the fluid, unstable subject who lacks a centre being diffused in a network. (shrink)

I begin this paper with a survey of the textual evidence for a new Cartesian subject, a post-Cartesian Cartesian individual, for whom the life of the body, its passions, and its relationships are central. In the second section, I consider his remarks on hatred, which complicate his view embodied life. Even if Descartes’s study of the passions in his treatise as well as his correspondence calls for a more nuanced understanding of the Cartesian person, we will find in (...) his attention to embodiment a conflicted and wary human being for whom relationships can be nourishing and sweet just as easily as they can be noxious and bitter. (shrink)

There are at present two ways in which to evaluate religiously-based claims to accommodation in the legal context. The first, objective approach holds that these claims should be grounded in « facts of the matter » about the religions in question. The second, subjective approach, is grounded in an appreciation by the courts of the sincerity of the claimant. The first approach has the advantage of accounting for the difference between two constitutional principles : freedom of conscience on the one (...) hand, and freedom of religion on the other. It has the disadvantage of transforming courts into expert bodies on religious matters. The subjective approach has a harder time accounting for the distinction. It also risks giving rise to a proliferation of claims. A plausible synthesis between the two approaches requires that we uncover the normative grounds justifying the granting by liberal democracies of religious accommodation. An analogous argument to that put forward by Kymlicka in the case of minority nations identifies the interest that citizens have in being able to exercise their « cultural agency » : the creative reappropriation and reinterpretation of the rituals, practices and norms of religious traditions.Il existe à l’heure actuelle dans le contexte juridique deux principales approches à l’évaluation de la légitimité des demandes d’accommodement pour des motifs religieux. La première, objective, affirme que ces demandes doivent pouvoir s’appuyer dans des faits concernant la religion en question. La seconde, subjective, s’appuie sur l’appréciation de la sincérité de la demande faite par le requérant. La première approche a l’avantage de rendre compte de la distinction entre les deux principes constitutionnels que sont, d’une part, la liberté de conscience, et de l’autre, la liberté de religion. Elle a l’inconvénient de tendre à ériger les tribunaux en « experts » sur des questions religieuses. L’approche subjective rend plus difficilement compte de la distinction entre les deux principes, et de plus risque de donner lieu à une prolifération de demandes. Pour atteindre une synthèse plausible de ces deux approches, il nous faut identifier les fondements normatifs justifiant l’intérêt que les démocraties libérales ont à reconnaître une telle catégorie d’accommodements. En prenant appui dans le célèbre argument de Kymlicka justifiant les droits de nations minoritaires, nous pouvons identifier un intérêt que ces types d’État ont à protéger les conditions permettant aux citoyens de manifester leur « agentivité culturelle », leur capacité à s’identifier en se les réappropriant et en les réinterprétant les normes, pratiques et rites issues de traditions religieuses. (shrink)