Phenomenal concepts are the concepts that we deploy when – but arguably not only when – we introspectively examine, focus on, or take notice of the phenomenal character of our experiences. They refer to phenomenal properties (or qualities) and they do so in a subjective (first-personal) and direct (non-relational) manner. It is through the use of such concepts that the phenomenal character of our experiences is made salient to us. Discourse about the nature of (...) class='Hi'>phenomenal concepts plays an important role in the philosophy of mind. For one, phenomenal concepts have been used to explain the epistemological relation that holds between a subject and her conscious mental states. Most prominently, however, discussions of phenomenal concepts figure in the on-going and multifaceted debate concerning the metaphysical status of consciousness. Even though some theorists have utilized phenomenal concepts in arguments purporting to show that consciousness is ontologically distinct from physical entities and processes, most accounts of phenomenal concepts are advanced having the opposite objective in mind: a proper articulation of the nature of phenomenal concepts, it is held, can defend the view that consciousness is physical against epistemic arguments to the contrary. The present entry focuses on the nature of phenomenal concepts as this is articulated and developed in attempts to defend the contention that conscious states are identical to (realized by, metaphysically necessitated by, or supervenient upon) physical states. (shrink)

It's a common idea in philosophy that we possess a peculiar kind of "phenomenal concept" by which we can think about our conscious states in "inner" and "direct" ways, as for example, when I attend to the way a current pain feels and think about this feeling as such. Such phenomenal ways of thinking figure in a variety of theoretical contexts. The bulk of this article discusses their use in a certain strategy – the phenomenal concept (...) strategy – for defending the physicalist view that conscious states are reducible to brain states. It also considers, more briefly, how phenomenal concepts have been used to defend dualism about consciousness, and how they have been used to explain our special access to our consciousness. It concludes with a discussion about whether, and in what more precise sense of the term, we at all possess "phenomenal concepts" of our conscious states. (shrink)

In recent literature, there is a strong tendency to endorse the following argument: There are particular judgments about one's current phenomenal experiences that are infallible; if there are particular judgments about one's current phenomenal experiences that are infallible, then the infallibility of those judgments is due to the relation of acquaintance; therefore, acquaintance explains why those particular judgments about one's current phenomenal experiences are infallible. The aim of this paper is to examine critically both the first and (...) the second premise of this argument. It will emerge that there might be a small class of judgments about one's current phenomenal experiences that are infallible, namely judgments involving direct phenomenal concepts. However, as I will try to show, the infallibility of such judgments, if existent at all, is not due to the relation of acquaintance. (shrink)

This article aims to show that Williamson's anti-luminosity argument does not succeed if we presuppose a constitutive connection between the phenomenal and the doxastic. In contrast to other luminists, however, my strategy is not to critically focus on the refined safety condition in terms of degrees of confidence that anti-luminists typically use in this context. Instead, I will argue that, given a certain conception of what Chalmers calls ‘direct phenomenal concepts,’ luminosity is guaranteed even if the refined (...) safety condition in terms of degrees of confidence is taken for granted. (shrink)

“Strong AI” is the view that it is possible for an artificial agent to be mentally indistinguishable from human agents. Because the behavioral dispositions of artificial agents are determined by underlying dispositional systems, Strong AI seems to entail human behavioral dispositions are also determined by dispositional systems. It is, however, highly intuitive that non-dispositional, phenomenal properties, such as being in pain, at least partially determine certain human behavioral dispositions, like the disposition to take a pain killer. Consequently, Strong AI (...) seems to conflict with an intuitive view of phenomenal properties’ role in determining human behavioral dispositions. My goal here is not directly to evaluate this tension, but rather to clarify how dispositionalism in the metaphysics of properties bears on it. While a tempting thought is that dispositionalism fits well with Strong AI’s thoroughly dispositional account of human behavior, I argue that this thought does not hold for dispositionalism in general. In particular, I argue that combining a version of the “powerful qualities view” with certain dispositionalist conceptions of the will leads to a version of the intuitive view of phenomenal properties that is radically incompatible with Strong AI. I argue further that this view also raises a challenge for the weaker claim that an artificial agent could be behaviorally indistinguishable from a human agent. (shrink)

This paper will be concerned with the role acquaintance plays in contemporary theories of introspection. Traditionally, the relation of acquaintance has been conceived in analytic epistemology and philosophy of mind as being only epistemically relevant inasmuch as it causes, or enables, or justifies a peculiar kind of propositional knowledge, i.e., knowledge by acquaintance. However, in recent years a novel account of the role of acquaintance in our introspective knowledge has been offered. According to this novel constitutive approach, acquaintance is, in (...) itself, a sui generis—i.e., non-propositional—kind of knowledge. As we will suggest, a stalemate between David Chalmers’ account of direct phenomenal concepts—as a prototypical example of a causal view—and Anna Giustina’s account of primitive introspection—as a prototypical example of a constitutive view—is looming in the current controversy between the two families of theories. Towards the end of the essay, we will point to some possible ways for a constitutive theorist to break the stalemate. (shrink)

This article presents phenomenological meta-analysis of Tymieniecka's phenomenology of life with regard to its strategies of knowledge. The novelty of phenomenology of life consists in special orientation of direct intuition of Tymieniecka's insight. The analysis suggests that the positioning of the direct intuition differes from philosopher to philosopher. Even though this perspective pays attention to individual differences in philosophical thinking, this view has to be distinguished froll1 psychologism as criticized by Husser!. and rather, seen as a development of (...) Husserl 's lheory of direct intuition. A framework for such analysis can be also found in Islamic philosophies of Suhrawardi and Ibn 'Arabi, who introduced the concepts of individual predisposition, modes of knowledge, and self-knowledge mediated by knowledge by presence. These concepts can be applied to understanding of the origins of philosophical insight. The paper examines in depth the workings of direct, or presentive, intuition in Tymieniecka's descriptions of the phenomenal field of life, and of life per se as a dynamic object. It demonstrates the dialogical nature of interrogation, and the sentience of logos as a horizon of philosophical inquiry. Finally, the paper introduces the concept of process phenomenology, and suggests directions of future research with regard to phenomenology of imagination. (shrink)

I elaborate and defend a set of metaphysical and epistemic claims that comprise what I call the acquaintance approach to introspective knowledge of the phenomenal qualities of experience. The hallmark of this approach is the thesis that, in some introspective judgments about experience, (phenomenal) reality intersects with the epistemic, that is, with the subject’s grasp of that reality. In Section 1 of the paper I outline the acquaintance approach by drawing on its Russellian lineage. A more detailed picture (...) of the approach emerges in succeeding sections, which respond to a range of objections. Some critics charge that approaches of this sort are overly idealized, in that they ignore the cognitive flaws and limitations of actual human beings. I begin to address these worries in Section 2, by arguing that the epistemic commitments of the acquaintance approach are in fact relatively modest. In Section 3, I sketch a picture of introspective reference that explains how phenomenal reality can intersect with the epistemic in a phenomenal judgment, as the acquaintance approach requires. Drawing on this picture of introspective reference, Section 4 sets out a practical strategy for achieving knowledge by acquaintance. Some contemporary acquaintance theorists (BonJour 2003, Fumerton 1996) employ demanding epistemic standards for knowledge by acquaintance, standards beyond those mandated by the acquaintance approach. In Section 5 I show that instances of introspective knowledge that meet less demanding standards can satisfy the acquaintance approach’s epistemic commitments. The final sections concern the most direct challenges to the acquaintance approach, which target the claim that phenomenal reality intersects with the epistemic. According to one such challenge, this claim is belied by the fact that possessing a phenomenal concept is a matter of having certain dispositions. Section 6 draws on a discussion by Sosa (2003) to articulate this challenge, and responds to it on behalf of the acquaintance approach. Section 7 addresses Stalnaker’s (2008) worry that, if phenomenal reality intersected with the epistemic, phenomenal information would be incommunicable. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss three problems of consciousness. The first two have been dubbed the “Hard Problem” and the “Harder Problem”. The third problem has received less attention and I will call it the “Hardest Problem”. The Hard Problem is a metaphysical and explanatory problem concerning the nature of conscious states. The Harder Problem is epistemological, and it concerns whether we can know, given physicalism, whether some creature physically different from us is conscious. The Hardest Problem is a problem (...) about reference. Recently some philosophers – among them David Papineau – who advocate a physicalist approach to both the Hard and the Harder problem have called into question the common sense assumption that phenomenal concepts – subjective concepts that we apply directly to experience – refer determinately (modulo vagueness) to real properties that can be instantiated in minds other than my own. The Hardest Problem is the problem of explaining how, given physicalism, this assumption could be true. In this paper I explore how these three problems appear from the perspective of a physicalist approach to consciousness based on Brian Loar’s account of phenomenal concepts, recently dubbed the “phenomenal concept strategy”. My contention is that this approach can go quite far in handling not just the first two problems but the Hardest Problem as well. (shrink)

This paper is a defense of the so-called phenomenal-concept strategy, based on a new view of phenomenal concepts as special de re modes of presentation of the phenomenal character of experience. Phenomenal concepts can be explained in physical terms as mental particulars (as phenomenal files) created in the individual’s mind to pick out the phenomenal character of experience by representing certain physical properties as those represented by the experiences themselves (metarepresentation). They are individuated by (...) two fundamental relations: the perceptual (acquaintance) relation the creature bears to the physical properties represented by its own experience and the relation the creature bears to itself (self-acquaintance) as the subject undergoing those experiences. Mary’s newly acquired phenomenal file presents the phenomenal character of her new experience of red by means of the new relation she bears to herself as the creature standing in the experiential relation to the color red. (shrink)

This article is about the special, subjective concepts we apply to experience, called “phenomenal concepts”. They are of special interest in a number of ways. First, they refer to phenomenal experiences, and the qualitative character of those experiences whose metaphysical status is hotly debated. Conscious experience strike many philosophers as philosophically problematic and difficult to accommodate within a physicalistic metaphysics. Second, PCs are widely thought to be special and unique among concepts. The sense that there is something special (...) about PCs is very closely tied up with features of the epistemic access they afford to qualia. When we deploy phenomenal concepts introspectively to some phenomenally conscious experience as it occurs, we are said to be acquainted with our own conscious experiences. Accounts of PCs either have to explain the acquaintance relation, or acquaintance with our phenomenal experiences has to be denied. PCs have received much attention in recent philosophy of mind mainly because they figure in arguments for dualism and in physicalist responses to these arguments. The main topic of this paper is to explore different accounts of phenomenal concepts and their role in recent debates over the metaphysical status of phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

Many great authors claim that reading literature can expand your phenomenal imagination and allow you to imagine experiences you have never had. How is this possible? Your phenomenal imagination is constrained by your phenomenal concepts, which are in turn constrained by the phenomenology of your own actual past experiences. Literature could expand your phenomenal imagination, then, by giving you new phenomenal concepts. This paper explains how this can happen. Literature can direct your attention to (...) previously unnoticed phenomenal properties of your own past experiences, as brought to mind by involuntary memory. This process gives you the opportunity to notice those phenomenal properties for the first time, and so also to form phenomenal concepts of those properties. Forming a new phenomenal concept strictly expands the range of your phenomenal imagination. It gives you the capacity to imagine more than you could have before, including certain specific kinds of experience that you yourself have never enjoyed firsthand. Literature’s capacity to expand your phenomenal imagination in this way is central to its social, moral, and epistemic value. (shrink)

The phenomenal concept strategy (PCS) is widely regarded as the most promising physicalist defence against the so-called epistemic arguments—the anti-physicalist arguments that establish an ontological gap between physical and phenomenal facts on the basis of the occurrence of epistemic gaps in our descriptions of these facts. The PCS tries to undercut the force of the epistemic arguments by attributing the occurrence of the epistemic gaps to the special character of phenomenal concepts—the concepts by means of which we (...) think about our phenomenal experiences. In this essay, the author examines David Chalmers' master argument against the PCS and the objections raised against this argument by Peter Carruthers, Bénédicte Veillet and Katalin Balog in defending the PCS. While the author finds these objections to be successful defences of the PCS, the author shares Balog's belief that in this regard, the debate between the physicalists and anti-physicalists is a stalemate. (shrink)

The phenomenal concept strategy is considered a powerful response to anti-physicalist arguments. This physicalist strategy aims to provide a satisfactory account of dualist intuitions without being committed to ontological dualist conclusions. In this paper I first argue that physicalist accounts of phenomenal concepts fail to explain their cognitive role. Second, I develop an encapsulation account of phenomenal concepts that best explains their particularities. Finally, I argue that the encapsulation account, which features self-representing experiences, implies non-physical referents. Therefore, (...) the account of phenomenal concepts that has strong explanatory power does not explain away dualist intuitions—rather, it reinforces dualism. (shrink)

This article is about the special, subjective concepts we apply to experience, called “phenomenal concepts”. They are of special interest in a number of ways. First, they refer to phenomenal experiences, and the qualitative character of those experiences whose metaphysical status is hotly debated. Conscious experience strike many philosophers as philosophically problematic and difficult to accommodate within a physicalistic metaphysics. Second, PCs are widely thought to be special and unique among concepts. The sense that there is something special (...) about PCs is very closely tied up with features of the epistemic access they afford to qualia. When we deploy phenomenal concepts introspectively to some phenomenally conscious experience as it occurs, we are said to be acquainted with our own conscious experiences. Accounts of PCs either have to explain the acquaintance relation, or acquaintance with our phenomenal experiences has to be denied. PCs have received much attention in recent philosophy of mind mainly because they figure in arguments for dualism and in physicalist responses to these arguments. The main topic of this article is to explore different accounts of phenomenal concepts and their role in recent debates over the metaphysical status of phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

Illusionism claims that we are not conscious, that there is nothing it is like, in the usual sense of the word, to feel sad, or to smell lavender. According to Illusionists, we are, in a technical sense, zombies. Instead of arguing for the falsity of Illusionism directly, I will explain why the main philosophical motivations for it are mistaken – and I trust the rest will be taken care of by the extreme implausibility of the view. I want to spread (...) the good news to Illusionists that they don’t need to resort to this highly counterintuitive, strange, and as I will argue later, morally corrosive idea. One can be a physicalist and phenomenal realist since neither of the two types of arguments Illusionists rely on – the conceivability arguments, and the debunking arguments against physicalist phenomenal realism – work. In the last part of the paper, I will say something about the corrosive effect this metaphysics has on our moral and evaluative outlook. (shrink)

It is often thought that acquiring a phenomenal concept requires having the relevant sort of experience. In "Extending Phenomenal Concepts", Andreas Elpidorou defends this position from an objection raised by Michael Tye (in "Consciousness Revisited: Materialism without Phenomenal Concepts"). Here, I argue that Elpidorou fails to attend to important supporting materials introduced by Tye.

During the last two decades, several different anti-physicalist arguments based on an epistemic or conceptual gap between the phenomenal and the physical have been proposed. The most promising physicalist line of defense in the face of these arguments – the Phenomenal Concept Strategy – is based on the idea that these epistemic and conceptual gaps can be explained by appeal to the nature of phenomenal concepts rather than the nature of non-physical phenomenal properties. Phenomenal concepts, (...) on this proposal, involve unique cognitive mechanisms, but none that could not be fully physically implemented. David Chalmers has recently presented a Master Argument to show that the Phenomenal Concept Strategy – not just this or that version of it, but any version of it – fails. Chalmers argues that the phenomenal concepts posited by such theories are either not physicalistically explicable, or they cannot explain our epistemic situation with regard to qualia. I argue that it is his Master Argument that fails. My claim is his argument does not provide any new reasons to reject the Phenomenal Concept Strategy. I also argue that, although the Phenomenal Concept Strategy is successful in showing that the physicalist is not rationally compelled to give up physicalism in the light of the anti-physicalist arguments, the anti-physicalist is not rationally compelled to give up the anti-physicalist argument in the light of the Phenomenal Concept Strategy either. (shrink)

I propose a way of understanding empathy on which it does not necessarily involve any-thing like thinking oneself into another’s shoes, or any imagining at all. Briefly, the empa-thizer uses an aspect of her own mental state as a sample, expressed by means of a phenomenal concept, to understand the other person. This account does a better job of explaining the connection between empathetic experiences and the objects of empathy than most traditional ones do. And it helps to clarify (...) the relations among different varieties of empathy and empathy-like experiences, including empathy with fictional characters. -/- . (shrink)

There’s a long but relatively neglected tradition of attempting to explain why many researchers working on the nature of phenomenal consciousness think that it’s hard to explain.1 David Chalmers argues that this “meta-problem of consciousness” merits more attention than it has received. He also argues against several existing explanations of why we find consciousness hard to explain. Like Chalmers, we agree that the meta-problem is worthy of more attention. Contra Chalmers, however, we argue that there’s an existing explanation that (...) is more promising than his objections suggest. We argue that researchers find phenomenal consciousness hard to explain because phenomenal concepts are complex demonstratives that encode the impossibility of explaining consciousness as one of their application conditions. (shrink)

Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument and different conceivability arguments, advanced by Saul Kripke, David Chalmers and Joseph Levine, conclude that consciousness involves non-physical properties or properties that cannot be reductively accounted for in physical terms. Some physicalists have replied to these objections by means of different versions of the phenomenal concept strategy. David Chalmers has responded with the master argument, a reasoning that, if successful, would undermine any reasonable version of the phenomenal concept strategy. In this paper, I argue (...) that the master argument does not advance the debate between the supporters of the anti-physicalist arguments and those of the phenomenal concept strategy. (shrink)

Some contemporary discussion about the explanation of consciousness substantially recapitulates a decisive debate about reference, knowledge and justification from an earlier stage of the analytic tradition. In particular, I argue that proponents of a recently popular strategy for accounting for an explanatory gap between physical and phenomenal facts – the so-called “phenomenal concept strategy” – face a problem that was originally fiercely debated by Schlick, Carnap, and Neurath. The question that is common to both the older and the (...) contemporary discussion is that of how the presence or presentation of phenomenal experiences can play a role in justifying beliefs or judgments about them. This problem is, moreover, the same as what was classically discussed as the problem of acquaintance. Interestingly, both physicalist and non-physicalist proponents of the phenomenal concept strategy today face this problem. I consider briefly some recent attempts to solve it and conclude that, although it is prima facie very plausible that acquaintance exists, we have, as yet, no good account of it. (shrink)

It has long been widely agreed that some concepts can be possessed only by those who have undergone a certain type of phenomenal experience. Orthodoxy among contemporary philosophers of mind has it that these phenomenal concepts provide the key to understanding many disputes between physicalists and their opponents, and in particular offer an explanation of Mary’s predicament in the situation exploited by Frank Jackson's knowledge argument. I reject the orthodox view; I deny that there are phenomenal concepts. (...) My arguments exploit the sort of considerations that are typically used to motivate externalism about mental content. Although physicalists often appeal to phenomenal concepts to defend their view against the knowledge argument, I argue that this is a mistake. The knowledge argument depends on phenomenal concepts; if there are no phenomenal concepts, then the knowledge argument fails. (shrink)

The Phenomenal Concept Strategy offers the physicalist perhaps the most promising means of explaining why the connection between mental facts and physical facts appears to be contingent even though it is not. In this article, we show that the large body of evidence suggesting that our concepts are often embodied and grounded in sensorimotor systems speaks against standard forms of the PCS. We argue, nevertheless, that it is possible to formulate a novel version of the PCS that is thoroughly (...) in keeping with embodied cognition, focuses on features of physical concepts, and succeeds in explaining the appearance of contingency. (shrink)

Over the past decade or so, David Papineau has given an account of the content and motivation of a physicalist conception of the world with more thoroughness and argumentative defence than many physicalists have thought necessary. In doing this, he has substantially advanced the debate on physicalism, and physicalists and non-physicalists alike should be grateful to him.1 At the heart of Papineau’s defence of physicalism in his recent book (2002) is his theory of phenomenal concepts. Like many physicalists, Papineau (...) diagnoses the apparent threats to physicalism posed by the phenomena of consciousness by locating the source of anti-physicalist intuitions in features of our thinking rather than in non-physical features of reality. But what is new in Thinking About Consciousness is his detailed account of which features of our thinking it is that generate these supposedly confused anti-physicalist arguments. Hence the bulk of the book is an attempt to show that the most famous ‘consciousness-based’ anti-physicalist arguments—the knowledge argument, the zombie argument and the explanatory gap argument—rest on a mistaken understanding of certain kinds of concepts: phenomenal concepts. I agree with Papineau that physicalism (properly understood) should not be troubled by the knowledge argument and the explanatory gap argument, and that some other anti-physicalist arguments seem to move from assumptions about ways of thinking to conclusions about reality. But I doubt whether his theory of phenomenal concepts can help his defence of physicalism and his diagnosis of the errors of dualism. My reason for saying this is that I do not think there are any such concepts. In saying this I do not mean to deny that there is a useful distinction to be made between scientific concepts, the mastery of which requires knowledge of a certain amount of theory, and concepts which are acquired on the basis of experience, which can be called ‘phenomenal’ concepts. (shrink)

This essay is a sustained attempt to bring new light to some of the perennial problems in philosophy of mind surrounding phenomenal consciousness and introspection through developing an account of sensory and phenomenal concepts. Building on the information-theoretic framework of Dretske (1981), we present an informational psychosemantics as it applies to what we call sensory concepts, concepts that apply, roughly, to so-called secondary qualities of objects. We show that these concepts have a special informational character and semantic structure (...) that closely tie them to the brain states realizing conscious qualitative experiences. We then develop an account of introspection which exploits this special nature of sensory concepts. The result is a new class of concepts, which, following recent terminology, we call phenomenal concepts: these concepts refer to phenomenal experience itself and are the vehicles used in introspection. On our account, the connection between sensory and phenomenal concepts is very tight: it consists in different semantic uses of the same cognitive structures underlying the sensory concepts, such as the concept of red. Contrary to widespread opinion, we show that information theory contains all the resources to satisfy internalist intuitions about phenomenal consciousness, while not offending externalist ones. A consequence of this account is that it explains and predicts the so-called conceivability arguments against physicalism on the basis of the special nature of sensory and phenomenal concepts. Thus we not only show why physicalism is not threatened by such arguments, but also demonstrate its strength in virtue of its ability to predict and explain away such arguments in a principled way. However, we take the main contribution of this work to be what it provides in addition to a response to those conceivability arguments, namely, a substantive account of the interface between sensory and conceptual systems and the mechanisms of introspection as based on the special nature of the information flow between them. (shrink)

This paper is both systematic and historical in nature. From a historical viewpoint, I aim to show that to establish Wittgenstein’s claim that “an ‘inner process’ stands in need of outward criteria” (PI §580) there is an enthymeme in Wittgenstein’s private language argument (henceforth PLA) overlooked in the literature, namely Wittgenstein’s suggestion that both perceptual and bodily experiences are transparent in the relevant sense that one cannot point to a mental state and wonder “What is that?” From a systematic viewpoint, (...) I aim to show that Wittgenstein’s PLA teaches us that the prevailing picture of the nature of phenomenal concepts (henceforth PCs) is upside down: we can only introspectively know what is going on inside our heads after we learn of what is going on outside (PI §580). In this regard, I aim to defend two associate claims against the prevailing view of PCs on the basis of PLA. First, by means of transparency, I aim to show that there is no de re awareness of our private sensation that could determine the meaning of sensation words; for example, I am never aware of the phenomenal blueness of my experience of something blue. The second associated claim is that introspective self-knowledge of our private sensations is always de dicto. We can only know introspectively that phenomenal blueness is the phenomenal character of the experience we are undergoing after we have learned that (de dicto knowledge) blue is the color that usually causes us that kind of experience. Likewise, we can only introspectively know that pain is the phenomenal character of the experience we are undergoing after we have learned that pain is what usually causes some typical pain behavior. (shrink)

Phenomenal qualities are embodied spaciotemporal abstractions subjectively perceived by a conscious observer. Specific examples, i.e., qualia, include the color purple, the taste of chocolate, and the fragrance of a rose. The question of whether phenomenal awareness can be empirically understood forms one important facet of the “Hard Problem of Consciousness” (Chalmers, 1995, pp. 200–219). It is the position of this analysis that we will never understand why we experience sensory qualities in the manner we do until we first (...) comprehend how they may have evolved in the very distant past. This examination explores the evolutionary development of phenomenal experience. In so doing, it proposes that behind the mechanisms through which external stimuli interface with our sensory apparatus, there lies a long evolutionary process of standardization, approximation, and synchronization that has ultimately forged the close links between the two. The consistent and efficient correlations that the resultant evolutionary links give rise to cumulatively generate conscious experience. There is a tight correspondence between our sensations and incoming stimuli, and this synchronous covariance is meaningful and functional; however, it does not result from a strict cause-and-effect relationship between the physical properties of external objects and our internal neurophysiology. As such, this investigation endorses Hoffman’s (1998, 2003, 2008, 2009) view that the external world is largely hidden from direct sensory evaluation. The following inquiry utilizes Jung’s (1952) “Acausal Connecting Principle” to further explore the concept of complementary sensory phenomena as it may have originally been envisioned by Wolfgang Pauli. (Meier, 2001) This thesis, with respect to meaningful acausality and synchronicity, is first used to provide a plausible explanation for the initial genetic development of color perception, and then employed to examine the analogous evolutionary ties that ultimately engender all sensory modalities. Without invoking the Quantum-Mind hypothesis, this paper supports the idea that our five senses are not direct, or true, or even approximate abstract representations of any underlying material properties of incoming stimuli; instead, they efficiently provide useful higher-order assumptions pertaining to the macro properties of spacetime, matter, and motion, as well as the causal-objective of all life. The overall investigation concludes that it is the structural categorization, hierarchical organization, and qualitative characterization of this indirect presumptive meta-information that has engendered meaningful sensory experience, and all conscious thought over evolutionary time. (shrink)

A slew of conceivability arguments have been given against physicalism. Many physicalists try to undermine these arguments by offering accounts of phenomenal concepts that explain how there can be an epistemic gap, but not an ontological gap, between the phenomenal and the physical. Some complain, however, that such accounts fail to do justice to the nature of our introspective grasp of phenomenal properties. A particularly influential version of this complaint comes from David Chalmers (1996; 2003), who claims, (...) in opposition to the accounts of phenomenal concepts described above, that phenomenal concepts have primary and secondary intensions that coincide in all worlds. In this paper, I construct an argument that casts doubt upon Chalmers' claim. At the heart of this argument is an idea that Chalmers shows some affinity for: namely, that introspection doesn't reveal whether phenomenal properties are fundamental properties or whether they are derived from more basic protophenomenal properties. I argue that this claim implies that the primary and secondary intensions of our phenomenal concepts do not coincide in all worlds. In this way, I show that a plausible idea about the powers of introspection – an idea that Chalmers himself is drawn to – is a reason for rejecting the claim that phenomenal concepts have primary and secondary intensions that coincide in all worlds. (shrink)

This paper replies to objections from perceptual distortion against the representationalist thesis that the phenomenal characters of experiences supervene on their intentional contents. It has been argued that some pairs of distorted and undistorted experiences share contents without sharing phenomenal characters, which is incompatible with the supervenience thesis. In reply, I suggest that such cases are not counterexamples to the representationalist thesis because the contents of distorted experiences are always impoverished in some way compared to those of normal (...) experiences. This can be shown by considering limit cases of perceptual distortion, for example, maximally blurry experiences, which manifestly lack details present in clear experiences. I argue that since there is no reasonable way to draw the line between distorted experiences that have degraded content and distorted experiences that do not, we should allow that an increase in distortion is always accompanied by a change in content. This applies to perceptual distortions due to blur, double vision, perspective, and illumination conditions. (shrink)

Will I die? As a hypothesis, in my natural scientific understanding, the psyche, is nothing more than, and exclusively just some states of my living brain – I will die as a result of his death. -/- In presented answer, psyche – itself own immediate reality itself, that is – undoubted. -/- This work was performed in reality “in the first person” (“subjective reality”, “phenomenal consciousness”). To realize, how, what it is the reality of the “in the first person” (...) let’s imagine ourselves as an experimenter, who does not replace reality with reasoning about it. – Now for us, as experimenters, how (what it is) psychic is an immediate and undoubted reality. And the awareness of “I am” is a direct reality, and not knowledge about it, which is always doubtful. That is, in psychic reality, nothing prevents us from answering undoubtedly and definitively the question, asked by this psychic reality itself about itself. The author acts from the position of “being in reality – not going beyond its limits, for example, into philosophy” (philosophy, including methodology, is the replacement of reality itself with always dubious reasoning about reality) – explores phenomenal consciousness (“psychic”) directly and as an immediate reality. That is, this work is the mastery of psychic reality through subjective-psychical experimentation – don’t philosophize, but experiment! -/- For example, Descartes, introspectively experimenting in his own psyche reality with his own psyche, informed us about the immutability of the “mind” and proposed to understand this immutability as our own immortality: “the mind does not represent any combination of accidents, it is a pure substance, and although all its accidents are subject to change, it understands some things, it desires others or feels others, etc. – nevertheless, in itself it does not change; and as for the human body, it changes, if only because they are subject to a change in the shape of some of its parts. It follows from this that the body perishes very easily, while the mind, by its very nature, is immortal” (Декарт Р., p. 13). Note that, Descartes did not realize that he was immortal, but logically deduced his own immortality from the immutability of the mind. However, Descartes’ unchanging “mind” itself is such that there is something to die. And in my natural scientific understanding, the immutability of the mind does not imply its immortality – it will die without changing in its subjective self-perception, while instantly fading away as a result of brain death. Psyche (psychical) – a designation of the fact that this is one’s own immediate reality (that is, undoubtedly) – how (what) I myself am immediately, undoubtedly, and that immediate reality of mine, how and through which I myself and everything in general for me there is, and which is exclusively the only one for me. It should be noted that while I am unconscious (brain injury or dreamless sleep), there is nothing at all. -/- But this does not mean that “I”, having completely gone into oblivion, I'll die. This does not exclude that, I will disappear completely into oblivion and does not exist, but (at the same time) “I” – am. So, let’s define immortality as the impossibility of dying because there is nothing to die (psychic, but is such that there is nothing to die – is immortal) and will make a conclusion important for this work: if I am, as psyche, exclusively only is such that there is something to die and nothing else, then, therefore, my death is not excluded. But am I like that? The idea of this work is that I, as a psyche can to manifest (reveal) and realize myself as such (I such), that there is nothing to die, but (at the same time) I – am. I will realize of myself as immortal – such that to die (to decease) nothing. In other words, if I will approach with a bias and, acting purposefully, will reveal the subjective reality “I (psyche) such is that to die (to decease) nothing, but I – am”, that is – I am immortal, that the hypothesis “I will die” will falsified and excluded. -/- To realize this in the work, it is proposed to use the subject-object model, shift the boundary of “I” to the pole of the subject and become objectless, manifesting (revealing) oneself as such that there is nothing to die. Therefore, the aim (goal) of the work – to realize: I – am, but such that there is to die (decease) nothing. To become objectless and wondering about the possibility to dying, as a result, or I will exclude the immortality of the manifested state, or I will manifest (will reveal) immortal undoubtedly and definitively. -/- At the same time, I, as a subject, am “a necessary pole of subject-object relations. … An object is what the activity of … a subject is directed at. … In fact, everything that exists can become an object. … it is important to keep in mind the fundamental fact that the object is always outside the subject, does not merge with it. This externality also takes place when the subject deals with the states of his own consciousness, his Self ... it is important to emphasize that the relation of the subject and the object is not the relation of two different worlds, but only two poles as part of some unity” (Лекторский В.А., p. 6-7). That is, everything that I find existing in myself, this (such) is as an object. “The subject always refers to all “objects”, but it can never become an object for itself” (Титлин Л.И., p. 23). “… you will not be able to see the seeing vision ...” (Титлин Л.И., p. 40), and in this model this implies the “limit” of the subject. As the limit of the subject, I am “objectless”. And, therefore, in its own pole the subject is “ideal” – in its (own) limit (as its own limit, its own limit), I do not exist for myself (non-existent). -/- Using the “fact of the mobility of the boundaries of the subject” (for example, Тхостов А.Ш., p. 16), I have the opportunity to “pull” the boundary of the “I” into myself and become my own limit. At the same time, it is necessary to realize and accept that “inside” the limit of the subject and behind – “beyond of the subject”, and in general the very “inside” and “behind” in this version – unreality. In such a subject limit, the required paradoxical subjective state is assumed – I exist and see, but at the same time I am such that I do not exist for myself, that is, I am, but (subjectively such that) there is nothing to die (“immortality”). -/- Accordingly, the following tasks are indicated in the experiment: 1. In the object-subject sphere of visual perception, shift (and shift) the boundary of “I” into oneself –» to run into one’s own limit and become one’s own limit (without thickness: without depth, without “from within” and without reverse side) –» 2. Having become your own limit, which in its own limit is, but for myself I do not exist (non-existent), realize: • Myself – I am and this is real; • Will I die? – or there is nothing to die, which of the options is to me, as a psyche (as itself the psychic “I”), is applicable: • or I am such that it is not impossible that I will die, and the realized state is not immortal; • or “I” am such that “I” – am (is reality), but such that myself “I” to die nothing, that is, my own immortality – I am immortal; • Is this real? -/- Instruction for reproducing the target result: sequence of actions and results in a subjective-psychic experiment (hereinafter referred to as SPE) -/- At a distance of 25-40 cm from the wall (so that the wall occupies the entire field of view or its overwhelming part), • Here and now, focus on your face: “I am” – reality (and not is the knowing about it). • In yourself step back and look out of yourself at this wall. • Without moving your head, cover the field of vision with your attention as wide as possible and at the same time perceive everything at once (all this) as a single whole. • Perceive a high and wide wall (option: look up at an angle of 135-150 degrees in front of you) in such a way that the space (volume) surveyed by you without turning your head is a closed asymmetrical “lens” • limited in a circle in the periphery of the field of view, • convex in you; You – the beholder, rearwards concave in self (“subject”) – which one of you are watching? • Without moving your head, perceive the field of view as a single whole –» • Into yourself “draw in” –» “backing away” –» step back from everything –» • lean back into yourself –» up to dead-end limit –» • become a dead end itself – a concave (reflector-like) limit-plane. • You – into yourself – backward concave – a perceiving visual screen (limit-dead end), plane –» • lean back and press –» • something in general somehow inside the dead-end plane and behind the dead-end plane, as well as “inside” and “behind”, “behind the dead-end plane” – unreality; • myself – a dead-end plane without thickness (depth), without “inside”, without a reverse side for oneself. • –» That is, as a psychic reality (what is it psychically) will I die? –» or • Something there is, and that is I will die (it is possible); or • I am such that there is nothing to die, but I – am. or • Subjective-psychic experiment is incomplete… • –» Realize that this is reality (realize the reality of it) and emphasize (answer). -/- As a result, “I” am, but there is nothing to die/not to die, that is, the hypothesis “I will die” is unrealistic. -/- Remarks -/- • Each completed SPE is completed with the target result: “I am such that there is nothing to die, but I – am”. And the that what I will die (not excluded) does not correspond to this, that is unreality and is excluded by this. • But I am not such that I will not die. The concepts “I will die/ I will not die” to me, as a psyche are not applicable. That is, I, as a psyche, is immortal, but I am not eternal (not eternal – endlessly lasting, such that there is something to last) – to last, to be eternal and to end there is nothing. This is “immortality”. • In the target result of this work, I – am, but such that there is nothing to die/not die (“immortality”). And such a “I” is not the Atman of the Hindu schools of Nyaya, Vaisheshika and Purva Mimamsa, which E.A. Torchinov. Since the “I” – psychic, and not a substance with the psyche as an attributes. • According to illusionism, what I am as a result of the experiment given in the work is an illusion. And the impression of immortality is a product of the brain. But in reality I am such that I will die (it is not excluded). However, it is necessary to realize that illusionism is a detached reasoning about the “I”, but not is the self itself. And to what I am (as psiche), reasoning and questions about the reality of the “I” (for example, question: am I really like this, what am I like as psyche?) and other expressing illusionism do not correspond. That is, subjectively (psychic, in the psychic reality of the “first person”, in first person perspective), the illusionism of the “I” is unreality. Subjectively (psychic, in the psychic reality of the “first person”, in first person perspective), this is undeniable and final. • Reasoning about what such a “I” is in this (mine) or not in this brain, as well as (for example, holding a real skull in my hands), questions like “how (or, but now where is it here) such “I” – how is it after brain death?” – To the fact that is such an “I” these questions do not correspond and is falsified by this. • After being unconscious, the impression remains that I'm is not and that there is nothing at all. That is, my “unconsciousness” is psychic indistinguishable from my non-existence. However, science has not shown, but and it is not excluded that before and after I exist physically (there is something to die), I still or I no longer exist, there is still or nothing to die as a soul, substance, or otherwise. But what I am in the target result of this work is what I – am, and not “died and already now or still unreality” and I am such that there is nothing to die, this is – reality. That is, I will die? – there is nothing (to die), but I – am (reality), even if I am not (don’t exist). Or I do not exist as something. • I am such that there is nothing to be and die, but I am. And subjectively (psychic, in the psychic reality of the “first person”, in first person perspective), this immortality is – reality. But this reality eludes my rational explanation. -/- Conclusion -/- Will I die? – In the target result the I am, but at the same time I am such that there is nothing to die. That is, I am immortal, but at the same time, I am not eternal (“I” not something eternal (endlessly continuing)) – I am such that to be eternal there is nothing. And, if we accept the subjective (psychic, “first person”, in first person perspective) reality without trying to understand it rationally, then I am exactly like that – I realize that this is my undoubted nature. That is, “I will die / I will not die” is an unreality. Subjectively (psychic, in the psychic reality of the “first person”, in first person perspective), it is undoubted and final. Despite the unscientific nature, this work is a way of mastering reality. The author would be grateful for the identified and shown unreality of the fact that the “I” – am, but such that there is nothing to die, and ideally, the awareness: “I will die (not excluded).” -/- Bibliography -/- Декарт Р., Размышления о первой философии //Декарт Р. Соч.: В 2 т. Т. 2. М., 1994. Лекторский В.А. Субъект в истории философии: проблемы и достижения // Методология и история психологии. 2010. Том 5. Выпуск 1. С. 5-18. Титлин Л.И. Проблема субъекта в индийской философии («Пудгалавинишчая» Васубандху) [Текст] / [Л. И. Титлин]; Федеральное государственное бюджетное учреждение науки Институт философии Российской академии наук. – Москва: ОнтоПринт: Сделано-Сказано, 2018. – 361, [1] с. Тхостов A. Ш. Культурно-историческая патопсихология: монография, – М.: Канон+ РООИ «Реабилитация», 2020. – 320 с. Торчинов Е.А. «Словарик индуизма» (Дата написания: 2003; дата файла: 15.06.2007). Торчинов Е.А. Пути философии Востока и Запада: познание запредельного — СПб.: «Азбука-классика», «Петербургское Востоковедение», 2005. — 480 с. ISBN 5-352-01371-5 (Азбука-классика) ISBN 5-85803-258-3 (Петербургское Востоковедение). -/- Скончаюсь? – я бессмертен (как осознать бессмертие «от первого лица») -/- Скончаюсь? В качестве гипотезы в моем естественно-научном понимании психическое (каково психически), это не более чем, и исключительно только всего лишь некоторые состояния моего живого мозга – скончаюсь в результате его смерти. -/- В представленном ответе психическое – сама собственная непосредственная реальность, то есть, то, каково психически, это – несомненно. -/- Данная работа выполнена в реальности «первого лица» («субъективная реальность», «феноменальное сознание»). Чтобы осознать то, как, каково это, представим себя экспериментатором, который не подменяет реальность рассуждениями о ней. – Теперь для нас, как экспериментаторов, то, как (каково) психически, это непосредственная и несомненная реальность. И осознание «я есть», это непосредственная реальность, а не знание об этом, которое всегда сомнительно. То есть, в психической реальности, на вопрос, заданный самой этой психической реальностью самой себе о себе самой, нам ничто не запрещает ответить несомненно и окончательно. Автор действует с позиции «быть в реальности – не выходить за ее пределы, например, в философию» (философия, включая методологию, это подмена самой реальности всегда сомнительными рассуждениями о реальности) – исследует феноменальное сознание («психическое») непосредственно и в качестве непосредственной реальности. То есть, данная работа, это овладение психической реальностью посредством субъективно-психического экспериментирования – не философствуй, а экспериментируй! -/- Например Декарт, интроспективно экспериментируя в собственной психической реальности с собственным психическим, сообщил нам о неизменности «ума» и предложил эту неизменность понять в качестве нашего собственного бессмертия: «ум не представляет какого-то соединения акциденций, являет собой чистую субстанцию и, хотя все его акциденции подвержены изменению — он то понимает какие-то вещи, то желает другие или чувствует третьи и т.д.,— тем не менее сам по себе он не изменяется; а что касается тела человека, то оно изменяется хотя бы уже потому, что подвержены изменению формы некоторых его частей. Из этого следует, что тело весьма легко погибает, ум же по самой природе своей бессмертен» /Декарт Р., стр. 13. Заметим, Декарт не осознавал себя бессмертным, а логически вывел собственное бессмертие из неизменности ума. Однако, неизменный «ум» Декарта таков, что скончаться есть чему. А в моем естественно-научном понимании из неизменности ума не следует его бессмертие – он, не изменяясь в своем субъективном само-восприятии, при этом мгновенно угаснув в результате смерти мозга, скончается. Психически (психическое) – обозначение того, что это сама собственная непосредственная реальность (то есть – несомненно) – то, как (каково) я сам непосредственно, несомненно, и та моя непосредственная реальность, как и посредством чего я сам и всё вообще для меня есть, и которое для меня исключительно единственное. Следует заметить, что пока бываю без сознания (травма мозга или сон без сновидений), ничего и никак нет вообще. -/- Но это не значит, что «я» ушедши в небытие окончательно – скончаюсь. Этим не исключено, что таковой ушедший в небытие «я» не существую, но (при этом) есть. Итак, определим бессмертие, как невозможность скончаться потому, что скончаться нечему (например, если «умерший» психически есть, но уже таков, что скончаться больше нечему, то теперь он бессмертен) и сделаем важный для данной работы вывод: если психически я исключительно только таков, что скончаться есть чему и ни каков иначе, то, следовательно, то, что скончаюсь, это не исключено. Но таков ли я? Идея данной работы в том, что мне удастся проявить (выявить) и осознать себя таковым (я таков), что скончаться нечему, но (при этом) я есть. Иначе выражаясь, если я подойду предвзято и действуя целеустремленно, выявлю субъективную реальность «я есть, но таков, что скончаться нечему» – то смерть мне, как психическому несвойственна, то есть, я бессмертен – гипотеза возможности субъективно скончаться («я скончаюсь») будет фальсифицирована и исключена. -/- Чтобы это реализовать в работе предлагается воспользоваться субъект-объектной моделью, сдвинуть границу «я» в полюс субъекта и стать безобъектным, проявившись (выявившись) собой таковым, что скончаться нечему. Следовательно, цель работы – осознать: я таков, что есть, но скончаться нечему. Стать безобъектным и задаваясь вопросом о возможности скончаться, или исключу бессмертие проявленного состояния, или проявлюсь (выявлюсь) бессмертным несомненно и окончательно. -/- При этом, я, как субъект, являюсь «необходимым полюсом субъектно-объектных отношений. … Объект – то, на что направлена активность … субъекта. … В действительности объектом может стать все, что существует. … важно иметь в виду тот принципиальный факт, что объект всегда внеположен субъекту, не сливается с ним. Эта внеположность имеет место и тогда, когда субъект имеет дело с состояниями собственного сознания, своим Я … важно подчеркнуть, что отношение субъекта и объекта – это не отношение двух разных миров, а лишь двух полюсов в составе некоторого единства» /Лекторский В.А., стр. 6-7. То есть, всё, что нахожу в себе существующим, это (таковое) есть в качестве объекта. «Субъект – всегда относится ко всем «объектам», но он никогда не может стать объектом для самого себя» /Титлин Л.И., стр. 23. Иначе это выражая – «ты не сможешь увидеть видящего видение…» /Титлин Л.И., стр. 40, и в данной модели таковое предполагает «предел» субъекта. Как предел субъекта я «безобъектен». То есть, «идеален» – своим (собственным) пределом (в качестве собственного предела) самим для себя не существую (несуществующий). -/- Используя «факт подвижности границ субъекта» /например, Тхостов А.Ш., стр. 16, я имею возможность границу «я» в себя-назад «втянуть» и стать собственным пределом. При этом необходимо осознать и принять, что внутри предела субъекта и сзади – «за пределом субъекта», и вообще само «внутри» и «сзади» в этой модели – нереальность. Таким субъектным пределом предполагается требуемое парадоксальное субъективное состояние – я есть и вижу, но при этом я таков, что для себя не существую, то есть, я есть, но (психически таков, что) умереть нечему («бессмертие»). -/- Соответственно, в эксперименте обозначаются следующие задачи: 1. В объект-субъектной сфере зрительного восприятия сдвинуть (и сдвинув) границу «я» в себя-назад –» упереться в собственный предел и стать самим собственным пределом (без толщены: без глубины, без «внутри» и без обратной стороны) –» 2. Став собственным пределом, которым есть, но для себя не существую (несуществующий), осознать: • Себя – я есть и это реально; • Скончаюсь? – есть ли чему скончаться или скончаться нечему, какой из вариантов мне (как психическому «я») свойственен: • или я таков, что то, что скончаюсь не исключено, и реализованное состояние не бессмертно; • или я есть, но таков, что скончаться нечему, то есть, собственное бессмертие – я бессмертен; • Реальность ли это. -/- Инструкция воспроизведения целевого результата: последовательность действий и результатов в субъективно-психическом эксперименте (далее СПЭ) -/- На расстоянии 25-40 см от стены (так, чтобы стена занимала всё поле зрения или его подавляющую часть), • Здесь и сейчас сосредоточьтесь на своём лице: «я есть» – реальность (а не знание об этом). • В себе отстранитесь назад и смотрите из себя на эту стену. • Не двигая головой, охватите поле зрения вниманием предельно широко и одновременно всё сразу (всё это) воспримите единым целым. • Высокую и широкую стену (вариант: смотрите вверх под углом 135-150 градусов перед собой) воспримите так, что обозреваемое вами без поворота головы пространство (объем), это – ограниченная по окружности в периферии поля зрения замкнутая несимметричная «линза» • плоская с противоположной вам стороны • и выпуклая в вас; Вы – вогнутый в себя-назад смотрящий («субъект») – каков? – кто из вас сейчас на всё это смотрит? • Не двигая головой, поле зрения воспримите единым целым –» • В себя-назад «втянитесь» –» и «пятьтесь» –» «за мысли» и за всё вообще –» из этого всего назад вытесняясь –» от всего вообще взад отстранитесь –» • собой в себя-назад подайтесь и упершись в собственный (себя) задний к объектному обращённый (развернутый) тупиковый предел –» • станьте самим пределом-тупиком – в себя-назад вогнутой (рефлектор-подобной) пределом-плоскостью смотрящей – воспринимающим зрительным экраном –» станьте плоскостью-тупиком –» • «проскользните» по себе – плоскости-тупику и охватите вниманием целиком –» • собой – самим плоскостью-тупиком назад надавить, нажать –» • осознать: что-то как-то внутри плоскости-тупика и сзади за плоскостью-тупиком, и там вообще «что-то как-то», а также само «внутри» и «сзади», «за плоскостью-тупиком» и вообще «там» – нереальность; • самого себя – плоскости-тупика без толщины (глубины), без «внутри», без обратной стороны для себя нет. • –» То есть – в качестве психической реальности (каково психически) я скончаюсь? –» или • скончаться есть чему – скончаюсь (не исключено). или • я таков, что скончаться нечему, но я есть. или • субъективно-психический эксперимент не завершён. • –» Осознайте, что это – реальность (осознать реальность этого) и подчеркните (ответ). -/- В результате я есть, но скончаться/не скончаться нечему, то есть гипотеза «скончаюсь» – нереальность. -/- Замечания -/- • Каждый завершённый СПЭ завершён целевым результатом: «я таков, что скончаться нечему, но я есть». И тому, каков я в результате СПЭ, то, что скончаться есть чему – скончаюсь (не исключено) не соответствует, то есть нереальность и этим исключено. • То есть, я и не таков, что не скончаюсь. «Я скончаюсь/не скончаюсь» ко мне, как к психике, неприменимо. Иначе это выражая, тому, каков я, смерть несвойственна. То есть, я, как психика (психическое), бессмертен, но я не вечен (не вечный – бесконечно длящийся, таковой, что есть чему длиться) – длиться, быть вечным и не скончаться нечему. Таково «бессмертие». • В целевом результате данной работы я есть, но таков, что скончаться/не скончаться нечему («бессмертие»). И таковой «я» не Атман индуистских школ ньяя, вайшешика и пурва-миманса, о котором сообщает Е.А. Торчинов. Так как «я» психичен, а не субстанция с психическим в качестве атрибута. • Согласно иллюзионизму, то, каков я в результате данного в работе эксперимента, это иллюзия. И впечатление бессмертия, это порождение мозга. А реально я таков, что скончаюсь (не исключено). Однако, необходимо осознать, что иллюзионизм, это отстраненные рассуждения о «я», но не сам я непосредственно. И тому, каков я психически (каково психически), рассуждения и вопросы о реальности «я» (например, таков ли я реально, каков психически?) и другие выражающие иллюзионизм «я» не соответствуют. То есть, каково психически, иллюзионизм «я» – нереальность. Психически, это несомненно и окончательно. • Рассуждения о том, что таковой «я» в этом (моем) или не в этом мозге, а также (например, держа в руках реальный череп), вопросы, типа «а как же (или, но теперь где же здесь) таковой «я» – как это после смерти мозга?» тому, каков таковой «я» эти вопросы не соответствуют. • После пребывания без сознания остается впечатление, что без сознания меня нет и ничего никак нет вообще. То есть, моё «бессознание» психически неотличимо от моего несуществования (небытия). Однако, наукой не показано и не исключено то, что до и после того, как я есть физически (скончаться есть чему), меня ещё или уже нет, скончаться ещё или уже нечему в качестве души, субстанции или как-то иначе. Но, то, каков я в целевом результате данной работы, таковой я есть, а не «скончался и уже теперь или ещё нереальность» и я таков, что скончаться нечему – реален (реалия). То есть, скончаюсь? – нечему (скончаться), но я есть, даже если меня нет (не существую). • Я таков, что быть и скончаться нечему, но я есть. И то, как (каково) психически, это бессмертие – реальность. Но эта реальность ускользает от моего рационального её объяснения. -/- Заключение -/- Скончаюсь? – в целевом результате я есть и вижу, но при этом я таков, что умереть (скончаться) нечему. То есть, я бессмертен, но при этом я не вечен (не нечто вечное (бесконечно длящееся)) – быть вечным нечему. И, если принять психическое реальностью не пытаясь понять это рационально, то я именно таков – осознаю, что такова моя несомненная для меня природа. То есть, «скончаюсь/не скончаюсь» – нереальность. Психически, это несомненно и окончательно. Несмотря на ненаучность, данная работа – способ овладения реальностью. Автор был бы признателен за выявленную и показанную нереальность целевого результата данной работы, а в идеале, за осознание: «скончаюсь (не исключено)». -/- Annex 2. The key essence of this work (only in Russian to convey the nuances without distortion) -/- Performed, expressed and transmitted initially by means of Russian, the native language of the author, and, in order to avoid distortions in the correspondence of the linguistic nuances of the reproduced subjective reality, it assumes an independent translation into the language of the experimenter by the experimenter himself in the process of reproducing the target result of this work. -/- «Я» скончаюсь? – нечему (скончаться), но «Я» есть. Will “I” die (decease)? – to die (decease) nothing, but “I” am. -/- Заметить: • Выполнено, выражено и передано изначально посредством русского – родного для автора языка и, чтобы избежать искажений соответствия языковых нюансов воспроизводимой психической реальности, предполагается самостоятельный перевод на язык экспериментатора самим экспериментатором в процессе воспроизведения целевого результата данной работы. • В «кавычки» взяты слова и выражения, требующие «субъективного» приведения в соответствие психическому содержанию. Подготовка: • Вам потребуется уединённое место (там, где вас не отвлекут). • На первоначальном этапе понадобится некоторое (возможно длительное) время для того, чтобы усвоить предложенный алгоритм действий в психической реальности в процессе реализации и воспроизвести целевой результат впервые. • Возможно, результату поспособствует отклонение от предложенного алгоритма «психических действий», импровизация в направлении целевого результата. • В процессе эксперимента количество попыток не ограничено и затраченное на это время не имеет значения. Необходим исключительно только именно целевой результат. Реализация: • В уединении встать перед плоской широкой и высокой (достаточно большой, чтобы её границы были на периферии вашего поля зрения) стеной, например, покрытой однородной светлой (но не белой) керамической, не глянцевой (не отражающей на вас свет или отвлекающих внимание изображений, не дающей бликов) плиткой с лёгким текстурным рисунком (позволяющим глазам «зацепиться» за стену и отчётливо воспринимать перед собой поверхность, а не «утонуть» в однородном (монотонном) пространстве), на расстоянии 25-40 см от неё (так, чтобы стена занимала всё поле зрения или его подавляющую часть) –» • Скончаюсь (1)? – каково психически (психическое), в моем естественно-научном понимании – это (я) не более чем и исключительно только некоторые состояния функционирующего (живого) мозга – скончаюсь, как и уже скончался каждый умерший мозг – того каждого, кто скончался, как реальности (реального, реалии) (2) уже теперь нет окончательно. Теоретически, если психически я исключительно только таков, что скончаться есть чему и ни каков иначе, то, следовательно, что (я) скончаюсь, это не исключено. • Глядя на стену, здесь и сейчас сосредоточиться на своём лице (и осознать): «я есть» – реальность (а не знание об этом) –» • В себе «отстраниться» назад – смотрю из себя на эту стену –» • Не двигая головой, охватить поле зрения вниманием предельно широко (поднять (вздернуть) брови, если это расширит поле зрения) и одновременно всё сразу (всё это) воспринять единым целым –» • Высокую и широкую стену (вариант: смотреть вверх под углом 135-150 градусов перед собой) воспринять так, что обозреваемое без поворота головы пространство (объем), это – ограниченная по окружности в периферии поля зрения замкнутая несимметричная «линза» • плоская (ограниченная стеной) с противоположной мне стороны • и «выпуклая в меня» –» • Я – «вогнутый» в «себя-назад» смотрящий, каков? – кто из меня сейчас на всё это смотрит? –» • Не двигая головой, поле зрения воспринять единым целым –» • в себя-назад «втянуться» –» и «пятиться» –» «за мысли» и за всё вообще –» из этого всего назад «вытесняясь» –» от всего вообще «взад отстраниться» –» • «собой» в себя-назад «податься» и «упершись» в «собственный (себя) задний к объектному обращённый (развернутый)» «предел тупиковый» («тупо-уперто») –» • «стать» самим «пределом-тупиком» – «в себя-назад вогнутой (рефлектор-подобной)» «пределом-плоскостью» смотрящей – воспринимающим «зрительным экраном» –» стать «плоскостью-тупиком» –» • «проскользнуть» по себе – плоскости-тупику и охватить вниманием целиком –» • собой — самим плоскостью-тупиком «назад надавить, нажать»: • осознать: «что-то как-то внутри плоскости-тупика» и «сзади – за плоскостью-тупиком», и «там вообще» «что-то как-то», а также само «внутри» и «сзади», «за плоскостью-тупиком» и вообще «там» – нереальность; • самого себя – плоскости-тупика без толщины (глубины), без «внутри», без обратной стороны для себя нет –» Собой – плоскостью-тупиком: • без глубины (толщины), без «внутри», без обратной стороны таков, что скончаться есть чему – скончаюсь (не исключено) –» • смотрю –» смотря –» «Непосредственно-психически» -/- Заметить: • Специфику используемых в данной работе слов (терминов), названий и выражений необходимо осознать в соответствии с (4.1.) (данный пункт смотрите ниже). • Необходимо от себя – (как) «смотрящего плоскости-тупика», такового, что скончаться есть чему, оттождествиться собой — «самим психическим» (каково психически) (3) –» • –» «отличить (4)» «Я» –» «Я-лик». • Отличив, и себя такового обозначая, но не имея в языке отличающего местоимения, именую «Я» (5). • «Соединённое-через-дефис-в-кавычках» реализовать и/или воспринять «одним-единым-целостным»; • Последовательность слов и знаков предполагает последовательность психических действий (алгоритм действий в собственном психическом); • Вопросительность слова, фразы или отдельной её, именно вопросительной части задаётся знаком «?» расположенным перед и после них. Требование к действию задаётся знаком «!» расположенным перед и после слова (фразы); • Субъективно-психический эксперимент завершён, если воспроизведен (4.1.), иначе субъективно-психический эксперимент не завершён. -/- Собой – плоскостью-тупиком … смотрю –» смотря –» -/- «Психически» (6) 1. ?кто? видит –» !отличить «Я»! –» 2. –» !«Я-видящий-лик»! –» 3. –» !«Я-лик»! –» 4. –» !«Я-ликом» всем «психически-назад-надавить(нажать)»: «Я» ?скончаюсь?! –» !«Я-ликом» всем «психически-назад-давить(жать)»: (4.1.) – нечему (7), но «Я» есть.! -/- Признательность: Согласно иллюзионизму, то, каков «Я» (как (каково) «скончаться нечему, но «Я» есть.»), реально, это не так (не таково). То есть, таковой «Я» нереален (нереальность), а реально – таков, что скончаюсь (не исключено). Однако, необходимо осознать, что это «отстраненные» от «Я» рассуждения о «Я», но не сам «Я» непосредственно. И тому, каков «Я» (как (каково) скончаться нечему, но «Я» есть.) таковое (рассуждения) не соответствует. То есть, эти рассуждения о «Я» – заблуждение. Это (как осознание) несомненно и окончательно. Не так? – за выявленную и показанную нереальность (того, что) «Скончаюсь? – нечему (скончаться), но «Я» есть.», за показанную реальность того, что скончаться не исключено, а в идеале, за осознание: «скончаюсь (не исключено)» я был бы признателен. -/- (Сноски) (1) Именно «скончаюсь, скончался», то есть – как реальности (реального, реалии) нет окончательно. (2) Реалия, реально, реален, реальность, реальное – само то, что (каково это) непосредственно, как само таковое – само то, каково познаваемое и как-либо моделируемое вне его познания и иного (вообще) моделирования. То есть, само само-осознание себя реальностью, например, «я-реалия», «я есть» или «скончаться – нечему, но «Я» есть.» – реальность. То есть – нам ничто не запрещает ответить на вопрос «скончаюсь?» несомненно и окончательно. (3) Психически (психическое) – то, как (каково) я сам непосредственно, несомненно, и та моя непосредственная реальность, как и посредством чего я сам и всё вообще для меня есть, и которое для меня исключительно единственное. Следует заметить, что пока бываю без сознания (травма мозга или сон без сновидений), ничего и никак нет вообще. Также само обозначение того, что это сама собственная непосредственная реальность (то есть – несомненно). И чтобы её осознать, представьте себя экспериментатором, который не подменяет реальность рассуждениями о ней. – Теперь для вас, как экспериментатора, то, как (каково) психически, это – несомненно (непосредственная несомненная реальность). Не философствуй (не рассуждай, не моделируй её), а экспериментируй! (4) «Я-Лик» – специфическое выражение, соответствующее психическому в данный момент СПЭ. (5) «Я» – целевой (конечный, «предельный») и «ключевой» результат данной работы. «Я» в данной работе не склоняется, выделено полужирным подчеркнутым шрифтом и заключено в кавычки. (6) «Каково психически» – то, как (каково) «Я» сам непосредственно, несомненно – само «первое лицо» (субъект психического), а также обозначение принятия позиции «первого лица» и сообщения «от первого лица». (7) Пока я бываю без сознания («бессознание», например, сплю без сновидений), моего сознания нет (оно сведено на нет, угасло) – ничего и никак нет вообще (это моё абсолютное небытие) – (каково) психически, мне скончаться нечем. А в целевом результате данной работы, психически (то есть – непосредственно), «Я» таков, что скончаться не нечем, а именно нечему, но при этом «Я» есть. (shrink)

We present a cognitive-physicalist account of phenomenal consciousness. We argue that phenomenal concepts do not differ from other types of concepts. When explaining the peculiarities of conscious experience, the right place to look at is sensory/ perceptual representations and their interaction with general conceptual structures. We utilize Jerry Fodor’s psycho- semantic theory to formulate our view. We compare and contrast our view with that of Murat Aydede and Güven Güzeldere, who, using Dretskean psychosemantic theory, arrived at a solution (...) different from ours in some ways. We have suggested that the representational atomism of certain sensory experiences plays a central role in reconstructing the epistemic gap associated with conscious experience, still, atomism is not the whole story. It needs to be supple- mented by some additional principles. We also add an account of introspection, and suggest some cognitive features that might distinguish representational atoms with phenomenal character from those without it. (shrink)

Peter Carruthers argues that the global workspace theory implies there are no facts of the matter about animal consciousness. The argument is easily extended to other cognitive theories of consciousness, posing a general problem for consciousness studies. But the argument proves too much, for it also implies that there are no facts of the matter about human consciousness. A key assumption of the argument is that scientific theories of consciousness must explain away the explanatory gap. I criticize this assumption and (...) point to an alternative strategy for defending scientific theories of consciousness, one that better reflects the ongoing scientific practice. I argue there are introspectable inferential connections from phenomenal concepts to functional concepts that scientists can use to individuate the global workspace in terms of capacities that animals and humans share. (shrink)

Quantities like mass and temperature are properties that come in degrees. And those degrees (e.g. 5 kg) are properties that are called the magnitudes of the quantities. Some philosophers (e.g., Byrne 2003; Byrne & Hilbert 2003; Schroer 2010) talk about magnitudes of phenomenal qualities as if some of our phenomenal qualities are quantities. The goal of this essay is to explore the anti-physicalist implication of this apparently innocent way of conceptualizing phenomenal quantities. I will first argue for (...) a metaphysical thesis about the nature of magnitudes based on Yablo’s proportionality requirement of causation. Then, I will show that, if some phenomenal qualities are indeed quantities, there can be no demonstrative concepts about some of our phenomenal feelings. That presents a significant restriction on the way physicalists can account for the epistemic gap between the phenomenal and the physical. I’ll illustrate the restriction by showing how that rules out a popular physicalist response to the Knowledge Argument. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to defend Langsam’s Theory of Appearing (TA) against Djukic et al’s critique. In strengthening Langsam’s defense of TA, I adopt some of Le Morvan's arguments in defending Direct Realism. TA states that experiences are relations between material object and mind, and that phenomenal features are appearances of relations held between material objects and mind. Djukic objects to TA on three grounds of Hallucination, Causal Principle (CP), and Time-Gap: First, Djukic objects to TA (...) on the ground that perception and hallucinations are phenomenally indistinguishable, thus phenomenal features (or properties) instantiated in perception may not be relations either, and thus TA could fail. In defending TA, Langsam argues that indistinguishability does not entail that perception and hallucination instantiate the same appearance. Moreover, disjunctivist conception of experience supports TA in that phenomenal features are either a relation between a material object and mind, or it is something else (as in cases of hallucination). I aim to show that sense-data (or like) theories of perception, that Djukic favors as being superior, would fail Djukic's own scrutiny in cases of hallucination in addition to being against common-sense. Second objection is that perception and hallucination must have the same-cause because they are indistinguishable, and also CP requires that same-causes to produce the same-effects. But hallucination and perception are different experiences, and hence TA fails CP. Responding to CP objection, “same-cause same-effect” only applies to intrinsic changes and intrinsic changes are changes in intrinsic properties and relations between intrinsic properties. Third, TA is opposed because for a given Time-Gap we cannot experience objects as they are (were) at the time of our perception. TA defeats this objection because it does not claim that “we can now (experience) the no-longer existent object as it is now, but only that we can now (experience) the once-existent object as it used to be. Fourth, to further strengthen TA, I will raise objections to TA including from the vantage point of Durability, Perceptual Relativity, Illusion, and Partial Perception arguments, and respond to such objections accordingly. To explicate TA, I argue from the vantage points of common sense, realistic physical biological considerations, and non-miraculous expectations from any theory of perception, including from TA. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that physicalism faces its most serious challenge when it comes to making room for the phenomenal character of psychological experience, its so-called what-it-is-like aspect. The challenge has surfaced repeatedly over the past two decades in a variety of forms. In a particularly striking one, Frank Jackson considers a situation in which Mary, a brilliant scientist who knows all the physical facts there are to know about psychological experience, has spent the whole of her life in (...) a black and white room. He asks, What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a colour television monitor? Will she learn anything or not? It seems just obvious that she will learn something about the world and our visual experience of it. But then it is inescapable that her previous knowledge was incomplete. But she had all the physical information. (Jackson 1986: 130). (shrink)

I consider the first part of Marty’s Raum und Zeit, which treats of both the nature of space and spatial perception. I begin by sketching two charges that Marty raises against Kantian and Brentanian conceptions of space (and spatial perception) respectively, before detailing what I take to be a characteristically Martyan picture of space perception, though set against the backdrop of contemporary philosophy of perception. Marty has it that spatial relations are non-real but existent, causally inert relations that are grounded (...) in space, which is itself non-real but existent. Objects do not inhere in space in the way properties inhere in substances. Rather, there is a ‘non-real’ relation of ‘fulfillment’ (Erfüllung) that holds between objects and places in space, which itself subsists. I consider whether any contemporary philosophy of perception is equipped to make sense of Martyan space perception and I suggest that the most promising conception is Naïve Realism. I then outline a difficulty for this theoretical translation. Naïve Realism is a direct theory of perception whereby S is said to perceive O just in case S stands in a psychological relation of acquaintance with O, where this relation is both non-representational and explanatorily primitive. For Marty however, all relations are non-real and, insofar as they are grounded, are neither fundamental, nor brute or primitive in an explanatory sense. I close by detailing what I thereby take a distinctively Martyan form of Naïve Realism to involve. The central theoretical tenet that phenomenal character is fundamentally constituted by worldly objects is preserved; but the manifestly relational structure of the acquaintance relation, construed in particular as a relation of awareness, is treated as derivative. I make headway in spelling out the latter claim by bringing Marty into fleeting conversation with another Thomist - G.E.M. Anscombe. (shrink)

Recently, the construct ‘lucid dreamless sleep’ has been proposed to explain the state of ‘clear light’ described by Tibetan Buddhist traditions, a special state of consciousness during deep sleep in which we’re told to be able to recognise the nature or essence of our mind (Padmasambhava & Gyatrul, 2008; Ponlop, 2006; Wangyal, 1998). To explain the sort of awareness experienced during this state, some authors have appealed to the sort of lucidity acquired during lucid dreaming and suggested a link between (...) both phenomena (Thompson, 2014, 2015; Windt, 2015a; Windt et al., 2016). Whilst these authors appeal to a non-conceptually mediated form of lucidity, which doesn’t consist of reflective awareness and propositional thought, the question as to whether the state of clear light should be considered a lucid state similar to lucid dreaming still arises. I argue that the concept ‘lucidity’ used to describe this sort of state is imprecise and that two theoretical notions of lucidity should be distinguished. The first one, which I call the technical notion, requires the recognition of the hallucinatory character of my current experience. The second, the broader notion, involves the seeming recognition of being directly acquainted with the phenomenal character of my experience. I spell out these two notions of lucidity and argue that only the latter could apply to the state of clear light sleep. (shrink)

Interactive social cognition theory and approaches of developmental psychology widely agree that central aspects of emotional and social experience arise in the unfolding of processes of embodied social interaction. Bi-directional dynamical couplings of bodily displays such as facial expressions, gestures, and vocalizations have repeatedly been described in terms of coordination, synchrony, mimesis, or attunement. In this paper, I propose conceptualizing such dynamics rather as processes of affective resonance. Starting from the immediate phenomenal experience of being immersed in interaction, I (...) develop the philosophical notion of affective resonance to refer to a dynamic entanglement of moving and being-moved in relation. The concept of affective resonance makes visible that the interaction dynamic itself creates an affective experience rather than transmitting internal feeling states between pre-existent individuals. This leads to a philosophical framework in which relationality and ontogeny are primary over separate individuals, and in which the naturalistic distinction of a fundamental physical level versus an emerging level of social processes has to be given up. (shrink)

It’s plausible that we only fully appreciate the value of something, say a painting or a blameworthy action, when we have a fitting emotional response to it, such as admiration or guilt. But exactly how and why do we grasp value through emotion? I propose, first, that a subject S phenomenally grasps property P only if what it is to be P is manifest in the phenomenal character of S’s experience. Second, following clues from the Stoics, I argue that (...) the phenomenal character of emotional experience is constitutively linked with its having directive content. More precisely, emotional experience directs us both to adopt a maxim for action – take certain characteristic kinds of action for an emotion-specific end – and to treat something about the object as a presumptively decisive reason to take such action for such end. If we assent to what the experience proposes (or rational control gets bypassed), we are motivated to take the relevant action and have a corresponding evaluative belief. This picture of emotional cognition yields a natural conception of the evaluative fittingness conditions of emotions without the problematic assumption that they have a presentational phenomenology. Instead, it is precisely in virtue of the directive and valenced phenomenology of emotion that values are only fully manifest in emotional experience, since values are essentially action- and attitude-guiding properties. (shrink)

continent. 1.1 : 3-13. / 0/ – Introduction I want to propose, as a trajectory into the philosophically weird, an absurd theoretical claim and pursue it, or perhaps more accurately, construct it as I point to it, collecting the ground work behind me like the Perpetual Train from China Mieville's Iron Council which puts down track as it moves reclaiming it along the way. The strange trajectory is the following: Kant's critical philosophy and much of continental philosophy which has followed, (...) has been a defense against horror and madness. Kant's prohibition on speculative metaphysics such as dogmatic metaphysics and transcendental realism, on thinking beyond the imposition of transcendental and moral constraints, has been challenged by numerous figures proceeding him. One of the more interesting critiques of Kant comes from the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land stating, “Kant’s critical philosophy is the most elaborate fit of panic in the history of the Earth.” And while Alain Badiou would certainly be opposed to the libidinal investments of Land's Deleuzo-Guattarian thought, he is likewise critical of Kant's normative thought-bureaucracies: Kant is the one author for whom I cannot feel any kinship. Everything in him exasperates me, above all his legalism—always asking Quid Juris? Or ‘Haven’t you crossed the limit?’—combined, as in today’s United States, with a religiosity that is all the more dismal in that it is both omnipresent and vague. The critical machinery he set up has enduringly poisoned philosophy, while giving great succour to the academy, which loves nothing more than to rap the knuckles of the overambitious [….] That is how I understand the truth of Monique David-Menard’s reflections on the properly psychotic origins of Kantianism. I am persuaded that the whole of the critical enterprise is set up to to shield against the tempting symptom represented by the seer Swedenborg, or against ‘diseases of the head’, as Kant puts it. An entire nexus of the limits of reason and philosophy are set up here, namely that the critical philosophy not only defends thought from madness, philosophy from madness, and philosophy from itself, but that philosophy following the advent of the critical enterprise philosophy becomes auto-vampiric; feeding on itself to support the academy. Following Francois Laruelle's non-philosophical indictment of philosophy, we could go one step further and say that philosophy operates on the material of what is philosophizable and not the material of the external world. [1] Beyond this, the Kantian scheme of nestling human thinking between our limited empirical powers and transcendental guarantees of categorical coherence, forms of thinking which stretch beyond either appear illegitimate, thereby liquefying both pre-critical metaphysics and the ravings of the mad in the same critical acid. In rejecting the Kantian apparatus we are left with two entities – an unsure relation of thought to reality where thought is susceptible to internal and external breakdown and a reality with an uncertain sense of stability. These two strands will be pursued, against the sane-seal of post-Kantian philosophy by engaging the work of weird fiction authors H.P. Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti. The absolute inhumanism of the formers universe will be used to describe a Shoggothic Materialism while the dream worlds of the latter will articulate the mad speculation of a Ventriloquil Idealism. But first we must address the relation of philosophy to madness as well as philosophy to weird fiction. /1/ – Philosophy and Madness There is nothing that the madness of men invents which is not either nature made manifest or nature restored. Michel Foucault. Madness and Civilization. The moment I doubt whether an event that I recall actually took place, I bring the suspicion of madness upon myself: unless I am uncertain as to whether it was not a mere dream. Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Idea, Vol. 3. Madness is commonly thought of as moving through several well known cultural-historical shifts from madness as a demonic or otherwise theological force, to rationalization, to medicalization psychiatric and otherwise. Foucault's Madness and Civilization is well known for orientating madness as a form of exclusionary social control which operated by demarcating madness from reason. Yet Foucault points to the possibility of madness as the necessity of nature at least prior to the crushing weight of the church. Kant’s philosophy as a response to madness is grounded by his humanizing of madness itself. As Adrian Johnston points out in the early pages of Time Driven pre-Kantian madness meant humans were seized by demonic or angelic forces whereas Kantian madness became one of being too human. Madness becomes internalized, the external demonic forces become flaws of the individual mind. Foucault argues that, while madness is de-demonized it is also dehumanized during the Renaissance, as madmen become creatures neither diabolic nor totally human reduced to the zero degree of humanity. It is immediately clear why for Kant, speculative metaphysics must be curbed – with the problem of internal madness and without the external safeguards of transcendental conditions, there is nothing to formally separate the speculative capacities for metaphysical diagnosis from the mad ramblings of the insane mind – both equally fall outside the realm of practicality and quotidian experience. David-Menard's work is particularly useful in diagnosing the relation of thought and madness in Kant's texts. David-Menard argues that in Kant's relatively unknown “An Essay on the Maladies of the Mind” as well as his later discussion of the Seer of Swedenborg, that Kant formulates madness primarily in terms of sensory upheaval or other hallucinatory theaters. She writes: “madness is an organization of thought. It is made possible by the ambiguity of the normal relation between the imaginary and the perceived, whether this pertains to the order of sensation or to the relations between our ideas” Kant's fascination with the Seer forces Kant between the pincers of “aesthetic reconciliation” – namely melancholic withdrawal – and “a philosophical invention” – namely the critical project. Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis is a combination and reversal of Kant's split, where an aesthetic over engagement with the world entails prolific conceptual invention. Their embrace of madness, however, is of course itself conceptual despite all their rhizomatic maneuvers. Though they move with the energy of madness, Deleuze and Guattari save the capacity of thought from the fangs of insanity by imbuing materiality itself with the capacity for thought. Or, as Ray Brassier puts it, “Deleuze insists, it is necessary to absolutize the immanence of this world in such a way as to dissolve the transcendent disjunction between things as we know them and as they are in themselves”. That is, whereas Kant relied on the faculty of judgment to divide representation from objectivity Deleuze attempts to flatten the whole economy beneath the juggernaut of ontological univocity. Speculation, as a particularly useful form of madness, might fall close to Deleuze and Guattari’s shaping of philosophy into a concept producing machine but is different in that it is potentially self destructive – less reliant on the stability of its own concepts and more adherent to exposing a particular horrifying swath of reality. Speculative madness is always a potential disaster in that it acknowledges little more than its own speculative power with the hope that the gibbering of at least a handful of hysterical brains will be useful. Pre-critical metaphysics amounts to madness, though this may be because the world itself is mad while new attempts at speculative metaphysics, at post-Kantian pre-critical metaphysics, are well aware of our own madness. Without the sobriety of the principle of sufficient reason we have a world of neon madness: “we would have to conceive what our life would be if all the movements of the earth, all the noises of the earth, all the smells, the tastes, all the light – of the earth and elsewhere, came to us in a moment, in an instant – like an atrocious screaming tumult of things”. Speculative thought may be participatory in the screaming tumult of the world or, worse yet, may produce its spectral double. Against theology or reason or simply commonsense, the speculative becomes heretical. Speculation, as the cognitive extension of the horrorific sublime should be met with melancholic detachment. Whereas Kant's theoretical invention, or productivity of thought, is self -sabotaging, since the advent of the critical project is a productivity of thought which then delimits the engine of thought at large either in dogmatic gestures or non-systematizable empirical wondrousness. The former is celebrated by the fiction of Thomas Ligotti whereas the latter is espoused by the tales of H.P. Lovecraft. /2/ – Weird Fiction and Philosophy. Supernatural horror, in all its eerie constructions, enables a reader to taste treats inconsistent with his personal welfare. Thomas Ligotti Songs of a Dead Dreamer. I choose weird stories because they suit my inclination best—one of my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve,momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which forever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our sight and analysis H.P. Lovecraft. “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction” Lovecraft states that his creation of a story is to suspend natural law yet, at the same time, he indexes the tenuousness of such laws, suggesting the vast possibilities of the cosmic. The tension that Lovecraft sets up between his own fictions and the universe or nature is reproduced within his fictions in the common theme of the unreliable narrator; unreliable precisely because they are either mad or what they have witnessed questions the bounds of material reality. In “The Call of Cthulhu” Lovecraft writes: The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. Despite Lovecraft's invocations of illusion, he is not claiming that his fantastic creations such as the Old Ones are supernatural but, following Joshi, are only ever supernormal. One can immediately see that instead of nullifying realism Lovecraft in fact opens up the real to an unbearable degree. In various letters and non-fictional statements Lovecraft espoused strictly materialist tenets, ones which he borrowed from Hugh Elliot namely the uniformity of law, the denial of teleology and the denial of non-material existence. Lovecraft seeks to explore the possibilities of such a universe by piling horror upon horror until the fragile brain which attempts to grasp it fractures. This may be why philosophy has largely ignored weird fiction – while Deleuze and Guattari mark the turn towards weird fiction and Lovecraft in particular, with the precursors to speculative realism as well as contemporary related thinkers have begun to view Lovecraft as making philosophical contributions. Lovecraft's own relation to philosophy is largely critical while celebrating Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. This relationship of Lovecraft to philosophy and philosophy to Lovecraft is coupled with Lovecraft's habit of mercilessly destroying the philosopher and the figure of the academic more generally in his work, a destruction which is both an epistemological destruction and an ontological destruction. Thomas Ligotti's weird fiction which he has designated as a kind of “confrontational escapism” might be best described in the following quote from one of his shortstories, “The human phenomenon is but the sum of densely coiled layers of illusion each of which winds itself on the supreme insanity. That there are persons of any kind when all there can be is mindless mirrors laughing and screaming as they parade about in an endless dream”. Whereas Lovecraft's weirdness draws predominantly from the abyssal depths of the uncharted universe, Ligotti's existential horror focuses on the awful proliferation of meaningless surfaces that is, the banal and every day function of representation. In an interview, Ligotti states: We don't even know what the world is like except through our sense organs, which are provably inadequate. It's no less the case with our brains. Our whole lives are motored along by forces we cannot know and perceptions that are faulty. We sometimes hear people say that they're not feeling themselves. Well, who or what do they feel like then? This is not to say that Ligotti sees nothing beneath the surface but that there is only darkness or blackness behind it, whether that surface is on the cosmological level or the personal. By addressing the implicit and explicit philosophical issues in Ligotti's work we will see that his nightmarish take on reality is a form of malevolent idealism, an idealism which is grounded in a real, albeit dark and obscure materiality. If Ligotti's horrors ultimately circle around mad perceptions which degrade the subject, it takes aim at the vast majority of the focus of continental philosophy. While Lovecraft's acidic materialism clearly assaults any romantic concept of being from the outside, Ligotti attacks consciousness from the inside: Just a little doubt slipped into the mind, a little trickle of suspicion in the bloodstream, and all those eyes of ours, one by one, open up to the world and see its horror [...] Not even the solar brilliance of a summer day will harbor you from horror. For horror eats the light and digests it into darkness. Clearly, the weird fiction of Lovecraft and Ligotti amount to a anti-anthrocentric onslaught against the ramparts of correlationist continental philosophy. /3/ – Shoggothic Materialism or the Formless Formless protoplasm able to mock and reflect all forms and organs and processes—viscous agglutinations of bubbling cells—rubbery fifteen-foot spheroids infinitely plastic and ductile—slaves of suggestion, builders of cities—more and more sullen, more and more intelligent, more and more amphibious, more and more imitative—Great God! What madness made even those blasphemous Old Ones willing to use and to carve such things? H.P. Lovecraft. “At the Mountains of Madness” On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit. Georges Bataille. “Formless”. The Shoggoths feature most prominently in H.P. Lovecraft's shortstory “At the Mountains of Madness” where they are described in the following manner: It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train – a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self -luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter. The term is a litmus test for materialism itself as the Shoggoth is an amorphous creature. The Shoggoths were living digging machines bio engineered by the Elder Things, and their protoplasmic bodies being formed into various tools by their hypnotic powers. The Shoggoths eventually became self aware and rose up against their masters in an ultimately failed rebellion. After the Elder Ones retreated into the oceans leaving the Shoggoths to roam the frozen wastes of the Antarctic. The onto-genesis of the Shoggoths and their gross materiality, index the horrifyingly deep time of the earth a concept near and dear to Lovecraft's formulation of horror as well as the fear of intelligences far beyond, and far before, the ascent of humankind on earth and elsewhere. The sickly amorphous nature of the Shoggoths invade materialism at large, where while materiality is unmistakably real ie not discursive, psychological, or otherwise overly subjectivist, it questions the relation of materialism to life. As Eugene Thacker writes: The Shoggoths or Elder Things do not even share the same reality with the human beings who encounter them—and yet this encounter takes place, though in a strange no-place that is neither quite that of the phenomenal world of the human subject or the noumenal world of an external reality. Amorphous yet definitively material beings are a constant in Lovecraft's tales. In his tale “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadatth” Lovecraft describes Azathoth as, “that shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe,” that, “last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blashphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity,” who, “gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time”. Azathoth's name may have multiple origins but the most striking is the alchemy term azoth which is both a cohesive agent and a acidic creation pointing back to the generative and the decayed. The indistinction of generation and degradation materially mirrors the blur between the natural and the unnatural as well as life and non-life. Lovecraft speaks of the tension between the natural and the unnatural is his short story “The Unnameable.” He writes, “if the psychic emanations of human creatures be grotesque distortions, what coherent representation could express or portray so gibbous and infamous a nebulousity as the spectre of a malign, chaotic perversion, itself a morbid blasphemy against Nature?”. Lovecraft explores exactly the tension outlined at the beginning of this chapter, between life and thought. At the end of his short tale Lovecraft compounds the problem as the unnameable is described as “a gelatin—a slime—yet it had shapes, a thousand shapes of horror beyond all memory”. Deleuze suggests that becoming-animal is operative throughout Lovecraft's work, where narrators feel themselves reeling at their becoming non-human or of being the anomalous or of becoming atomized. Following Eugene Thacker however, it may be far more accurate to say that Lovecraft's tales exhibit not a becoming-animal but a becoming-creature. Where the monstrous breaks the purportedly fixed laws of nature, the creature is far more ontologically ambiguous. The nameless thing is an altogether different horizon for thought. The creature is either less than animal or more than animal – its becoming is too strange for animal categories and indexes the slow march of thought towards the bizarre. This strangeness is, as aways, some indefinite swirling in the category of immanence and becoming. Bataille begins “The Labyrinth” with the assertion that being, to continue to be, is becoming. More becoming means more being hence the assertion that Bataille's barking dog is more than the sponge. This would mean that the Shoggotth is altogether too much being, too much material in the materialism. Bataille suggests that there is an immanence between the eater and the eaten, across the species and never within them. That is, despite the chaotic storm of immanence there must remain some capacity to distinguish the gradients of becoming without reliance upon, or at least total dependence upon, the powers of intellection to parse the universe into recognizable bits, properly digestible factoids. That is, if we undo Deleuze's aforementioned valorization of sense which, for his variation of materialism, performed the work of the transcendental, but refuse to reinstate Kant's transcendental disjunction between thing and appearance, then it must be a quality of becoming-as-being itself which can account for the discernible nature of things by sense. In an interview with Peter Gratton, Jane Bennett formulates the problem thusly: What is this strange systematicity proper to a world of Becoming? What, for example, initiates this congealing that will undo itself? Is it possible to identify phases within this formativity, plateaus of differentiation? If so, do the phases/plateaus follow a temporal sequence? Or, does the process of formation inside Becoming require us to theorize a non-chronological kind of time? I think that your student’s question: “How can we account for something like iterable structures in an assemblage theory?” is exactly the right question. Philosophy has erred too far on the side of the subject in the subject-object relation and has furthermore, lost the very weirdness of the non-human. Beyond this, the madness of thought need not override. /4/ - Ventriloquial Idealism or the Externality of Thought My aim is the opposite of Lovecraft's. He had an appreciation for natural scenery on earth and wanted to reach beyond the visible in the universe. I have no appreciation for natural scenery and want the objective universe to be a reflection of a character. Thomas Ligotti. “Devotees of Decay and Desolation.” Unless life is a dream, nothing makes sense. For as a reality, it is a rank failure [….] Horror is more real than we are. Thomas Ligotti. “Professor Nobody's Little Lectures on Supernatural Horror”. Thomas Ligotti's tales are rife with mannequins, puppets, and other brainless entities which of replace the valorized subject of philosophy – that of the free thinking human being. His tales such as “The Dream of the Manikin” aim to destroy the rootedness of consciousness. James Trafford has connected the anti-egoism of Ligotti to Thomas Metzinger – where the self is at best an illusion and we plead desperately for someone else to acknowledge that we are real. Trafford has stated it thus, “Life is played out as an inescapable puppet show, an endless dream in which the puppets are generally unaware that they are trapped within a mesmeric dance of whose mechanisms they know nothing and over which they have no control”. An absolute materialism, for Ligotti, implies an alienation of the idea which leads to a ventriloquil idealism. As Ligotti notes in an interview, “the fiasco and nightmare of existence, the particular fiasco and nightmare of human existence, the sense that people are puppets of powers they cannot comprehend, etc.” And then further elaborates that,“[a]ssuming that anything has to exist, my perfect world would be one in which everyone has experienced the annulment of his or her ego. That is, our consciousness of ourselves as unique individuals would entirely disappear”. The externality of the idea leads to the unfortunate consequence of consciousness eating at itself through horror which, for Ligotti, is more real than reality and goes beyond horror-as-affect. Beyond this, taking together with the unreality of life and the ventriloquizing of subjectivity, Ligotti's thought becomes an idealism in which thought itself is alien and ultimately horrifying. The role of human thought and the relation of non-relation of horror to thought is not completely clear in Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. Ligotti argues in his The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,that the advent of thought is a mistake of nature and that horror is being in the sense that horror results from knowing too much. Yet, at the same time, Ligotti seems to suggest that thought separates us from nature whereas, for Lovecraft, thought is far less privileged – mind is just another manifestation of the vital principal, it is just another materialization of energy. In his brilliant “Prospects for Post-Copernican Dogmatism” Iain Grant rallies against the negative definition of dogmatism and the transcendental, and suggests that negatively defining both over-focuses on conditions of access and subjectivism at the expense of the real or nature. With Schelling, who is Grant's champion against the subjectivist bastions of both Fichte and Kant, Ligotti's idealism could be taken as a transcendental realism following from an ontological realism. Yet the transcendental status of Ligotti's thought move towards a treatment of the transcendental which may threaten to leave beyond its realist ground. Ligotti states: Belief in the supernatural is only superstition. That said, a sense of the supernatural, as Conrad evidenced in Heart of Darkness, must be admitted if one's inclination is to go to the limits of horror. It is the sense of what should not be- the sense of being ravaged by the impossible. Phenomenally speaking, the super-natural may be regarded as the metaphysical counterpart of insanity, a transcendental correlative of a mind that has been driven mad. Again, Ligotti equates madness with thought, qualifying both as supernatural while remaining less emphatic about the metaphysical dimensions of horror. The question becomes one of how exactly the hallucinatory realm of the ideal relates to the black churning matter of Lovecraft's chaos of elementary particles. In his tale “I Have a Special Plan for This World” Ligotti formulates thus: A: There is no grand scheme of things. B: If there were a grand scheme of things, the fact – the fact – that we are not equipped to perceive it, either by natural or supernatural means, is a nightmarish obscenity. C: The very notion of a grand scheme of things is a nightmarish obscenity. Here Ligotti is not discounting metaphysics but implying that if it does exist the fact that we are phenomenologically ill-equipped to perceive that it is nightmarish. For Ligotti, nightmare and horror occur within the circuit of consciousness whereas for Lovecraft the relation between reality and mind is less productive on the side of mind. It is easier to ascertain how the Kantian philosophy is a defense against the diseases of the head as Kant armors his critical enterprise from too much of the world and too much of the mind. The weird fiction of both Lovecraft and Ligotti demonstrates that there is too much of both feeding into one another in a way that corrodes the Kantian schema throughly, breaking it down into a dead but still ontologically potentiated nigredo. The haunting, terrifying fact of Ligotti's idealism is that the transcendental motion which brought thought to matter, while throughly material and naturalized, brings with it the horror that thought cannot be undone without ending the material that bears it either locally or completely. Thought comes from an elsewhere and an elsewhen being-in-thought. The unthinkable outside thought is as maddening as the unthought engine of thought itself within thought which doesn't exist except for the mind, the rotting décor of the brain. /5/ - Hyperstitional Transcendental Paranoia or Self -Expelled Thought Weird fiction has been given some direct treatment in philosophy in the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land. Nick Land along with others in the 1990s created the Cyber Culture Research Unit as well as the research group Hyperstition. The now defunct hyperstitional website, an outgrowth of the Cyber Culture Research Unit, defined hyperstition in the following fourfold: 1-Element of effective culture that makes itself real. 2-Fictional quantity functional as a time-traveling device. 3-Coincidence intensifier. 4-Call to the Old Ones. The distinctively Lovecraftian character of hyperstition is hard to miss as is its Deleuzo-Guattarian roots. In the opening pages of A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari write, “We have been criticized for over-quoting literary authors. But when one writes, the only question is which other machine the literary machine can be plugged into”. The indisinction of literature and philosophy mirrors the mess of being and knowing as post-correlationist philosophy, where philosophy tries to make itself real where literature, especially the weird, aims itself at the brain-circuit of horror. The texts of both Lovecraft and Ligotti work through horror as epistemological plasticity meeting with proximity as well as the deep time of Lovecraft and the glacially slow time of paranoia in Ligotti. Against Deleuze, and following Brassier, we cannot allow the time of consciousness, the Bergsonian time of the duree, to override natural time, but instead acknowledge that it is an unfortunate fact of existence as a thinking being. Horror-time, the time of consciousness, with all its punctuated moments and drawn out terrors, cannot compare to the deep time of non-existence both in the unreachable past and the unknown future. The crystalline cogs of Kant's account of experience as the leading light for the possibility of metaphysics must be throughly obliterated. His gloss of experience in Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics could not be more sterile: Experience consists of intuitions, which belong to the sensibility, and of judgments, which are entirely a work of the understanding. But the judgments which the understanding makes entirely out of sensuous intuitions are far from being judgments of experience. For in the one case the judgment connects only the perceptions as they are given in sensuous intuition [....] Experience consists in the synthetic connection of appearances in consciousness, so far as this connection is necessary. Here it is difficult to dismiss the queasiness that Kant's legalism induces upon sight for both Badiou and David-Menard. Kant's thought becomes, as Foucault says when reflecting on Sade's text in relation to nature, “the savage abolition of itself”. For Badiou, Kant's philosophy simply closes off too much of the outside, freezing the world of thought in an all too limited formalism. Critical philosophy is simply the systematized quarantine on future thinking, on thinking which would threaten the formalism which artificially grants thought its own coherency in the face of madness. Even the becoming-mad of Deleuze, while escaping the rumbling ground, makes grounds for itself, mad grounds but grounds which are thinkable in their affect. The field of effects allows for Deleuze's aesthetic and radical empiricism, in which effects and/or occasions make up the material of the world to be thought as a chaosmosis of simulacra. Given a critique of an empiricism of aesthetics, of the image, it may be difficult to justify an attack on Kantian formalism with the madness of literature, which does not aim to make itself real but which we may attempt to make real. That is, how do Lovecraft's and Ligotti's materials, as materials for philosophy to work on, differ from either the operative formalisms of Kant or the implicitly formalized images of Deleuzian empiricism? It is simply that such texts do not aim to make themselves real, and make claims to the real which are more alien to us than familiar, which is why their horror is immediately more trustworthy. This is the madness which Blanchot discusses in The Infinite Conversation through Cervantes and his knight – the madness of book-life, of the perverse unity of literature and life a discussion which culminates in the discussion of one of the weird's masters, that of Kafka. The text is the knowing of madness, since madness, in its moment of becoming-more-mad, cannot be frozen in place but by the solidifications of externalizing production. This is why Foucault ends his famous study with works of art. Furthermore extilligence, the ability to export the products of our maligned brains, is the companion of the attempts to export, or discover the possibility of intelligences outside of our heads, in order for philosophy to survive the solar catastrophe. To borrow again from Deleuze, writing is inseparable from becoming. The mistake is to believe that madness is reabsorbed by extilligence, by great works, or that it could be exorcised by the expelling of thought into the inorganic or differently organic. Going out of our heads does not guarantee we will no longer mean we cannot still go out of our minds. This is simply because of the outside, of matter, or force, or energy, or thing-in-itself, or Schopenhauerian Will. In Lovecraft’s “The Music of Erich Zahn” an “impoverished student of metaphysics” becomes intrigued by strange viol music coming from above his room. After meeting the musician the student discovers that each night he plays frantic music at a window in order to keep some horridness at bay, some “impenetrable darkness with chaos and pandemonium”. The aesthetic defenses provided by the well trained brain can bear the hex of matter for so long, the specter of unalterability within it which too many minds obliterate, collapsing everything before the thought of thought as thinkable or at least noetically mutable on our own terms. Transcendental paranoia is the concurrent nightmare and promise of Paul Humphrey's work, of being literally out of our minds. It is the gothic counterpart of thinking non-conceptually but also of thinking never belonging to any instance of purportedly solid being. As Bataille stated, “At the boundary of that which escapes cohesion, he who reflects within cohesion realizes there is no longer any room for him” Thought is immaterial only to the degree that it is inhuman, it is a power that tries, always with failure, to ascertain its own genesis. Philosophy, if it can truly return to the great outdoors, if it can leave behind the dead loop of the human skull, must recognize not only the non-priority of human thought, but that thought never belongs to the brain that thinks it, thought comes from somewhere else. To return to the train image from the beginning “a locomotive rolling on the surface of the earth is the image of continuous metamorphosis” this is the problem of thought, and of thinking thought, of being no longer able to isolate thought, with only a thought-formed structure. [1] One of the central tenets of Francois Laruelle's non-philosophy is that philosophy has traditionally operated on material already presupposed as thinkable instead of trying to think the real in itself. Philosophy, according to Laruelle, remains fixated on transcendental synthesis which shatters immanence into an empirical datum and an a prori factum which are then fused by a third thing such as the ego. For a critical account of Laruelle's non-philosophy see Ray Brassier's Nihil Unbound. (shrink)

The Shadow of God in the Philosopher’s Garden. The Parc de La Villette in Paris in the context of the philosophy of chôra I Bernard Tschumi’s project of the Parc de La Villette could have won the competition and was implemented thanks to the political atmosphere that accompanied the victory of the left-wing candidate in the French presidential elections in 1981. François Mitterand’s revision of the political programme and the replacement of radical reforms with the construction of prestigious architectural objects (...) and urban assumptions in the French capital gave Tschumi a unique opportunity to realise ideas that polemicised with traditional forms of social life, questioned the basic principles of architecture and included architectural work in the philosophical disputes over the issues of metaphysics. Tschumi’s theoretical assumptions put forward during the design of the Parc de La Villette highlighted the questions of conflict between the main components of the project and suggested that the intensification of differences was analogous to Jacques Derrida’s creation of the concept of différance. It was this philosopher who in a special commentary to Derrida’s project also introduced the concept of maintenant, which aimed at demonstrating that the architect’s polemical inclinations remain in a hidden balance with his inclinations to affirmation of architectural principles. During the discussion between Derrida and Peter Eisenman, who was to take part in the design of the Parisian park, the concept of the chôra was also put forward, which in the course of the debate led to an additional confusion of architectural and philosophical problems. II In the period from the Antiquity to the Renaissance, the dialogue Timaeus was the most frequently commented work of Plato. At present, the most frequently discussed is the issue of the chôra included in it, which aroused fascination among philosophers, researchers of rhetoric, religion, feminism, but also architecture. The work on the chôra also influenced the development of the interpretation of the Parc de La Villette, among which the topics related to the beginning and the change were highlighted. In early uses of the word chôra in Greek, as in Homer’s 18th Book of Iliad, it meant both dancing and a place to dance. On this occasion, it can be seen that it is not possible to determine which phenomenon took precedence in the creation of the name. It cannot be denied, however, that the word concerned a specific movement, as if circular and returning to an indefinable beginning. Despite gaining more and more general meanings, the word chôra has retained its connection with the dance of people on the threshing floor, the dance of bees (choros meliton) or the dance of stars (choros astron). In Timaeus, the chôra is a space filled with movement with an effect similar to shaking the sieve to husk the grain: it separates similar elements from the dissimilar ones. The juxtaposition of the Parc de La Villette and the chôra already at this stage leads to the suggestion that the park was treated by the architect as a place of dynamic changes leading to the establishment of new social solutions. In his statements, the architect confirmed that the park was to be a space of new politics and ethics. The book by Julia Kristeva La Révolution du langage poétique contributed to the spread of the belief that works of art can play a role as factors of political revolution. In this work, the author put forward the thesis that the chôra is a kind of space, the character of which has a destructive influence on attempts to conclude language games. The chôra gives beginning to words, but at the same time, by leaving a trace of this beginning it forces us to renew their meanings. The chôra understood in this way, turns out to be an irremovable beginning, to which one has to return all the time. Kristeva found manifestations of the chôra’s activity in avant-garde French poetry, to which she attributed the role of a mediator between criticism of metaphysics and aspirations for social change. The chôra, violating the language, introduces some voids into it, as if traces of the abyss, which direct the consciousness towards understanding the necessity of political changes. The Parc de La Villette was to pursue similar objectives in the city space. In his essays, Tschumi considered the problems of creating spaces that would give rise to a radical democracy. The proposed rebellious spaces should have the characteristics of a void, in which contradictory forces would occur as forms of pure activity. The means of achieving this goal was to concentrate contradictions and make them visible. The Parc de La Villette was supposed to collect differences as indelible and at the same time by showing them it was supposed to raise awareness of the social world as a conglomerate of differences. Saturation of the space of the park with subversive values results from the character of this space suppressed in the consciousness, as well as from the social diversity which has not been taken into account so far. The main contradictions contained in space relate to the division that exists between its presentation as a mental problem and a sensual one. The park was the deliberate creation of a place that transcends such a division and creates a separate space for negotiation between architectural theories and its practical applications. The purpose of the park was to become a place of future events, which would not hide their conflicting character coming from diversity of both space and society. The method of composition usually aimed at achieving a harmonious whole has been replaced by Tschumi with a system of juxtaposition of non-coherent elements or those resulting from variations and transformations. Tschumi did not seek direct influence on politics in the Parc de La Villette, but made room for thinking about the possibilities of the future. He introduced problems rather than showed solutions to them. The task of the park was to put the principles of architecture into a kind of vibration that would inspire users to participate in the new community. III Tschumi believes that the quality of architecture depends on the theoretical factor it contains. Such a view led to the creation of architecture that would achieve visibility and comprehensibility only after its interpretation. On his way to creating such an architecture he took on a purely philosophical reflection on the basic building block of architecture, which is space. In 1975, he wrote an essay entitled Questions of Space, in which he included several dozen questions about the nature of space. The questions he formulated could be regarded as analogous to the situation in the philosophy of the time, in which the interest in questioning the most obvious forms of understanding the world and intellectual categories increased. The research on space is an area common to many fields of natural sciences, humanities and artistic creation, but it also deals with other problems, such as issues of experience. The concept of space-time continuum proposed by Hermann Minkowski drew attention to the identity of time and space with the events taking place. Probably regardless of the postulates of physicists commenting on Albert Einstein’s discoveries, also in philosophy it increased the importance of the concept of the event which became dominant in Martin Heidegger’s latest work Contributions of Philosophy: Of the event. Furthermore, Tschumi’s reflections on space entered into relation with the problem of experience, which aroused the interest of a group of French philosophers trying to assimilate Georges Bataille’s concept of “inner experience”. Both Tschumi and Derrida referred to Bataille because his views could be used not only to modify the concept of the subject, but also to change the understanding of what constitutes the area of architecture. The discussion on experience has led to the recognition that the subject is not sovereign, but actually a form of what is on their outside. Such insights make it possible to treat the area of the Parc de La Villette as existing mainly when it is organised by its users. The decisive features of the park are its assumptions, according to which it is a variety of active void that leads to agreeing new social relations with it. The park does not force to participate in already existing moral or political communities, but tries to move into an unknown future in which the scope of free functioning of individuals will be increased. Doubts about the principles of functioning of the individual self and its discovery as a whole composed of non-coherent parts, as well as its dependence on its own depth full of disordered forces, influenced the understanding of architecture as a set of contradictions whose source is a fundamental void anticipating the empty phenomenal space. The use of this phenomenal void in architecture, as well as the rejection of the whole and unity, had a specific political purpose and drew its inspiration from political analyses. In the Parc de La Villette, metaphysics and politics were brought closer together because the philosophy of void was used to create new conditions for community action. It can be argued that the source of this philosophy was the perception of errors in existing societies dependent on the shortcomings of traditional metaphysics. Spacing (espacement) was one of the key terms in Derrida’s philosophy, which was also combined with the concepts of différance and chôra. The study of the nature of space, especially its transition from the level of pure possibility to the level of sensual phenomenon, also contributes to understanding how well designed space can have an impact on its audience. This explanation is based on Tschumi’s assumption that the space of the Parc de La Villette contradicts the integrating approaches and instead exposes contradictions, but it does so in a way that combines incompatible properties into a single piece of architecture. The specificity of such integration is similar to the invention of a musical phrase, which is an ideological message: moral and political. Such a thesis may raise doubts, however, if both the clearly adopted assumptions and those deduced from the work allow for their logically ordered presentation then to a limited extent it may be assumed that the work has achieved a connection between a specific philosophy of space and its practical application. Derrida combined the problem of spatiality with the problem of transcendental imagination in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, who in the first version of Critique of Pure Reason assumed that pure imagination precedes the appearance of time and space, even in their transcendental forms. The imagination in such a situation can be described as a factor activating time and space, which indicates what function is played by movement in this activity. This leads us to recognize that the ultra originary source of pure forms of sensual intuition is movement, which in early Greek philosophy was identified with void and its lack of resistance to phenomena occurring in it. Derrida’s philosophy in search of a certain super-transcendental source of time and space pointed to différance which, like void or the chôra, does not have material features or even any other form of being. Différance is the primary cause of the disruption of motionlessness and the introduction of activity into motionless time and space, thus its activity can be described as spacing (espacement). Derrida’s discoveries in this respect are not entirely original, because Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel already pointed out when examining the present that it is primarily a differential relation (differente Beziehung), which, being seemingly neutral, influences the present with supernatural force and makes it unidentifiable with itself. Differente Beziehung must similarly influence the originary space, negating its initial character by multiplying its divisions and expanding its boundaries. Différance acts by revealing contradictions wherever there is apparent undifferentiation. Tschumi, composing the Parc de La Villette as a variety of void and a set of incompatible layers, followed the rules of différance or the chôra: he made void visible together with its saturation with contradictions. If space can be considered to be the result of the activity of difference, such activity has a certain regularity, which influences the behaviour of its observers. Differences or contradictions fall into a certain rhythm, which can be considered a manifestation of transcendent order. The problem is that what can be considered the source of such order, namely the logos or God, is partly disorder and error. According to descriptions contained in Timaeus, the world is a combination of forces that drive to order with forces of erroneous necessity that resounds in every order and forces it to return to disorder. Derrida denied the possibility of understanding différance as a theological value, even if it were a negative or apophatic theology, but no categorical denial could be perfect. The assumption that différance or the chôra are not endowed with any substance properties cannot deny their activity, and thus a certain force. Already since Democritus, philosophy has multiplied the names of such a force and the contradictory variety of its manifestations, never forgetting also the necessity for reason to withdraw from the possibility of giving its correct characteristics. Such a withdrawal may be interpreted as an expression of respect and, in certain situations, as a cult of the force that precedes reasonableness. The Parc de La Villette, which is an artistic divagation about the contradictions and forces behind them, can be considered as a place of their sublimation, and therefore as a variation of the temple of what differs from order and disorder. IV In the texts that presented the theoretical assumptions of the Parc de La Villette, Tschumi used a large number of terms that contradicted not only the traditional principles of composing architecture, but also negated the rules of social order and the foundations of Western metaphysics. Tschumi’s statements, which are a continuation of his leftist political fascinations from the May 1968 revolution, as well as his interest in the philosophy of French poststructuralism and his collaboration with Derrida, prove that terms such as “disruption”, “dissociation”, “disfunction”, “disjunction” and “dispersion” not only referred to architectural problems but also applied to political criticism and the deepest foundations of thinking itself. His collaboration with Derrida manifested itself primarily in the publication La Case Vide: La Villette 1985, in which the architect’s design drawings and texts explaining his concepts related to the Parc de La Villette were accompanied by an extensive essay by Derrida, which included theoretical problems taken up by Tschumi in a philosophical context. Architectural and philosophical issues were also combined during seven discussion meetings organised by Eisenman, invited by Tschumi to collaborate on the design of the Parc de La Villette. Eisenman, who, like Tschumi, invited Derrida to participate in the design of the park and also led to the publication of Chora L Works: Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman, in which his ideas were confronted with Derrida’s philosophical text. In this case, Derrida’s essay was not a direct commentary on the architect’s concepts, but rather a reflection on the question of the chôra presented by Plato in Timaeus. During the discussion and in his essay, Derrida pointed out that the chôra is a component of the created world, yet it does not belong to it, but precedes it. The originality of the chôra is so radical that she also precedes all the factors of creating the world, including ideas and the Demiurge. Thus athesis appeared in the metaphysics of the West that the chôra is a form of active abyss, in relation to which all beings are secondary, both those perfect (as ideas or God) and those created, such as the world, things, people or language. This leads to the conclusion that the chôra does not exist, because all existence is a derivative of the chôra. Nor could the chôra be described, since it is a form of developing a space that is preceded by a lack of space characteristic of the chôra. Derrida intended the chôra to be an instance with an exceptional degree of transcendentalism, an anti-metaphysical instance, but also an a-theological one. However, this attempt failed, both in the field of secular philosophy and in the field of theology. Derrida’s characteristics of the chôra to strengthen its transcendentalism and negation of metaphysics had to be expressed in a language that immediately produces new concepts and a new metaphysics that reproduces the categories of the beginning, the origin or the foundation known from earlier philosophical traditions. All forms of criticism of metaphysics are also inspired by negative, apophatic and mystical theology. The undermining of many concepts of permanent meaning and the introduction of new concepts of unstable meaning, characteristic of the philosophy of deconstruction, had many features of originality, but it was directed towards problems whose solutions repeat, with the use of new vocabulary, the findings known in culture since Democritus. Thus, if apophatic philosophy can be regarded as deconstruction avant la lettre, then deconstruction itself in its late versions began to take on the features of a new religion. The exchange of inspiration between theology and deconstruction was manifested in a series of scientific conferences and publications in which Derrida’s philosophical concepts were interpreted within the scope of religious thought. Theological threads began to be found in such concepts of deconstruction as différance or the chôra, while at the same time Derrida himself undertook in his philosophy to study problems such as the Other (L’Autre) or the Impossible (Impossible), which belonged to newer theological traditions. As a consequence of the new problems, the deconstruction became closer to the features of a new religion. Philosophy, at least from Kant’s time, has tried to create a system that would take over from religion the tasks of setting moral and political goals. Similarly, Derrida has directed his interest towards the problems of democracy and ethics, which would enable their renewal. Attempts to create a new religion (cleared of old metaphors), a new community or a new democracy bring problems and threats which may be no less troublesome than the previous systems. All promises of freedom carry with them threats, the greater the more they strive for perfection. The renewal of existential orders, sometimes carried out by means of violent changes, is a certain repetitive feature of human cultures. Deep changes, however, do not protect against the return of both old gods and old demons. Tschumi and Derrida were shaped in their youth by the atmosphere of leftist rebellion against the moral and political limitations of ossified communities and the imperfections of democracy. The ethical theme distinguishes many of their works, including the Parc de La Villette. The opposition to the metaphysical traditions of philosophy and architecture contained in this park was prompted by specific political situations and resulted from bringing political issues to the level of philosophical considerations. Achievements made at the level of pure concepts were then subject to elevation, to a kind of sacralization, which made them religious concepts. The deconstruction reached for the status of the new religion especially when it found its followers and began to generate moral obligations. In the new situation, terms such as the chôra, l’Autre or the Impossible were absolutized and in relation to them a cult and attitude of adoration emerged. The Parc de La Villtette then gained new post-secular meanings, which allow it to be assigned the function of a Temple of Otherness (L’Autre) and Impossible. V In the traditional sense, a work of art creates an illustration of the outside world, or of a certain text or doctrine. Sometimes it is considered that such an illustration is not literal, but is an interpretation of what is visible, or an interpretation of a certain literary or ideological message. It can also be assumed that a work of art creates its own visual world, a separate story or a separate philosophical statement. Parc de La Villette represents the last of these possibilities: it is a philosophical statement that develops the premises derived from poststructuralist philosophies and the philosophy of deconstruction. The uniqueness of its being status, however, is that it does so not only at the level of the theoretical assumptions, but also through its functioning as an active philosophical work. This means that a park is a happening philosophy. Its activity, however, does not refer only to the present tense, but is also an attempt to penetrate the future, all otherness and impossibility. This kind of activity assumes that the work, in a sense, does not yet fully exist, but is also still produced in the processes of its interpretation. The theoretical foundations of the park included texts by Tschumi, in which he questioned traditional ways of creating a work of architecture, postulating in return the use of a long series of negations, which were comparable to the crisis of metaphysics characteristic of contemporary philosophy. It is therefore no coincidence that the publication containing Tschumi’s theoretical text on Parc de La Villette was accompanied by an essay by Derrida developing some of the architect’s concepts. The next step in integrating philosophy into the process of park design was a series of discussions between Eisenman and Derrida, who completely moved the creation of the park into the world of thoughts, without accentuating the need for their realization in the material reality. The main topic of these discussions was the problem of the chôra, which was taken up by later commentators and used to interpret the park as a work in which the philosophy of the beginning is manifested relating to issues of politics, morality and religion. The park was therefore interpreted as a space of invention within the scope of creating new rules of functioning of the community and democracy. Thinking about the political future may, however, exceed the horizon of ordinary expectations. Although philosophical thought is always connected with contemporary problems and metaphysics sometimes intertwines with current politics, yet at the same time the customs of philosophy also include crossing horizons and thinking about absolute otherness and impossibility. Initially, the chôra, différance, absolute otherness (tout autre) and the Impossible were concepts of pure philosophy of atheistic character, but with the further development of the discussion, more and more theological motifs began to emerge. One of the reasons for this phenomenon was the fact that radical negations of all being, which were contemplated in contemporary philosophy (by Heidegger and Derrida, among others), had previously been manifested in negative and apophatic theologies (by Master Eckhart, among others).Also the category of the “Other”, taken from Emmanuel Levinas, was clearly connected with the thought about God. A further reason for connecting the chôra with the theological thought was the interest in the philosophy of deconstruction expressed by some theologians. John Caputo in particular managed to persuade Derrida to participate in discussions on the current status of religion. In the late period of Derrida’s writing, further statements on religious topics appeared. All these reasons led to posing a question about the identity of the chôra and God. Although there were no satisfactory conclusions on this issue, the discussion was also important to create an interpretation of the park as a place of worship. The chôra, representing, according to Plato, the preoriginal emptiness is the place of every beginning, but it turns out that it is not neutral to the being created in it. The chôra deposits itself in every being as an irremovable beginning that interferes with its stability. The chôra, therefore, forces us into a palintropical movement, but it also turns out to be a pure compulsion, an erring necessity and a fundamental force from which, in the human perception, motifs useful to the individual and to the community are extracted. All definitions of this force, including its anthropomorphisation, are formulated in such a way that they allow for building private and collective morality upon them. Such definitions are changed depending on variable political situations. It is difficult to determine whether in the processes of changes in the formulation of “God’s names” any essential value is retained, which is not subject to change. The current definitions of the chôra (God?), which can be found, for example, in the philosophy of Caputo, stress that she is a combination of various and contradictory forces. This characteristic inherits much of Plato’s concept, reminds us of Master Eckhart’s views on Gottheit and, at the same time, is not unfamiliar to Tschumi, whose essays were an apologia of contradictions. The current concept of chôra, transferred into the sphere of politics, is the praise of social diversity and the protection of the difference from the forces of order. In the Parc de La Villette, the future community and democracy were elevated as a system of safe existence of individuals in all their singularity. The park is a temple of a future community in which individual beings have nothing in common. (shrink)

According to phenomenal transparency, phenomenal concepts are transparent where a transparent concept is one that reveals the nature of that to which it refers. What is the connection between phenomenal transparency and our concept of a subject of experience? This paper focuses on a recent argument, due to Philip Goff, for thinking that phenomenal transparency entails transparency about subjecthood. The argument is premissed on the idea that subjecthood is related to specific phenomenal properties as a (...) determinable of more specific determinates. I argue that the argument fails, which opens the door for one to endorse phenomenal transparency while denying transparency about the concept of a subject of experience. I draw out the consequences of this for certain versions of the combination problem for panpsychist metaphysics and moreover argue that rejecting the transparency of subjecthood does not undermine anti-physicalist arguments premissed on considerations relating to phenomenal transparency. (shrink)

In the Visuddhimagga, there is movement from an early Buddhist phenominalist epistemology towards essentialist ontology based in rationality and abstraction. The reductionist methodology of the Abhidhamma and reactions to it brought forth a theory of momentariness not found in early Buddhism. Abhidhamma reductionism and the concept of phenomenal dhammas led to a conception of momentary time-points and the incorporation of a cinematic model of temporal consciousness as a direct consequence of momentariness. Essentialism was incorporated into the Visuddhimagga precisely (...) because of Buddhaghosa’s commitment to momentariness. This is seen in Buddhaghosa’s treatment of karma and rebirth. Karma, particularly death-threshold karma, receives more emphasis in the Visuddhimagga than was previously found in the Suttas. This is due to the need to explain the continuity of the process of karmic rebirth in light of the theory of momentariness, making it necessary for Buddhaghosa to synthesise momentariness with the tri-temporal existence of the Sarvāstivādins. (shrink)

The list which follows is intended as a comprehensive bibliographical survey of the wider Gestalt tradition from Graz and Berlin to Padua, Frankfurt and New York. It presents diagrammatically the main influence and teacher-pupil relationships also groupings into schools. It includes the classical texts of the Gestalt psychological tradition, together with the more important translations and reprints thereof. Special attention is paid to works on the following topics: - the concept of Prägnanz or `good form' and related treatments of aesthetic (...) phenomena and of pattern recognition - cognitive processes and problem-solving - criticisms of Gestalt theoru - phenomenal causation - figure-ground relations , phenomenaI boundaries, subjective contours - phenomenal motion - perceptual constancies - philosophical inquiries into the nature of `configuration'. `relation', `structure', etc . , and writing on psychological holism (but only insofar as they relate directly to the literature of Gestalt psychology proper). (shrink)