On identifie deux modèles du concept de règle présents dans l’œuvre de Wittgenstein, dès le Tractatus : les règles de projection (ou de traduction) et les règles opératoires (ou de calcul). Dans le cadre conceptuel de ce texte, gouverné par l’indépendance des propositions élémentaires, ces deux modèles sont équivalents. On interprète ensuite les difficultés de Wittengstein avec le concept de phénoménologie, au début des années trente, comme liées à la restriction du concept de règle aux règles de projection. Le (...) dépassement de ces difficultés se fait par la découverte de la possibilité d’un nouvel équilibre entre les deux modèles, équilibre dans lequel les règles opératoires jouent un rôle directeur. (shrink)

This Ph.D. thesis is, in large part, a deepening of my M. A. dissertation, entitled: "Différance Beyond Phenomenological Reduction (Epoché)?" - an edited version of which was published in The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 2, Issue 2, 1989. The M. A. dissertation explores the development of the various phases of the movement of epoché in Edmund Husserl's phenomenology and its relevance for Jacques Derrida's project of deconstruction. The analyses not only attend to the need for an effective propaedeutic to (...) an understanding of phenomenology as method, they also serve to demystify the logics of Derridean non-teleological strategy by explaining the sense of such a manoeuvre - as a kind of maieutic response to the Husserlian project - which operates within the horizon of a radical epoché. According to this orientation, Derrida's deconstruction of phenomenology is permitted to open itself up to a phenomenology of deconstruction. This doctoral thesis develops these analyses and utilizes a form of critique that points the way to the possibility of a phenomenological-deconstruction of the limits of Derrida's project of deconstruction through the themes of epoché, play, dialogue, spacing, and temporalization. In order to trace the resources from which he draws throughout the early development of deconstruction, this study confines itself to a discussion on the texts published between 1962 and 1968. This subjection of deconstruction to a historical de-sedimentation of its motivational, methodological, theoretical, and strategic moments, involves a certain kind of transformational return to the spacing between phenomenology and deconstruction that urgently puts into question the alleged supercession of phenomenology by deconstruction. The expression of such a 'beyond' is already deeply sedimented in contemporary deconstructive writing to the point at which it is now rarely even noticed, let alone thematized and brought into question. This conviction (regarding the transgression of phenomenology by deconstruction) traces itself out in the form of an attitude to reading which is, in fact and in principle, counter to D6rrida's own call for care. The meaning and limits of the very terms, transgression, beyond, supercession, etc., must be continually subjected to deconstruction. The notions of play, dissemination and supplementarity - with the concomitant sense of transformational repetition that defines them - do not function as a mere excuse for lack of scholarly rigour. Deconstruction is a movement of critical return, which must insert itself (with a sense of irony) within the margins and intersections of that which gives itself up to this practice of textual unbuilding. The strategy of play encourages the structural matrix of that with which it is engaged to turn in upon itself, exposing its limits and fissures in a kind of textual analogue to a psychoanalysis. To be sure, this does involve a certain kind of violence -a violation of the ( system's' own sense of propriety (what is proper [propre] and closest to itself) -but in no sense is this an anarchical celebration of pure destruction. We speak rather of irony, parody, satire, metaphor, double-reading and other tactical devices, which permit a reorganization of the deconstructed's (textual analysand's) self-relation and the possibility of playful speculation. Such play demands care and vigilance in regard to the appropriation of the logics of the system with which it is in a relation of negotiation. In order to play well, one must learn the game-rules. (shrink)

Two of Husserl’s most important, though fragmentary texts from the final phase of his thought, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology and “The Origin of Geometry as an Intentional-Historical Problem,” focus on the themes of history and the life-world. It is well known that prior to these works Husserl sought to establish transcendental phenomenology as both a factually and an historically pure eidetic science. Thus the interpreter of the whole of Husserl’s thought is faced with the question of (...) whether his later focus on history and the life-world represents a significant departure from his previous thought. In what follows, I shall defend the thesis that it does not. Specifically, I shall argue that the completion of Husserl’s project of realizing the goal of First Philosophy in transcendental phenomenology renders necessary the turn both to history and to the life-world. In connection with this, I shall argue further that the peculiar phenomenological character of this necessity demands that the ‘concepts’ of history and life-world operative in Husserl’s last texts are taken to be inseparably rooted in a more original phenomenon. Husserl conceives this more original phenomenon as the crisis situation of the exemplars of European humanity, the philosophers, who, as the “functionaries of mankind” are faced with the “breakdown” situation of our time, with the “breakdown” of science itself. (shrink)

If we consider Wittgenstein's career as a whole, it appears that he wrote more on the philosophy of logic and mathematics than any other subject. Yet his writings on these subjects have exerted little influence. Indeed, the tide of response to Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, which contains the bulk of his latest views of mathematics, has been for the most part overwhelmingly negative. Given his later emphasis on the context-bound character of language, mathematics and logic--where language apparently operates (...) in an maximally precise, clear and general way--represent two of the most difficult cases for Wittgenstein to confront. My thesis aims to defend Wittgenstein from the charges of benighted arrogance traditionally levelled against him. I argue that Wittgenstein's later discussions of mathematics form a central part of a larger philosophical project, internally related to Philosophical Investigations and shaping in specific ways Wittgenstein's reaction to both scepticism and accounts of the nature of logical and mathematical truth. I see Wittgenstein criticizing the unreflective use of mathematical tools in philosophy, not offering a competing philosophy of mathematics. ;Too few of Wittgenstein's readers have been willing to offer detailed exegesis of his writing . This has made it difficult to understand how the aphoristic style of his late writing bears on the philosophical problems being discussed. On my view, the quality of Wittgenstein's writing is intrinsic to his later conception of the nature of logic, mathematics and philosophy. Line by line engagement with his texts is thus imperative in order to achieve an understanding of his philosophical objectives and criticisms. My dissertation offers as a paradigm of such reading a detailed exegesis and criticism of the opening five sections of Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. ;I briefly explore in some detail the origin and genesis of Wittgenstein's interest in rule-following, from its roots in the Tractatus's conception of logical syntax. This background illuminates Wittgenstein's later conception of logical truth and his criticisms of Frege's and Russell's arguments for logicism. To explore these criticisms, I focus on Wittgenstein' s discussions of the Frege-Russell definition of "Number" in "logical" terms. Placed in their appropriate philosophical and historical context, Wittgenstein's seemingly outrageous remarks about the nature of proof, mathematical logic and the foundations of mathematics do not simply betray his ignorance. Nor do they commit him to a revisionist attitude toward mathematical practice. Rather, they raise fundamental questions about the philosophical presuppositions lying behind attempts to bring particular mathematical results to bear in philosophy. (shrink)

The notion of repression as active forgetfulness already found in Nietzsche and systematised by Freud and his successors is employed in a distinctive manner by Merleau-Ponty in Phenomenology of Perception. By showing how we appropriate our environment towards outcomes and respond to other people, he contends, we can unearth hidden modes of operative intentionality. Two such modes are the motor intentional projection of action and the anonymous intercorporeality that includes touching and being touched. Each of these is an aspect of (...) a past that was never a present. Merleau-Ponty does have something to say about pasts that were once present and that linger on in human life. Yet he shows little interest in the unconsciousness of psychoanalysis for its own sake. Psychoanalytic accounts of repression are assimilated into his theory of the body itself, serving merely as means for illustrating the latter. I suggest that this move follows on a conception of an integrated existent whose past acquisitions are remarkably enabling and untroubling. (shrink)

Formal series are associated with ascriptions of numbers. They are ordered by formal operations that, unlike negation and disjunction, are not truth-operations. In spite of this, they are required to build propositions involving generic reference to numbers, and are essential to the Tractarian version of the logicist project.

Sara Heinämaa and James Jardine demonstrate that both classical and existential phenomenology offer analytical concepts that are of crucial pertinence and value to contemporary dehumanization research. They begin by outlining an account of dehumanization that distinguishes this phenomenon both from the general operation of objectification and from the violation of autonomy. What is essential to dehumanizing acts and practices they argue, is not objectification or the violation of autonomy per se, but rather a disregard for, and undermining of, the unique (...) singularity of human persons. Moreover, it is proposed that dehumanization ought to be theorized as an intersubjective process that also incorporates how the dehumanizing activity is experienced by the person dehumanized. Two concrete cases of dehumanizing treatment are then discussed in detail: colonial racism and gender hierarchization. The analytical concepts of inferiorization, epidermalization, and emotive projection are introduced to account for some of the specific features of these varieties of dehumanization. The chapter thus argues that dehumanization is not one unified phenomenon but a pattern of social dynamics that emerges in different guises relative to specific practical and historical contexts. (shrink)

In his writings around 1930, Wittgenstein relates his philosophy to the idea of phenomenology. He indicates that his main philosophical project had earlier been the construction of a purely phenomenological language, and even after having given up this project he believed that "the world we live in is the world of sense-data," that is, of phenomenological objects. However, a problem is posed by the fact that he does not appear to have given a full, explicit account of what he means (...) by his 'phenomenology', 'phenomenological language', or 'phenomenological problems'. The aim of this dissertation is to unravel the nature of Wittgenstein's phenomenology and to examine its importance for his entire work in philosophy. ;Phenomenology can be characterized as philosophy whose primary concern is what is immediately given in one's experience. This 'immediately given' is not merely impressions inside one's mind, but includes also the part of objective reality that impinges upon one's consciousness. Thus, an aim of phenomenological enterprise is to grasp this objective reality by attending to immediate experience. Husserl's phenomenology is in fact a case in point. ;Similarly, Wittgenstein's main attention is directed to one's immediate experience. However, the early Wittgenstein's phenomenology is unusual because of the way he views immediate experience. For him, the nature of the immediately given is unique in the sense that the possibility of logic is also based on it. Indeed, the fact that Wittgenstein sees the foundation of logic in immediate experience is what makes his philosophy a kind of phenomenology. In the Tractatus, all logical forms are combinations of the logical forms of immediately given objects of experience. Also, immediate experience can only be grasped and understood by means of language, because Wittgenstein views language as the ultimate medium through which we understand the world. Therefore, the important problem for him is the way we use language to describe immediate experience. In my study, I examine Wittgenstein's concern with immediate experience and the way we describe it, a concern which guides his philosophical journey through the phenomenological problems that pervade his work. (shrink)

Over the last decade, attention has crawled from out of the shadows into the philosophical limelight with several important books and widely read articles. Carolyn Dicey Jennings has been a key player in the attention revolution, actively publishing in the area and promoting awareness. This book was much anticipated by insiders and does not disappoint. It is in no way redundant with respect to other recent monographs, covering both a different range of material and developing novel positions throughout. The book (...) might have been called The Attending Self, since Jennings defines attention as mental prioritization controlled by the self. This invocation of the self is among her central innovations, and may prove to be the main source of controversy. I will highlight points of contention here, but want to emphasize at the outset that the book is essential reading for anyone interested in attention. Jennings also contributes to a range of other debates, which will help a broader audience appreciate the importance this topic.After a brief introduction, Jennings provides “a philosophical landscape” of attention (chap. 2), tracing the concept through history. This is an invaluable achievement that will be welcomed by both newcomers and veterans. Jennings exhibits enormous breadth, covering areas that contemporary philosophers of mind tend to neglect: medieval philosophy, Buddhist thought, and phenomenology, to name a few. We also get perspectives on attention from core figures in the Western canon, such as Descartes, Locke, and Kant, as well as thinkers who gave the topic a more political inflection: Mary Wollstonecraft and W. E. B. DuBois. Jennings surveys contemporary literature as well, locating recent work in these older lineages. Some authors get more treatment later in the book (e.g., William James and Wayne Wu). Overall, Jennings provides the best overview of this history I have seen. She proves that attention is not a new topic, but one with deep roots and one that can inform current debates; Jennings draws on these roots throughout. I would love to see a companion piece surveying scientific theories, including “gain control” and “biased competition,” which get little airtime in the book. Some recent philosophical theories are under-explored as well, including Chris Mole’s concept of cognitive unison (Jennings discusses other aspects of his view), Carlos Montemayor and Harry Haladjian’s exploration of attention’s diversity (we get a touch of this), and my own proposal that attention is a gateway to working memory (not mentioned here). That said, no extant survey is more complete.Chapter 3 begins with the empirical claim that attention is regulated by slow brainwaves, and then takes up two issues. The first is mental causation. Endorsing moderate emergentism, Jennings argues that slow brain waves are causally efficacious even though they are not reducible to lower-level processes. (The metaphysics and neuroscience are presented accessibly, aided by three appendixes.) Second, Jennings argues that these slow brain waves indicate that attention is controlled by the self. As someone who was never moved by the mental causation problem—I don’t think overdetermination threatens efficacy—I would have welcomed more development of this second issue. For one thing, in linking attention to subjective control, Jennings eschews the idea that there can be purely “bottom-up” attention driven by stimulus features alone. This goes against the orthodoxy in attention science, and makes it hard for her to accommodate phenomena such as “pop-out,” or the commonsense idea that attention can be “captured” by a sudden flash or loud sound. For another thing, I wanted to hear more on why Jennings relates slow brain waves to the self. Does this include the slow waves that occur during deep sleep? Is there even such a thing as the self? Is there one self or many? How do slow brain waves reflect our interests, projects, values, self-conceptions, autobiographical narratives, or social identities? Does the social self invoked by Wollstonecraft and DuBois gain a foothold here? The whole chapter campaigns against metaphysical reductionism, but arrives at a perspective on the self that will strike some readers as highly reductive.In the fourth chapter, Jennings sheds further light on her conjecture that attention involves the self by advancing the thesis that attention endows sensory information with meaning. On the face of it, this may sound implausible. Object recognition, reading, and many other meaning-involving processes can take place outside of attention and outside of consciousness. But Jennings has a richer notion of “meaning” in mind. She develops the idea of “subject unity,” which is imposition of structure on perception that reflects the interests of the perceiving subject. This, she claims, is what brings perception into the space of reasons. Along the way, she has interesting observations about binding, feature integration, and demonstrative reference. The material is highly original, and Jennings’s postulation of interest-based perceptual organization is compelling. At the same time, one might wonder whether interests are really relegated to the ambit of attentional control. Consider the cocktail party effect, wherein one’s own name captures attention. This implies a preattentive filter that reflects our interests. Emotionally charged words, facial expressions, and dangerous objects also work this way, and social biases can operate preattentively as well. If these reflect our interests, then meaning may arise outside attention.Jennings’s fifth chapter explores the relationship between attention and consciousness. Some authors have argued that attention is necessary and sufficient for consciousness. Jennings focuses primarily on the necessity claim. She does not systematically review the empirical literature here, but she addresses some of the key findings, and effectively rebuts studies that allege to find consciousness outside attention. She does not rest her case there, however. Instead, she identifies a new class of examples that purport to establish the possibility of consciousness without attention. Her central example she calls “conscious entrainment,” which is what we experience when engaged in habitual or skilled activities. Other possible examples touched on in the chapter include hypervigilance in individuals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), passive movie watching, dreaming, and “attentional neglect.” These states all involve intense focus, Jennings admits, but not attention. To some readers this may sound contradictory. Isn’t focus a kind of attention? Don’t these states of absorption involve stimulus selection and enhancement of relevant features, suppression of distractors, and other hallmarks of attention? Jennings says none of this is tantamount to attention. Recall that she thinks attention is controlled by the self. In these cases, we are invited to imagine that the self takes a passive role: control is either ceded to the world (movie watching) or to previously mastered routines (skills and habits). Thus, Jennings’s claim that there is no attention in these cases hangs on her contentious thesis that attention requires a controlling self. One might also push back by arguing that, in some of Jennings’s allegedly selfless examples, the self remains involved. Skilled activities and hypervigilance, for example, can reflect personal interests.Skills and hypervigilance get more airtime in chapter 6. There, Jennings turns to questions of responsibility—a neglected topic in attention research. The chapter begins with a manslaughter trial in which the teenage plaintiff was given a light sentence because the judge evidently believed that the teen’s ADHD compromised his ability to control his actions. The example may be a bit triggering for people who have a personal relationship with this diagnosis, but, putting that aside, Jennings uses it to introduce the important concept of attention-based control. With reduced control, Jennings argues, comes reduced responsibility. I am inclined to see ADHD as involving dysregulation of attention (difficulty disengaging and dividing attention, for example) rather than diminished attention, but that can still be characterized as an issue with control of attention; therefore ADHD still illustrates Jennings’s point that there is a link between responsibility and control of attention. This, it turns out, is only half of her story. Having argued for this link, one might expect Jennings to follow Wayne Wu, who contends that attention is necessary for action, and hence for responsibility. She does not. Instead, she says argues that responsibility can also arise in cases of “strategic automaticity.” This brings us back to skills. When skills are deployed, action is governed by learned pairings between stimuli and responses. The choice to exercise a skill requires attention, so attention is needed for being a responsible agent, but once a skill kicks in, attention is no longer required, and one can be held responsible for actions performed skillfully—thus attention is not required for responsibility tout court. Jennings addresses an opposing view (defended by Wu, Ellen Fridland, and Barbara Montero), according to which skills involve “automatic attention” rather than no attention. Jennings worries that this move will collapse the distinction between attention and other kinds of selection and filtering that occur throughout the nervous system, including the retina. She says that the attentional interpretation of skilled action is at odds with the lack of top-down reweighing of sensory inputs, regulated by lateral frontal cortex. These objections to automatic attention warrant response. My own view is that attention involves broadcasting to working memory, so retinal filtering is ruled out. Jennings’s insistence on top-down reweighing will not move those who believe attention can be purely bottom-up. For all that, I side with Jennings in wanting to allow for responsibility without attentional control. I think we can be responsible for implicit biases, for example. I also think attentional control is insufficient for responsibility, as when we act under duress.Jennings offers fresh perspective on the nature of attention, and its role in meaningful perception, consciousness, action, and responsibility. Each chapter can be read separately, but they hang together well, and each reflects her thesis that attention is essentially linked to the self. Though I am skeptical of that strong claim, we would do well to follow Jennings in regarding attention as interest-laden interface between mind and world. I look forward to a sequel in which attention is related to richer conceptions of identity, and where the political consequences of this link are actively explored. Meanwhile, one can hardly fault Jennings for covering too little. She tackles a remarkable range of topics, from metaphysics to ethics. Her arguments throughout demand response, repay careful study, and propel the field forward. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to analyze the broader significance of Frege’s logicist project against the background of Wittgenstein’s philosophy from both Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations. The article draws on two basic observations, namely that Frege’s project aims at saying something that was only implicit in everyday arithmetical practice, as the so-called recursion theorem demonstrates, and that the explicitness involved in logicism does not concern the arithmetical operations themselves, but rather the way they are defined. It thus represents (...) the attempt to make explicit not the rules alone, but rather the rules governing their following, i.e. rules of second-order type. I elaborate on these remarks with short references to Brandom’s refinement of Frege’s expressivist and Wittgenstein’s pragmatist project. (shrink)

I suggest how Merleau-Pontian sense hinges on an ontology in which passivity and what I call “development” are fundamental. This means, though, that the possibility of philosophy cannot be guaranteed in advance: philosophy is a joint operation of philosophers and being, and is radically contingent on a pre-philosophical field. Merleau-Ponty thus transforms philosophy, revealing a philosophy of tomorrow: a new way of doing philosophy that, because it is grounded in pre-reflective contingency, has to wait to describe its beginnings, and so (...) has to keep studying its beginnings tomorrow. This does not destroy Husserl’s project of a transcendental philosophy, it just accepts that the transcendental conditions of philosophy cannot be constituted or even revealed via wholly active or autonomous reflection. Merleau-Ponty thus brings phenomenology down to earth by expanding it into a phenomenology of life and earth that describes the concrete beginnings of phenomena and phenomenology. (shrink)

There are non-governmental organizations that operate transnationally and there are those that operate within the boundaries of a nation. A third use of non-governmental organizations is articulated. We may call this third category an instrumental use of non-governmental organizations to facilitate the transfer of the work of third-party conflict resolution practitioners to the two previously feuding parties. Representative accounts are provided in Part I of this paper. In Part II, the instrumental use of the NGO to transfer knowledge from practitioners (...) to the indigenous and previously feuding parties is depicted as a means to fill a practice gap in the field of conflict resolution, where many praxes do not examine the transfer of knowledge in an experiential and discovery-oriented way. An alternative is presented where the process of appropriation is suggested as an object of study. In Part III, a conceptualization of how one may determine the phenomenology of a sense of ownership of the project by the previously feuding parties is provided. A phenomenological account of the journey from constituting subjectivity to a constituted objectivity is articulated to the point where we see a division of labour between Husserl’s transcendental project, that seeks universal and broader essences, and psychology, which is highly contextualized. Part IV constitutes the implementation of the praxis to answer the specific question, “What is the sense of ownership of the parties in conflict?” - and, derivatively, “What is the fate of the hitherto agonistic relation?” A conflict resolution model is consolidated or reconfigured using the lessons drawn from the results of the study and from a second look at the literature to see where changes in practice and reconceptualization may be required. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 6, Edition 2 August 2006. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics for a Layered SelfLaughter, Reciprocity, Generosity, HomeCynthia WillettI can imagine no better way to respond to these insightful readings than to turn the spotlight on the important books that Ann Murphy and Megan Craig have written on affect and ethics! Craig’s book, Levinas and James: Toward a Pragmatic Phenomenology, weaves radical empiricism into phenomenology as only a philosopher who is also an artist could. Her evocative queries on (...) prereflective affects, perception, and ethical attunement shed light on the role of moods for unsettling rigid ego boundaries, ethical subjectivity, the feeling of being alive, the audible dimension of ethical encounters, life beyond a struggle to survive, temporality, and ethical ambiguity. These themes are compelling for any postmoral ethics that operates beyond or below the register of modern moral theory’s abstract laws and transparent cogitos. Her work balances an ethical concern for vulnerability with a vital regard for the vibrancy of living creatures and landscapes.Ann Murphy’s Violence and the Philosophical Imaginary illuminates philosophical questions with an abiding lucidity that does not weaken but amplifies the complexity and difficulty of ethics. Murphy’s work exposes how tropes of violence saturate philosophical discourses of both identity formation and of political and historical transformation, and how this violence, embedded in norms, denies sympathetic concern to those outside the limits of cultural intelligibility. Building upon recent work by Judith Butler, Adriana Caverero, and others, Murphy addresses the ambiguities arising from the multiple responses that exposure to vulnerability provokes. These responses can signal care but [End Page 70] they can also manifest violence. Even as she acknowledges the complex underside of cultural intelligibility, Murphy affirms sympathy and generous concern as paradigmatic virtues to be cultivated in response to various forms of violence. She probes the significance of shame and guilt for collective responsibility, ever alert to alterity and difference. With attentive care to the singular contributions of a broad range of philosophers and critical traditions, she argues compellingly for a corporeal ethics grounded on the ontological fact of vulnerability.Through their work, Murphy and Craig pose astute questions for my project, and, in fact, for any endeavor to conceptualize an ethics attentive to an embodied sociality. I describe the multifaceted approach I contribute toward this task as a call and response ethics for a layered self. Craig wonders if the more basic feature before any “call” is contact, touch, or immersion. She notes my concern that “any purported gap or abyss between humans and animals has less to do with unique human capacities than with the rise of urban centers and the loss of contact with other species.” Harm arises from a loss of contact. This is so true. Ethics as contact calls attention to the poetry of proximity, to erotic waves that transmit through the sound or feel of the other’s breath, the heat of the body, and the smell of the skin. This intense proximity serves as a compelling source for ethical sociality, resonating in some respects with what Merleau-Ponty explores as the sense of flesh and touch and, as Murphy suggests, a transcendental eros. This contact is as primal and ordinary as the skin-to-skin contact of caregiver and infant or, perhaps, the skin-to-hair contact of a terrier and her human companion, lost for a moment in inexplicable laughter. From these observations, Craig asks if “call and response” as a locution or central designation adequately captures the intimacy and intensity of these engagements.Craig’s remarks raise the further question of what is at stake in designations or phrasings. An ethics of call and response, designated as such, emerges from phenomenological but also crucially Africana and critical theory traditions. As a relational ethics, this ethics of call and response highlights social relations and expectations, opening a path outside of what Murphy characterizes as the trifecta of virtue ethics, deontology, and utilitarianism. It attends to desire (eros) beneath, in between, and above the prescriptive rules of moral reason or the interests of individuals. At its center are social bonds (friendship and companionship, community and domination, love, hate, and other social emotions, belonging and alienation, and the conflicts of groups and reconciliation) rather... (shrink)

Born’s quantum probability rule is traditionally included among the quantum postulates as being given by the squared amplitude projection of a measured state over a prepared state, or else as a trace formula for density operators. Both Gleason’s theorem and Busch’s theorem derive the quantum probability rule starting from very general assumptions about probability measures. Remarkably, Gleason’s theorem holds only under the physically unsound restriction that the dimension of the underlying Hilbert space \ must be larger than two. Busch’s theorem (...) lifted this restriction, thereby including qubits in its domain of validity. However, while Gleason assumed that observables are given by complete sets of orthogonal projectors, Busch made the mathematically stronger assumption that observables are given by positive operator-valued measures. The theorem we present here applies, similarly to the quantum postulate, without restricting the dimension of \ and for observables given by complete sets of orthogonal projectors. We also show that the Born rule applies beyond the quantum domain, thereby exhibiting the common root shared by some quantum and classical phenomena. (shrink)

Starting with the Descartes' cogito, "I think, therefore I am"--and taking an uncompromisingly rational, rigorously phenomenological approach--I attempt to derive the basic principles of recursion theory (the backbone of all mathematics and logic), and from that the principles of feedback control theory (the backbone of all biology), leading to the basic ideas of quantum mechanics (the backbone of all physics). What is derived is not the full quantum theory, but a basic framework--derived from a priori principles along with common everyday (...) experience--of how the universe of everyday experience should work if it operates according to rational principles. We find, to our surprise, that the resulting system has all the most puzzling features of quantum physics that make physicists scratch their heads. Far from being "bizarre" and "weird", as is usually thought, the strangest paradoxes of quantum theory turn out to be just what one ought to expect of a rational universe. It is the classical, pre-quantum universe of the nineteenth century that has irrational, mystical components. The quantum-mechanics-like theory that is developed is, furthermore, most compatible with the strictest, most uncompromisingly rationalist of the standard interpretations of quantum mechanics, those which add no ad hoc elements to the theory, and which generally trace their history to the relative state formulation of Everett (also called the "many worlds" interpretation). These interpretations take the universe to be quite literally describable as a quantum wavefunction. As with any project this far-reaching in scope, I confess I have had to make some working assumptions along the way. I have attempted to isolate these, and clearly label them as points of possible future revision--they are marked in the text with an asterisk (*). (shrink)

The simplest axioms, formulated by medieval scholastics as rules of inference between potency and act, are also axioms concerning causality as they express some potency-act relations. These are: Ab esse ad posse valet illatio. A non posse ad non esse valet illatio. A posse ad esse non valet illatio. A non esse ad non posse non valet illatio. The project on formulating axioms of efficient causality by means of the prepositional variables calculus does not mean of course that we try (...) to create a complete theory of causality. We will, for the moment show that the quantification of the concepts „potency-act" by means of the concepts „set-element" or „parameter-specific numerical value" is very useful. We will also point out, intuitively, as an experiment, the logical operators which are linked very closely with such concepts as implication, potentiality, act, set, specific numeric value. (shrink)

How would we conceive a phenomenology that has been purified by a post-modern critique? Although the term “post-modernism” names an extremely varied phenomenon, two features seem especially relevant. The first is its distrust of meta-narratives or overarching accounts of the way things are. The second, which is closely related to this, is the deconstruction of the subject. By this is meant not just the deconstruction of the “author”—i.e., the undermining the notion of his/her subjective intentions as setting the parameters of (...) textual interpretation. At issue is the grand meta-narrative of modernity itself. This is the narrative of subjectivity. Beginning with Descartes, and continuing through Kant and Husserl, subjectivity has been central theme of modern philosophy. For Descartes, it provided the Archimedean point, the central focus of certainty. For Kant, subjectivity is the terminus of his Copernican turn. Rather than assuming that all our knowledge must conform to objects, let us, Kant suggests, turn and try the reverse. Let us see if the rules of our understanding make possible the experience of objects.1 Husserl, in radicalizing this position, takes these rules as rules of synthesis. He sees the world we experience as the “product” of the synthetic (or constitutive) activities of transcendental subjectivity. After pointing out the difficulties with this narrative, difficulties involving the inability of subjectivity sustain the normative role that modernity assigns it, my question will be: what remains of the phenomenological project? How can we think of phenomenology apart from the narrative Husserl inherits from his predecessors? In othe words: What is phenomenology’s self-understanding, once it admits the validity of the post-modern critique of the subject? Such an understanding, I shall argue, can be found in Patocka’s insight that that.. (shrink)

In some recent articles, Cobreros, Egré, Ripley, & van Rooij have defended the idea that abandoning transitivity may lead to a solution to the trouble caused by semantic paradoxes. For that purpose, they develop the Strict-Tolerant approach, which leads them to entertain a nontransitive theory of truth, where the structural rule of Cut is not generally valid. However, that Cut fails in general in the target theory of truth does not mean that there are not certain safe instances of Cut (...) involving semantic notions. In this article we intend to meet the challenge of answering how to regain all the safe instances of Cut, in the language of the theory, making essential use of a unary recovery operator. To fulfill this goal, we will work within the so-called Goodship Project, which suggests that in order to have nontrivial naïve theories it is sufficient to formulate the corresponding self-referential sentences with suitable biconditionals. Nevertheless, a secondary aim of this article is to propose a novel way to carry this project out, showing that the biconditionals in question can be totally classical. In the context of this article, these biconditionals will be essentially used in expressing the self-referential sentences and, thus, as a collateral result of our work we will prove that none of the recoveries expected of the target theory can be nontrivially achieved if self-reference is expressed through identities. (shrink)

First of all, we would like to gratefully thank all commentators for the attention and effort they have put into reading and responding to our review paper [this issue] and for useful observations that suggest novel applications for our framework. We understand and accept that some of our claims might appear controversial and raise skepticism, because the overall neural framework we have proposed is difficult to frame in established categories, given its strong multidisciplinary character. To make an example, Elsevier is (...) publishing the British Neuroscience Association (BNA) 2017 Special Issue Collection. However, our paper could not fully fit in any of their Special Issues—attention, motivation, behavior; sensory and motor systems; novel treatments and translational neuroscience; genetics and epigenetics; learning and memory; neurodegenerative disorders and ageing; developmental neuroscience; neuronal, glial and cellular mechanisms; neuroendocrine and autonomic nervous systems; psychiatry and mental health; methods and techniques. Perhaps because our paper was mathematically, physically, biologically (neuroscientifically), and phenomenologically motivated from the start? Nevertheless, venturing in novel, fresh, testable proposals is badly needed in contemporary neuroscience, so to break into “the utter darkness of the inner mechanism of psychic acts… during the production of the concomitant phenomena of perception and thought, namely, feelings, consciousness and volition”—as Cajal had already observed in his opus magnus ‘Textura’. But as he soberly confessed: “This ideal is still very distant” (Ramon y Cajal, 1899-1904, p. 1,141). In the pursuit of that very ideal, neuroscience and psychology have had, and continue to have, a plethora of movements and schools of thought: behaviorism, cognitivism, neural Darwinism, social constructivism, Bayesian optimization...In our paper, we propose to go a step further, via the notion of topodynamics, towards “projectionism.” In what follows, trying to elucidate the main features of this Emperor’s new clothing, we proceed with the responses to the comments received. (shrink)

This article is the promised sequel to a recently published article in this journal , in which I sought to make more available to psychologists Edmund Husserl’s attempted explanation of how perceptual mental acts succeed in presenting to consciousness their external, environmental objects themselves, as opposed to some kind of representation of them. Here, I continue my exposition of Husserl’s effort and, as well, I begin a project of seeking to bridge the gap between his phenomenological account of perceptual presence (...) to consciousness and James J. Gibson’s ecological conception of direct perception. I am concerned, with what happens at the juncture of the perceptual system’s resonance to the stimulus energy flux and the perceiver’s awareness of those environmental objects, events, properties, and relations which are specified by the informational variables that the picked-up stimulus flux instantiates. I believe that simultaneously considering the environment’s phenomenological perceptual presence from both sides of the great epistemic divide – from the ecological outside and from the phenomenological inside – is worth a serious try. In the case of both these perspectives, we fortunately can draw upon a lifetime of intensive work by a major theorist operating at the highest level, work directly relevant to the general phenomenon of special interest here. (shrink)

The philosophy of arithmetic of Wittgenstein's Tractatus is outlined and the central role played in it by the general notion of operation is pointed out. Following which, the language, the axioms and the rules of a formal theory of operations, extracted from the Tractatus, are presented and a theorem of interpretability of the equational fragment of Peano's Arithmetic into such a formal theory is proven.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Phenomenology of Superstition or a Phenomenological Superstition?Elena Ibáñez-Guerra (bio)KeywordsBehaviorism, constructionism, intentionality, operant behaviorWhen the editors of Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology asked me to make some brief comments on two articles for the special issue edited by Pérez-Álvarez and Sass, I was delighted to accept, thinking that the task would be a straightforward one, and that I could easily meet the agreed deadline. But nothing could be further from (...) the truth. The articles were of such density and their content of such profundity that it took months of interpretation and study, and of bringing my own knowledge up to date, before I was in a position to understand the concepts, adjust my beliefs, and make some comments. I could certainly have delivered some kind of eulogy about the brilliance of their content; I might have countered with my own article. However, what seemed most coherent to me was to meet their arguments head on and deal with what I consider to be their principal weaknesses, leaving the bouquets for the end.The articles set out, as I understand them and within the clinical context, to relate phenomenology, in its most traditional form, with the most current form of Skinnerian behaviorism, situating themselves in a contextualism that is, at the same time, close to and removed from the most radical type of social constructionism.But let us begin by looking more closely at “Phenomenology and Behaviorism.” It is novel for me, though Professor Pérez-Álvarez had already proposed it several years ago (Pérez-Álvarez 1992), to view operant behavior as intentionality, or at least as involving final causality according to the Aristotelian classification. It is a surprising contention, not least because, as I recall, Skinner lived in a time and a context (historical reason) in which the basic goal of psychology was to convert itself into a natural science, comparable in all respects to physics, which it took as a model, focusing therefore on efficient causality (also according to Aristotle’s terminology), so that behavior was considered as the immediate consequence of a stimulus, and the stimulus–response association became the cornerstone of the discipline. It is true that the operant behavior concept refers to the functional relationship between behavior and reinforcement, but it is no less true that Skinner’s definition of reinforcement is totally empirical—“all that which increases or decreases the probability”—meaning that reinforcement can be considered neither as a motive nor as a reason for behavior, unless it be in the eyes of the observer. [End Page 251]Furthermore, even though Yela (1987) refers to Ortega y Gasset’s formula “I am myself and my circumstances” as a Skinnerian approach, the truth is that Yela himself argues that it is precisely the self that constitutes personality, such that I have a personality because I am me, and not vice versa, as Skinner would appear to argue. In this regard, Ortega’s celebrated formula has generally been interpreted, from the most personalist perspectives, as “the circumstances are myself”—to highlight the denial of the psychological subject by radical behaviorism (Mischel’s [1968] criticism of the concept of personality is relevant here). On top of this, Skinner’s rejection of all that was not directly observable, or at least, that could not be operationalized, calls into question the admissibility of anything called final cause or intentionality of behavior. In his philosophy, all the indications are that contingencies are what determine behavior; and that there would be no room for a structural causality, as Althusser would argue, or of a reciprocal determinism, in Bandura’s terms, or even of an interaction between subject and environment, as modern interactionists would maintain. “I am myself and my circumstances” seems in Skinner to become “the circumstances are me”, and indeed, the reinforcement history – which in the article in question is considered as something akin to the Sartrian idea of “life project” – is for Skinner nothing more than a continuous association of events. In my view, Ortega’s perspectivism would perhaps be closer to the sociology of the American action theorists, Merton, Parsons, etc., than to Skinnerian behaviorism, since “action”—as the action theorists... (shrink)

In his Tractatus, Wittgenstein maintained that arithmetic consists of equations arrived at by the practice of calculating outcomes of operations$\Omega ^{n}(\bar {\xi })$defined with the help of numeral exponents. Since$Num$(x) and quantification over numbers seem ill-formed, Ramsey wrote that the approach is faced with “insuperable difficulties.” This paper takes Wittgenstein to have assumed that his audience would have an understanding of the implicit general rules governing his operations. By employing the Tractarian logicist interpretation that theN-operator$N(\bar {\xi })$and recursively defined (...) arithmetic operators$\Omega ^{n}(\bar {\xi })$are not different in kind, we can address Ramsey’s problem. Moreover, we can take important steps toward better understanding how Wittgenstein might have imagined emulating proof by mathematical induction. (shrink)

We present a complete axiomatisation of the operator of projection onto state in the Duration Calculus relative to validity in DC without extending constructs. Projection onto state was introduced and studied extensively in our earlier works. We first establish the completeness of a system of axioms and proof rules for the operator relative to validity in the extension of DC by neighbourhood formulas, which express the neighbourhood values of boolean DC state expressions. By establishing a relatively complete axiomatisation for the (...) neighbourhood formulas in DC, we then achieve completeness of our system relative to basic DC. (shrink)

What is strange? Or better, who is strange? When do we encounter the strange? We encounter strangers when we are not at home: when we are in a foreign land or a foreign part of our own land. From Freud to Lacan to Kristeva to Heidegger, the feeling of strangeness--das Unheimlichkeit--has marked our encounter with the other, even the other within our self. Most philosophical attempts to understand the role of the Stranger, human or transcendent, have been limited to standard (...) epistemological problems of other minds, metaphysical substances, body/soul dualism and related issues of consciousness and cognition. This volume endeavors to take the question of hosting the stranger to the deeper level of embodied imagination and the senses. This volume plays host to a number of encounters with the strange. It asks such questions as: How does the embodied imagination relate to the Stranger in terms of hospitality or hostility? How do we distinguish between projections of fear or fascination, leading to either violence or welcome? How do humans "sense" the dimension of the strange and alien in different religions, arts, and cultures? How do the five physical senses relate to the spiritual senses, especially the famous "sixth" sense, as portals to an encounter with the Other? Is there a carnal perception of alterity, which would operate at an affective, prereflective, preconscious level? What exactly do "embodied imaginaries" of hospitality and hostility entail, and how do they operate in language, psychology, and social interrelations? And what, finally, are the topical implications of these questions for an ethics and practice of tolerance and peace? (shrink)

In 1929 and 1930 Wittgenstein holds some form of Phenomenology. This is a most surprising development of his thought. His Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, published in 1921, represents a form of Philosophy radically opposed to Phenomenology. And yet, "Some Remarks on Logical Form," of 1929, and Philosophical Remarks, of 1930, each defends a form of Phenomenology, in the sense that in each one finds that Wittgenstein presents a version of the thesis that the phenomena of immediate experience are in some way (...) central to construal of meaningfulness. I study this period of Wittgenstein's Philosophy with the objective of clarifying his concern with the study of the phenomena. It will emerge that he holds not one, but rather two different forms of Phenomenology. "Some Remarks on Logical Form" gives voice to one conception of the phenomena and of their role in the determination of the rules which stipulate meaningfulness. Philosophical Remarks, on the other hand, contains a criticism of this view, as well as a different conception of the phenomena and of their role with respect to the rules of meaningfulness . It also emerges that the former kind of Phenomenology is very similar to the Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, the founder of Phenomenology. I will examine Wittgenstein's Phenomenology of 1929, its similarity with the Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, his rejection of this conception, and his Phenomenology of 1930. (shrink)

This dissertation offers an account of linguistic practices of Latinx people in the United States through the lens of critical feminist phenomenology. It examines how Latinx people are racialized on the basis of their language use, the normative logics that structure those processes of racialization, and the practices by which Latinx people resist and transform those logics. In this project, I develop a critical feminist phenomenological approach that locates itself within a tradition of Latina feminist phenomenology—a tradition that has prioritized (...) the articulation of situated, embodied experiences of oppressing⇔resisting relations lived by Latinx intersubjectivities in the context of the United States. I propose the concept of “linguistic rupture” in order to name the specific kind of experience at the center of this analysis. The analysis allows for a reconceptualization of language and linguistic practices that constructs Latinx speakers as actively resistant rather than just passively oppressed. While I do argue that linguistic rupture is particularly significant in understanding the racialization of Latinx populations in the United States, the account of linguistic rupture developed in this project has potential for application across a broad range of racializing processes and events not limited to U.S. Latinx experience. It thus invites further examination and critical engagement with the various ways in which ruptures experienced by minoritized and marginalized subjects in general expose hegemonic logics operating in multiple directions, as well as the ways in which linguistic engagements specifically anchor embodied intersubjectivity existentially. (shrink)

I show that the quantum state ω can be interpreted as defining a probability measure on a subalgebra of the algebra of projection operators that is not fixed (as in classical statistical mechanics) but changes with ω and appropriate boundary conditions, hence with the dynamics of the theory. This subalgebra, while not embeddable into a Boolean algebra, will always admit two-valued homomorphisms, which correspond to the different possible ways in which a set of “determinate” quantities (selected by ω and the (...) boundary conditions) can have values. The probabilities defined by ω (via the Born rule) are probabilities over these two-valued homomorphisms or value assignments. So any universe of interacting systems, including those functioning as measuring instruments, can be modelled quantum mechanically without the projection postulate. (shrink)

The article focuses on a phenomenological study of political action. The analysis includes three directions: the concept of action, paradigms that determine political actions, and the purpose of action. In the analysis of action, I first use the distinction between the concepts of “act” and “operate.” “To act” means a conscious, deliberate, rational action. In contrast, “operate” means to behave unconsciously, mechanically or automatically, passively or instinctively. The political implications of the distinction between an “acting” and “operating” person can be (...) formulated in the terms “freedom of action” and “coercion to operate,” and the latter can be used as a criterion for determining the type of social system, as well as for evaluating the correlated psychological state of society. As the next step, I analyse the action as a process and a result. I argue that in the social sphere, action appears as the sum of these moments, and the social sphere is a derivate of action. The last aspect of the analysis of action is responsibility. I claim that responsibility can be interpreted as the awareness and recognition by the individual of her role in history. The second part of the work is the study of paradigms and rules of political action in so-called open and closed societies. I claim that political action within the framework of an open society is limited only by legislation. In a closed society, political action is practically impossible: citizens do not act, but “operate” since there are no conditions for actions. After that, I analyse the role of social myths as a factor affecting people’s political activities. In the last part, I analyse the ultimate goal of political action. Traditionally, political philosophy assumes that the goals of politics are exhausted by the problems of relationship between the state and the individual. However, based on the theory of Hannah Arendt, it is possible to formulate the task of political action as the achievement of humanism in a human being, taken not in her relation to the state but in relation to herself. I argue that the minimal political action that can be qualified as humanism consists of the ability and courage to use one’s own mind. (shrink)

Décio Krause has achieved a thorough reconstruction of logic and set theory, to account for the unusual objects or quasi-objects of quantum physics. How can one cope with the (partial) lack of criteria of individualization and re-identification of quantum objects, when the elementary operations of counting them, and constituting sets of them, are to be performed? Here, I advocate an alternative strategy, that consists in going below the level of logic and set theory to inquire how their categories are generated (...) in the experience and activity of knowing subjects, and whether this mode of category generation is still relevant in the field of experimental quantum physics. This project of a “genealogy of logic” is borrowed from Husserl’s last treatise, entitled Experience and Judgment. It is transposed to the case of quantum physics by way of a QBist approach of Mott’s theorization of quasi-“trajectories” in Wilson cloud chambers. It is also shown that one of the most appropriate ontologies for quantum objects or quasi-objects involves reversing the (grammatical) roles of subject and predicate, as advocated by Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitarô in reasonable agreement with both Schrödinger’s and Krause’s approaches of the concept of “particle”. (shrink)

Formalization of reasoning which accepts rules of inference leading to conclusions whose logical values are not smaller than the logical value of the “weakest” premise leads to the concept of consequence operation preserving degrees of truth. Several examples of such consequence operation have already been considered . In the present paper we give a general notion of the consequence operation preserving degrees of truth and its characterization in terms of projective generation and selfextensionality.

Without complete and accurate status information, a project manager’s ability to monitor progress, allocate resources effectively, and detect and respond to problems is greatly diminished, and this can lead to impaired project performance. Many different factors can contribute to intentional misreporting of status information by project members to the project manager. In this study, the impact of organizational ethical climate was assessed through the analysis of responses from 228 project members drawn from a variety of ongoing information systems projects. Our (...) results revealed that project members who perceived their organization to be one in which rules are followed strictly tended to misreport less, while those operating in an environment dominated by personal self-interest tended to misreport more. Somewhat surprisingly, the existence of a caring, team-spirited environment did not appear to have an impact on misreporting behaviors. Implications for researchers and project managers are discussed. (shrink)

Alfred Schütz is often credited with providing sociology with a firm ground derived from phenomenology of science and justifying it as a science operating within natural attitude. Although his project of social science draws extensively on Edmund Husserl’s theory of attitudes, it would be incorrect to assume that Schütz shares with the founder of phenomenology his conception of science. This paper compares Husserl’s and Schütz’s views on the structure and meaning of science and traces the roots of their radical divergence. (...) Whereas Husserl increasingly emphasises the importance of phenomenological reduction for the genuine human science, Schütz eventually rejects reduction and restricts the social science to a specific system of relevancies within the reality of the lifeworld. This paper presents the argument that Schütz’s conception eliminates the possibility of a phenomenological justification of social science, as it implies that there are no rationally justifiable grounds to pursue science. In this way, Schütz’s views substantially differ from the phenomenological theory of science and become open to the phenomenological critique of naivety. (shrink)

The precautionary principle justifies postponing the implementation of development projects to await better information about their environmental impacts. But if implementation capacity is congestible, as is often the case in practical settings, a postponed project may have to vie for implementation priority with projects that arrive later. Limitations of implementation capacity create two risks. First, it may sometimes not make sense to go back to a postponed project, even if it is later revealed to be a good one. Second, the (...) planner may find it worthwhile to go back to it, but at the expense of undesirable delay of subsequent projects. We consider a planner facing a sequence of projects that vary stochastically in their (1) importance and (2) improvability, but knowing that implementation capacity is congestible. The scope for congestion implies a ‘bonus’ for earlier-than-otherwise decisions, in common parlance ‘keeping the desk clear’, which works against the well-understood option value that encourages postponement. The optimal decision rule depends upon the stochastic environment whereby future projects are generated, in ways that are not obvious. The value of the bonus is increasing in the expected importance of future projects but decreasing in their expected improvability. Higher variability of the importance of projects, in the sense of mean-preserving spread, increases the size of the bonus, but variability in their improvability has a generally ambiguous impact. We characterize the adjusted decision rule and note its implications for the conduct of cost-benefit informed policy. (shrink)

The optimistic perspective opened up by the preceding possibilities and promises does not grant that everything in this research project is rosy. Phenomenology may be a philosophy of infinite tasks, but it cannot pass for a philosophy of infinite means. By its very methodological principle, this philosophy is restricted to the elucidation of the phenomena in their horizontal and vertical (as it were) structure or, otherwise put, in their synchronic/diachronic or static/genetic structuring. To this extent, the specifically phenomenologically justified significance (...) of Phenomenology’s discoveries and teachings is restricted to the phenomena themselves, to what is phenomeno-logizable. To be sure, this restriction does not necessarily signal a diminishing of Phenomenology’s dignity as a kind of philosophizing. As we will see, what it signals is a more deeply entrenched self-awareness. Both Husserl and Heidegger nonetheless flirted with (and were sometimes fully enchanted by) the charm of the non-phenomenologizable. It is in the nature of our truth-seeking process in philosophy to frequently find ourselves moving along the boundary that separates the soundly intuitional from the merely speculative. According to Phenomenology’s strict rule, the possible drift into the merely speculative is the philosophical original sin against truth and knowledge, yet Phenomenology does not appear fully innocent of this drift. In this final chapter, we will have the opportunity to see what I believe to be the most crucial trespasses of these self-posed phenomenological limits. Generally speaking, this might be an expected result, given philosophy’s own high expectations in the field of truth and knowledge. The fact remains, however, that without any specific notice both Husserl and Heidegger do on occasion pass from the domain of phenomenological description of the things themselves into a speculative conjecturing of the phenomenologically unchartable. In their efforts to further extend the elucidatory capability of Phenomenology, fully absorbed in following the traces of the phenomena under investigation, they allow themselves to fall down the rabbit hole. (shrink)

In the philosophical works of Emmanuel Levinasʼs early career, it is in a phenomenology of Eros that he claims to have uncovered the site of what he calls ʻtranscendenceʼ. This is no small claim. According to the argument of the later Totality and Infinity (1961), the history of Western philosophy is to be thought as the history of the ʻphilosophy of the sameʼ. Within this polemical generalization almost the whole of Western philosophy is characterized as a totalizing discourse which aims (...) to reduce everything to the categories of a thematizing consciousness. Conceptual structures are employed (or presupposed) in order to make diverse phenomena commensurable within a system, and according to Levinas this operation always constitutes a reduction of what is ʻotherʼ to the order of the ʻsameʼ. In agreement with a certain transcendentalism which is itself implicated in Levinasʼs critique, these structures of thought are then equated with consciousness itself; the thematizing project is one of mastery in which noemata will of necessity conform to noesis, in which the object is constituted for and by the subject. The experience of transcendence, so rare in this version of philosophyʼs history, is the experience of whatever is and truly remains other than me, recalcitrant to mastery through conceptualization and to the transcendental project of the subject to construe everything as originating from within itself. If, then, it is first of all in the erotic relation that the possibility of the experience of transcendence is said to arise, Eros can in no sense be dismissed as an unimportant or peripheral theme for Levinas, and a full investigation is warranted, especially given the current interest in Levinasʼs work, interest which is not limited to the discipline of philosophy. Furthermore, as the notion of Eros is closely associated, textually and conceptually, with what Levinas calls ʻthe feminineʼ, critical attention has been excited amongst feminist scholars of various persuasions, with claims – both positive and negative – being made for Levinasʼs significance as a resource for feminist philosophy and feminist politics. If assertions of a ʻLevinasianʼ feminism, no matter how qualified, tend to rest on the idea that Levinasʼs phenomenology of Eros, and analyses of ʻthe feminineʼ mark a break in or a new departure from a ʻmasculinistʼ tradition, this article seeks, in part, to argue to the contrary. (shrink)

The magical number three has provided the template for this comparative study of Freudian psycho-analysis and Husserlian phenomenology. "Three" should be considered the number of dialectics; the method in the study to let three distinct thematisations succeed each other should find its legitimation in dialectics. The relationship between psycho-analysis and phenomenology as that between two dialectic theories might well call for a dialectic interpretation. It should be difficult from a straightforward and unambiguous interpretation to give full credit to the rich (...) and equivocal meaning of psycho-analysis and phenomenology. I hope to have shown in the presentation above, that it is possible by accentuating different sides of the two scientific disciplines to reach different conclusions regarding their relationship. For a full account of this relationship these different conclusions should be placed together and viewed in their internal coherence as a dialectical unity. Thus none of the three sections of the text should be considered apart from the others. In the first section of the paper, the first thematisation, I tried to spell out the discrepancies between Freud and Husserl as clearly as possible. The point of departure here was the Freudian notion of the "psychical apparatus," and Husserl's doctrine of "intentional consciousness." The models built around these central notions can be shown to have a paradigmatic meaning for the development of Freud's and Husserl's psychological projects. Conceiving the subject as psychical apparatus, Freud thought it possible to make psychology a natural science. The subject could be treated like a mechanical apparatus, that is a machine admitting the general laws of motion. - In contrast, Husserl thought psychology should depart from natural science in its scientific selfunderstanding, and join the humanities instead. Psychology's departure from natural science, Husserl found legitimized in the subject's essential character of intentional consciousness. According to Husserl, man as a conscious being could not be reduced to a thing in the natural world. On the contrary, the aprioric basis for the world should be found in intentional consciousness, which constitutes the "world" as a meaningful coherence related to the subject. Freud's and Husserl's conceptions of psychology were traced to historical roots in respectively positivism, naturalism and mechanical materialism on the one hand, and rationalism, humanism and idealism on the other. In this first interpretation the relationship between psycho-analysis and phenomenology seemed to be antithetical, the two theoretical projects representing opposite poles with regard to cartesian dualism. Although in some ways caricaturing the theories in this one-sided interpretation, I tried to show, that such interpretation is possible with bases in the texts of Freud and Husserl. The decided one-sidedness of the first thematisation should, however, be balanced by the competing interpretation in the second section of the paper. In the second thematisation, I tried to show, that both psycho-analysis and phenomenology in their concrete psychological projects went beyond their points of departure. Although Freud as a scientist of the 19th century naturally found his theoretical language in the successful natural sciences, from which his scientific career started, he decisively broke with this frame of reference in his descriptions of the pathological problems from his clinical praxis. In contrast to the abstract metapsychology of the psychical apparatus, Freud in his clinical psychology departed from mechanism in his attempts to interpret the meaning of the patient's neurotic symptom. The clinical attitude of Freud might resemble phenomenologists' openness towards the meaning of the phenomena, and the case-histories of Freud often read like clinical analyses stemming from existential- phenomenological psychiatrists. - Correspondingly, although Husserl started from the tradition of German philosophy of consciousness, also he can be seen to go beyond the premises of his wellsprings. Starting with a notion of intentionality as consciousness's active positing meaningful objects, Husserl later was led to consider a deeper level of intentionality, a "functioning intentionality," that would situate the subject in a "world" prior to any thematic perceptual act. With the notion of functional intentionality and its further development in Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of the "body-subject," phenomenology seems to have come close to the Freudian doctrine of the unconscious. From this second interpretation it seemed to follow, that a meeting between psycho-analysis and phenomenology should be possible, by cutting off the mechanistic parts from psychoanalysis and the idealistic parts from phenomenology. The hindrance for such meeting should apparently be found in the divergent theoretical prejudices stemming from the ideological climates in which the theories were hatched. None of these two apparently contradictory interpretations, that of the first and second thematisation, should, however, rule out the other. To the question which interpretation is the right one, we should answer "both... and," or perhaps better "Neither... nor." Freud and Husserl in fact held contradictory views in their explicit scientific self-understanding. On the other hand, much of the controversy was caused by theoretical prejudices not essential to the central enterprise of psycho-analysis and phenomenology. And yet, the theoretical work of Freud and Husserl should be considered in its entirety, not omitting parts that do not fit the interpretative context. Freud's mechanistic theories must be read in connection with his clinical/phenomenological psychology, Husserl's doctrine of transcendental consciousness together with his concrete analyses of the world and the body. Freud sticked to his mechanistic metaphors throughout his life, not just because mechanic materialism was his scientific point of departure, but also because he found the models of the psychical apparatus useful to picture the subject-matter of psycho-analysis, the unconscious as it is discovered by the analytic method. Correspondingly, Husserl found in transcendental idealism a metaphysical horizon apparently suited for his main theoretical project, to un-cover by phenomenological reflexion man in his free and conscious being. In this way Freud's materialism and Husserl's idealism might find their limited justification, not in the absolutistic sense set forth in the first section, but in relation to their weighting different aspects of the subject/object dialectic of man. This point of view I tried to explicate in the third section of this paper. In the subject/object dialectic Freud seems to underline man's existence as object, his being ruled by the mechanic, the irrational, the infantile, the unconscious. In contrast, Husserl underlines man's existence as subject, his free and conscious openness towards the world and the future. This difference I characterized with the notions of Ricoeur as respectively an "archeology" and a "teleology" of the subject. And yet the difference between Freud and Husserl is that of a weighting different sides of the subject/object dialectic, not of an exclusive thematisation of man as either subject or object. Freudian archaeology is supplemented by an implicit teleology, Husserlian teleology by an implicit archeology. On the background of such interpretation the relationship between psycho-analysis and phenomenology should be seen neither as the polarity of the first thematisation, nor as the synthesis of the second. Psycho-analysis and phenomenology both contradict and imply each other in a relationship that should be termed dialectical. With this third interpretation the paper ended. At last I noted that the problems raised by the controversy on the subject/object dialectic of man should not easily be solved. Instead, the question "what is man" should have to be answered continuously in a concrete historical reflextion or dialogue. Yet I think it safe to conclude, that any psychological consideration has to take into consideration, both man's archeological and his teleological features, thus not allowing the one perspective completely to rule out the other. (shrink)

Sport often seems to teeter on the edge, on one side of the entertainment industry, on the other of cheating violent aggression: from a make-believe simulacrum of serious play to a nasty chemically enhanced descent into a Hobbesian state of nature. Such perversions lend credibility to reductive views of sport itself as a metonymic feature of capitalism. But that sport as entertainment means fixing it to produce exciting outcomes and amplifying capacities to superhuman proportions, while sport as aggression means treating (...) rules as mere obstacles to brute dominance, shows how far we in fact are from these abysses, even in the days of the Coca Cola/Nike Olympics, Vinny Jones and cricket sledging. In this essay, I try to delineate through history— from Homer to … Gomer?—a common culture of sport and sportsmanship that, with its excesses and perversions, continues to operate as one, albeit complex, ideal of human excellence. (shrink)

This article examines the lasting phenomenological consequences of inhabiting “spaces” of exception by rethinking the operation of sovereign violence therein. Taking as its point of departure Giorgio Agamben’s suggestion that the ‘state of exception’ is the ‘rule’ of modern politics, I argue that arbitrary sovereign violence has taken the place of the ‘sovereign decision’ of Carl Schmitt’s original theory. However, recognizing that it is neither enough simply to articulate the institutional grid of intelligibility of the state of exception nor expose (...) the logics of sovereignty that make possible arbitrary violence, it draws on phenomenology, affect theory, and trauma studies to reorient our focus from the sovereign to the subject upon whom sovereign power is executed. Ultimately it proposes a new understanding of modern subjecthood as one of existential insecurity generated by the ‘new age of anxiety’ permeating social and political life today. (shrink)

Heinrich Popitz’s Phenomena of Power aims to uncover power as “a universal component in the genesis and operation of human societies”. In order to uncover this “universal” concept of power, Popitz employs Husserl’s method of the “imaginative variation” [Phantasievariation]. Yet, contrary to phenomenology’s traditionally descriptive posture, Phenomena of Power’s project is at once descriptive and normative—seeking not only to describe power, but to also describe the way in which power can be remade. In the present paper it is argued that (...) this normative component of Popitz’s project offers the burgeoning field of critical phenomenology an illustration of the way in which Husserl’s “imaginative variation” might be employed not only as a descriptive tool of pure essences, but also as an instrument in the refashioning of social reality. (shrink)

This paper takes up the question as to what has primacy within Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology as a way to provide insight into the relation between empirical science and transcendental philosophy within his account of embodiment. Contending that this primacy necessarily pertains to methodology, I show how Kurt Goldstein’s conception of biology provided Merleau-Ponty with a scientific model for approaching human existence holistically in which primacy pertains to the transcendental practice of productive imagination that generates the eidetic organismic Gestalt in terms (...) of which sense is made of empirical facts. Considering the analogous role played by imagination in Merleau-Ponty’s account of perceptual synthesis in the form of what he called projection, I argue that his account of embodiment is, parallel to Goldstein, grounded methodologically on the projection of an organismic Gestalt, and that as a form of operative-intentional praxis projection is the site of primacy in his phenomenology overall. In terms of the relation between natural science and transcendental philosophy in Merleau-Ponty’s account of embodiment, while the theoretical dimension of the latter—the eidetic apriority of the organismic Gestalt—is coupled dialectically with empirical facts on an epistemically coeval basis, these are jointly subordinated to the normative commitments implied by the imaginative projection of that Gestalt. The primacy of the latter is transcendental but in a distinctly practical sense, such that any substantive discrepancy between natural science and Merleau-Pontian phenomenology reflects metaphilosophical, not theoretical, disagreement. (shrink)

The implications of commonalities in the contributions of five key thinkers in twentieth century phenomenology are discussed in relation to both original aims and contemporary projects. It is argued that, contrary to the claims of Husserl, phenomenology can only operate as hermeneutic phenomenology. Hermeneutics arose within German idealism. It began with Friedrich Ast and Heinrich Schleiermacher and was further developed by, among others, Wilhelm Dilthey and Martin Heidegger. Hermeneutics claims that current understanding is created on the basis of the prior (...) understanding taken to any new situation, in that what is initially understood or believed determines the direction and scope for inquiry or action. Subsequent action and conclustions are similarly based on what has been previously understood and believed. As a consequence, however, what may, in some cases, result is the confirmation of prior inaccurate understanding. For these reasons, it is important to be clear about how initial understandings are formed and how they inform a discipline, be it the Husserlian phenomenology of intentionality or any empirical phenomenological approach. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 8, Edition 1 May 2008. (shrink)

It is well-known that the mature Foucault, while recognizing the influence of phenomenology on him during his youth, declared his anti-phenomenological position since his archeological breakthrough. This paper tries to argue and show that though phenomenology is an object of criticism of Foucault’s archaeology, it nonetheless plays a paradoxical and strategic role in the construction of the archaeological project. Though Foucault undertakes in The Birth of the Clinic a critical deconstruction of phenomenology as positivism, against the open anti-positivist declaration of (...) phenomenology itself, in the Archeology of Knowledge Foucault acknowledges that the opening of the space of archeology requires the practice of the “épochè of the épochè”, and in this sense archeology is a positivism too. That means also that archeology is possible only by the practice of the phenomenological operation of épochè in order to exit from phenomenology. This paradoxical and strategic usage of phenomenology in Foucault’s archeology is extended to his theory of discourse. For Foucault came to realize the limit of discursive practice: not only words signify but things signify too. If archeology wants to extend its domain of competence, it has to recur to description according to the way things show up themselves. This is nothing other than the basic methodological recommendation of phenomenology. Thus Foucault’s open declaration of his anti-phenomenological position is merely apparent, hiding his discrete paradoxical and strategic usage of the rich methodological resources of phenomenology. (shrink)

In elaborating his phenomenological project, Michel Henry refers to Søren Kierkegaard. After a brief survey of Henry’s phenomenology of the self, we will inquire whether this appropriation is accurate. It will be argued that Kierkegaard’s dialectics of existence can operate as a therapy or corrective in order to save Henry’s project of a radical immanent and passive self. If not, it suffers from incoherence both from a phenomenological as well as from a theological perspective. Each self-consciousness, even in its most (...) extreme aff ective states, cannot dispose itself of refl ective remnants. On the contrary, it is precisely Kierkegaard’s proposition that refl ection intensifi es pathos. What appears as most near and dear to us, be it God, self or life, always touches from a distance. (shrink)

Martin-Löf’s type theory stems simultaneously from Frege and Russell’s logic-ontological ideas and Husserl’s phenomenology. The article examines this intermediate status of type theory using as examples Martin-Löf ’s syntactical-semantic method and the role of evidence and canonical objects in his approach. Martin-Löf borrows the syntactical-semantic method from Frege and extends it drawing on Husserl’s theory of meaning. In type theory this method leads to the identity (isomorphism) of syntax and semantics (formal logic and formal ontology). Unlike traditional formal logic the (...) type theory is an interpreted system from the very beginning. Being intuitionistic, Martin-Löf ’s theory is based on the notion of proof, not truth. From the meaning theory point of view, it is a variant of proof-theoretic semantics (Gentzen, Prawitz, Dummett) which understands meaning as an object constructed according to certain rules. So understood, the proof is based on evidence, which allows us to associate it with the theory of intentionality by Husserl. The article compares Martin-Löf ’s type theory with Husserl’s intentionality theory, especially with the latter’s noematic component. We may consider type-theoretical rules for constructing objects and operating with them as a concretization and formalization of the phenomenological notion of noema. Both are explications of the more general concept of meaning. The article discusses the interrelation between notions of sense and meaning (Sinn, Bedeutung) in Frege, Husserl and Martin-Löf. This reveals the uncertainty of Martin-Löf ’s position in relation to meaning theories of Frege and Husserl. (shrink)

As a celebration of theTractatus100th anniversary it might be worth revisiting its relation to the later writings. From the former to the latter, David Pears recalls that “everyone is aware of the holistic character of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, but it is not so well known that it was already beginning to establish itself in theTractatus” (The False Prison, 1987). From the latter to the former, Stephen Hilmy’s (The Later Wittgenstein, 1987) extensive study of theNachlasshas helped removing classical misconceptions such as (...) Hintikka’s claim that “Wittgenstein in thePhilosophical Investigationsalmost completely gave up the calculus analogy.” Hilmy points out that even in theInvestigationsone finds the use of the calculus/game paradigm to the understanding of language, such as “in operating with the word” (Part I, §559) and “it plays a different part in the calculus”. Hilmy also quotes from a late (1946) unpublished manuscript (MS 130) “this sentence has use in the calculus of language”, which seems to be compatible with “asking whether and how a proposition can be verified is only a particular way of asking ‘How do you mean?’” Central in this back and forth there is an aspect which seems to deserve attention in the discussion of a semantics for the language of mathematics which might be based on (normalisation of) proofs and/or Hintikka/Lorenzen game-dialogue: the explication of consequences. Such a discussion is substantially supported by the use of the open and searchableThe Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen. These findings are framed within the discussion of the meaning of logical constants in the context of natural deduction style rules of inference. (shrink)

There is no immediate knowledge, neither empirical nor conceptual. Hegel shows this in his Phenomenology of Spirit. He develops this most important insight in his writings on logic. Science is the project of developing situation-independent generic sentences – which are not to be confused with universally quantified empirical statements. Rather, the sentences articulate law sor rules of default inference and proper judgment in a generic way. They are set as “conceptually valid” not only on merely verbal or conventional grounds, but (...) are “material” in their world-relation. In other words, science develops “the concept” which, in turn, enables us to understand, i.e. to use languages and to think about reality and possibilities more or less correctly. “The concept” is, therefore, the system of generic conditions of all “meaning” and “truth” and is, as such, presupposed in empirical judgments of the category of singularity. “Reason” is the subjective side of “spirit”, which, in turn, is nothing but our practice of scientific development. If we look at this practice from within, spirit is the “self-development” of conceptual contents. Moreover, any causal explanation and any appeal to forces or dispositions rest on conceptual constructions of generic models. This is the core claim of Hegel’s idealism with respect to causes and grounds by which we “explain” appearances: The underlying “Wirklichkeit” is our own scientific construction suited to our joint experiences. (shrink)

In spite of some remarkable contributions, Husserl’s project of phenomenology as universal phenomenology still remains incomplete, and therefore may be questionable both in its fundamental idea – that that phenomenology should encompass all the ontologies and all the sciences in general in a final foundation - and in its accomplishments. In order to complete this task, I believe that the methodological orientation of phenomenology should be stressed, and that the distinctions operating in this second-order critique must be prolonged till their (...) final consequences. One of the aims of this paper is a methodology guided by the theory of constitution and a more precise correlation between the levels of constitution and the levels of phenomenology. Therefore I propose a two-steps post-preliminary methodological approach, which will clarify the status of phe¬nomenology and release its genuine innovating forces. The first step is that of a sharp distinction, perhaps even a separation, between the level of the phenomenological analyses and the level of the philosophical auto-interpretation of these analyses. This distinction will allow us to discuss the various connections between these two levels in Husserlian phenomenology and to examine the way in which some specific phenomenol¬ogical analyses require a specific philosophical superstructure. The second step is the elaboration of a typology of phenomenological analyses. The chart of the systematic lines of methodological issues, elaborated by A. Steinbock, will be the starting point of a discussion, which will be oriented to the clarification of the role that the so-called empirical sciences played in the general theory of constitution. The final conclusive part of our paper contains some reflections about the viability of the Husserlian project of phenomenology as a universal philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper we provide the first in-depth analysis of Anton Wilhelm Amo’s 1734 Tractatus de Arte Sobrie et Accurate Philosophandi by examining the fundamental role that intention plays in this work. Specifically, we argue that the ‘Intentional Principle’, which states that everything that exists (except for God) is the effect of an intentional action, is key to understanding his account of the operations of human and divine spirits and his account of what exists (and why). In doing so, (...) we demonstrate that Amo was a systematic thinker with intention underpinning his philosophical system. Furthermore, we show that intentions are key to understanding Amo’s views on what the ends of philosophy are and how philosophical inquiry ought to be pursued. (shrink)

In his highly perceptive, if underappreciated introduction to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, Russell identifies a “lacuna” within Wittgenstein’s theory of number, relating specifically to the topic of transfinite number. The goal of this paper is two-fold. The first is to show that Russell’s concerns cannot be dismissed on the grounds that they are external to the Tractarian project, deriving, perhaps, from logicist ambitions harbored by Russell but not shared by Wittgenstein. The extensibility of Wittgenstein’s theory of number to the case of (...) transfinite cardinalities is, I shall argue, a desideratum generated by concerns intrinsic, and internal to Wittgenstein’s logical and semantic framework. Second, I aim to show that Wittgenstein’s theory of number as espoused in the Tractatus is consistent with Russell’s assessment, in that Wittgenstein meant to leave open the possibility that transfinite numbers could be generated within his system, but did not show explicitly how to construct them. To that end, I show how one could construct a transfinite number line using ingredients inherent in Wittgenstein’s system, and in accordance with his more general theories of number and of operations. (shrink)