In this book Elizabeth Spillius and Edna O'Shaughnessy explore the development of the concept of projective identification, which had important antecedents in the work of Freud and others, but was given a specific name and definition by Melanie Klein. They describe Klein's published and unpublished views on the topic, and then consider the way the concept has been variously described, evolved, accepted, rejected and modified by analysts of different schools of thought and in various locations – Britain, Western Europe, (...) North America and Latin America. The authors believe that this unusually widespread interest in a particular concept and its varied ‘fate’ has occurred not only because of beliefs about its clinical usefulness in the psychoanalytic setting but also because projective identification is a universal aspect of human interaction and communication. _Projective Identification: The Fate of a Concept_ will appeal to any psychoanalyst or psychotherapist who uses the ideas of transference and counter-transference, as well as to academics wanting further insight into the evolution of this concept as it moves between different cultures and countries. (shrink)

Brian O'Shaughnessy puts forward a bold and original theory of consciousness, one of the most fascinating but puzzling aspects of human existence. He analyses consciousness into purely psychological constituents, according pre-eminence to its epistemological power; the result is an integrated picture of the conscious mind in its natural physical setting. Consciousness and the World is a rich and exciting book, a major contribution to our understanding of the mind.

The phenomenon of action in which the mind moves the body has puzzled philosophers over the centuries. In this new edition of a classic work of analytical philosophy, Brian O'Shaughnessy investigates bodily action and attempts to resolve some of the main problems. His expanded and updated discussion examines the scope of the will and the conditions in which it makes contact with the body, and investigates the epistemology of the body. He sheds light upon the strangely intimate relation of awareness (...) in which we stand to our own bodies, doing so partly through appeal to the concept of the body-image. The result is a new and strengthened emphasis on the vitally important function of the bodily will as a transparently intelligible bridge between mind and body, and the proposal of a dual aspect theory of the will. (shrink)

I have no comment to make on the aesthetic merits of these verses. I have put them at the head of my discussion because they happen to introduce a cluster of concepts connected with forgiveness: pride, love, hate, God, friendship, goodwill, eternity, offence, condemnation, resentment, blame. We may think that some, but not all, of these have essential connections with the concept in which we are interested. And we may, of course, think that the list is incomplete. Other obvious candidates (...) spring to mind: pity, for example, repentance, compassion, punishment and pardoning. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose and defend a theory of concepts. According to Machery (2009), psychologists and philosophers mean different things by ‘concept’. Psychologists mean bodies of knowledge used to categorise and infer; philosophers mean constituent of propositional thought. Machery’s conclusion would drive a wedge between contributions by psychologists and philosophers on concepts. Theories about the former would have no clear role to play in, and cast no light on, the latter, and vice versa. We argue that, on the contrary, (...) ‘concept’ has a single core meaning: a container of stored knowledge pertaining to a single category. This single meaning satisfies both the theories of psychologists and philosophers. The divergence in use of the term ‘concept’ on which Machery focuses arises because words for containers are often used to refer to (a) what is contained by the container and (b) the label of a container. Our account explains what a concept is, and how one might be misled by Machery’s challenge. (shrink)

Brian O'Shaughnessy; V—Material Objects and Perceptual Standpoint, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 65, Issue 1, 1 June 1965, Pages 77–98, https.

Brian O'Shaughnessy; XI*—Seeing the Light, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 85, Issue 1, 1 June 1985, Pages 193–218, https://doi.org/10.1093/aris.

In March 2018, the Irish government confirmed that a referendum would be held on 25 May, allowing for the Irish public to vote on the legalisation of abortion. The same month, Together for Yes – the national civil society campaign advocating for a ‘Yes’ vote in the referendum – was launched. This article draws upon findings from 27 in-depth interviews conducted in December 2019 and January 2020 with Irish abortion activists, to explore the moral and emotional construction of abortion within (...) the ‘Yes’ campaign. This research suggests that the ‘Yes’ campaign, which secured 66% of the votes cast in the referendum, framed abortion as a negative affective object and constructed the moral permissibility of abortion along rather conservative lines. Data from the first year of abortion provision in the Republic of Ireland reveals that abortion seekers still face huge obstacles in accessing services in the State. The legislation introduced in January 2019 allows abortion on request only until 12 weeks, whilst issues remain in relation to the refusal of care. This article, therefore, concludes that by framing abortion in conservative terms, the pro-choice campaign has not yet succeeded in destigmatising abortion in Ireland – an issue now translated into limited legislation and inadequate provision of services. (shrink)

The aim is to discover a principle governing the formation of the dream. Now dreaming has an analogy with consciousness in that it is a seeming-consciousness. Meanwhile consciousness exhibits a tripartite structure consisting of understanding oneself to be situated in a world endowed with given properties, the mental processes responsible for the state, and the concrete perceptual encounter of awareness with the world. The dream analogues of these three elements are investigated in the hope of discovering the source of the (...) kinship between dream and consciousness. The dream world proves to be a logically impossible world, limited by nothing more than sheer narratability. The internal world of the dreamer is notable for the limitlessness of the scope allotted to the imagination, together with the presence of two important phenomena encountered in waking consciousness: a measure of interiority, and the positing of a world. Finally, the dream further replicates consciousness in so far as we seem in dreaming concretely to experience our physical surrounds in the form of perceptual imagining. These properties play their part in enabling the dream to be a seeming-consciousness. At the same time they are such as to necessitate its not being consciousness. It is proposed that in the light of these properties, and those composing the state of consciousness, the dream simply is the imagining of consciousness. (shrink)

Michael Abecassis 'Le Petit Theatre de Renoir: Martin O'Shaughnessy's _Jean Renoir_' _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 8 no. 8, March 2004.

Additional arguments for sense‐data begin by defending the claim that perceptual sensations are psychological individuals, examples being phosphenes, after‐images, and the ‘ringings’ of ‘tinnitus’. Five arguments for sense‐data follow. First, that since corresponding to every veridical visual field is a possible non‐veridical visual field of sensations, the latter merely needs a different and regular outer cause to be deemed veridical. Second, since bodily sensation experience is extremely strong evidence for the existence of a matching sensation cause, the experience of ‘ringing’ (...) must be strong evidence that a ‘ringing’ sensation is its cause, and this holds in the veridical hearing of a ringing sound. Third, that it is inconceivable that one has a truly visual experience of a red visual field, and absolutely nothing red‐looking be there before one had noticed. Fourth, that the experience of sound might have had a different developmental history, in which first there was merely experience of auditory sensation, and then over millennia such experience gradually found itself caused by regular outer phenomena, thereby constituting the hearing of sound. And a fifth argument that resembles the first argument. (shrink)

Self‐awareness—knowledge of self and of one's mental states—is of central importance in ensuring the properties constitutive of consciousness in rational beings. A modified Cartesian thesis is defended: that a well‐formed state of self‐conscious wakefulness is such that the present contents of that mind must be insightfully given to its owner. This is demonstrated through investigating four different states in which insight is diminished and consciousness absent or impaired: sleep, trance, intoxication, and psychosis. These states are analytically explored, and the thesis (...) proven in each case. It emerges that the very items that constitute consciousness in unthinking animals, do the same in thinking animals, only in a more developed form. The differentia of the state of self‐conscious wakefulness is analysed into the co‐presence of a syndrome of mutually necessitating properties : self‐knowledge, rationality, freedom, thinking, etc. When this syndrome is conjoined with the availability of the perceptual attention, together with experience, the state is fully constituted. This is the answer to the fundamental question: what is consciousness? (shrink)

The definition of perception is defended by piecemeal assembling of the concept of perception. We begin with the assumption that some event is an intentionally directed experience; add that it is of a type that aspires to ‘success’‐status, as seem‐see and try‐act aspire to status see and act ; and add that the object actually exists, and that the ‘aspiration’ is successful. Now this complex property fits both action and perception. Then to define action we have the need of a (...) further and indefinable concept, that of will, whereas to define perception we have all the conceptual material we need, for we need no more than the concepts, experience, and object. Perception is unique in being the only experience that finds its identity under the concept of experience, for it is merely awareness or experience taking an extensional object. Then since consciousness and experience are universal to any account of mind, perception likewise must have a position of centrality in the mind. It is an a priori‐given a priori‐definable concept, built out of a priori‐given concepts.. (shrink)

This article brings together the work of Catherine Malabou and films by Jacques Audiard, Céline Sciamma and Mia Hansen-Løve to probe what a Malabouian approach to cinema might be and how it could be brought into dialogue with specific works. Grounding itself in Malabou's thought around change, migration, metamorphosis and brain plasticity, it homes in on her discussion of cineplastics and the brain as image of the world and screen. It argues that, although the cineplastic is paradoxically not applied to (...) film by Malabou, it constitutes a more productive route into film analysis than her direct cinematic references. Turning to the filmmakers to apply a cineplastic approach, it explores how they enable us to reflect on the mobile encounter between plastic subjects and their world, as the world reaches into them and shapes them and they reflexively respond by shaping themselves and reaching out into the world, moulding their relation to it. Building on the careful line Malabou draws between plasticity and neoliberal flexibility, the article uses her thought to probe the films' politics, finding most interest in their reflexivity, their capacity to render visible the contingency of apparently fixed forms and the non-reconciliation of filmic subjects to their worlds. (shrink)

Perception is here differentiated from perceptual imagining. To better understand the latter, the imagination was studied. Three different kinds of imaginative experience were characterized: propositional imagining, imaginative perception, and perceptual imagining. The origins of propositional imagining ensure that they cannot instantiate the cognitive prototype. Meanwhile, both the origins and constitutive character ensure the same in the case both of imaginative perception and of perceptual imagining. The general conclusion is, that imaginings are imaginings neither through having a required constitution nor through (...) origins, and not even through a combination of these factors. Rather, they are imaginings through satisfying the definition. Imagining is quasi a cognitive prototype, which represents Reality as endowed with a certain character, is of necessity not that prototype, and is merely quasi that prototype. (shrink)

This article challenges the critical view that Godwin's association with the theatre is limited to the ill-fated Antonio (1800), and argues that the theatrical world was extremely important to Godwin the writer and political reformer. It considers Caleb Williams (1794) in this theatrical context and suggests a reading of it as a ‘theatrical novel’ in the light of St. Dunstan (1790), Godwin's historical tragedy. It argues that the novel is structured in such a manner that it reflects contemporary dramatic technique, (...) especially in its incorporation of the practice peculiar to the Georgian stage known as ‘pointing’. I will suggest that this deliberate attempt to ‘narrativize’ this performative technique in fictional prose has profound implications in terms of explaining how Godwin saw his novel interact with its reader and is consistent with the philosophy of Political Justice. (shrink)

Rationality of state is essential to consciousness, and depends both on self‐knowledge and on mental activeness—and above all upon the mental activity of thinking. What contribution does the overall activeness of the stream of consciousness make to the obtaining of consciousness? It firstly contributes to the epistemological and perceptual function, through ordering perceptual process. But it secondly conditions the intelligibility of the stream of consciousness of the conscious. The least apparently active experiences of the conscious, such as daydreaming, are shown (...) to be intentionally active, along with the others. This activeness makes possible rationality and explanatorial pellucidity in the development of that ‘stream’, which would otherwise be absent, because of the close link between activeness and rationality. This internal intelligibility has epistemological repercussions, for it is a necessary condition for making sense of the outer phenomenal world. (shrink)

The aim is to provide a theory of consciousness, and of the relation of consciousness through perception with the World. Consciousness is not a mystery, being an internal state analysable into internal constituents. However, it is essentially directed to the World, and this necessitates some knowledge of the World. Certain epistemological powers are peculiar to it, but are they essential? It emerges that consciousness necessitates an accessible perceptual attentive capacity. This is demonstrated through appeal to the principle: the conscious are (...) ‘in touch with’ Reality, and are of necessity oriented towards the truth. Part of the proof turns upon the theory that perception is the sheer presence to awareness of extensionally given phenomenal objects. It contacts objects, not propositions. This is accomplished through the mediation of perceptual ‘proxies’ like side, surface, and ultimately also in seeing through light and visual sensations. However, even prior to this encounter, a ‘The Visual Given’ is presented to consciousness, a causal posit necessitated by the presence of mental causation in the aetiology of the visual experience. This is where the ‘journey’ of the Attention begins, and it ends in Physical Reality, in a complex mental perceptual‐cognitive phenomenon in which in humans the conceptual powers of the mind are engaged in constituting the physical object and its universal setting. Consciousness has from the start an appointment in the concrete with the World in its ultimate physical form, and the introduction sets out to explain how it is that it keeps that appointment. (shrink)

The aim is to distinguish imagining‐of from thought‐of a phenomenal object, and ultimately to differentially distinguish perception‐of a phenomenal object from these close experiential neighbours. Now there is a special negation of imagination, in that imaginings are of necessity not the prototype. This joins the identity‐heading as a criterion for distinguishing the above three varieties of experience. Thus, perception takes direct objects and discovers its identity autonomously under ‘perceive’, but takes no negative objects and no negative propositional objects. The perceptual (...) imagination takes direct objects, finds its identity non‐autonomously under ‘imagine‐of perceiving’, and takes no negative objects, while the propositional imagination takes both positive and negative propositional objects. Then whereas thought probably takes no direct objects, if it could do so such an event would autonomously discover its identity under ‘thought‐of’, and in any case thought takes both positive and negative propositional objects. Finally, we can add to this list the perceptual discovery‐experience, already demarcated in Ch. 10. This differentially demarcates perception. (shrink)

The stream of consciousness of the waking conscious manifests both meaningfulness and interiority as the dream does not. The variety of meaning involved is spelt out. It emerges that it is a derivative of the overall mental activeness of consciousness together with the fact that the activeness pre‐eminently includes the thinking process. This is the one active experiential line that carries its own rationale, for thinking is a mental willing, which par excellence knows where it is going, indeed is the (...) meaning‐giver par excellence in the mind. The nature of thinking is investigated, including the rationale of its close link with the use of language. Thinking is an active process of engendering phenomena in one's understanding, whose object is a changing entity expressed in the symbolism that encapsulates thought. It lies at the heart of consciousness, being the custodial agency responsible for the continuing state of rationality necessary for the state, and is coincident with the interiority of that state. (shrink)

What is implicit in a typically human perception of a material object? First, perceivability is a contingent property of its bearer, relative to perceiver and conditions. Typically, human perception is special in involving the use of concepts and an awareness of object‐structures. When we visually recognize a material object, an almost limitless array of properties and procedures are by implication condensed into an instant: one entertains multiple beliefs, and posits at a distance, multiple properties. Then the experiential integration of the (...) almost limitless visual evidence of a material object is dubbed ‘constituting the material object out of experience’. Central concepts in doing so are those of side, outside, surface, interior, and part. The most important of these experiential syntheses is the spatial, whose unit is the 3D‐seeing of object‐sides, a concept that depends upon those of 2D/3D and 2D/2D seeing. Two vitally important elements in this procedure are, first, the work of the understanding, second, an awareness of the objective physical situation of perceiver and object. (shrink)

Are there some mental phenomena for which insight is necessarily inexistent? The Freudian ‘Id’, and Schopenhauerian ‘Will’, have been joined in latter days by certain cerebral phenomena, all of which have been claimed to be both necessarily inaccessible and mental. General principles of insight are sought whereby we may assess such claims. The main truth emerging is that all known mental phenomenal types are normally immediately insightable in states of proper waking consciousness, and that the only phenomenon that defies the (...) rule is constituted out of insightables. While many mental causal relations are naturally and even necessarily inaccessible, it seems unlikely that any mental phenomenal processes could be. As a test case, the formation of the visual experience is investigated, to discover whether it includes such a mental process. No evidence for such is encountered. All mental processes seem in principle to be accessible to their owner, whether immediately qua experience or inferentially through their constituting state. The conditional‐Cartesian thesis seems intact. (shrink)

Why is consciousness so closely linked to perception? It is because consciousness is directed to the World, and perception our ultimate mode of access to the World. Thus, the most fundamental of the empirical relations of consciousness to the World is the perceptual. Through it the mind acquires both the content necessary for intentionality, and an awareness of the setting in which to lead a life. What does consciousness bring to this situation? Apart from availability of the perceptual Attention, the (...) most important property is the rationality of the state. Two mental conditions of rationality were explored: self‐knowledge, and an overall mental activeness and pre‐eminently the active process of thinking. Then in the state of consciousness thus constituted we typically encounter the phenomenon of perception, set in the stream of experience, the unique experience, which is of the species‐type, experience‐of. Here we have the original epistemological relation between consciousness and the World, and the basis of all more developed or thought‐mediated intentional consciousnesses. Then, sight has a multitude of assets that make it the most effective example to demonstrate how in the perceptions of the conscious we encounter the fully constituted object in its universal setting. At that point, consciousness fufils an appointed destiny. (shrink)

Brian O'Shaughnessy; XII*—Processes, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 72, Issue 1, 1 June 1972, Pages 215–240, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristoteli.

The phenomenon of action in which the mind moves the body has puzzled philosophers over the centuries. In this new edition of a classic work of analytical philosophy, Brian O'Shaughnessy investigates bodily action and attempts to resolve some of the main problems. His expanded and updated discussion examines the scope of the will and the conditions in which it makes contact with the body, and investigates the epistemology of the body. He sheds light upon the strangely intimate relation of awareness (...) in which we stand to our own bodies, doing so partly through appeal to the concept of the body-image. The result is a new and strengthened emphasis on the vitally important function of the bodily will as a transparently intelligible bridge between mind and body, and the proposal of a dual aspect theory of the will. (shrink)