Professor Campbell Garnett has here presented a history, critique and synthesis of several widely diverse philosophical methods and conclusions. With great simplicity he gives an account of the genesis of idealism and the early twentieth century reaction towards realism, highlighting William James’ ‘Does Consciousness Exist’ and G E Moore’s ‘Refutation of Idealism’. Two methods involved are singled out: introspection, emphasised by the ‘acknowledged master of this art’, James and Moore’s linguistic analysis, leading to the analysis of ordinary language and (...) the attempt to develop an ideal language. The author then proposes the analysis of mental life as the most important and central task of the philosopher.. In proof of the validity of this method, it is said that ‘All the various departments of philosophy are analyses of different parts or phases of mental life. Logic is an analysis of the processes of statements and inference; ethics is an analysis of the moral consciousness, and aesthetics of the aesthetic consciousness; epistemology is an analysis of the processes of perception and conception’. This seems to me misleading; the author has already associated analysis of mental life with armchair psychology; and can ‘analysis’ be used to cover critical evaluation? This characterisation of the task of philosophy leads to seeing phenomenology, as ‘a technique in which reflective analysis of the categories is sharpened by the setting aside of other questions’ which is very vague; ‘analysis of ordinary language’ is said to be ‘an analysis of meaning, not in the objective sense of the usage of words as described in the dictionary, but in the subjective sense of their use, of what the use means or intends to do by framing and uttering his sentences’. It also leads to that conflation of philosophy of mind and epistemology/ontology which leads to much confusion, and which it has been the achievement of contemporary philosophy on both sides of the linguistic divide to disentangle. (shrink)

The chapter focuses on attributions of the transparency of thought to early modern figures, most notably Descartes. Many recent philosophers assume that Descartes believed the mind to be “transparent”: since all mental states are conscious, we are therefore aware of them all, and indeed incorrigibly know them all. Descartes, and Berkeley too, do make statements that seem to endorse both aspects of the transparency theses (awareness of all mental states; incorrigibility). However, they also make systematic theoretical statements that directly countenance (...) “unnoticed” thoughts or mental states, that is, thoughts or mental states of which the subject is unaware and has no knowledge. Descartes, having identified the essence of mind with thought or representation, distinguishes bare states of mind from states of which we have reflective awareness, thereby providing a theoretical tool for understanding both his seeming endorsement of transparency and his actual denial of it: Descartes distinguished between a basic perceptual state, or a basic awareness, and reflectively conscious states that involve explicit noticing and cognizing on the part of the subject. Leibniz (as is better known) directly endorsed a similar distinction between bare perception and reflective consciousness, using the term “perception” for the first and “apperception” for the second. In these cases, bare perceptions are not transparently available to the subject, and so in fact the subject does not have knowledge, hence does not have incorrigible knowledge, of all its occurrent mental states. This chapter gives evidence to support these claims; elaborates the complex psychology of the subject found in Descartes and other early moderns; and notes some ways in which these early moderns contributed to the genesis of the modern subject. Finally, it compares McDowell’s conception of the Cartesian mind with the conceptions of mind found in the writings of Descartes, Berkeley, and Leibniz, finding that his characterization caricatures the positions of early modern philosophers. McDowell's characterization has four elements: consciousness as essence of mind; intentionality as exclusively mental; the veil of perception; and the transparency of mind. Only the second point, about intentionality, fully fits Descartes. As a consequence of his own misdirection, McDowell misses the actual basis of his difficulty in connecting mind with world, which arises from a point of agreement between him and Descartes: the removal of intentionality from material sensory systems. But whereas Descartes could relocate (nonconceptual) sensory intentionality in mental states, McDowell is left to account for it with his overly cognitivized scheme of perceptual content as exclusively conceptual. (Paper first given at the European Society for Early Modern Philosophy, 2007.). (shrink)

The Genesis of the Social and the Carnal Donation of the Non-Presentable. The Range of the Notion of Institution in Merleau-PontyThis article examines the range of the notion of institution that Merleau-Ponty proposes in his course at the Collège de France (1954-55), by notably insisting on the importance of the question of the genesis of the social for the deepening of his thought. By broadening his investigative domains in two complementary directions (that is, lateral passivity and socio-historical institution), (...) Merleau-Ponty aims in this course to grasp in a better way the lateral relations of our Urstiftung (originary institution) and the instituting subject who obliquely goes beyond the institution towards its sense. That leads him to introduce the perceptual field as being essentially lacunary, because it marks a place where the consciousness is present at the divergence in relation to consciousness. It is certain that the Phenomenology of Perception addressed this question by considering the social as a place where “I am given to myself”. However, the psychological starting point of this work, as well as the originary temporal and unilateral character of radical reflection, prevented one from really grasping the institutional junction of the concrete event and the symbolic matrix. One was not able to thematize an auto-articulation which appears suddenly between radical reflection and the unreflective. This is why Lévi-Strauss’ structuralist thought, by considering the social as symbolism, allows for a better understanding of this institutional nexus. But this idea does not lead to the dogmatic positing of the reality and the autonomy of the social. Instead, it encourages us to practice “the perception of history,” which consists in guessing, in the very process of sociological idealization, the carnal and wild donation of the non-presentable. Far from returning to psychologism, this perception aims at actively achieving the movement internal to the symbolic, that is, its incarnation.La genesi del sociale e la donazione carnale del non-presentabile. La portata della nozione di istituzione in Merleau-PontyQuesto articolo esamina la portata della nozione d’istituzione che Merleau-Ponty propone nel suo corso al Collège de France del 1954-1955, insistendo in particolare sull’importanza della questione della genesi del sociale per l’approfondimento del suo pensiero.Estendendo i propri domini di ricerca in due direzioni complementari (la passività laterale e l’istituzione socio-storica), Merleau-Ponty si propone in questo corso di cogliere meglio i rapporti laterali della nostra Urstiftung (l’istituzione originaria) e del soggetto istituente che la supera obliquamente in direzione del suo senso. Ciò induce a presentare il campo percettivo come essenzialmente lacunoso, poiché manca di un luogo dove la coscienza possa assistere allo scarto rispetto a se stessa.È certo che la Fenomenologia della percezione affrontava questa questione considerando il sociale come un luogo dove “io sono donato a me stesso”. I presupposti psicologici di quest’opera, così come il carattere originariamente temporale e unilaterale della riflessione radicale, impedivano tuttavia di cogliere in maniera adeguata il legame istituzionale dell’evento concreto e della matrice simbolica, e di tematizzare un’autoarticolazione che sorgesse tra la riflessione radicale e l’irriflesso.È per questo motivo che il pensiero strutturalista di Lévi-Strauss, che considerava il sociale come simbolismo, permette di comprendere meglio questo nesso istituzionale. Quest’idea non conduce però a porre dogmaticamente la realtà e l’autonomia del sociale, essa incita piuttosto a praticare “la percezione della storia” che consiste nell’individuare, nel processo stesso dell’idealizzazione sociologica, la donazione carnale e selvaggia del non-presentabile. Lungi dal rappresentare un ritorno allo psicologismo, questa nozione di percezione mira a completare attivamente il movimento interno al simbolico, ovvero la sua incarnazione. (shrink)

The major theoretical framework relative to the perception of illusory figures is reviewed and discussed in the attempt to provide a unifying explanatory account for these phenomena.

Resumen: Los objetivos de mi trabajo son: explorar la génesis de la función llamada “arco intencional” en la infancia, entenderla como un proceso de desarrollo paulatino y analizar los procesos intermedios que intervienen en su definición. Asimismo, intentaré demostrar que el concepto de arco intencional, aunque poco desarrollado por Merleau-Ponty, conlleva consecuencias que impregnan y sostienen gran parte de su teoría perceptual. Esclarecer la trama conceptual que lo fundamenta no sólo podrá arrojar luz sobre la génesis de la percepción (...) en su teoría, sino que también aportará herramientas valiosas para explicar los inicios de la constitución del cuerpo habitual en la niñez.: This paper aims to explore the genesis of the function called “intentional arc” during childhood, considering it as a process of gradual development and analysing the intermediate processes that collaborate in its definition. I also attempt to demonstrate that the concept of intentional arc, though scarcely developed by Merleau-Ponty, has consequences that imbue and support much of his perceptual theory. Clarifying the conceptual framework that sustains it can not only shed light on the genesis of perception in his theory, but also provides valuable tools to account for the beginning of the constitution of the habitual body in childhood. (shrink)

The recent investigations into knowledge and its elements viz facts, skills and objects have become prominent in various subfields of philosophy and other areas like linguistics, cognitive science, neuroscience and artificial intelligence. These investigations have been mainly on understanding the relation between the intentionality and its referential entities to know how they enrich knowledge with their existence. This article starts with an exploration of the fundamental aspects of judgemental sense from the knowledge origins perspective. To explain the consequences of this, (...) I start with reconstructing the notion of categorial intuitions described in Husserl’s sixth Logical Investigations by relating it to ‘knowledge origination’ as an intuitive fulfilment of signifying acts. This offers a relation of perceptual synthesis, operating implicitly among the signifying intentions upon grasping intended objects, in view of language structures such as copulas. This leads to the synthesis of intuitive aspects mainly from the categorial elements for a judgemental sense or thinking and the attitude from the very sphere of perception. The tension between categorial intuitions is understood as foundational acts and founded acts. Husserl’s sixth Logical Investigation describes the notion of passive synthesis, the genesis of categoriality in every realm of sensibility that allows one to formulate the relational role among the ‘act of knowing’ and phenomenological approaches to the judgemental sense. Thus, the investigation focuses on perceptual judgements and categories, which fulfils the judgemental sense of categorial elements and attitude. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present Peirce’s semiotics as an important factor in the genesis of Alfred North Whitehead’s doctrine of symbolism. I argue that Peirce had a direct impact on Whitehead’s earliest reflections on symbolism generally and mathematical symbolism particularly. From his first encounter with Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotic doctrine, contrasted to that of George F. Stout, Whitehead derived a general doctrine of signs which he never abandoned and which formed the basis of his mature doctrine (...) of symbolism. While in the first years of his Harvard professorship, Whitehead suffered a second, indirect, influence from Peirce, through the American philosophers he interacted with. His mature philosophy of perception is both the development and application of the doctrine derived from Peirce and Stout thirty years before, and a reply to the realist doctrines which stressed the symbolic nature of perceptual knowledge, most importantly Santayana’s. Whitehead’s own brand of realism rests on the assumption of a pansemiotic principle, obscurely and mediately derived from Peirce. (shrink)

Poorly saturated colors are closer to a pure grey than strongly saturated ones and, therefore, appear less “colorful”. Color saturation is effectively manipulated in the visual arts for balancing conflicting sensations and moods and for inducing the perception of relative distance in the pictorial plane. While perceptual science has proven quite clearly that the luminance contrast of any hue acts as a self-sufficient cue to relative depth in visual images, the role of color saturation in such figure-ground organization has (...) remained unclear. We presented configurations of colored inducers on grey ‘test’ backgrounds to human observers. Luminance and saturation of the inducers was uniform on each trial, but varied across trials. We ran two separate experimental tasks. In the relative background brightness task, perceptual judgments indicated whether the apparent brightness of the grey test background contrasted with, assimilated to, or appeared equal (no effect) to that of a comparison background with the same luminance contrast. Contrast polarity and its interaction with color saturation affected response proportions for contrast, assimilation and no effect. In the figure-ground task, perceptual judgments indicated whether the inducers appeared to lie in front of, behind, or in the same depth with the background. Strongly saturated inducers produced significantly larger proportions of foreground effects indicating that these inducers stand out as figure against the background. Weakly saturated inducers produced significantly larger proportions of background effects, indicating that these inducers are perceived as lying behind the backgrounds. We infer that color saturation modulates figure-ground organization, both directly by determining relative inducer depth, and indirectly, and in interaction with contrast polarity, by affecting apparent background brightness. The results point towards a hitherto undocumented functional role of color saturation in the genesis of form, and in particular figure-ground percepts in the absence of chromatostereopsis. (shrink)

In recent years it has become popular to model putative refutations of skepticism on Kant's answer to Hume, that is, on transcendental arguments purporting to show that the skeptical theses presupposes essential features of the very conceptual scheme they call into question. In his book, Oneself as Another, Paul Ricoeur makes the claim that transcendental considerations of the sort invalidate Edmund Husserl's foundationalist epistemological enterprise, that of uncovering the genesis of primitive concepts of oneself, world, and others in a (...) primordial solipsistic stage from which all trace of others is excluded. According to Ricoeur the concept of others must be presupposed throughout. This paper examines the experiential evidence for four of the transcendental arguments endorsed by Ricoeur, each treating one of four key concepts--the concept of oneself as subject, that of one's flesh, that of one's body, and that of other selves. It finds that in each case Ricoeur’s argument fails, and that in each case Husserl is right to claim that a rudimentary nonlinguistic concept may arise within the confines of first-person perceptual experience. The paper then briefly examines the source of Ricoeur's erroneous evaluation. (shrink)

In recent decades, scientists and philosophers have developed several naturalistic theories of consciousness, in which they try to work out some theoretical foundations for a satisfactory solution to the problem of voluntary acts, in particular the genesis of voluntary bodily movements. From the author’s point of view, depending on which concept of consciousness scientists rely on in their empirical studies of voluntary movements, volition can be understood either as a generative act or as a perceptual act. The first (...) part of the article shows that nowadays there are two competing philosophical and scientific models of volition: the generative model (dualistic and casualistic types) and the perceptual model (strong and weak types). The second part of the article deals with some experimental data from cognitive psychology and neuroscience related to the study of voluntary movements and concludes that they are in favor of the perceptive model of volition. (shrink)

Riassunto: Questo lavoro tratta le dimensioni analitiche della hyletica e della genetica nella prima fenomenologia della percezione sensibile di M. Scheler, caratterizzata da una fondazione realistica della materia e della forma del percetto. La hyletica fenomenologica indaga la “materia” o contenuto qualitativo del vissuto nel suo aspetto pre-intenzionale di dato sensoriale informe, privo cioè di forma oggettiva. La genetica fenomenologica indaga la genesi o formazione dei due poli della relazione intenzionale atto-oggetto, a partire dal loro originario momento d’indistinzione allo stadio (...) primitivo della coscienza percettiva. In questo lavoro si sottolinea l’originale elaborazione scheleriana dell’analisi fenomenologica: hyletica e genetica sono parte di un’indagine volta a indagare i diversi aspetti della realtà intesa come fenomeno vissuto caratterizzato dalla resistenza delle cose rispetto a un comportamento animato da finalità adattative. Il percipiente non è per Scheler il soggetto autocosciente, ma l’organismo come agente di informazione/comunicazione in costante interazione con il proprio ambiente circostante. Parole chiave: Hyletica fenomenologica; Fenomenologia genetica; Oggetto reale; Materia; Resistenza Matter and Form in Max Scheler’s Early Phenomenological Aesthetics: This paper addresses the analytic dimensions of Hyletics and Genetics in M. Scheler’s early phenomenology of sense perception, characterized by its realistic foundation for the matter and form of percepts. Phenomenological Hyletics studies the “matter”, i.e., the qualitative content of lived experiences with respect to the pre-intentional aspect of its unformed sensory input, lacking in objectual form. Phenomenological Genetics studies the “genesis” or formation of intentionality’s relata, starting from the early moments of indistinction at the initial phase of perceptual consciousness. This paper highlights the pivotal role and, above all, the original elaboration of these two analytic dimensions by the author: within Scheler’s work, phenomenological Hyletics and Genetics form part of an inquiry that stresses different aspects of reality, understood as a living phenomenon characterized by the resistance of things to adaptive behavior. According to Scheler, therefore, the perceiver is not a self-conscious subject, but rather an organism, i.e., an agent of information-communication that continuously interacts with his surrounding environment. Keywords: Phenomenological Hyletic; Genetic Phenomenology; Real Object; Matter; Resistence. (shrink)

Phenomenology’s reversal of naturalism hinges on the central claim that the worldly objects that we experience acquire their ontological solidity throughout series of intentional acts that are accomplished over the course of our subjective and intersubjective lives. This posture has historically given rise to realist critiques stating that such a “correlational” ontology undermines our capacity to formulate a coherent discourse on generative natural events that predate humans, such as the Big Bang, the Earth’s accretion, the formation of the oceans, etc. (...) In this paper, I articulate a Merleau-Pontian response to this problem. I establish a continuity between the temporality that is at play in the genesis of empirical bodies and the pre-objective tension that precedes perceptual givenness. I therefore suggest treating the past of nature as a transcendental past, always at work within our present experience, instead of an objective moment that would have determined in advance a causal chain of events. (shrink)

This contributed volume aims to reconsider the concept of individuation, clarifying its articulation with respect to contemporary problems in perceptual, neural, developmental, semiotic and social morphogenesis. The authors approach the ontogenetical issue by taking into account the morphogenetical process, involving the concept of individuation proposed by Gilbert Simondon and Gilles Deleuze. The target audience primarily comprises experts in the field but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students. The challenge of the genesis and constitution of "units" (...) has always been at the center of philosophical and scientific research. This ontogenetical issue is common to every discipline but it is articulated in different ways: in phenomenology of perception the constitution of perceptual units is at the base of gestalt field theories, in theoretical neuroscience synchronized neural assemblies are considered as correlates of conscious processes, in developmental embryogenesis the constitution of organs is the principle outcome of morphodynamic evolution while in social morphogenesis the constitution of coherent units is common to segmentary, gerarchic and functional differentiation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The New Husserl: A Critical ReaderBob SandmeyerDonn Welton, editor. The New Husserl: A Critical Reader. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003. Pp. xxv + 334. Cloth, $75.00. Paper, $29.95.Donn Welton has put together a superb collection of twelve essays which "provide an alternative to the standard approach to Husserl by examining his method as a whole and by offering depth-probes into a number of issues, old and new, that (...) occupied [Husserl] during his exceptionally productive later period" (xi). Although classed under five subheadings by Welton, the essays are of three types generally. These are (1) essays which provide introduction to and overview of Husserl's philosophy, especially as expressed in his later works, (2) essays of comparison between aspects of Husserl's philosophy and other non-phenomenological or psychological theories, and (3) analytic essays which treat a particular thematic within (and transcending) Husserl's phenomenological philosophy.The book begins with Klaus Held's wonderfully coherent introductions to Husserl's phenomenological method and phenomenology of the life-world. Although these two essays are not new, they remain original and current overviews of Husserl's whole philosophy [End Page 122] translated into English for the first time. More importantly, they do not lapse into an obtuse jargon so typical of Husserlian scholarship. Both essays provide an excellent introduction to the major themes of Husserl's philosophy.Three essays within the collection are primarily comparative. Dieter Lohmar delves into a notoriously thorny issue within Kant's first critique, i.e., the schematism of concepts, in order to compare this against Husserl's concept of type. But he attempts herein to articulate something that "never really interested Kant" (97), i.e., the empirical genesis of the schemata. Apart from providing a clear account of the genesis of empirical schema within Kantian philosophy, Lohmar also clarifies the Husserlian conception of type as instituted in perceptual consciousness. Rudolf Bernet examines the appearing of Unconsciousness as presented by Freud in order to "show how it is possible that consciousness can bring to present appearance something unconscious... without thereby incorporating it into or subordinating it to the conscious present" (200). Bernet achieves two ends in this fine essay. He employs Husserl's theory of phantasy in inner-time consciousness in order to intimate a solution to the seeming aporia implicit in Freud's theory of unconscious consciousness. More importantly to Husserlian scholarship, however, Bernet also provides a fine articulation of Husserl's theory of phantasy as it develops from the "apprehension of a content of apprehension" schema to that of a non-positing, intuitive-reproductive presentification. Donn Welton's essay, "World as Horizon," attacks the semantic theory of claims and descriptions espoused primarily by Robert Brandom. What is lacking in Brandom's theory of claims and, by extension, in any abstracting semantic theory, Welton argues, is the proper starting point. Speech acts must be understood from within a theory of world "as a nexus of significance that situates not only our multiple discourses about different regions but also the regions themselves" (224).The bulk of the essays in this collection, however, are analytic in nature and range over themes as diverse as intentionality, inner-time-consciousness, self-reflection, intersubjectivity and the differing styles of phenomenological analysis within Husserl's philosophy. Perhaps the best essays in this collection, given its aim, are Lanei Rodemeyer's essay "Developments in the Theory of Time-Consciousness: an Analysis of Protention" and Anthony Steinbock's "Generativity and the Scope of Generative Phenomenology." Where Rodemeyer concentrates her attention on explicating the role of protention in all of Husserl's time-analyses—but most especially in the later Bernauer and C manuscripts, Steinbock looks from within Husserl's philosophy to a style of analysis that goes beyond Husserl to become "a communal effort, not just among contemporary phenomenologists, but as a project handed down and appropriated over the generations" (317 ff.). With the exception of David Carr's essay on subjectivity in the transcendental tradition, what is common to all these analytical essays is the dominant place of Husserl's late analyses of inner-time-consciousness and temporalization. These analyses play a major role in the two essays just... (shrink)

In this article I will suggest ways in which adding the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze to the mix can complement and extend the 4EA approach to cognitive science. In the first part of the paper, I will show how the Deleuzean tripartite ontological difference (virtual/intensive/actual) can provide an explicit ontology for dynamical systems theory. The second part will take these ontological notions and apply them to three areas of concern to the 4EA approaches: (a) the Deleuzean concept of the virtual (...) will clarify the ontological status of perceptual capacity as sensorimotor skill; (b) the Deleuzean concept of “intensive individuation” will clarify the ontological status of the genesis of perceptually guided behavior; (c) the Deleuzean critique of confusing the actual and the virtual will enable us to intervene in the realism/idealism debate. These aspects will not be addressed sequentially but will be interwoven into an unfolding argument. (shrink)

This monograph presents new material on Francisco Suárez’s comprehensive theory of sense perception. The core theme is perceptual intentionality in Suárez’s theory of the senses, external and internal, as presented in his Commentaria una cum quaestionibus in libros Aristotelis De anima published in 1621. The author targets the question of the multistage genesis of perceptual acts by considering the ontological “items” involved in the procession of sensory information. However, the structural issue is not left aside, and the (...) nature of the relationship due to which our perceptions are mental representations of this or that object is also considered. The heuristic historiographical background includes not only the theories of classical authors, such as Aristotle and Aquinas, but also those of late medieval authors of the fourteenth century. These are headed by John Duns Scotus, John of Jandun, Peter Auriol and Peter John Olivi. Readers will discover the differences between Suárez’s and Aquinas’s views, as well as other sources that may have served as positive inspiration for the Jesuit’s theory. By considering the late medieval philosophy of the fourteenth century, this book helps, to a certain extent, to fill a gap in the historiography of philosophy regarding the link between late medieval and early modern scholasticism. In the first part of the book, the metaphysics of the soul and powers is considered. Chapters on the external senses follow, covering topics such as the sensible species, the causes of sensation, self-awareness, and the ordering of the external senses. A further chapter is devoted to the internal senses and the author argues that by reducing the number and functional scope of the interior senses Suárez deepens the gap between the external senses and the intellect, but he reduces it through emphasizing the unifying efficacy of the soul.This book brings a synthetic and unifying perspective to contemporary research and will particularly appeal to graduate students and researchers in theology and philosophy, especially philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The last years’ achievements in neuroscience are key for a philosophical analysis focused on the mind-body problem, such as the phenomenological approach.The digital evolution, on the one hand, faces us with the interaction between the world of reality and the world of possibility. This means more than a mere coexistence between these two dimensions. Rather, a concrete feedback occurs among them, and this brings out unprecedented and unavoidable issues with regard to perceptual processes. On the other hand, the digital (...) evolution allows for analyzing data and monitoring environmental systems, thus reasoning in a predictive way, anticipating problems, and checking ex ante their evolution and outcomes.Neuroscience, for its part, with the experiments of Libet and their subsequent interpretations, has highlighted a consciousness of the unconscious made of ballistic and automatic processes, which constitutes the starting phase of our decisions and actions. This further confirmed that sequential and linear thinking is unable to address the brain-environment relationship that is key in understanding any cognitive process.This analysis confirms the relevance of different aspects of Husserl’s phenomenology. There is, however, a “but,” which significantly reduces the extent of adherence to his point of view. Husserl assumed that an implicit horizon precedes or accompanies the acts of conscience. This is the material, impressional, passive, receptive, and, in some way, tacit dimension, strictly connected to the issue of genesis, i.e. the process of constitution of the analyzed entities. Thus, he drew a clear dividing line between this dimension and the phases of the self-controlling, vigilant conscience and its activity. In fact, his approach to the phenomenological problem is mainly oriented toward these phases. (shrink)

A theory of the first-person plural occupies a unique place in philosophical investigations into intersubjectivity and social cognition. In order for the referent of the first-person plural—“the We”—to come into existence, it seems there must be a shared ground of communicative possibility, but this requires a non-circular explanation of how this ground could be shared in the absence of a pre-existing context of communicative conventions. Margaret Gilbert’s and John Searle’s theories of collective intentionality capture important aspects of the We, but (...) fail to fully account for this shared ground of communicative possibility. This paper argues that Merleau-Ponty’s concept of intercorporeity helps reconcile the positive aspects of these accounts while also explaining how the genesis of the social world is continuous with perceptual life in general. This enables an account of the first-person plural as dependent on reciprocal communicative interaction without the need to posit a primitive or primordial “we-mode” of consciousness. “Intercorporeity” designates a bodily openness to others that is not fundamentally different in kind from the general style of bodily comportment found in Merleau-Ponty’s rich analyses of perceptual life. (shrink)

This study aims at discovering the essential constituents involved in the experiences of guilt and shame. Guilt concerns a subject’s action or omission of action and has a clear temporal unfolding entailing a moment in which the subject lives in a care-free way. Afterwards, this moment undergoes a reconstruction, in the moment of guilt, which constitutes the moment of negligence. The reconstruction is a comprehensive transformation of one’s attitude with respect to one’s ego; one’s action; the object of guilt and (...) the temporal-existential experience. The main constituents concerning shame are its anchorage in the situation to which it refers; its public side involving the experience of being perceptually objectified; the exclusion of social community; the bodily experience; the revelation of an undesired self; and the genesis of shame in terms of a history of frozen now-ness. The article ends with a comparison between guilt and shame. (shrink)

The first half of Barbaras’s book, which is as lucidly analytical as it is ambitiously interpretive, is an uncovering of the unjustified Husserlian transcendental “objectivism,” Sartrean dialectic, and Cartesian dualism that dominate the early period of Merleau-Ponty’s thought. According to Barbaras, the Phenomenology of Perception is overburdened with the critique of the intellectualist and realist framework of nonphenomenological theories of perception. Merleau-Ponty’s development must be understood as transcending the residue of his former intellectualist point of view deriving from a phenomenological (...) theory of consciousness. His achievement in his later work is to have uncovered the “unthought” in Husserl’s phenomenology of perception, which is precisely the articulation of intersubjectivity that transcends the insular, solipsistic body. What Barbaras traces in comprehensive detail is a teleology that is directed toward an ontological turn based on the primacy of the flesh as that which manifests meaning in the world of perceptual and linguistic sense, even though, as he admits, “We do not have any one text that gathers together the final state of his philosophy”. Nonetheless, according to the teleological reading incited by the later working note according to which the results of Phenomenology of Perception need to be brought to ontological explicitation, Barbaras takes as the basis of the critique the idea that the early work is based on the consciousness-object distinction, later to be overcome in the notions of intertwining and chiasm. Merleau-Ponty later overcomes this separation by disclosing that genesis of the ideality of expressible meaning is based in the perceptible domain itself, but that in turn the perceivable is not to be reduced to the expressible. Through the investigation of expression the being of a “wild world” can be located beyond the earlier opposition between fact and essence, an inheritance of Husserl’s thought the overthrow of which signals the turn toward the Being of the world as rooted in the intertwining of the perceived and expressed sense in speech. Visual perception is conceived simultaneously as “silent logos,” speech, and expression, and ontologically speaking, as the world itself. This entails a radical extension of phenomenality to include that which is invisible in speech and sense. (shrink)

Face-to-face meetings are often preferred over other forms of communication because meeting in person provides the “richest” way to communicate. Face-to-face meetings are so rich because many ways of communicating are available to support mutual understanding. With the progress of digitization and driven by the need to reduce personal contact during the global pandemic, many face-to-face work meetings have been shifted to videoconferences. With webcams turned on, video calls come closest to the richness of face-to-face meetings. However, webcam use often (...) remains voluntary, and some participants choose not to turn their cameras on. In order to find ways to support webcam use—when desired—we analyzed how social norms in groups affect the decision to activate a webcam in a specific meeting. Based on an online survey with N = 333 participants, we found that social norms are related to an individual’s decision to turn on the webcam, even when controlling for group size. If the number of participants with activated webcams in a university meeting increased by 25%, it was 5.92 times more likely that an individual decided to turn their webcam on, too. Furthermore, 81.84% of respondents indicated they would turn on their webcam if participants in a meeting were explicitly asked to do so. The results demonstrate a strong relation between social norms and the decision to activate a webcam in online meetings. They build a basis for enhancing webcam use and enable a greater richness of communication in online meetings. (shrink)

Is color real or illusory, mind independent or mind dependent? Does seeing in color give us a true picture of external reality? The metaphysical debate over color has gone on at least since the seventeenth century. In this book, M. Chirimuuta draws on contemporary perceptual science to address these questions. Her account integrates historical philosophical debates, contemporary work in the philosophy of color, and recent findings in neuroscience and vision science to propose a novel theory of the relationship between (...) color and physical reality. -/- Chirimuuta offers an overview of philosophy’s approach to the problem of color, finds the origins of much of the familiar conception of color in Aristotelian theories of perception, and describes the assumptions that have shaped contemporary philosophy of color. She then reviews recent work in perceptual science that challenges philosophers’ accounts of color experience. Finally, she offers a pragmatic alternative whereby perceptual states are understood primarily as action-guiding interactions between a perceiver and the environment. The fact that perceptual states are shaped in idiosyncratic ways by the needs and interests of the perceiver does not render the states illusory. Colors are perceiver-dependent properties, and yet our awareness of them does not mislead us about the world. Colors force us to reconsider what we mean by accurately presenting external reality, and, as this book demonstrates, thinking about color has important consequences for the philosophy of perception and, more generally, for the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Perceptual learning is commonly understood as conferring some benefit to the learner, such as allowing for the extraction of more information from the environment. However, perceptual learning can be biased in several different ways, some of which do not appear to provide such a benefit. Here we outline a systematic framework for thinking about bias in perceptual learning and discuss how several cases fit into this framework. We argue these biases are compatible with an understanding in which (...) perceptual learning is beneficial, but that its benefits are tied to both a person's narrow interests and the training environment or domain, and so if there are changes to either of these, then benefits can turn into liabilities, though these are often temporary. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe standard view in philosophy of mind is that the way to understand the difference between perception and misperception is in terms of accuracy. On this view, perception is accurate while...

It is argued that three major attempts by Barsalou to specify what makes a perceptual symbol perceptual fail. It is suggested that one way to give such an account is to employ the symbols.

Aim: Explore nurses’ values and perceptions regarding the practice of medical aid in dying. Background: Medical aid in dying is becoming increasing legal in the United States. The laws and American Nurses Association documents limit nursing involvement in this practice. Nurses’ values regarding this controversial topic are poorly understood. Methodology: Cross-sectional electronic survey design sent to nurse members of the American Nurses Association. Inductive thematic content analysis was applied to open-ended comments. Ethical Considerations: Approved by the institutional review board (#191046). (...) Participants: 1213 nurses provided 3639 open-ended comments. More than 80% of participants self-identified as white 58% held a graduate degree; and half were of Christian faith. Results: Values ranged on a continuum expressed through four themes: “Honoring Patient Autonomy without Judgment,” “Honoring with Limitations,” “Not until...,” and “Adamantly against.” Some felt it was a duty to honor the patients’ wishes, set aside own beliefs, and respect patients’ choices often with a spiritual connotation. Nurses held concerns about the process, policy, potential psychological harm, legal risk, and the need to learn more about MAID. Nurse who were adamantly against MAID associated the practice with murder/suicide and against religious beliefs. Disparate values were expressed about changing the MAID legislation to allow patient support with taking MAID medications and allowing MAID via advance directive. Conclusions: Nurses desire more education on MAID. There is not one universally held position on the nurse’s role during MAID. Healthcare policy/standards need to accommodate the wide variation in nurses’ values. Implications: Nurses desire education regarding their role in MAID. Nurses are encouraged to participate in policy discussions as the practice becomes increasingly legal. Managers need to expect that nurses, patients, and families will need psychological support to participate in MAID. Careful construction of policy/standards is needed to minimize conflict, moral distress, and psychological harm amongst nurses. Further research is needed. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that McDowell's brand of disjunctivism about perceptual knowledge is ill‐motivated. First, I present a reconstruction of one main motivation for disjunctivism, in the form of an argument that theories that posit a “highest common factor” between veridical and non‐veridical experiences must be wrong. Then I show that the argument owes its plausibility to a failure to distinguish between justification and warrant (where “warrant” is understood as whatever has to be added to true belief to (...) yield knowledge). (shrink)

It has been suggested that Russell and or Wittgenstein arrived at a truth-table device in or around 1912 [Shosky 1997], and that, since the history of its development is so complex, the best one can claim is that theirs may be the first identifiably ascribable example. However, Charles Peirce had, unbeknownst to most logicians of the time, already developed a truth table for binary connectives of his algebra of logic in 1902.

In Older Adults (OAs), Electroencephalogram (EEG) slowing in frontal lobes and a diminished muscle atonia during Rapid Eye Movement sleep (REM) have each been effective tracers of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), but this relationship remains to be explored by non-linear analysis. Likewise, data provided by EEG, EMG (Electromyogram) and EOG (Electrooculogram)—the three required sleep indicators—during the transition from REM to Non-REM (NREM) sleep have not been related jointly to MCI. Therefore, the main aim of the study was to explore, with (...) results for Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (DFA) and multichannel DFA (mDFA), the Color of Noise (CN) at the NREM to REM transition in OAs with MCI vs. subjects with good performances. The comparisons for the transition from NREM to REM were made for each group at each cerebral area, taking bilateral derivations to evaluate interhemispheric coupling and anteroposterior and posterior networks. In addition, stationarity analysis was carried out to explore if the three markers distinguished between the groups. Neuropsi and the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) were administered, as well as other geriatric tests. One night polysomnography was applied to 6 OAs with MCI (68.1 ± 3) and to 7 subjects without it (CTRL) (64.5 ± 9), and pre-REM and REM epochs were analyzed for each subject. Lower scores for attention, memory and executive funcions and a greater index of arousals during sleep were found for the MCI group. Results confirmed that EOGs constituted significant markers of MCI, increasing the CN for the MCI group in REM sleep. The CN of the EEG from the pre-REM to REM was higher for the MCI group vs. the opposite for the CTRL group at frontotemporal areas. Frontopolar interhemispheric scaling values also followed this trend as well as right anteroposterior networks. EMG Hurst values for both groups were lower than those for EEG and EOG. Stationarity analyses showed differences between stages in frontal areas and right and left EOGs for both groups. These results may demonstrate the breakdown of fractality of areas especially involved in executive functioning and the way weak stationarity analyses may help to distinguish between sleep stages in OAs. (shrink)

Here is a puzzle about aesthetic education. In a variety of contexts, we commit significant time, energy, and resources to aesthetic education. We teach (and in many cases publicly subsidize) university courses and degrees that have aesthetic education as their primary aim; we also invest public resources into museums, including enrichment programs that are also designed to afford aesthetic education. It would seem that if our commitment to aesthetic education is rational, then aesthetic appreciation is something that can be done (...) better or worse. However, we also, in a variety of contexts (oddly enough, some of them being the same sorts of contexts that are designed to abet aesthetic education), act as if it is true that there is no disputing taste. We may try to persuade students to come around to particular judgments, but we do not penalize students for judging one way or another. The aim of this paper is to dissolve the apparent puzzle of aesthetic education by clarifying its aims and advancing a conception of it that deemphasizes the role of taste. I claim that, pace “the default view of aesthetic education” (as I shall call it), the primary purpose of aesthetic education is not to educate taste. It is, rather, to facilitate the development of certain perceptual-cognitive capacities so as to enhance aesthetic experience and improve aesthetic appreciation. Thus, I call the view of aesthetic education advanced here “a perceptual-cognitive model”. (shrink)

What is it about art that can be so captivating? How is it that we find value in the often odd and abstract objects and events we call artworks? William P. Seeley proposes that artworks are attentional engines. They are artifacts that have been intentionally designed to direct attention to critical stylistic features that reveal their point, purpose, or meaning. In developing this view, Seeley argues that there is a lot we can learn about the value of art from interdisciplinary (...) research focused on our perceptual engagement with artworks. Recent breakthroughs in cognitive science and behavioral science can explain how we recognize artworks and how we differentiate them from more quotidian artifacts. Seeley pushes this line of reasoning, showing how cognitive science can help reveal the way artworks function as a unique source of value. Cognitive systems integrate this information into our experience of art, guiding attention and shaping what we perceive. Our understanding and appreciation of artworks is therefore carried in our perceptual experience of them. -/- Attentional Engines explores the pitfalls and potential of this interdisciplinary strategy for understanding art. It articulates a cognitivist theory of art grounded in perceptual psychology and neuroscience and demonstrates its application to a range of puzzles in the philosophy of the arts. This includes questions about the nature of depiction, the role played by metakinesis in dance appreciation, the nature of musical expression, and the power of movies. The provocative interdisciplinary theories Seeley presents will appeal to scholars and students interested in aesthetics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of art, cognitive science, and anyone with a burning curiosity about how artworks work. (shrink)

This study explores the effect of individuation training on the acquisition of race-specific expertise. First, we investigated whether practice individuating other-race faces yields improvement in perceptual discrimination for novel faces of that race. Second, we asked whether there was similar improvement for novel faces of a different race for which participants received equal practice, but in an orthogonal task that did not require individuation. Caucasian participants were trained to individuate faces of one race (African American or Hispanic) and to (...) make difficult eye-luminance judgments on faces of the other race. By equating these tasks we are able to rule out raw experience, visual attention, or performance/success-induced positivity as the critical factors that produce race-specific improvements. These results indicate that individuation practice is one mechanism through which cognitive, perceptual, and/or social processes promote growth of the own-race face recognition advantage. (shrink)

How does the human brain link relational concepts to perceptual experience? For example, a speaker may say “the cup to the left of the computer” to direct the listener's attention to one of two cups on a desk. We provide a neural dynamic account for both perceptual grounding, in which relational concepts enable the attentional selection of objects in the visual array, and for the generation of descriptions of the visual array using relational concepts. In the model, activation (...) in neural populations evolves dynamically under the influence of both inputs and strong interaction as formalized in dynamic field theory. Relational concepts are modeled as patterns of connectivity to perceptual representations. These generalize across the visual array through active coordinate transforms that center the representation of target objects in potential reference objects. How the model perceptually grounds or generates relational descriptions is probed in 104 simulations that systematically vary the spatial and movement relations employed, the number of feature dimensions used, and the number of matching and nonmatching objects. We explain how sequences of decisions emerge from the time‐ and state‐continuous neural dynamics, how relational hypotheses are generated and either accepted or rejected, followed by the selection of new objects or the generation of new relational hypotheses. Its neural realism distinguishes the model from information processing accounts, its capacity to autonomously generate sequences of processing steps distinguishes it from deep neural network accounts. The model points toward a neural dynamic theory of higher cognition. (shrink)

Previous research suggests that curiosity is sometimes induced by novel information one has no relevant knowledge about, but it is sometimes induced by new information about something that one is familiar with and has prior knowledge about. However, the conditions under which novelty or familiarity triggers curiosity remain unclear. Using metacognitive confidence judgments as a proxy to quantify the amount of knowledge, this study evaluates the relationship between the amount of relevant knowledge and curiosity. We reviewed previous studies on the (...) relationship between subjective curiosity and confidence and reanalyzed existing large‐sample data. The findings indicate that the relationship between curiosity and confidence differs depending on the nature of the stimuli: epistemic versus perceptual. Regarding perceptual stimuli, curiosity is stronger when individuals have lower confidence levels. By contrast, for epistemic stimuli, curiosity is stronger when individuals have higher confidence levels. These results suggest that curiosity triggered by perceptual stimuli is based on perceived novelty, whereas that triggered by epistemic stimuli is based on familiarity with prior knowledge. (shrink)