This paper aims to pay tribute to Figal’s comprehensive and innovative analysis of the artwork and beauty, while challenging both his realist position on the immediacy of meaning and his monist stance that reduces sublimity to beauty. To enquire into the origin of aesthetic feelings and sense, and thus, to break the hermeneutic circle, we first trace the origin of this reduction to the reception of Burke’s concept of the sublime by Mendelssohn and Kant. We then recur to Husserl and (...) Dufrenne to trace the origin of the sense of the feeling of sublimity in the realm of affectivity or sensuousness. This genesis takes place in passive experience, where we identify an excess of sensuous sense over categorial meaning that is constitutive of the affective sense that our bodily sensations give to hyletic material. It is argued that this sensuous excess evokes a sublime experience in the phenomenological sense, involving an affective and disruptive bodily experience and an endless process of sense formation. Affective or sensuous sense is thus an event that irreversibly affects the bodily surface. To elucidate this phenomenon, we draw on the theoretical framework of Breton and Bataille, positing it as a form-transgressive ‘convulsive’ sublime, which we then illustrate in the architectural works of Tschumi and Eisenman. In short, we have retrieved the origin of aesthetic experience and redefined the feeling of the sublime as a phenomenological ‘convulsive’ sublimity. (shrink)

Max Scheler never published a theory of art, but his aesthetics, like the rest of his thought, occupies an intriguing position that links early phenomenology, Catholic personalist thought, and philosophical anthropology. His metaphysics of the person and theory of value, when combined with his account of the lived-body and of our access to other minds through love, translates into a powerful, humanistic theory of art. This article elaborates what Scheler’s aesthetics would look like had he developed (...) it and applied it to film. Film offers an intimate access to the lives, bodies, and minds of others that is particularly well-suited to Scheler’s idea that art reveals the moral personality—the ordo amoris or “order of love”—that makes up the value-essence of the person. The person’s unique and highest possibilities for acting, feeling, and valuing are the contents of their spiritual essence and these, often thought obscure and inaccessible, are made present in film. (shrink)

Phenomenology provides a method for disability theorists to describe embodied subjectivity lacking within the social model of disability. Within the literature on body integrity identity disorder (BIID), dominant narratives of disability are influential, individual bodies are considered in isolation, and experiences of disabled people are omitted. Research on BIID tends to incorporate an individualist ontology. In this article, I argue that Merleau-Ponty's conceptualization of “being in the world,” which recognizes subjectivity as embodied and intersubjective, provides a better starting point (...) for research describing the experiences of those with BIID and amputees. (shrink)

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

Sensation is a concept with a conflicted philosophical history. It has found as many allies as enemies in nearly every camp from empiricism to poststructuralism. Polyvalent, with an uncertain referent, and often overshadowed by intuition, perception, or cognition, sensation invites as much metaphysical speculation as it does dismissive criticism. -/- The promise of sensation has certainly not been lost on the phenomenologists who have sought to ‘rehabilitate’ the concept. In Plastic Bodies, Tom Sparrow argues that the phenomenologists have not gone (...) far enough, however. Alongside close readings of Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, he digs into an array of ancient, modern, and contemporary texts in search of the resources needed to rebuild the concept of sensation after phenomenology. He begins to assemble a speculative aesthetics that is at once a realist theory of sensation and a philosophy of embodiment that breaks the form of the ‘lived’ body. Maintaining that the body is fundamentally plastic and that corporeal identity is constituted by a conspiracy of sensations, he pursues the question of how the body fits into/fails to fit into its aesthetic environment and what must be done to increase the body’s power to act and exist. (shrink)

Some fundamental aspects of the lived body only become evident when it breaks down through illness, weakness or pain. From a phenomenological point of view, various breakdowns are worth analyzing for their own sake, and discussing them also opens up overlooked dimensions of our bodily constitution. This book brings together different approaches that shed light on the phenomenology of the lived body—its normality and abnormality, health and sickness, its activity as well as its passivity. The contributors integrate (...) phenomenological insights with discussions about bodily brokenness in philosophy, theology, medical science and literary theory. Phenomenology of the Broken Body demonstrates how the broken body sheds fresh light on the nuances of embodied experience in ordinary life and ultimately questions phenomenology’s preunderstanding of the body. (shrink)

The purpose of this project is to argue that we possess a minimal self. It will demonstrate that minimal selfhood arrives early in our development and continues to remain and influence us throughout our entire life. There are two areas of research which shape my understanding of the minimal self: phenomenology and enactivism. Phenomenology emphasizes the sense of givenness, ownership, or mineness that accompanies all of our experiences. Enactivism says there is a sensorimotor coupling that occurs between us and the (...) environment in a way which modulates the dynamic patterns of our self development; the laying down of these basic patterns helps make us who we are and gives rise to the phenomenological, experiential mineness. Drawing on these two core ideas, I will be arguing for a Phenomenological-Enactive Minimal Self. I will be emphasizing the role of the body and the role of affects as the most important components relevant to understanding minimal selfhood. Put more concretely, the set of conditions which constitute the PEMS view are: The minimal self is the experiential subject; the minimal sense of self is present whenever there is awareness. It is the subjectivity of experience, the sense of mineness, or givenness which our experiences contain. The phenomenological part of the PEMS view turns on the idea of a bodily and dynamic integration of sensorimotor coupling and affective experience. It is, ontologically speaking, the lived body in enactive engagement with the environment. It is this embodied subject which anchors and forms the foundation for the later ‘narrative’ self, which emerges from it and which is continually influenced by it. It is the subject enactively engaged with others, dependent on sensorimotor processes and affects. We have an identity, but it emerges from relational and dynamic processes. (shrink)

Abstract The last two decades have witnessed a vast expansion in research and writing on the sociology of the body and on issues of embodiment. Indeed, both sociology in general and the sociology of sport specifically have well heeded the long-standing and vociferous calls ‘to bring the body back in’ to social theory. It seems particularly curious therefore that the sociology of sport has to-date addressed this primarily at a certain abstract, theoretical level, with relatively few accounts (...) to be found that are truly grounded in the corporeal realities of the lived sporting body; a ‘carnal sociology’ of sport, to borrow Crossley’s (1995) expression. To portray and understand more fully this kind of embodied perspective, it is argued, demands engaging with the phenomenology of the body, and this article seeks to contribute to a small but growing literature providing this particular form of ‘embodied’ analysis of the body in sport. Here we identify some useful intellectual resources for developing a phenomenology of sporting experience, specifically its sensory elements, and also subsequently examine the potential for its evocative portrayal and effective analysis via different kinds of textual forms. (shrink)

The detection of the number of extra–compact dimensions contained in some gravitational models is analyzed resorting to the discontinuity of the specific heat at the critical temperature of a Bose–Einstein condensate. It is shown that the function relating the number of particles and this discontinuity defines a segment of a straight line whose slope depends upon the number of extra–compact dimensions. The experimental feasibility of the proposal is also considered.

The global crisis of COVID-19 pandemic has considerably accelerated the use of teleconsultation (consultation between the patient and the doctor via video platforms). While it has some obvious benefits and drawbacks for both the patient and the doctor, it is important to consider—how teleconsultation impacts the quality of the patient-doctor relationship? I will approach this question through the lens of phenomenology of the body, focusing on the question—what happens to the patient objectification in teleconsultation? To answer this question I (...) will adopt a phenomenological approach combining both insights drawn from the phenomenological tradition, i.e., the concepts of the lived body and the object body, and the results from the phenomenologically informed qualitative research study on the patient experience of teleconsultation. The theoretical background against which I have developed this study comprises discussions within the field of phenomenology of medicine regarding the different sources of patient objectification within clinical encounter and the arguments concerning the negative impact that objectification has on the quality of care. I will argue that a factor that has frequently been identified within phenomenology of medicine as the main source of patient objectification in clinical encounters, namely, the internalized gaze of the clinician, is diminished during teleconsultation, increasing patient’s sense of agency, decreasing her sense of alienation and opening up the possibility for a closer relationship between the patient and the health care provider, all of which lead to the transformation of the hierarchical patient-health care professional relationship. (shrink)

이 논문은 20세기 프랑스의 대표적인 철학자 메를로-퐁티(M. Merleau-Ponty)의 현 상학적 언어론에 대해 해명해 보는 것을 근본 목적으로 삼고 있다. 주지하다시피 메를로- 퐁티는 서구 전통철학에서처럼, 언어 문제를 단순히 인간의 이성이나 정신에서 전개하는 것이 아니라 신체의 ‘지각’으로부터 해명해 보려는 새로운 접근 방식을 시도하였다. 그래 서 그는 ‘언어(말)’를 포함한 모든 표현 작용이 신체의 표현적 기능에 근거함을 주장하면 서, 신체에 의한 언어표현은 그 자체가 모종의 ‘의미’를 생성한다고 주장하였다. 말하자면 그에게 있어서 ‘언어’란 단지 이미 결정된 사유나 개념을 전달하기 위한 기호가 아니라 원 초적인 의미를 담고 (...) 있는 생동적인 신체의 표현이라고 할 수 있다. 본 논문에서는 이러한 메를로-퐁티의 현상학적 언어론을 해명하기 위해 다음과 같은 순서 로 논의를 전개하였다. 먼저, 경험주의와 주지주의의 입장과 그들의 언어관에 대해 살펴보았 는데, 이것은 전통적인 언어관에서 나타나는 문제점을 메를로-퐁티가 어떻게 극복했는지를 보여주기 위한 예비적 고찰인 셈이다. 이어서 메를로-퐁티의 현상학적 언어론을 구체적으로 해명하기 위해 우선, 메를로-퐁티에 있어서 신체에 대한 개념적 설명과 이러한 신체와 지각 의 관계에 대해 살펴보았고, 또한 이러한 그의 신체 ‘지각’과 신체(몸)의 표현활동인 ‘언어’개 념에 대해서도 함께 검토하였다. 다음으로, 그가 주장하는 언어의 의미와 원초적인 말(파롤)이 무엇인지에 대해 해명해 봄으로써, 그가 주장하는 현상학적 언어론의 본질적 의미를 드러내 보고자 하였다. 끝으로, 메를로-퐁티가 주장하는 현상학적 언어론의 기본내용을 간략히 정리 하면서 본 논의를 마무리하였다. (shrink)

Enactivism maintains that the mind is not produced and localized inside the head but is distributed along and through brain-body-environment interactions. This idea of an intrinsic relationship between the agent and the world derives from the classical phenomenological investigations of the body (Merleau-Ponty in particular). This paper discusses similarities and differences between enactivism and Jean-Paul Sartre’s phenomenology, which is not usually considered as a paradigmatic example of the relationship between phenomenological investigations and enactivism (or 4E theories (...) in general). After a preliminary analysis of the three principal varieties of enactivism (sensorimotor, autopoietic and radical), I will present Sartre’s account of the body, addressing some key points that can be related to the current enactivist positions: perception-action unity, anti-representationalism, anti-internalism, organism-environment interaction, and sense-making cognition. Despite some basic similarities, enactivism and Sartre’s phenomenology move in different directions as to how these concepts are developed. Nevertheless, I will suggest that Sartre’s phenomenology is useful to the enactivist approaches to provide a broader and more complete analysis of consciousness and cognition, by developing a pluralist account of corporeality, enriching the investigation of the organism-environment coupling through an existentialist perspective, and reincluding the concept of subjectivity without the hypostatisation of an I-subject detached from body and world. (shrink)

본 논문의 목적은 마르틴 하이데거(M. Heidegger)와 장-폴 사르트르(J.-P. Sartre)의 현상학적 신체론의 유사성을 드러내는 것이다. 널리 알려져 있듯이 두 현상학자는 서로 신체에 대해서 현상학적으로 제대로 접근하지 못했다고 비판한다. 그러나 잘 살펴보면 두 사람의 신체론에서는 몇 가지 공통점이 발견된다. 우선 하이데거는 ‘탈존’(Ex-sistenz) 혹은 ‘세계형성’(Weltbildung)이, 그리고 사르트르는 ‘무화’(néantisation)하면서 존재함이 신체적으로 존재함보다 더 존재론적으로 앞선다고 주장하지만, 공통적으로 우리가 신체적으로 존재하면서만 탈존하고 무화할 수 있다고 주장한다. 두 사람에게 있어서 신체는 탈존 혹은 무화가 일어나는 장소로 간주되는 것이다. 두 번째로 두 사람 모두 전통적인 견해와는 다르게 감각과 (...) 지각이 분리되어 있지 않다고 본다. 우리는 대상이 가지는 각각의 성질들을 독립적으로 감각하고서 그것을 대상으로서 구성해내는것이 아니다. 우리는 단번에 대상을 ‘~으로서’ 지각한다. 세 번째로 신체는 ‘결여’의 형식으로 자신을 드러낸다는 점을 두 사람은 인정한다. 우리가 신체를 통해서 대상과 관계 맺을 때 신체는 자신을 드러내지 않는 방식으로 자신과 대상을 드러내는 것이다. 이러한 공통점들은 두 철학자가 우리의 신체에 대해서 현상학적으로 접근했기 때문에 드러날 수 있는 신체현상이라 할 수 있을 것이다. (shrink)

This paper explores the question of embodiment/disembodiment discussed by Hwa Yol Jung mainly in his recent work, Rethinking Political Theory (1993a) in tandem with an examination of some recent developments in Korean scholarship on the same subject. To sum up, the following three points are emphasized. First, this living body does not exist except in specific modalities. In this sense, Gabriel Marcel''s paradigmatic affirmation that I am my body requires an elaboration of the specific modalities of the (...) living body as a being in the world. Second, the way a living body exists is not exclusively mental or physical, but both. In short, it is phenomenal. Third, the point of the whole argument can be summed up as follows: to conceal one''s own body is natural, but to forget it is dangerous. The primary task of phenomenology is not to denude human beings, but to reawaken ourselves to the idea that we are beings who live with and through bodies. (shrink)

Water is the element that, more than any other, ties human beings in to the world around them - from the oceans that surround us to the water that makes up most of our bodies. Exploring the cultural and philosophical implications of this fact, this book develops an innovative new mode of posthuman feminist phenomenology that understands our bodies as being fundamentally part of the natural world and not separate from or privileged to it.

This book begins with the distinction between the so-called 'lived body' or 'felt body' (Leib) and the 'physical body' (Körper), tracing the conceptual history of this distinction through key figures in philosophical and social thought and articulating a theory of the lived body that draws on the New Phenomenology developed by Hermann Schmitz. An explanation of our being-in-the-world in terms of a felt-bodily communication with all perceived forms and their affective-bodily resonance in us, "Being a (...) Lived Body" integrates and critically assesses the leading theories of embodiment, while presenting a new approach to the body. It will therefore appeal to scholars of philosophy, social theory and anthropology with interests in phenomenology and embodiment. (shrink)

Richard Shusterman suggested that Maurice Merleau-Ponty neglected “‘lived somaesthetic reflection,’ that is, concrete but representational and reflective body consciousness.” While unsure about this assessment of Merleau-Ponty, lived somaesthetic reflection, or what the late Sam Mallin called “body phenomenology”—understood as a meditation on the body reflecting on both itself and the world—is my starting point. Another is John Dewey’s bodily theory of perception, augmented somewhat by Merleau-Ponty. -/- With these starting points, I spent roughly 20 hours with (...) St. Benedict Restores Life to a Young Monk (c. 1360), a work of tempera and gold leaf on panel, by Giovanni Del Biondo, active in Italy from 1356 to 1398, on display in the Art Gallery of Ontario’s permanent collection. Following Dewey’s suggestion that “[t]he eye ... is only the channel through which a total response takes place,” meaning that motor, emotional, intellectual and non-visual perceptual capacities become active when we encounter paintings, I describe how the work engaged a range of bodily modalities; and how reflecting on these, in turn, supplied phenomenal articulations of life negating, preserving and enhancing forces important in the culture that produced it, and famously discussed by Friedrich Nietzsche. By virtue of the approach adopted, I also demonstrate Dewey’s belief that intimate engagement with art entails a total coordination of one’s capacities around the artwork, while simultaneously reinforcing Merleau-Ponty’s ideas about perception and how we can find phenomenal articulations of concepts such as the Nietzschean ones just mentioned. While focusing on Del Biondo’s painting, my main purpose is to engage in body phenomenology practices, and to show, in the words of Shusterman, how “[w]e might sharpen our appreciation of art through more attention to our somaesthetic feelings involved in perceiving art” and indeed the world. (shrink)

Hidden away in the remote corners of one of the largest parts of Husserl's Kˆrper, if we can use that word to translate Corpus, there is ein Leib , an animate body of text that reverberates not only with some of Husserl's other little known texts, but also with some of the most recent discoveries in neuroscience. These texts suggest a theory of intersubjectivity, or what psychologists term social cognition. Let me start with a proviso: whether Husserl ever (...) fully settled on this theory is completely open to interpretation. Accordingly, I will leave it to Husserlian scholars to determine whether this is a position that Husserl actually or ultimately embraces, either in the years 1906 through 1913 when he writes some of these texts, or later when he writes other related texts. The texts in question are from Husserl's early years and they are rather tentative and reactive in nature, since he was just beginning to think of these problems, and he was responding to proposals put forward by Lipps and Meinung. That's also why I claim that these texts suggest a theory of social cognition rather than anything like a pure phenomenology of intersubjectivity. Husserl was trying to work out ways to counter the theories of Lipps and Meinung, and his reflections, I think, should count as phenomenologically informed theory. (shrink)

Body dysmorphic disorder is a debilitating mental health condition that presently affects ~2% of the general population. Individuals with BDD experience distressing preoccupations regarding one or more perceived defects in their physical appearance. These preoccupations and perceived distortions can have a profound impact on key areas of social functioning and psychological health. Individuals’ BDD origins have not been explored in significant depth and have been, often unhelpfully, conflated with social media usage and exposure to idealistic imagery of the (...) class='Hi'>body. Such generalisations fail to acknowledge the complexity of BDD development and onset, highlighting the importance of moving towards an understanding of people’s implicit theories regarding their own experience. It is therefore essential to gain insight into how individuals make sense of the experiences which they believe led to the development and onset of BDD. The aim of this exploratory study was to elicit and phenomenologically analyse the accounts of individuals with lived experience of BDD in order to examine their beliefs about its origins and understand how they navigate the world with a distorted sense of self. Participants provided written and verbal accounts regarding both their BDD onset and experiences of living with the disorder. Both components of the study were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Four main themes were generated from the data: Exposure to bullying and external critique of appearance; Experiencing rejection, shame, and a sense of not being enough; Developing an awareness of the solidification of concerns, and Learning about and reflecting upon triggers. Participants attributed their BDD onset to adverse experiences such as childhood bullying, receiving appearance-focused criticism, rejection and being subjected to emotional and physical abuse. The findings from this study highlight the complexity of BDD development and onset in individuals, and the need for appropriate care and treatment for those affected by BDD. (shrink)

The author of this paper discusses the theme of the "simulated body", that is the sense of "being there” in a body that is not one's own, or that does not exist in the way one perceives it. He addresses this issue by comparing Immersive Virtual Reality technology, the phenomenological approach, and Gerald Edelman's theory of Neural Darwinism. Virtual Reality has been used to throw light on some phenomena that cannot be studied experimentally in real life, (...) and the results of its simulations enrich the phenomenological discourse on the lived body. Virtual “Reality” seems to replicate—at least in part—the simulation mechanisms of our mind, thus favoring developments in the field of philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This article proposes that feminist phenomenology offers an essential set of conceptual tools for analysing forms of violence which destroy the body beyond the point of death. To illustrate the potential utility of this approach, I apply this lens to the 11 September 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in Manhattan, New York City. I identify several distinct modes of bodily transformation from the attack, grouped into three broad categories: vaporised bodies, intermingled remains, and hidden fragments. I describe (...) how these transformations unsettled the relationships between bodies and contexts, and occasioned the formation of new relationships in ways that heightened and extended the violence of the attack. I end with a discussion of attempts to resettle and repair these relationships through the creation of fictive bodies. These fictive bodies aim to repair the specific harms caused by the derangement of bodily relations by re-establishing firm boundaries between heroic, national bodies, and the monstrous body of the attacker. Through rigorous engagement with this case, I illustrate the unique potential of feminist phenomenology to account for the relationships between bodies, objects, and spaces as the site of political meaning-making in the aftermath of violence. (shrink)

This book is a discussion of the most timely and contentious issues in the two branches of neuroethics: the neuroscience of ethics; and the ethics of neuroscience. Drawing upon recent work in psychiatry, neurology, and neurosurgery, it develops a phenomenologically inspired theory of neuroscience to explain the brain-mind relation. The idea that the mind is shaped not just by the brain but also by the body and how the human subject interacts with the environment has significant implications for (...) free will, moral responsibility, and moral justification of actions. It also provides a better understanding of how different interventions in the brain can benefit or harm us. In addition, the book discusses brain imaging techniques to diagnose altered states of consciousness, deep-brain stimulation to treat neuropsychiatric disorders, and restorative neurosurgery for neurodegenerative diseases. It examines the medical and ethical trade-offs of these interventions in the brain when they produce both positive and negative physical and psychological effects, and how these trade-offs shape decisions by physicians and patients about whether to provide and undergo them. (shrink)

Most mainstream attempts to understand the “placebo effect” invoke expectancy theory, arguing that expecting certain outcomes from a treatment or intervention can manifest those outcomes. Expectancy theory is incompatible with the phenomena of placebo responses, more appropriately named “meaning responses.” The expectancy account utilizes reflexive consciousness to connect a world of conceptual representations to mechanical physiology. An alternative account based upon Merleau-Ponty's motor intentionality argues that the body understands and is capable of responding to meanings without the (...) need for any conceptual or linguistic content. A motor intentional framework of meaning poses dramatic implications for the interpretation of clinical trials and in the clinical practice of medicine. Most strongly, it argues that the empathic physician can facilitate the physiologic effects of treatments through skillful participation and manipulation of the meaning response. (shrink)

Phenomenology's relation to sensation has many facets. Sensation arises in different contexts in Edmund Husserl's work, and receives several reformulations. This causes us to inquire how the sensations that are unified within the temporal flow by time constituting consciousness, in On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, and that continue to exercise an affective pull even after having passed away, in Analyses Concerning Passive Synthesis, can be related to the bodily sensations which constitute the lived body in (...) Ideas II. What is revealed in a critical study of these texts is the unthematized role that sensation plays in Husserl's writings. Yet sensation is not for that reason less significant, nor could his phenomenological descriptions of experience convincingly forgo this concept. ;What is the concept of sensation which can subtend these different formulations and provide a connecting thread within Husserl's phenomenology? My dissertation is a reply to this question. I argue that the sketches of sensation found in Husserl's works can provide the grounds for a rhythmic and dynamic theory of the lived body---a theory which not only inserts the body into the temporal flow of lived experience, and defines its spatiality as fluid, malleable and affectively charged, but which also opens the body to an intersubjective dimension. In this way, sensation becomes a differentiated and heterogeneous reality. Sensation has the structure of an evolution, the continuity of a rhythm, so that the body that is constituted of sensings secretes time at its joints. This theory frees sensation from Husserl's early hylomorphic schema in Ideas I, and reconnects it to the flow of life, and to bodily experiences of world and others. In the process I also examine alternative views which deal with the role of sensation in the contexts of the body, temporality and otherness. The works of M. Merleau-Ponty, but also of E. Levinas, L. Irigaray, H. Bergson and G. Deleuze are important in this regard. Reading these thinkers in connection to Husserl sheds an unexpected light on their philosophies, while allowing us to challenge Husserl and to propel phenomenology in new directions. (shrink)

Phenomenology is the general study of the structure of experience, from thought and perception, to self-consciousness, bodily-awareness, and emotion. It is both a fundamental area of philosophy and a major methodological approach within the human sciences. Experiencing Phenomenology is an outstanding introduction to phenomenology. Approaching fundamental phenomenological questions from a critical, systematic perspective whilst paying careful attention to classic phenomenological texts, the book possesses a clarity and breadth that will be welcomed by students coming to the subject for (...) the first time. Accessibly written, each chapter relates classic phenomenological discussions to contemporary issues and debates in philosophy. The following key topics are introduced and explained: the methodological foundations of phenomenology intentionality as the ‘mark of the mental’ and the problem of non-existent objects perceptual experience, including our awareness of things, properties, and events the experience of body, self, and others imaginative and emotional experience detailed discussions of classical phenomenological texts, including: Brentano's _Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint _ Husserl's _Logical Investigations_, _Cartesian Meditations, _and On_ the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time _ Heidegger’s _History of The Concept of Time,_ and _Being and Time _ Stein's _On the Problem of Empathy _ Sartre's _Transcendence of the Ego_, _Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions,_ and _The Imaginary _ Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception. Also included is a glossary of key terms and suggestions for further reading, making this book an ideal starting point for anyone new to the study of phenomenology, not only in Philosophy but related disciplines such as Psychology and Sociology. (shrink)

In recent philosophy of mind, a series of challenging ideas have appeared about the relation between the body and the sense of touch. In certain respects, these ideas have a striking affinity with Husserl’s theory of the constitution of the body. Nevertheless, these two approaches lead to very different understandings of the role of the body in perception. Either the body is characterized as a perceptual “organ,” or the body is said to function as (...) a “template.” Despite its focus on the sense of touch, the latter conception, I will argue, nevertheless orients its understanding of tactual perception toward visual objects. This produces a distorted conception of touch. In this paper, I will formulate an alternative account, which is more faithful to what it is like to feel. (shrink)

Husserl’s phenomenology was particularly influential for a number of French philosophers and their theories. Two of the most prominent French thinkers, Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, turned to the instruments offered by phenomenology in their attempts to understand the notions of the body, consciousness, imagination, human being, world and many others. Both philosophers also provided their definitions of perception, but they understood this notion in very different ways. The paper describes selected aspects of Husserl’s phenomenology that were adopted by (...) Sartre and Merleau-Ponty and depicts the presumptions of their respective theories of perception, as well as the differences between them. The main thesis presented here is that theories as different as those proposed by Sartre and Merleau-Ponty may, and indeed do, lead to the same conclusion, i.e. that perception represents a different form of cognition. Despite the differences between these theories, they can both be placed in the contemporary context of phenomenological research carried out by cognitive philosophers Dan Zahavi and Shaun Gallagher, as well as by the proponent of the enactive theory of perception, Alva Noë. (shrink)

This article reassesses the concept of identification in line with the increased importance phenomenology has taken on in film-philosophy of the 1990s and 2000s. In the 1970s and 1980s, a Lacanian psychoanalytic interpretation of identification dominated film theory and criticism, and spectatorial engagement with elements of films was understood as what psychoanalysis calls secondary identification – the identification with stable subject-positions (characters) in the film-text. But non-Lacanian psychoanalysis and Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology offer film-philosophy a very different understanding of identification (...) as a non image-based, ‘blind’, bodily affective tie that is established between spectators and what Vivian Sobchack describes as ‘the sense and sensibility of materiality itself’ (Sobchack 2004, 65). By first exploring how this more bodily (for psychoanalysis, primary ) identification is theorized by psychoanalysts (Freud, Paul Schilder, Henri Wallon) and by film theorists (Kaja Silverman), the article proposes that film criticism make greater use of it in order to engage more meaningfully with the visible cultural specificities – size, skin colour, age, sex – of the images of bodies viewed on cinema screens. It is not just ‘the’ body that needs bringing back into thinking about film spectatorship, but culturally differentiated bodies , both on the screen and in the auditorium. A psychoanalytic and phenomenological film criticism of embodied cultural identity, one that attends to the materiality of the film and of the body-images and objects on the screen, may be the most culturally and politically useful successor to ‘screen’ theory of the 1970s and 1980s. (shrink)

A RELATIVISTIC THEORY OF PHENOMENOLOCICAL CONSTITUTION: A SELF-REFERENTIAL, TRANSCENDENTAL APPROACH TO CONCEPTUAL PATHOLOGY. (Vol. I: French; Vol. II: English) -/- Steven James Bartlett -/- Doctoral dissertation director: Paul Ricoeur, Université de Paris Other doctoral committee members: Jean Ladrière and Alphonse de Waehlens, Université Catholique de Louvain Defended publically at the Université Catholique de Louvain, January, 1971. -/- Universite de Paris X (France), 1971. 797pp. -/- The principal objective of the work is to construct an analytically precise methodology which can (...) serve to identify, eliminate, and avoid a certain widespread _conceptual fault_ or _misconstruction_, called a "projective misconstruction" or "projection" by the author. It is argued that this variety of error in our thinking (i) infects a great number of our everyday, scientific, and philosophical concepts, claims, and theories, (ii) has largely been undetected, and (iii), when remedied, leads to a less controversial and more rigorous elucidation of the transcendental preconditions of human knowledge than has traditionally been possible. The dissertation identifies, perhaps for the first time, a _projective_ variety of self-referential inconsistency, and proposes an innovative, self-reflexive approach to transcendental argument in a logical and phenomenological context. The strength of the approach lies, it is claimed, in the fact that a rejection of the approach is possible only on pain of self-referential inconsistency. The argument is developed in the following stages: A general introduction identifies the central theme of the work, defines the scope of applicability of the results reached, and sketches the direction of the studies that follow. The preliminary discussion culminates in a recognition of the need for a _critique of impure reason_. The body of the work is divided into two parts: Section I seeks to develop a methodology, on a purely formal basis, which is, on the one hand, capable of being used to study the transcendental foundations of the special sciences, including its own proper transcendental foundation. On the other hand, the methodology proposed is intended as a diagnostic and therapeutic tool for dealing with _projective_ uses of concepts. The approach initiates an analysis of concepts from a perspective which views _knowledge as coordination_. Section I describes formal structures that possess the status of preconditions in such a coordinative account of knowledge. Special attention is given to the preconditions of _identifying reference_ to logical particulars. The first section attempts, then, to provide a self-referential, transcendental methodology which is essentially revisionary in that it is motivated by a concern for conceptual error-elimination. Phenomenology, considered in its unique capacity as a self-referential, transcendental discipline, is of special relevance to the study. Section II accordingly examines a group of concepts which come into question in connection with the central theme of _phenomenological constitution_. The "_de-projective methodology_" developed in Section I is applied to these concepts that have a foundational importance in transcendental phenomenology. A translation is, in effect, proposed from the language of consciousness to a language in which preconditions of referring are investigated. The result achieved is the elimination of self-defeating, projective concepts from a rigorous, phenomenological study of the constitutive foundations of science. The dissertation was presented in a two volume, double-language format for the convenience of French and English researchers. Each volume contains an analytical index. (shrink)

This essay explores consonant aspects of the relationship between phenomenology and practice theory. It makes three basic claims. The first is really just an observation, namely, that phenomenology makes incisive contributions to the account of action found in practice theory. The second claim is that practice theory updates an important conception of sociality developed in post Heideggerian phenomenology. And the third claim is that phenomenologies and practice theories can combine to form wider accounts of human life that (...) encompass such phenomena as experience, consciousness, emotions, and the body that phenomenology has well analyzed and practice theory has somewhat ignored. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Catherine Malabou : “Unbind Me” Judith Butler : What Kind of Shape Is Hegel's Body in? Catherine Malabou : What Is Shaping the Body? Judith Butler : A Chiasm between Us, but No Chasm.

At the intersections of social anthropology, philosophy, and Asian studies, my paper explores the body ecologic through a phenomenological frame in the context of Chinese culture engaging both theory and method. How can qì cultivation experiences transporting bodies and persons in movement, within the world and their “life‐world,” be interpreted through a phenomenology of perception? Based on ethnographic study data collected mainly in South China (Guangzhou) and in Taiwan (1990s–2000s), this exploration is situated within qìgōng experiences (training, (...) cultivating and mastering the qì). Anchored in martial, religious, and healing arts and their meanings, qìgōng’s myriad of forms and infinite variations invite journeys into religious Daoist and Buddhist practice, Chinese thought, and politico‐religious issues of past and present Chinese society. The qìgōng world, paths of knowledge transmission, healing horizons, claimed affiliations, and views of practitioners unveil an ontology and a cosmology grounded in religious (Daoist and Buddhist) lore. (shrink)

The second edition of The Theory and Practice of Husserl's Phenomenology is a clear and concise introduction to the theoretical background and the rigorous method of Edmund Husserl , perhaps the most influential philosopher of the twentieth century and the founder of the phenomenological movement. According to Husserl phenomenology is not a body of knowledge but a scientific practice based in a rigorous and difficult method, a method that takes long effort and practice to enter into and (...) in which to develop some significant results. Since many scholars and students do not read many of Husserl's published works, this text is meant to show the core unity of focus and method throughout decades of his phenomenological practice and refinement. The present work covers the historical origin of phenomenology and some main thematic results that appear in Husserl's works, and provides an introduction to the "how to" of producing phenomenological description. (shrink)

In this paper, I show that, although Husserl explicitly explains a kinetic theory of Leib already in § 83 of Raum und Ding, a real phenomenology of the distinction between Leib (living body) and Körper (corporeal object) is not conceivable without Scheler's contribution. It’s quite common to search for the origin of this distinction in Ideen II, in a work composed of texts written in different moments from 1912 on. Before 1912 Husserl dedicated himself to the theme of (...) corporeality in the first part of Göttinger Vorlesungen 1904/1905 as well as in the lectures in the Sommersemester of 1907 titled Ding und Raum [Hua XVI]. Both lectures, however, lack an explicit analysis on the distinction between Leib and Körper. Scheler instead mentions it already in an unpublished text from 1908/1909 and fully develops it in the years 1911 and 1912, where the issue is explored in a more organic and radical way than in the writings of Husserl. -/- In diesem Beitrag möchte ich darauf hinweisen, dass, obwohl Husserl bereits in § 83 von Raum und Ding eine kinetische Theorie von Leib erklärt, eine reale Phänomenologie der Unterscheidung zwischen Leib und Körper ohne Schelers Beitrag nicht denkbar wäre. Im Allgemeinen wird ihr Ursprung in den Ideen II festgestellt, einer Schrift, die aus den Texten verschiedener Zeiten nach 1912 besteht. Vor 1912 widmet sich Husserl dem Thema der Körperlichkeit in dem ersten Teil der Göttinger Vorlesungen 1904/1905 sowie in den Vorlesungen aus dem Sommersemester 1907 über Ding und Raum [Hua XVI]. In beiden Vorlesungen fehlt jedoch eine explizite Untersuchung zum Unterschied zwischen Leib und Körper. Bei Scheler hingegen ist sie bereits in einem Nachlasstext aus 1908/1909 auffindbar und wird in den Jahren 1911 und 1912 sehr ausführlich entfaltet. Die Auseinandersetzung mit dieser Thematik erfolgt bei ihm viel organischer und eingehender als bei Husserl. -/- In questo scritto dimostro che, sebbene Husserl espliciti una teoria cinetica del Leib già nel § 83 di Raum und Ding, una vera e propria fenomenologia della distinzione fra Leib (corpo vivente) e Körper (oggetto corporeo) è inconcepibile senza il contributo di Scheler. Generalmente tale distinzione viene ricondotta a Idee II, un testo che è il risultato di diverse versioni composte a partire dal 1912. Prima del 1912 Husserl si dedica al tema della corporeità nella prima parte delle Göttinger Vorlesungen del 1904/5, e nelle lezioni del Sommersemester del 1907 dedicate a Ding und Raum [Hua XVI]. In entrambi questi testi manca però un’analisi esplicita sulla differenza fra Leib e Körper. In Scheler invece tale distinzione è già rintracciabile in un inedito del 1908/09 per poi essere pienamente esplicitata nel biennio 1911-1912, dove è presente un’elaborazione di questa tematica ben più organica e radicale rispetto a quella presente negli scritti di Husserl. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a phenomenology of falling ill by presenting, interpreting and developing the basic model we find in Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness. The three steps identified by Sartre in this process are analysed, developed further and brought to a five- step model: pre-reflective experience of discomfort, lived, bodily discomfort, suffered illness, disease pondering, and disease state. To fall ill is to fall victim to a gradual process of alienation, and with each step this alienating process is (...) taken to a new qualitative level. Consequently, the five steps of falling ill have not only a contingent chronological order but also a kind of logical order, in that they typically presuppose each other. I adopt Sartre's focus on embodiment as the core ground of the alienation process, but point out that the alienation of the body in illness is not only the experience of a psychic object, but an experience of the independent life of one's own body. This facticity of the body is the result neither of the gaze of the other person, nor of a reflection adopting the outer perspective of the other in an indirect way, but is a result of the very otherness of one's own body, which addresses and plagues us when we fall ill. I use examples of falling ill and being a patient to show how a phenomenology of falling ill can be helpful in educating health-care personnel about the ways of the lived body. (shrink)

What significance does the body have in the process of teaching and learning? In what way can the thoughts of a contemporary junior-level teacher in this regard be connected to the theory of the lived body formulated by the French phenomenologist philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), and vice versa? The aim of this paper is to illuminate, enable understanding and discuss the meaning of the body in the learning process, with specific focus on the learning of writing (...) as embodied experience. In the process, the boundaries of learning are also explored. While understanding the significance both of learning as embodied experience and of the boundaries of learning is essential within the educational field, in this paper the discussion is limited to exploring how learning as embodied experience and the boundaries of learning can be viewed by taking Merleau-Ponty's notions as theoretical starting points. In an attempt to answer the aim and connect the paper's theoretical point of departure with a voice from a teacher, an interview with a junior-level teacher was conducted. The paper thus offers a theoretical contribution to the field of educational research, but one in which the theory is exemplified by, and connected to, a teacher's voice. Accordingly, the paper concludes by summarising the common understandings of learning held theoretically by Merleau-Ponty and made real in the activities of the contemporary junior-level teacher. (shrink)

What is initially striking about Alfred Schutz’s phenomenological account of the musical experience, which encompasses both the performance and reception of music, is his apparent dismissal of the corporeal and spatial aspects of that experience. The paper argues that this is largely a product of his wider understanding of temporality wherein the mind and time are privileged over the body and space, respectively. While acknowledging that Schutz’s explicit or stated view is that the body and space are (...) relatively insignificant to his account, the paper reveals how they actually feature significantly in the latter, but in ways that remain largely implicit. First, the analysis demonstrates that the mental and temporal aspects of Schutz’s phenomenology of the musical experience cannot be considered independently of their interrelations with the equally important, albeit under-examined, corporeal, and spatial aspects. Concepts from Nietzsche’s early aesthetics are recruited to fulfil this task. Second, the analysis challenges Schutz’s dismissal of space in his theory of music perception. Lastly, it reveals the crucial, yet implicit, role of the body and space in his key examination of the intersubjective phenomenon he terms “making music together”. By presenting the above arguments, the paper aims to draw out the implicit dimensions of Schutz’s phenomenology of music and thereby enrich his influential account. (shrink)

Although some scholars acknowledge the decisive role of the felt body in the process of perspective taking, the precise role of the felt body remains unclear. In this paper, a theory of affective communication is developed in order to explain and understand the process of perspective taking in human interaction on a corporeal, pre-reflective and thus affective level. The key assumption of the outlined theory is that any process of perspective taking is essentially based on the (...) two dimensions of the felt body, namely attraction and repulsion, dominance and subdominance. The dimension of attraction and repulsion determines whether individuals attractively converge or repulsively diverge in their perspectives. Regarding the dimension of dominance and subdominance, it is assumed that there is always a dominant and a subdominant side in human interaction. In the case of attraction as a necessary condition for finding common ground, the dominant side serves as the perspective giver and the subdominant side serves as the perspective taker. The outlined theory is phenomenologically based on the works of Schmitz and Rappe and marks a contribution to the research program of neophenomenological sociology. (shrink)

Rather than as a giving of permission to someone to transgress one’s bodily boundaries, I argue for defining sexual consent as feeling-with one’s sexual partner. Dominant approaches to consent within feminist philosophy have failed to capture the intercorporeal character of erotic consciousness by treating it as a form of giving permission, as is evident in the debate between attitudinal and performative theories of consent. Building on the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Ann Cahill, Linda Martín Alcoff, and others, I argue that (...) taking consent to be an intercorporeal and dynamic coexistence of desiring bodies opens up new ways of thinking about the role of consent in sexual ethics. I suggest that phenomenology’s theories of embodied consciousness, operative intentionality, and the direct perception of others provide a better groundwork for conceptualizing the role of ambiguity and subtle power dynamics in sexual encounters than attitudinal or performative accounts of consent. I also defend my view against Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa’s argument for doing away with the concept of consent in sexual ethics due to consent's stubborn and infelicitous presupposition of permission-giving. (shrink)

This is an advanced introduction to and original interpretation of Merleau-Ponty's greatest work, Phenomenology of Perception. Timothy Mooney provides a clear and compelling exposition of the theory of our projective being in the world, and demonstrates as never before the centrality of the body schema in the theory. Thanks to the schema's motor intentionality our bodies inhabit and appropriate space: our postures and perceptual fields are organised schematically when we move to realise our projects. Thus our lived (...) bodies are ineliminably expressive in being both animated and outcome oriented through-and-through. Mooney also analyses the place of the work in the modern philosophical world, showing what Merleau-Ponty takes up from the Kantian and Phenomenological traditions and what he contributes to each. Casting a fresh light on his magnum opus, this book is essential reading for all those interested in the philosophy and phenomenology of the body. (shrink)

Body Memory, Metaphor and Movement is an interdisciplinary volume with contributions from philosophers, cognitive scientists, and movement therapists. Part one provides the phenomenologically grounded definition of body memory with its different typologies. Part two follows the aim to integrate phenomenology, conceptual metaphor theory, and embodiment approaches from the cognitive sciences for the development of appropriate empirical methods to address body memory. Part three inquires into the forms and effects of therapeutic work with body memory, based (...) on the integration of theory, empirical findings, and clinical applications. It focuses on trauma treatment and the healing power of movement. The book also contributes to metaphor theory, application and research, and therefore addresses metaphor researchers and linguists interested in the embodied grounds of metaphor. Thus, it is of particular interest for researchers from the cognitive sciences, social sciences, and humanities as well as clinical practitioners. (shrink)

Attempts to close the mind-body gap traditionally resort to a priori speculations. Motivated by dissatisfaction with such accounts, neurophenomenology constitutes one of the first attempts to close the mind-body gap non-metaphysically. Nonetheless, it faces significant challenges. Many of these challenges arise from its abandoning of transcendentality and its dim view of bioinformation. In this paper, I propose a superior non-metaphysical alternative: a combination of a reformed biosemiotics and transcendental phenomenology. My approach addresses the difficulties of neurophenomenology, while retaining (...) the merit of mutual constraints. Biosemiotics pays respect to bioinformation while imposing the sign-meaning duality on primitive forms of life, which is a relic of anthropomorphism. To avoid this unjustified commitment, I argue for a sign-free biosemantics which replaces Peirce’s semiotics with Husserl’s theory of meaning and exchanges naturalism for transcendentalism. Meaning, according to the resulting account, is the “intended as such”. The irreality of meaning results from what I term the ‘higher visibility’ of intentionality. I argue that the mind-body gap can be locally closed in a non-metaphysical manner as the result of reflection upon empirical biological investigations. Sign-free biosemantics uncovers the meanings for the organism that are implicit in biological research, while transcendental phenomenology analyses the experiences that biologists undergo when associating the physical with the biological level, while at the same time also analysing the very framework within which they work. Meanwhile, biosemiotics frees phenomenology from its methodological limitations, and the two domains establish mutual constraints in a more radical form than neurophenomenology. (shrink)

Abstract:Critics often misinterpret Beckett’s Worstward Ho as being about the phenomenology of presence. The narrator, however, engages not with things that exist but, instead, the process of imaginative conjuring. The procedure resembles Sartre’s phenomenological method in The Imaginary and Beckett’s fictional depiction of the imagination serves as a corrective to Sartre’s “essential poverty” of the image—its lack of context. Worstward Ho demonstrates instead the image’s polyvalent contextual compatibility, which explains not only the referential ambivalence of Beckett’s work, but also (...) the truth function of fiction itself, wherein the imaginary particular is amenable to general insights into the real. (shrink)

An increasing number of scholars at the intersection of feminist philosophy and critical disability studies have turned to Merleau-Ponty to develop phenomenologies of disability or of what, following Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, I call "non-normate" embodiment. These studies buck the historical trend of philosophers employing disability as an example of deficiency or harm, a mere litmus test for normative theories, or an umbrella term for aphenotypical bodily variation. While a Merleau-Pontian-inspired phenomenology is a promising starting point for thinking about embodied experiences of (...) all sorts, I here draw a cautionary tale about how ableist assumptions can easily undermine accounts of non-normate experience. I first argue that the omission or misguided treatment of disability within the history of philosophy in general and the phenomenological tradition in particular is due to the inheritance of what I call “the ableist conflation” of disability with pain, suffering, and disadvantage. I then show that Merleau-Ponty’s famous reading of the blind man’s cane is problematic insofar as it omits the social dimensions of disabled experiences, misconstrues the radicality of blindness as a world-creating disability, and operates via an able-bodied simulation that confuses object annexation or extension with incorporation. In closing, I contend that if phenomenology is to overcome the errors of traditional philosophy, as Merleau-Ponty once hoped, it must heed the insights of “crip” or non-normate phenomenology, which takes the lived experience of disability as its point of departure. [French translation forthcoming in Pour une phénoménologie critique, ed. Donald A. Landes, Quebec City, Les Presses de l'Université Laval/Paris, J.Vrin]. (shrink)

The body is both the subject and object of intentionality: qua Leib, it experiences worldly things and qua Körper, it is experienced as a thing in the world. This phenomenological differentiation forms the basis for Helmuth Plessner’s anthropological theory of the mediated or eccentric nature of human embodiment, that is, simultaneously we both are a body and have a body. Here, I want to focus on the extent to which this double aspect of embodiment relates (...) to our experience of temporality. Indeed, to question, does this double bodily relation correspond to a twofoldtemporality of embodied intentionality? In the first part of this paper, I differentiate between the intentional temporality of being a body and the temporal experience of having a body. To further my argument, in the second part, I present examples of specific pathologies, as well as liminal cases of bodily experiences, wherein these temporal dimensions, which otherwise go hand-in-hand, become dissociated. Phenomenologically, I want to argue that Husserl’s differentiation between Leib and Körper corresponds to two genetic forms of intentionality – operative and act intentionality – and that these are, in turn, characterized by different temporalities. Anthropologically, I want to argue that having a body – what occurs as an inherent break to human embodiment – is the presupposition for the experience of a stable and object-like time. I will conclude that the double aspect of human embodiment and in particular the thematic experience of having a body enables both the experience of a past, which is remembered, and a future that is planned. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of neuroscientific theories of consciousness. These include theories which explicitly point to EM fields, notably Operational Architectonics and, more recently, the General Resonance Theory. In phenomenological terms, human consciousness is a unified composition of contents. These contents are specific and meaningful, and they exist from a subjective point of view. Human conscious experience is temporally continuous, limited in content, and coherent. Based upon those phenomenal observations, pre-existing theories of consciousness, and (...) a large body of experimental evidence, I derived the Temporally-Integrated Causality Landscape. In brief, the TICL proposes that the neural correlate of consciousness is a structure of temporally integrated causality occurring over a large portion of the thalamocortical system. This structure is composed of a large, integrated set of neuronal elements, which contains some subsystems, defined as having a higher level of temporally-integrated causality than the System as a whole. Each Subsystem exists from the point of view of the System, in the form of meaningful content. In this article, I review the TICL and consider the importance of EM forces as a mechanism of neural causality. I compare the fundamentals of TICL to those of several other neuroscientific theories. Using five major characteristics of phenomenal consciousness as a standard, I compare the basic tenets of Integrated Information Theory, Global Neuronal Workspace, General Resonance Theory, Operational Architectonics, and the Temporo-spatial Theory of Consciousness with the framework of the TICL. While the literature concerned with these theories tends to focus on different lines of evidence, there are fundamental areas of agreement. This means that, in time, it may be possible for many of them to converge upon the truth. In this analysis, I conclude that a primary distinction which divides these theories is the feature of spatial and temporal nesting. Interestingly, this distinction does not separate along the fault line between theories explicitly concerned with EM fields and those which are not. I believe that reconciliation is possible, at least in principle, among those theories that recognize the following: just as the contents of consciousness are distinctions within consciousness, the neural correlates of conscious content should be distinguishable from but fall within the spatial and temporal boundaries of the full neural correlates of consciousness. (shrink)

Taking up the body turn in sociology, this paper discusses scientific practices as embodied action from the perspective of Husserl’s phenomenological theory of the “Body”. Based on ethnographic data on a biology laboratory it will discuss the importance of the scientist’s Body for the performance of scientific activities. Successful researchers have to be skilled workers using their embodied knowledge for the process of tinkering towards the material transformation of their objects for data production. The researcher’s (...) body then is an instrument of measuring as well as a kind of archive of knowing. Their body becomes a disciplined instrument which has its own place and function inside the laboratory. Furthermore, the appresentational apperception of Bodies (Husserl) is being discussed as a basis for the emotional and ethical concerns towards laboratory-animals. Attitudes towards animals in the laboratory setting (as well as elsewhere) are highly emotional. Nevertheless, following the literature of the sociology of the body, those emotional reactions still follow certain cultural patterns which themselves can be understood as embodied ways of knowing “right” or “wrong”. Besides as an instrument, the scientist’s body can also be understood as a resource of emotional attachment towards animals. It is an instrument for performing transformation as well as one for caring. (shrink)

Difficulties in distinguishing veridical reports of experience from confabulations have implications for theories of consciousness. I develop some of these implications through a consideration of out-of-body experiences (OBEs). Do these variations indicate individual variation in experience or are they post-hoc confabulations, stories told by subjects to themselves in an attempt to make sense of the core phenomenology? I argue that no existent or possible evidence would be sufficient to favour one hypothesis over the other. How such evidence is interpreted (...) depends on prior commitments to one or other of these hypotheses or to a theory of consciousness that is not neutral as to these hypotheses. One of these types of theory, namely vehicle theories, has difficulty accommodating the existence of confabulations and so allows for only the elaborate phenomenology hypothesis. Because we cannot know that reports are not confabulations, vehicle theories are insufficient to explain OBEs. (shrink)