In _Consciousness and persons_, Michael Tye. Consciousness and persons. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.) develops and defends a novel approach to the unity of consciousness. Rather than thinking of the unity of consciousness as involving phenomenal relations between distinct experiences, as standard accounts do, Tye argues that we should regard the unity of consciousness as involving relations between the contents of consciousness. Having developed an account of what it is for consciousness to be unified, Tye goes on to apply his (...) account of the unity of consciousness to the split-brain syndrome. I provide a critical evaluation of Tye's account of the unity of consciousness and the split-brain syndrome. (shrink)

Every scientific theory is a simulacrum of reality, every written story a simulacrum of the canon, and every conceptualization of a subjective perspective a simulacrum of the consciousness behind it—but is there a shared essence to these simulacra? The pursuit of answering seemingly disparate fundamental questions across different disciplines may ultimately converge into a single solution: a single ontological answer underlying grand unified theory, hard problem of consciousness, and the foundation of mathematics. I provide a hypothesis, a speculative approximation, (...) supported by a comprehensive overview of scientific evidence and philosophical literature, of a unified epistemic and phenomenological model and, in doing so, propose a parsimonious solution to the hard problem of consciousness. -/- The proposition of the hypothesis bears important implications for cross-disciplinary study between linguistics, mathematics, physics, and computer science, and offers new epistemic, ontological, and ethical propositions about the nature of AI consciousness, as well as existential risk mitigation. (shrink)

This chapter presents the main formalism of the book, which is used in subsequent chapters to describe a variety of concepts in Husserlian phenomenology, and thereby unify them. A dynamical systems approach to Husserl is introduced, and several dynamical laws of Husserlian phenomenology are described. The first is an expectation rule according to which expectations are determined by what a person knows, sees, and does. The second is a learning rule according to which background knowledge is updated in (...) a specific way when experiences fulfill or frustrate prior expectations. In addition to these rules, a “supervenience function” is described, which associates how a thing is seen with a “trail set,” the set ways that thing is expected to look, relative to all possible ways of moving around it. This function further illustrates the explanatory dimension of phenomenology described in Chap. 2, whereby how we immanently experience things is determined by how we expect them to look relative to counterfactual movement patterns. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the almost forgotten early dissertation of the phenomenologist Hans Reiner Freiheit, Wollen und Aktivität. Phänomenologische Untersuchungen in Richtung auf das Problem der Willensfreiheit engages with what I call the unity problem of activity. This problem concerns the question whether there is a structure in virtue of which all instances of human activity—and not only “full-blown” intentional actions—can be unified. After a brief systematic elucidation of this problem, which is closely related to the contemporary (...) “problem of action,” I elaborate and critically discuss two relevant threads running through Reiner’s work. The first view concerns the alleged motivational asymmetry between activity and passivity according to which it is essential only for active experiences to be motivated by an underlying passivity. The second view focuses on Reiner’s phenomenology of the will, especially on his notions of “ego-centrality” and “inner will” the latter being introduced in analogy to Brentano’s notion of “inner consciousness.” These two notions are supposed to unify all manifestations of the human will, including “full-blown” intentional actions and non-intentional doings such as laughter. Reiner’s extension of will-based actions to non-intentional activity is one of the most remarkable aspects of his early work. Finally, I show that Reiner ultimately answers the unity problem in the negative because he ends up with the view that besides will-based agency he also acknowledges so-called “motor activity” which is not intrinsically related to the will. I close with a couple of tentative proposals how volitional and motor actions might be unified nonetheless. (shrink)

This article discusses how existential phenomenology may serve as a frame in a mixed‐methods study of changes in weight and body composition among women in adjuvant treatment for breast cancer. In accordance with ontologically and epistemologically fundamental assumptions in nursing, we link mixed‐methods and existential phenomenology from the perspective of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau‐Ponty and his notion of a unified body subject. Letting this perspective permeate our philosophy, methodology and issues at the method level in mixed‐method (...) research undermines the distinction between first‐ and third‐person perspective when applying and integrating different data sources in a mixed‐methods study. Applying Merleau‐Ponty's third way, the women's bodily experiences appear as gestalt; a ‘figure’ against a ground of existential threats that are grasped through insight from data integrating in joint displays, which revealed the women's experiences on a deep existential level. Existential phenomenology as a frame in mixed‐method studies can speak not only to nurses but also to a multidisciplinary audience in a shared attempt to deepen the understanding of a patient's healthcare problem. (shrink)

In this short paper, I argue that the phenomenology of moral judgment is not unified across different areas of morality (involving harm, hierarchy, reciprocity, and impurity) or even across different relations to harm. Common responses, such as that moral obligations are experienced as felt demands based on a sense of what is fitting, are either too narrow to cover all moral obligations or too broad to capture anything important and peculiar to morality. The disunity of moral phenomenology (...) is, nonetheless, compatible with some uses of moral phenomenology for moral epistemology and with the objectivity and justifiability of parts of morality. (shrink)

In our contribution we will observe phenomenal architecture of a mind and operational architectonics of the brain and will show their intimate connectedness within a single integrated metastable continuum. The notion of operation of different complexity is the fundamental and central one in bridging the gap between brain and mind: it is precisely by means of this notion that it is possible to identify what at the same time belongs to the phenomenal conscious level and to the neurophysiological level of (...) brain activity organization, and what mediates between them. Implications for linguistic semantics, self-organized distributed computing algorithms, artificial machine consciousness, and diagnosis of dynamic brain diseases will be discussed briefly. (shrink)

I offer an outline of an integrated phenomenological analysis of free fantasy and of fictional worlds. My main concern amounts to stress the scissions entailed in free fantasy and in the consciousness of fictional objects: a scission of the I, and a scission of the experience. Firstly, I offer a somewhat new characterization of the presence of the objects of free fantasy, which disconnects any possible relationship of those objects with a real perception as the leading form of an originally (...) giving consciousness. My leading example is daydream. Secondly, I take the Husserlian analysis of neutralization as a conceptual tool to explain the consciousness of fictional worlds, against a new tendency for interpreting these worlds in light of the concept of “possible world”. The two approaches converge to a twofold characterization of the mode of being of fictions and of the modality of presence of the objects of fantasy. (shrink)

The article covers Erwin W. Straus’ views on the problem of time and temporal experience in the context of psychopathology. Beside Straus’ published scholarship, including his papers dealing exclusively with the subject of time, the sources utilized in this essay comprise several of Straus’ unpublished manuscripts on temporality, with the primary focus on the 1952 manuscript Temporal Horizons, which is discussed in greater detail and subsequently published for the first time in this journal. In the first part of the article, (...) the author introduces what he considers to be the central tension of the whole of Straus’ work on the issue of time, namely, the tension stemming from a dualistic account of time with its personal and impersonal dimensions. Interpretative developments of this tension are followed covering Straus’ early German works and his late American scholarship. The author presents Straus’ way of overcoming the dualistic account of time and his arguments in favour of what is termed here the “unified view of time”. Of critical importance for the unified view is Straus’ concept of “today”, which is extensively commented upon. In the second part of the article, the author focuses on the psychopathological consequences of the unified view as seen by Straus. A clear-cut boundary between a normal and a psychotic experience of time is supposed to lie in breaking the bond between the personal and the impersonal orders of time, leading to a fundamental estrangement. This view, it is claimed, is already present in a nutshell in Straus’ earliest work, and is elaborated upon later. In conclusion, both the merits and the weaknesses of Straus’ account of temporality are presented. A major advantage is that Straus abstains from a dualistic conception of time and reappraises the often-devalued clock time. A fundamental drawback is that Straus does not venture to explore the pathological varieties of temporal experience and fails to specify the acknowledged differences between, on the one hand, psychotic elements in depressive disorders, and, on the other hand, such elements in schizophrenic disturbances. (shrink)

Experimental phenomenology has demonstrated that perception is much richer than stimulus. As is seen in color perception, one and the same stimulus provides more than several modes of appearance or perceptual dimensions. Similarly, there are various perceptual dimensions in form perception. Even a simple geometrical figure inducing visual illusion gives not only perceptual impressions of size, shape, slant, depth, and orientation, but also affective or aesthetic impressions. The present study reviews our experimental phenomenological work on visual illusion and experimental (...) aesthetics, and examines how aesthetic preference is influenced by stimulus factors determining visual illusions including anomalous surface and transparency as well as geometrical illusion. Along with line figures producing geometrical illusions, illusory surface figures inducing neon color spreading and transparency effects were used as test patterns. Participants made both of psychophysical judgments and of aesthetic judgments for the same test pattern. Both of geometrical illusions and aesthetic preferences were found to change similarly as a function of stimulus variables such as the number of filling lines and the size ratio of the inner and outer figural components. Also, following specific stimulus variables such as lightness contrast ratio and spatial interval between inducing figural elements (so called ``packmen''), strong effects of color spreading and transparency were accompanied with strong preferences. It seems that the paradigm to investigate aesthetic phenomena along with perceptual dimensions is useful to bridge the gap between experimental phenomenology and experimental aesthetics. (shrink)

In this book, Andrew Inkpin considers the disclosive function of language—what language does in revealing or disclosing the world. His approach to this question is a phenomenological one, centering on the need to accord with the various experiences speakers can have of language. With this aim in mind, he develops a phenomenological conception of language with important implications for both the philosophy of language and recent work in the embodied-embedded-enactive-extended tradition of cognitive science. -/- Inkpin draws extensively on the work (...) of Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, showing how their respective conceptions of language can be combined to complement each other within a unified view. From the early Heidegger, Inkpin extracts a basic framework for a phenomenological conception of language, comprising both a general picture of the role of language and a specific model of the function of words. Merleau-Ponty’s views are used to explicate the generic “pointing out”—or presentational—function of linguistic signs in more detail, while the late Wittgenstein is interpreted as providing versatile means to describe their many pragmatic uses. Having developed this unified phenomenological view, Inkpin explores its broader significance. He argues that it goes beyond the conventional realism/idealism opposition, that it challenges standard assumptions in mainstream post-Fregean philosophy of language, and that it makes a significant contribution not only to the philosophical understanding of language but also to 4e cognitive science. (shrink)

The paper takes an expressivistic perspective, i.e., it takes conditionals of all sorts to primarily express conditional beliefs. Therefore it is based on what it takes to be the best account of conditional belief, namely ranking theory. It proposes not to start looking at the bewildering linguistic phenomenology, but first to systematically study the various options of expressing features of conditional belief. Those options by far transcend the Ramsey test and include relevancies of various kinds and in particular the (...) so-called “circumstances are such that” reading, under which also all conditionals representing causal relations can be subsumed. In this way a unifying perspective on the many kinds of conditionals is offered. The final section explains the considerable extent to which truth conditions for conditionals, which may seem lost in the expressivistic or epistemic perspective, may be recovered. (shrink)

A survey is given of the concepts of interaction (force) and matter, i.e., of process and substance. The development of these concepts, first in antiquity, then in early modern times, and finally in the contemporary system of quantum field theory is described. After a summary of the basic phenomenological attributes (coupling strengths, symmetry quantities, charges), the common ground of concepts of quantum field theory for both interactions and matter entities is discussed. Then attention is focused on the gauge principle which (...) has been developed to describe all interaction fields in the same way, and hopefully to unite them all into one unified field. While a similar unification of all fundamental types of matter fields (quarks and leptons) into one family may be possible (SU 5), there still remains at this level a duality between interaction quanta (bosons with spin 1) and matter particles (fermions with spin 1/2). Whether this duality may be removed in some future supersymmetric theory is not discussed in this paper. Nor is Quantum Gravitation discussed, though the analogy of the gauge principle for the three fundamental non-gravitational interactions (hadronic, electromagnetic and weak) to Einstein's principle of equivalence for gravitation in spacetime is noted. However, the equivalence concept is applied not to spacetime but to the internal spaces for the matter (or charge) fields which are the sources between which the fundamental interactions operate. The gauge principle states that a change in the measures of the internal space charge of gauge or phases of the matter fields is equivalent to, and can be compensated by, suitably introduced interaction fields. From such an interaction field, the gauge potential field in the internal space, one may derive a gauge force field by exterior differentiation.Geometrically, the collection of all internal spaces, one over each point of spacetime, constitutes a fiber bundle. The gauge potential field represents a connection on the fiber bundle, and the gauge force field is the curvature (calculated by taking the exterior derivative of the connection and adding to it the exterior product of the connection with itself). Thus, just as gravitational force is interpreted as spacetime curvature, so the three other fundamental forces are interpretable as internal space curvature. The Standard Model which unites the three non-gravitational fields into an SU c 3 ×SU 2×U 1 structure, and the grand unified model, SU 5, are discussed briefly, and difficulties are noted. Finally it is suggested that a composite model, based on more subtle structure, may be needed to remove the present obscurities and difficulties that stand in the way of a unified theory. (shrink)

Information and communication technology is changing many aspects ofhuman endeavour and existence. This is beyond dispute for most. Whatare contested are the social and ethical implications of thesechanges. Possible sources of these disputes are the multiple ways inwhich one can conceptualize and interpret the informationtechnology/society interrelationship. Each of these ways ofconceptualization and interpretation enables one to see theinformation technology/society relationship differently and thereforeconstrue its social and ethical implications in a different manner. Atthe center of this technology/society interrelationship we find manycomplex (...) questions about the nature of the human, the technical,agency, autonomy, freedom and much more. This is indeed a vastintellectual landscape, which can obviously not be explored here inits fullness. This entry is about just one particular perspective onthis landscape. It is primarily concerned with the phenomenologicalapproach to interpreting information technology and its social andethical implications. It should be noted from the start that there isnot a unified phenomenological tradition or approach to informationtechnology in particular, or other phenomena more generally. Thephenomenological tradition consists of many different approaches thatshare certain characteristics but not all. We may however suggest, with Don Ihde,that they all accept that “phenomenology investigates theconditions of what makes things appear as such [as that which we takethem to be].” Differently stated, phenomenology suggests thatthere is a co-constitutive relationship between us and the phenomenawe encounter in our engagement with the world. In this sensephenomenologists would suggest that to understand thetechnology/society relationship we need to reveal how theyco-constitute each other—i.e. draw on each other for theirongoing meaning and sense. We will elaborate more precisely what thismeans in section 2 below. However, in order to understand the distinctiveness of thephenomenological approach other possible ways of interpreting thistechnology/society relationship will also be outlined brieflybelow., It can be said that information technology has become in a very realsense ubiquitous. Most everyday technologies such as elevators,automobiles, microwaves, watches, and so forth depend onmicroprocessors for their ongoing operation. Most organizations andinstitutions have become reliant on their information technologyinfrastructure to a lesser or greater degree. Indeed informationtechnology is seen by many as a cost-efficient way to solve amultitude of problems facing our complex contemporary society. One canalmost say that information technology has become construed as thedefault technology for solving a whole raft of technical and socialproblems such as health provision, security, governance, etc. Onecould also argue that it has become synonymous with society’sview of modernization and progress. For most it seems obvious thatinformation technology has made it possible for humans to continue toconstruct increasingly complex systems of coordination and socialordering—systems without which contemporary society would not beable to exist in its present form. To say the least, we, ascontemporary human beings, have our manner of being made possiblethrough a rather comprehensive entanglement with information andcommunication technology. Indeed, the economic, organizational andsocial benefit of information technology is not widely disputed. Thedispute is more often about the way information technology is changingor transforming the social domain, and in particular, the ethicaldomain. This dispute is largely centered around different ways ofconceptualizing and interpreting the nature of our entanglement withinformation technology. This debate is not merely an academic debateabout different and competing theoretical ‘models.’Rather, these different ways of conceptualizing it is central to ourunderstanding of how we go about managing our increasingly entangledrelationship with information technology. (shrink)

This is the first book dedicated to Husserl's aesthetics. Paul Crowther pieces together Husserl's ideas of phantasy and image and presents them as a unified and innovative account of aesthetic consciousness. He also shows how Husserl's ideas can be developed to solve problems in aesthetics, especially those related to visual art, literature, theatre, and nature. After outlining the major components of Husserl's phenomenological method, Crowther addresses the scope and structure of Husserl's notion of aesthetic consciousness. For Husserl, aesthetic consciousness (...) in all its forms involves phantasy-where items or states of affairs are represented as if actually perceived or experienced, even though they are not, in fact, given in the present perceptual field. Husserl also makes some extraordinarily interesting links between aesthetic consciousness and nature, showing how natural things and environments become instigators of such consciousness when apprehended in the appropriate terms. This "unreality" of the object of aesthetic consciousness anticipates contemporary debates about pictorial representation and is also relevant to Husserl's accounts of literature and theatre. The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Consciousness and Phantasy will appeal to scholars and advanced students interested in aesthetics, philosophy of art, phenomenological aesthetics, and Husserl's philosophy. (shrink)

The Emergic Cognitive Model (ECM) is a unified computational model of visual filling-in based on the Emergic Network architecture. The Emergic Network was designed to help realize systems undergoing continuous change. In this thesis, eight different filling-in phenomena are demonstrated under a regime of continuous eye movement (and under static eye conditions as well). -/- ECM indirectly demonstrates the power of unification inherent with Emergic Networks when cognition is decomposed according to finer-grained functions supporting change. These can interact to (...) raise additional emergent behaviours via cognitive re-use, hence the Emergic prefix throughout. Nevertheless, the model is robust and parameter free. Differential re-use occurs in the nature of model interaction with a particular testing paradigm. -/- ECM has a novel decomposition due to the requirements of handling motion and of supporting unified modelling via finer functional grains. The breadth of phenomenal behaviour covered is largely to lend credence to our novel decomposition. -/- The Emergic Network architecture is a hybrid between classical connectionism and classical computationalism that facilitates the construction of unified cognitive models. It helps cutting up of functionalism into finer-grains distributed over space (by harnessing massive recurrence) and over time (by harnessing continuous change), yet simplifies by using standard computer code to focus on the interaction of information flows. Thus while the structure of the network looks neurocentric, the dynamics are best understood in flowcentric terms. Surprisingly, dynamic system analysis (as usually understood) is not involved. An Emergic Network is engineered much like straightforward software or hardware systems that deal with continuously varying inputs. Ultimately, this thesis addresses the problem of reduction and induction over complex systems, and the Emergic Network architecture is merely a tool to assist in this epistemic endeavour. -/- ECM is strictly a sensory model and apart from perception, yet it is informed by phenomenology. It addresses the attribution problem of how much of a phenomenon is best explained at a sensory level of analysis, rather than at a perceptual one. As the causal information flows are stable under eye movement, we hypothesize that they are the locus of consciousness, howsoever it is ultimately realized. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore scientific attempts to articulate a unified theory of the serotonin system and to explain the effects of psychedelic substances. I consider how certain accounts of psychedelic action have focused primarily on cognitive states, and I propose some phenomenological insights to supplement these models and inform work on psychedelics as therapeutic agents. Specifically, I argue that considering “psychological transformation” to be a core desideratum of psychedelic therapy should lead us to investigate the role of affect (...) in guiding significant psychological change. The phenomenological tradition offers resources for describing the relationship between knowledge and affect, and I argue that epistemically significant affective states such as fascination and revelation are more central to psychedelic experience than is commonly acknowledged. I propose that understanding the role of affect in psychedelic experiences is critical to developing a plausible account of the potential for using these substances therapeutically. (shrink)

Whenever psychologists, neuroscientists, or philosophers draw conclusions about moral judgments in general from a small selected sample, they assume that moral judgments are unified by some common and peculiar feature that enables generalizations and makes morality worthy of study as a unified field. We assess this assumption by considering the six main candidates for a unifying feature: content, phenomenology, force, form, function, and brain mechanisms. We conclude that moral judgment is not unified on any of these (...) levels and that moral science should adopt a more fine-grained taxonomic approach that studies carefully defined groups of moral judgments. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger closes his Winter Semester 1927–28 lectures by claiming that Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, read through the lens of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, confirmed the accuracy of his philosophical path culminating in Being and Time. A notable interpretation of Heidegger’s debt to Kant, advanced by William Blattner, presents Heidegger as a temporal idealist. I argue that attention to Husserl’s adaptation of Kant’s critical philosophy shows that both Husserl and Heidegger are realists. I make my case by tracing a (...) unified philosophical problematic through three puzzling passages: the Schematism chapter of the first Critique, Husserl’s thought experiment of the destruction of the world in Ideas, and the passage in Being and Time that motivates Blattner’s idealist reading. Husserl and Heidegger give accounts, derived from Kant, of how the consciousness of time makes it possible for objects to be perceived as enduring unities, as well as ‘genealogies of logic’ that show how a priori knowledge, including ontology, is possible. These accounts are idealistic only in the sense that they concern the ideal or essential features of intentionality in virtue of which it puts us in touch with things as they are independently of the contributions of any mind of any type. -/- . (shrink)

The intellectual virtues include two seemingly quite different types of traits: reliable faculties on the one hand and inquiry-regulating traits of intellectual character like conscientiousness and openmindedness on the other. Extant virtue theories do not appear to have provided a single account that adequately covers both types of virtue. In this paper, I examine the different ways in which a trait or disposition can contribute to our cognitive goal of acquiring significant true beliefs. I propose that the two types of (...) virtues can be understood as contributing in different ways to our cognitive goal, and develop a general framework for understanding their value. (shrink)

A perceptual experience of a given object seems to make the object itself present to the perceiver’s mind. Many philosophers have claimed that naïve realism (the view that to perceive is to stand in a primitive relation of acquaintance to the world) provides a better account of this phenomenological directness of perceptual experience than does the content view (the view that to perceive is to represent the world to be a certain way). But the naïve realist account of this (...) class='Hi'>phenomenology has a conspicuous shortcoming: it explains the phenomenological directness of veridical perceptual experiences but not of hallucinations. Conversely, I maintain that a particular variety of the content view provides a unified account of the phenomenological directness of both veridical and hallucinatory experiences. If so, then contrary to what is often assumed, the phenomenological facts concerning perceptual experience are explained better by the content view than by naïve realism, and consequently, we have a compelling reason to prefer the content view to naïve realism. (shrink)

It is difficult to give a nice succinct précis of The Phenomenological Mind since it is composed of a set of chapters each of which addresses a different topic. The topics are linked in numerous ways. There is one way, however, in which all of the chapters are bound together to constitute a unified whole, and this might be considered something like a framework proposition. Phenomenology, understood as the philosophical approach taken up by Husserl and a number of (...) people who loosely follow his lead, has something important to contribute to philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences. The proof of this claim is to be found in the details of the various chapters. In some cases it consists of showing that a phenomenological approach provides a genuine alternative to the standard or current approaches to be found in these areas. In other cases, phenomenological methods may provide insights about certain key concepts; or insights that are suggestive for experimental work. To do any of this requires that we take an interdisciplinary approach and recognize that these various investigations do not move on a one-way track. (shrink)

Skeptical worries about moral responsibility seem to be widely appreciated and deeply felt. To address these worries—if nothing else to show that they are mistaken—theories of moral responsibility need to relate to whatever concept of responsibility underlies the worries. Unfortunately, the nature of that concept has proved hard to pin down. Not only do philosophers have conflicting intuitions; numerous recent empirical studies have suggested that both prosaic responsibility judgments and incompatibilist intuitions among the folk are influenced by a number of (...) surprising factors, sometimes prompting apparently contradictory judgments. In this paper, we show how an independently motivated hypothesis about responsibility judgments provides a unified explanation of the more important results from these studies. According to this ‘Explanation Hypothesis’, to take an agent to be morally responsible for an event is to take a relevant motivational structure of the agent to be part of a significant explanation of the event. We argue that because of how explanatory interests and perspectives affect what we take as significant explanations, this analysis accounts for the puzzling variety of empirical results. If this is correct, the Explanation Hypothesis also provides a new way of understanding debates about moral responsibility. (shrink)

Husserl envisages transcendental phenomenology as a radically founding science that lays bare the higher-order experiences whereby logic and a theory of science become constituted. On the other hand, according to a usual presentation of Hegel’s philosophy, phenomenology is “logic’s precondition,” and science presents itself as its “result.” This alleged precedence of Hegel’s phenomenology (with its experiential and historical horizons) regarding logic may be a motif behind the current affinities recently traced between Hegelian and Husserlian notions of (...) class='Hi'>phenomenology that highlight their views on experience, history, and the lifeworld. This paper offers instead a reconsideration of aspects of their philosophies mostly challenged or dismissed since the rise of positivism: a reappraisal of their views on the relationship between phenomenology, logic, and philosophy as an “absolute” system of sciences. The argument is made that the irreconcilable difference between their projects ultimately stands on the radical contrast between Hegel’s speculative-conceptual method and system of sciences and Husserl’s foundational science and method as experiential-phenomenological all the way through. Despite this methodological abyss, this paper vindicates their affinities in their refusal to segregate science from life, and their attempts to overcome modernity’s inherited fragmentation of culture by providing an all-unifying approach to philosophy. (shrink)

The notion of community—a many that is one—is troubled in two respects: (1) On a theoretical level, given that there are many kinds of communities, what, despite their differences, do they share as communities? (2) On a practical level, communities in fact often manifest little unity riven, as they are, by factions and conflicts. After exploring the ways in which empathy as supplemented and complemented by affective dimensions of experience contributes to both the unity and disunity of communities, I shall (...) focus on what I take to be an extreme instance of a disunified community, namely, the political community in which the disunity is institutionalized in political parties, governing administrations, and opposition movements. The focus on the disunified community, I suggest, points to a difference between those communities unified by a shared understanding of the ends and activities pursued in collective action and those communities more weakly unified by conflicting “thick” understandings of a shared “thin” understanding of the ends and activities proper to the political community. (shrink)

In recent years, the term experimental phenomenology has come to refer to the work of various researchers, mainly Italian, of whom Gaetano Kanizsa and Paolo Bozzi are the most representative. Their work is well presented in this article by Bianchi and Burro (2022). My objection is to what I consider to be the misnomer and misleading name “experimental phenomenology,” which gives the impression that we are dealing with a homogeneous group following a unified approach. However, this is (...) not the case. The phenomenological view is not the same for everyone, ranging from borrowings from Gestalt theory, as in Kanizsa, to Gibsonian ecologism, as in Bozzi. And, most importantly, the research designs of these researchers are only sometimes experimental, sometimes quasi-experimental, but more often non-experimental. (shrink)

As Hans Urs von Balthasar has put it, 1 This remark is the inspiration for the following rereading of Bonaventure’s inaugural lecture. Not only does the Commentary succeed to a remarkable degree in unifying scholasticism and mysticism, but it also contains the seeds of a descriptive theological method that is original in ways that parallel contemporary phenomenological thought, despite the risk of anachronism inherent in such a claim.

Naturalists seek to ground what exists in a set of fundamental metaphysical principles that they call ‘nature’. But metaphysical principles can’t function as fundamental explanatory grounds, since their ability to explain anything depends on the intelligibility granted by transcendental structures. What makes metaphysical principles intelligible, what unifies them, and allows them to characterize the being of worldly objects are the transcendental structures through which worldly objects are manifest. This means that the search for fundamental explanatory grounds must go deeper than (...) the postulation of brute metaphysical facts. But this search cannot end with transcendental structures either, since the mode of being of transcendental subjects also calls out for explanation. Conceiving of transcendental subjects through the concept of being-in-the-world ties the mode of being of subjects to the world they inhabit. What grounds the existence of worldly objects, and what grounds our existence as being-in-the-world is nature: a principle that is neither an object, nor a subject – a principle that makes possible our encounters with intelligible worldly things. (shrink)

The literature on the work of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) abounds in specialized studies of various aspects of his philosophy - transcendental phenomenology. Yet there have been few attempts to present Husserl's philosophy as a whole. No wonder, for Husserl's mammoth literary output over some forty years and the highly diverse nature of his investigations have made it extremely difficult to make a broad survey of his work. Now one of the world's leading Husserl scholars presents a unified and (...) critical interpretation of Husserl's philosophical work from the only point of view from which its continuity can be grasped: method. The culmination of several decades of intense scholarly engagement with Husserl's phenomenology, her work reveals as no other the dynamic interplay between the development of Husserl's method and the thematic progression of his research. (shrink)

The paper outlines a structuralist unification between two existing relational theories of the self, i.e., Beni's Structural Realist theory of the Self and Gallese's Embodied Relational Self. Each one of these theories provides a structuralist account of some aspects of the self but leaves out some other aspects which are indispensable to a comprehensive account of the self. SRS accounts for the reflective aspects of the self, and ERS accounts for the environmental and social aspects of the self. In this (...) paper, I argue that when paired with one another, SRS and ERS could amend one another's shortcomings, without giving way to a non-relational conception of the self. I draw on neurology of the connection between Cortical Midline Structures and the mirror neuron system to inform my unifying proposal. I also show that an informational framework can underlie the union. (shrink)

A lot of qualitatively very different sensations can be pleasant or unpleasant. The Felt-Quality Views that conceive of sensory affect as having an introspectively available common phenomenology or qualitative character face the “heterogeneity problem” of specifying what that qualitative common phenomenology is. In contrast, according to the Attitudinal Views, what is common to all pleasant or unpleasant sensations is that they are all “wanted” or “unwanted” in a certain sort of way. The commonality is explained not on the (...) basis of phenomenology but by a common mental, usually some sort of conative, attitude toward the sensation. Here I criticize both views and offer an alternative framework that combines what is right in both while avoiding their unintuitive commitments. The result is the reductive (psychofunctionalist) adverbial sensory modification view of pleasure and displeasure. (shrink)

The Buddhists philosophers put forward a revisionary metaphysics which lacks a “self” in order to provide an intellectually and morally preferred picture of the world. The first task in the paper is to answer the question: what is the “self” that the Buddhists are denying? To answer this question, I look at the Abhidharma arguments for the No-Self doctrine and then work back to an interpretation of the self that is the target of such a doctrine. I argue that Buddhists (...) are not just denying the diachronically unified, extended, narrative self but also minimal selfhood insofar as it associated with sense of ownership and sense of agency. The view is deeply counterintuitive and the Buddhists are acutely aware of this fact. Accordingly, the Abhidharma-Buddhist writings are replete with attempts to explain the phenomenology of experience in a no-self world. The second part of the paper reconstructs the Buddhist explanation using resources from contemporary discussions about the sense of agency. (shrink)

In this dissertation I develop a structural model of phenomenal consciousness that integrates contemporary experimental and theoretical work in philosophy and cognitive science. I argue that phenomenology must be “naturalized” and that it should be acknowledged as a major component of empirical research. I use this model to describe important phenomenal structures, and I then employ it to provide a detailed explication of tip-of-tongue phenomena. The primary aim of “structural phenomenology” is the creation of a general framework within (...) which descriptions of experiences may be organized. The work of Husserl, Gurwitsch, the Gestalt psychologists, and many contemporary philosophers and cognitive scientists reveals several basic parameters underlying subjectivity. Chapter I argues that Husserlian methodology possesses problems both of praxis and of internal logic, and that its phenomenological descriptions cannot have the certainty he claimed. Consequently, an adequate phenomenology must incorporate empirical studies. This conclusion enables explicit transitions between empirical investigations and phenomenological insights. Chapter II introduces the theoretical framework underlying my model. I identify four parameters applicable to all experiences: 1) the degree of volitional emphasis with which something is experienced, i.e., the intensity of our focus on it, 2) the degree of non-volitional emphasis, i.e., the degree to which it is salient, 3) a variant of intentionality I term “directionality”, and 4) the property of recursion. Experiences are embedded within a complex set of relationships that unify and direct a layered phenomenal structure. I support these claims with evidence discovered over the past two centuries of research. Chapter III applies my model to the tip-of-tongue (TOT) state, in which difficulty remembering is accompanied by a sense of active searching. I show that a phenomenological description of the TOT experience is dependent on cognitive data, and that a phenomenological analysis is necessary to properly interpret these data. By showing how structural phenomenology offers a perspective from which to elucidate the results of experimental studies, I hope to clarify and establish the explicit role of introspection in empiricism, and of empiricism in phenomenology. (shrink)

Scholars such as Renaud Barbara and Bernhard Waldenfels and Regula Giuliani have emphasized time’s central role in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, and Michael Kelly has shown how the Phenomenology’s “Temporality” chapter already broaches his later ontological concerns. I deepen our understanding of this temporal–ontological nexus by showing how Merleau-Ponty’s temporal ontology in fact erupts even earlier in the Phenomenology, as an underlying theme that unifies part two, on “The Perceived World,” as leading into the “Temporality” chapter. I do this via (...) a close study of the chapter, “The Thing and the Natural World,” first explicating some profound but easily overlooked points about time implied in Merleau-Ponty’s initial remarks on the constancy of form and size. I then closely analyze his study of color constancy in relation to his central source, David Katz’s The World of Colour, to show how color leads him to conceptualize things as what I call “time-things”—and more generally to conceptualize things, the world, and nature, as being in such a way that temporality is ingredient in their being. This leads to some implications for his temporal ontology. (shrink)

The conception on which the affirmative philosophy of G.G. Shpet rests can be called hermeneutic phenomenology. The choice of this term demands explanation. Shpet's basic hermeneutic work, Hermeneutics and Its Problems [Germenevtika i ee problemy], was completed in 1918. At the time hermeneutics was understood usually as the art of grasping the meaning of a text. It is worth noting that this art was quite specific. It consisted mostly of a set of psychological techniques for "penetrating" into the internal (...) world of the text's author. The techniques were empathy, sympathy, immersion in a historico-cultural world, and imaginative penetration into the author's creative "workshop." Understood in this way, hermeneutics was a psychologically loaded research method. And if it is treated only in that way, the recently coined term "hermeneutic phenomenology" is in respect to content internally contradictory. As I see it, Shpet fully realized what conclusions could follow from this. Nevertheless his fundamental aspirations are connected precisely with the idea of unifying hermeneutics and phenomenology. This is possible because words have a complex structure . The sense of a word is objective and can be known by nonpsychological methods. The art of comprehending the sense of a text must inevitably include semiotic methods as well as logical and phenomenological techniques. They are aimed at comprehending (studying, researching, but not "grasping" or "sympathizing with" the objective, internal sense of the text. All the other elements of the sensible structure of the text are overlaid with the psychological peculiarities of the author and historical and social conditions. They are external factors that influence the sense of the text in a distinctive way and, without question, must be taken into account and included in the investigation of texts under the general heading "conditions of understanding," which are comprehended by the historical method. The psychological and historical methods in hermeneutics were historically conditioned research techniques, scientific means of comprehending sense under conditions when semiotic means were not yet developed, contemporary logico-semantic techniques were not available, and the phenomenological method was not yet invented. For this reason hermeneutics is reducible conceptually to a mere psychological art: it was only forced into being this by the lack of technical instrumentation. Moreover, the psychological hermeneutics of the nineteenth century may be called without any exaggeration the historical variant of hermeneutics in general. (shrink)

Classical ethology encourages a causal approach to animal behaviour, using Tinbergen's four questions concerning evolution, function, mechanism and development of behaviour. It sets aside the study of mental processes, which could otherwise help to unify our picture of the relationships between animal and environment. Here the steps in research focused on the psychological meaning of a peculiar behaviour in the mouse — carrying its tail — and what this implies regarding the mouse's cognitive world are given. Initial empirical observations suggested (...) epistemic choices concerning space and object notions in the mouse; this led us to go beyond the first stage in exploring the significance of this behaviour. Later experiments showed the limitations of an explanation based on a cause-effect relationship. An interpretative model integrating a phenomenological conceptual framework is proposed. (shrink)

Forgiveness is often understood as a primarily interpersonal experience, a type of moral response to a wrongdoing that has particular effects on the personal relationship between the one wronged and the wrongdoer. However, some have also attempted to defend another kind of forgiveness, one that takes place in public and applies to a wider range of practices in a specifically political context. That such a concept of forgiveness is possible is not particularly controversial. But the way that this political forgiveness (...) is unified—if it is unified—with personal forgiveness has not been clarified. By approaching the question phenomenologically, it becomes possible to root forgiveness, both personal and political, in the more fundamental context of the shared human world. Hannah Arendt's analysis of forgiveness does just this. In so doing, Arendt accounts for both the role of forgiveness in private human relationships and the way in which this role is fundamentally political. (shrink)

We present a unified vision of human knowledge, the external world and ourselves in the frame of an overall unity of Everything. Two main sources of knowledge are considered to this goal: an admittedly reductionist version of Modern Science and a few key elements of Oriental Philosophy. Our view is based on an analogy between the fundamental unity of Vedic ontology and the Grand Unification scheme of Particle Physics traced along the evolution of the Universe. Our key statement is (...) that these two sources of knowledge describe the same ontological story of separation, from an original One down to the multiplicity of the phenomenological world. We further substantiate this vision by drawing an analogy between the Residue of the Vedic sacrifice and the post-Big-Bang cosmological Matter-Antimatter Asymmetry. We also discuss a Big-Bang analogy between the postulated field of Inflationary Cosmology (the Inflaton) and the Vedic dissolution-decomposition of the cosmic progenitor Prajapati – whose body, according to Brahmanas texts, provides the material substrate of which the Universe is built. (shrink)

This book introduces Hegel's best-known and most influential work, Phenomenology of Spirit, by interpreting it as a unified argument for a single philosophical claim: that human beings achieve their freedom through retrospective self-understanding. In clear, non-technical prose, Larry Krasnoff sets this claim in the context of the history of modern philosophy and shows how it is developed in the major sections of Hegel's text. The result is an accessible and engaging guide to one of the most complex and (...) important works of nineteenth-century philosophy, which will be of interest to all students and teachers working in this area. (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)

This paper analyzes from a pragmatic postphenomenological point of view the performative practice of CREW, a multi-disciplinary team of artists and researchers. It is our argument that this company, in its use of new immersive technologies in the context of a live stage, gives rise to a dialectics between an embodied and a disembodied perspective towards the perceived world. We will focus on W (Double U), a collaborative interactive performance, where immersive technology is used for live exchange of vision. By (...) means of a head mounted omni-directional camera and display the fields of vision of two participants are swapped, which enables the participants to perceive the world through another person’s point of view. This intermedial experience brings a classic dichotomic perception of space to falter: material reality as a ‘live’ condition can no longer be opposed to a virtual mediated reality. In the shifting moment between the embodied and the perceived world, on the fracture between what one sees and what one feels, the distinction between live and mediated is blurred, moreover, can no longer be made. The perception of the body is pushed to the extreme, causing a most confusing corporal awareness, a condition that intensifies the experience and causes an altered sense of presence. In a dynamic cognitive negotiation, one tends, however, to unify the divergent ontologies of the ‘real’ and the ‘virtual’ to a meaningful experience. In this respect, we refer to recent neurological experiments such as the ‘rubber hand illusion’ in order to clarify the spectator’s tendency to fuse both ontologies and to embody a coherent image-world. (shrink)

Hegel's Philosophy of Right represents a unique theory type in the history of political philosophy. It is a normative theory that departs in its construction from an empirical facticity without reducing norms to facts. It unifies teleological and deontic considerations. It is a theory of the normatively requisite institutional structures able to realize the demands of a historically particular form of individuality, and simultaneously it presents the phenomenology of modern subjectivity committed to the ultimate value of true freedom. In (...) this way it aims to transform into genuine self-knowledge the illusory social-political self-image of its addressees. The paper discusses the connection between this phenomenological method and Hegel's conception of freedom - his critique of unconditional, abstract normativity, his solution to the problem of collision between equally valid norms and the possible relevance of his methodological principles to contemporary political philosophy. (shrink)

We agree with Smrdu that pain cannot be reduced to a neurophysiological event and we welcome a (micro-)phenomenological investigation of pain experience. However, we do not think such an investigation can provide sufficient support for either a 5E theory of pain, or (just) an enactive one. A 5E theory of pain would require a clarification of how the 5Es fit together. An enactive account would require a “circulation” between first- and third-person data.

The author draws attention to the fact that the new millennium has not lived up to the high expectations that the ideological project of «tolerant universalism» and «multicultural liberalism», with its focus on consensus, solidarity, respect for the Other, and emphasis on universal liberal values, could become the ideology of global progress in the 21st century. Instead, misunderstandings, wars, conflicts, and violence have not disappeared from the world stage. On the contrary, there is an observable «budding» of new and new (...) conflicts and wars. Conflict, like evil in general, has deep roots in both historical and psychological experience, as well as in the very ontology of humanity. Therefore, the issue is not about eliminating conflict but about qualitatively changing the direction of conscious human efforts – whether individual, collective, or socially organized. The author argues that, if restraint and tolerance are not cultivated, mutual destruction remains the alternative. We enter the modern world (which is not unified, but globalized) through the intersubjective space, through dialogical truths, and so on. This requires the establishment of new forms of worldview, new approaches to examining phenomena in nature, society, and the human being. Clearly, today there is a preference for research ideas and principles related to the synergistic approach, self-organization, self-creation, and self-reproduction, both at the level of the macrocosm and the microcosm. Philosophically, these ideas resonate with existentialist and phenomenological narratives and philosophies. The author currently points to the presence of such approaches in the thought of domestic philosophers. (shrink)

Defining the "person" is not an easy task and not even a direct possibility. One cannot generate a definition with tremendous implications without properly understanding the ontological makeup of "person". From this point of view philosophy and science have more or less proven that they aren’t able to share the same conclusions regarding the ontological features of “person”. In part because philosophy and science do not share the same general concept of reality. As long as there is a debate regarding (...) the nature of reality and, inevitably, of what can be incorporated within such reality it is almost impossible to find a common ground. But disagreements with respect to the ultimate nature of reality occur within the field of philosophy for here too, there isn’t one, but multiple accounts of reality. On their turn philosophical accounts of reality differ dramatically and in some cases are fundamentally opposed. To some extent, the same can be claimed about science. Psychology is certainly under different epistemological constraints than cosmology. Therefore, when one speaks about “persons” he has first to account that the divide between fields and within the fields is already a serious obstacle in defining the ‘person”. Ideally, a definition of “person” should emerge from a unified conceptual paradigm but that is an epistemological ambition almost impossible to fulfill in the current context. In the absence of a common epistemological ground the task of identifying and describing the features of “person” is almost impossible to accomplish. If however we put aside the debate regarding the ultimate nature of reality while adopting at the same a phenomenological realistic attitude, we could at least begin to formulate some of the epistemological qualifiers which may be beneficial for our task. It is certainly the absence of such qualifiers that blocks a coherent philosophical investigation into the ontological makeup of “person”. I believe that in order to overcome such conceptual crisis we should first identify its philosophical origins and sketch some of the premises which will later lead not only to the conception of proper qualifiers, but also to a proper epistemological approach on “person”. (shrink)

The kind of collective improvisation attained by the “free jazz” at the beginning of the sixties sets a challenge to analytic theories of collective intentionality, that emphasize the role played by future-directed plans in the interlocking and interdependent intentions of the individual participants, because in the free jazz case the performers’ interdependence or [interplay] stems from an intuitive understanding between musicians. Otherwise said: what happens musically is not planned in advance, but arises from spontaneous interactions in the group. By looking (...) at the way jazz improvisers take up the challenge of making music together without a pre-conceived notion as to what kind of effect they will achieve and without a pre-set code of agreements, my aim has been to clarify what kind of strategies — other than advanced action plans and joint commitments — are used by improvising musicians to integrate their improvisations into a unified shared activity. In developing this proposal I initially drawn pre-theoretically on one paradigmatic study case — Ornette Coleman’s double quartet Free Jazz, A collective Improvisation and brought it in conversation with Husserl’s phenomenology of time. In a final move, I brought this phenomenological frame into dialogue with some recent readings of the predictive coding model. All in all, what we learned from the Free Jazz case is that the interdependence and interlocking of attitudes among individual participants characteristic of shared intention is not determined by a future-directed plan and the rational pressure to be responsive to and coordinate with others, it typically engages. Rather, in the free jazz case, the performers’ connection and interplay depend on the players’ readiness to feel each other out, by listening to each other playing, in a way that no doubt presupposes the Husserlian retention-protention scheme. (shrink)

In the Appendix to A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume famously retracts his account of personal identity by confessing that it involves a profound problem he cannot solve, which I have elsewhere identified and called the Bundling Problem. Neither of the two possible solutions that Hume himself considers in the Appendix is a viable option for him by his own lights, which might suggest that any successful account of a unified self must go beyond the empirical framework. In this (...) paper, I argue that we can find a strictly empiricist solution to Hume's problem in William James. I attempt to show that James's descriptions of our experience are phenomenologically more detailed and faithful to how experience is undergone from the first-person perspective, which allows him to explain our belief in an identical, unified self solely on empirical grounds. James finds unity and continuity right in the content of the stream of experience itself. A detailed investigation of James's accounts reveals that Hume's fundamental problem does not stem merely from his lack of empirical resources but, more importantly, from his tacit abandonment of the professed empiricist methodology. (shrink)

Hegel's _Phenomenology_ is considered by many to be the most difficult book in the philosophical canon. While some authors have published excellent essays on various chapters and aspects of the book, few authors have successfully tackled the whole. In _The Unity of Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit_", Jon Stewart interprets Hegel's work as a dialectical transformation of Kantian transcendental philosophy, providing from this unified standpoint a case for Hegel's own conception of philosophy as a system. In restoring them to (...) their larger systematic contexts, Stewart clarifies Hegel's individual analyses, as well as indicating the meaning and significance of the transitions and illustrating the parallelisms between the respective analyses. Many of Hegel's main themes- universal-particular, mediacy-immediacy-are traced through the text, demonstrating Hegel's formal continuity. By examining at the microlevel the particulars of the dialectical movement, and by analyzing at the macrolevel the role of the argument in question in the context of the work as a whole, Stewart provides a detailed analysis of the _Phenomenology_ and a significant scholarly demonstration of Hegel's own conception of the _Phenomenology_ as a part of a systematic philosophy. (shrink)