Ego sum moribundus, or Heidegger's call -- I am the dead person I see in the mirror, or Lacan's subject -- Return to Descartes -- the equivocations of (...) class='Hi'> phenomenology -- The field of immanence -- The carnal synthesis, the chiasm -- How touching touches itself touching : the (im)possibility of the chiasm -- In contact with the untouchable : the remainder -- This is (not) my body : the remainder of incorporation -- Beyond the other -- The crisis of the chiasm -- From hatred to love -- From archi-agony to resurrection -- Toward deliverance (instasy). (shrink)
This article presents two different phenomenological paths leading from ego to alter ego: a Husserlian and a Merleau-Pontian way of thinking. These two phenomenological paths serve (...) class='Hi'>to disentangle the conceptual–philosophical underpinning of the mirror neurons system hypothesis, in which both ways of thinking are entwined. A Merleau-Pontian re-reading of the mirror neurons system theory is proposed, in which the characteristics of mirror neurons are effectively used in the explanation of action understanding and imitation. This proposal uncovers the remaining necessary presupposition of a minimalized version of the Husserlian concept of pairing and its recent and improved version in terms of the intermodal system. This leads to a layered approach to the constitution of intersubjectivity. (shrink)
This article brings out certain philosophical difficulties in Lacan’s account of the mirror stage, the initial moment of the subject’s development. For Lacan, the “original organization (...) class='Hi'> of the forms of the ego” is “precipitated” in an infant’s self-recognition in a mirror image; this event is explicitly prior to any social interactions. A Hegelian objection to the Lacanian account argues that social interaction and recognition of others by infants are necessary prerequisites for infants’ capacity to recognize themselves in a mirror image. Thus mutual recognition with another, rather than self-recognition in a mirror, is what makes possible subsequent ego-formation and self-consciousness. This intersubjective critique suggests that many of the psychoanalytic consequences that Lacan derives from the mirror stage (e.g., alienation, narcissism, and aggressivity) may need to be rethought. (shrink)
In The Transcendence of the Ego Sartre deals with the idea of the self and of its relation to what he calls 'pure consciousness'. Pure consciousness is (...) an impersonal transcendental field, in which the self is produced in such a way that consciousness thereby disguises its 'monstrous spontaneity'. I want to explore to what extent the ego is to be understood as a result of absolute consciousness. I also claim that the idea of the self Sartre has in mind is Bergson's 'moi profond'. Since this 'deeper self' has to be understood as a result of an impersonal transcendental field, it loses its central position in consciousness. Sartre claims that the ego is not transcendental, as Husserl had claimed, but transcendent to consciousness. But can the role of Husserl's transcendental ego be reduced to that transcendent Bergsonian 'deeper self'? Isn't there something irreducible in Husserl's transcendental ego? (shrink)
In this paper, I elicit a number of ways in which, according to the Sartre of The Transcendence of the Ego, we can miss the truth about (...) our own self or, more simply, about ourselves. In order to do that, I consider what I call “statements about one's own self,” that is, statements of the form “I ...” where the predicate of the statement is meant to express things that are true of what is evidently given in reflection. I argue that, although statements about one's own self can, according to Sartre, be true on final philosophical analysis, there are at least three senses in which statements about one's own self can or do miss the truth, even when they are (by hypothesis) true. How they miss the truth depends on the different level of philosophical analysis at which we take Sartre to be working. (shrink)
There are two seemingly opposed descriptions of the subject in Totality and Infinity : the separate and autonomous I and the self that is ready to respond to (...) class='Hi'> the Other’s suffering and need. This paper points out that there is in fact another way Levinas speaks of the subject, which reinforces and reconciles the other two accounts. Throughout his first major work, Levinas explains how the ego is allowed to emerge as such by the Other who constantly confronts it. At certain points in that work Levinas comes to describe the self as a creature given to itself by another. The notion of the created ego allows for both freedom and responsibility as Levinas understands the creature as capable of thinking critically, becoming an independent individual, and turning to the Other in responsibility. (shrink)
This paper explores Husserl's phenomenological description of the constitution of the alter ego within the sphere of transcendental subjectivity. It is important at the start to (...) class='Hi'>point out that the Other plays a crucial role in securing the intersubjective nature of the experienced world. Although Husserl goes on in the "Fifth Cartesian Meditation" to consider the constitution of an objective world common to all subjects and the establishment of a community of monads, my primary focus in this paper will be the examination of the initial steps whereby the sense, "other ego," is constituted by the transcendental ego. My main task, then, will be to examine the reduction to the sphere of ownness, the appresentative transfer of sense from ego to alter ego, and the criterion of harmonious behavior. My primary criticisms will center around certain difficulties inherent in the attempt to uncover a primordial sphere of ownness and problems that arise from a shift in concern from the life-world (everyday) attitude to the attitude following the performance of the epoché. Part I of the paper will consist of a general discussion of Husserl's phenomenological project, Part II will be a detailed study of the alter ego, and Part III a general statement of problems and objections. (shrink)
In both Being and Nothingness and the Notebooks for an Ethics we are told how one needs the Ego to get along in the everyday world, but (...) yet at the same time that it is a psychic phenomenon that easily distorts everyday experience. In this paper, it is shown how, for Sartre, friends can play an important role by helping each other overcome the vested interest in maintaining the experience of a false, set identity that is engendered by the Ego. In addition, reference to the Notebooks will make it clear that support per se is insufficient to enable one to transcend the constraints of an entrenched Ego, and that instead this form of aid must be taken in conjunction with challenge, or a type of positive conflict, if one is going to be able effectively to help a friend for the task in question. (shrink)
The subjective effects and therapeutic potential of the shamanic practice of journeying is well known. However, previous research has neglected to provide a comprehensive assessment of the (...) subjective effects of shamanic-like journeying techniques on non-shamans. Shamanic-like techniques are those that demonstrate some similarity to shamanic practices and yet deviate from what may genuinely be considered shamanism. Furthermore, the personality traits that influence individual susceptibility to shamanic-like techniques are unclear. The aim of the present study was, thus, to investigate experimentally the effect of shamanic-like techniques and a personality trait referred to as "ego boundaries" on subjective experience including mood disturbance. Forty-three non-shamans were administered a composite questionnaire consisting of demographic items and a measure of ego boundaries (i.e., the Short Boundary Questionnaire; BQ-Sh). Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: listening to monotonous drumming for 15 minutes coupled with one of two sets of journeying instructions; or sitting quietly with eyes closed for 15 minutes. Participants' subjective experience and mood disturbance were retrospectively assessed using the Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory (PCI) and the Profile of Mood States-Short Form, respectively. The results indicated that there was a statistically significant difference between conditions with regard to the PCI major dimensions of visual imagery, attention and rationality, and minor dimensions of imagery amount and absorption. However, the shamanic-like conditions were not associated with a major reorganization of the pattern of subjective experience compared to the sitting quietly condition, suggesting that what is typically referred to as an altered state of consciousness effect was not evident. One shamanic-like condition and the BQ-Sh subscales need for order, childlikeness, and sensitivity were statistically significant predictors of total mood disturbance. Implications of the findings for the anthropology of consciousness are also considered. (shrink)
Certainly many in “Western” philosophy and psychology have conceived of the human subject in the Cartesian or neo-Cartesian tradition, as a self subsisting, self identical, monadic (...) class='Hi'>consciousness or Ego, which is to say as an essentially unchanging, substantial subject, initially isolated or separate from the world and others. On the other hand Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu and other “non-Western” traditions, adopting a more holistic approach, have argued that such a reified,atomistic and hypostatized conception of the self is illusory. However, suggesting that from at least since the time of Hume, and later, in Hegel, there has been an alternative “Western” view of consciousness, self-consciousness and identity, the development of which can be traced through the Phenomenology, Existentialism and Poststructuralism of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Derrida and others, the paper attempts to show how this evolving view may now contribute to a sophisticated and nuanced understanding and confirmation of the wisdom of “non-Western” conceptions. (shrink)
The Subject in Question provides a fascinating insight into a debate between two of the twentieth century's most famous philosophers over the key notions of conscious (...) class='Hi'>experience and the self. Edmund Husserl, the father of phenomenology, argued that the unity of one's own consciousness depends on the "transcendental ego," an irreducible, essential self not available to ordinary consciousness. But in The Transcendence of the Ego , Jean-Paul Sartre launched a sustained attack on Husserl's doctrine and argued that the self is instead a construct, a product of one's self-image in the eyes of others. In this first book-length commentary on Sartre's influential work, Stephen Priest explores Sartre's hostility to any essentialist conception of the self and sheds new light on the debates over consciousness, the legacy of Descartes and Kant, the nature of selfhood and personal identity, and the development of the phenomenological tradition. (shrink)
This essay is concerned with defending Husserl against the criticism that he is insuffi ciently attentive to intersubjectivity. It has two moments; the fi rst articulates what (...) I take to be a general version of the critique and then turns to a discussion of a version derived from Wittgenstein’s private language argument and the ensuing debate regarding this critique between Suzanne Cunningham and Peter Hutcheson. This discussion concludes by noting a general agreement betweenthe two participants that Husserl’s ego is not directly involved in intersubjective relationships. I argue that as long as this is granted, the broader criticism cannot be answered. Whence, the second moment defends Husserl against this critique arguing that Husserl’s transcendental ego is an intersubjective one. (shrink)
This book highlights the same topics in the philosophy of Descartes.In Part I (On the Ego), Marion explores the alterity of the Cartesian ego, arguing that (...) class='Hi'>it ... (shrink)
This essay presents central themes from my forthcoming book, The Awakening of the Global Mind. This book seeks to open a new frontier of Global Consciousness that (...) has been long emerging in human evolution through the ages. When we step back from our more localized perspectives and expand into a more integral, holistic, and global space through the awakening of the global mind we are able to discern striking mega-trends in cultural evolution across diverse cultural and religious worldviews and perspectives through time. One striking finding through this global lens is that the collective wisdom of humanity is quite clear that we make our living realities through the conduct of our consciousness: our technology of minding. And when we make ourselves and worlds through egocentric patterns of thinking we get polarized and fragmented worlds that are not sustainable. This essay joins a growing chorus of visionary thinkers and futurists which recognizes that in the 21st Century we face grave planetary crises and that our ego-based cultures are at a tipping point and not sustainable. The primary crisis on the planet now is a crisis of consciousness, and our global wisdom suggests that humanity is in a painful transformation toward a more healthful integral technology of mind that ushers in a new sustainable global civilization wherein the whole human family may flourish together on our sacred planet. (shrink)
The starting point of the investigation is the correspondence between the term and concept of Ego ("I") and the various types of experience. Two main ways of (...) introducing and applying of the term "I" (Ego) in Russian philosophy are investigated from the semantic-analytical point of view. The first takes the Ego as initially existed either as a spiritual substance or a given form uniting experiences. This way of treating is realized in L. Lopatin's and V. Soloviev's philosophical teachings. The second containing some moments of reflexion on the concept treated the Ego as a result of experience. It was developed in M. Karinskij und G. Spet. In context of difference between the Ego and the subject or consciousness the question of the owner of consciousness is considered. (shrink)
The most obvious cases of ego-involvement in conscious life are those which Husserl calls conscious acts or cogitationes.[2] They are the most obvious cases because they (...) class='Hi'> are the ones in which the ego explicitly involves himself in some way ; they exhibit the character of being engaged in by the ego or having been engaged in by him. This ego-quality or character belongs demonstrably to every conscious process in which the ego engages or lives. In the ego's conscious life, the life to which his, her, or its acts belong, there also occur mental or intentive processes in which the ego does not or did not engage, and these Husserl calls passive or non-actional processes as contrasted with the active or actional processes characterized by egoengagement. (shrink)
Descartes ne joue pas, dans la pensée de Heidegger, un rôle limité à l'interprétation de l'histoire de la philosophie. Lorsque Sein und Zeit entreprend de déterminer (...) class='Hi'> le mode d'être propre et irréductible du Dasein, Heidegger doit entrer en confrontation avec certes Husserl, mais surtout, par-delà la « conscience » husserlienne, avec Descartes lui-même. Car l'ennemi mortel du Dasein, cest l'ego du cogito. Dans quelle mesure cette rivalité n'induit-elle pas aussi une similitude? Die Rolle, die Descartes in dem Denken von Heidegger spielt, darf nicht in dem Feld seiner Deutung der Geschichte der Philosophie eng begrenztwerden. Denn, als Sein und Zeit eine Bestimmung der eigentümlicheigentlichen Seinsweise des Daseins hervorzubringen unternimmt, setzt die « Destruktion der Geschichte der Ontologie » eine Auseinanderstzung nicht nur mit Husserl, sondern auch, über Husserl hinaus, gerade mit Descartes vor. Der Todfeind des Daseins ist das ego, das aus dem cogito stammt. Inwiefern aber diese ständige Gegenüberstellung eine tiefe Nachahmung hinweise ? (shrink)
This paper clarifies Stirner’s relationship to his Left Hegelian contemporaries, Ludwig Feuerbch and Bruno Bauer, by showing how, in The Ego and Its Own, Stirner sought (...) class='Hi'>to exploit a fundamental contradiction that he perceived in the humanisitc atheism of Feuerbach and Bauer, and thereby to complete the critique of religious consciousness initiated by them. After having reconstructed Stirner’s position in relation to those of his contemporaries, the paper goes on to identify a significant weakness in it, and to identify resources in Feuerbach’s program for a future philosophy that might be enlisted in response to Stirner. The author argues that the central claim underlying Stirner’s criticism of Feuerbach involves a misconception of Feuerbach’s notion of the Gattungswesen or species-essence. Furthermore, Stirner’s unmitigated epistemological relativism is ultimately incompatible with his materialist ontology. (shrink)
Chow pays lip service (but not much more!) to Type I errors and thus opts for a hard (all-or-none) .05 level of significance (Superego of Neyman (...) class='Hi'>/Pearson theory; Gigerenzer 1993). Most working scientists disregard Type I errors and thus utilize a soft .05 level (Ego of Fisher; Gigerenzer 1993), which lets them report gradations of significance (e.g., p. (shrink)
Starting from the conceptual premises of Garrod, who as long ago as 1902 spoke of chemical individuality, and of Burnet (1949), who recognized as self one's (...) class='Hi'>own molecular antigenic structures (as opposed to the antigenic alien: the non- self), the discovery and understanding of HLA antigens and of their extraordinarily individual and differentiated polymorphisms have gained universal recognition. Transplant medicine has now dramatically stressed, within man's knowledge of himself, the characteristic of his biological uniqueness. Today man, having become aware of being a biological antigenic-molecular individuality which is unique and different from that of all of his fellow men (except for monozygotic twins), can therefore easily consider himself a true biological Ego. (shrink)
Abstract The study was designed as a test of an especially constructed series of dilemma discussion methods for an experimental group of female offenders and their guards. (...) The programme conducted on prison grounds, consisted of a five?month programme for the offenders and a separate ten?month programme for the staff. The results indicated that the experimental group of inmates improved on both the Defining Issues Test (DIT), an estimate of moral judgement and the Loevinger Sentence Completion Test (SCT), an estimate of ego development, when compared to a random group. The results for the staff programme were similar except that initially the guards? scores were much lower than those of the inmates, especially on the DIT. Two?year, follow?up information indicated that the experimental group of females achieved more positive outcomes than did the controls. Implications for prison reform from an educational and developmental perspective are stressed. (shrink)
Sartre’s relation to Kant in his essay The Transcendence of The Ego (TE) remains unexplained. In the last two decades, attention has increasingly beenfocused on TE (...) class='Hi'>for two main reasons. On the one hand, this essay provides an early formulation of a fundamental insight leading to Sartre’s masterpiece, Being and Nothingness. On the other hand, Sartre’s critical reflections on consciousness and self-consciousness remains relevant for our contemporary philosophical thinking. In TE, Sartre’s main goal is apparently to criticize Kant’s transcendental idealism and thereby establish his own thesis about the spontaneity of consciousness. Therefore, an explication and evaluation of Sartre’s critical reading of Kant is crucial to make sense of his own position. Though there has been attention in the discussion to TE, Sartre’s criticism of the Kant has not yet been adequately analyzed and well understood. This paper will focus on crucial elements in Sartre’s rejection of Kant’s transcendental idealism. (shrink)
In this book Almaas brings together concepts and experiences drawn from contemporary object relations theory, Freudian-based ego psychology, case studies from his own spiritual practice, and (...) class='Hi'>teaching from the highest levels of Buddhist and other Eastern practices. He challenges us to look not only at the personality and the content of the mind, but also at the underlying nature of the mind itself. (shrink)
Prezentacja koncepcji wiedzy milczącej Michaela Polanyi’ego poprzedzona jest krótkim – z konieczności – opisem złożonej teorii nauki i poznania, której koncepcja wiedzy milczącej jest zaledwie fragmentem. Dalsze części (...) class='Hi'> artykułu poświęcone są rekonstrukcji poglądów Polanyi’ego na wiedzę milczącą i jej rolę w nauce. W artykule podjęta została też próba dookreślenia wiedzy milczącej w odwołaniu do literatury przedmiotu. (shrink)
John Haugeland, in Artiftcial Intelligence: The Very Idea, predicts that it will not be possible to create systems whieh understand discourse about people unless those systems share (...) certain characteristics of people, specifically what he calls “ego involvement”. I argue that he has failed to establish this. In fact, I claim that his argument fails at two points. First, he has not established that it is impossible to understand ego involvement without simulating the processes which underlie it. Second, even if the first point be granted, the conclusion does not follow, for it is possible to simulate ego involvement without having it. (shrink)
For phenomenology, the study of appearances and the ways they come together to present a world, the question of the ego presents special difficulties. The ego, itself, (...) is not an appearance; it is the subject to whom appearances appear. As such, it cannot appear. As the neo-Kantian, Paul Natorp expresses this:“The ego is the subjective center of relation for all contents in my consciousness. . . . It cannot itself be a content and resembles nothing that could be a content ofconsciousness.” Husserl will wrestle throughout the whole of his career with the issue of how to handle phenomenologically an ego that cannot be considered asa content of consciousness. In this article, I will outline the stages of his journey toward resolving this question. (shrink)
b>: The problem of how physical systems, such as brains, come to represent themselves as subjects in an objective world is addressed. I develop an account of (...) the requirements for this ability that draws on and refines work in a philosophical tradition that runs from Kant through Peter Strawson to Gareth Evans. The basic idea is that the ability to represent oneself as a subject in a world whose existence is independent of oneself involves the ability to represent space, and in particular, to represent oneself as one object among others in an objective spatial realm. In parallel, I provide an account of how this ability, and the mechanisms that support it, are realized neurobiologically. This aspect of the article draws on, and refines, work done in the neurobiology and psychology of egocentric and allocentric spatial representation. (shrink)
This paper examines Husserl’s fascination with the issues raised by Hume’s critique of the philosophy of the ego and the continuity of consciousness. The path taken (...) class='Hi'> here follows a continental and phenomenological approach. Husserl’s 1905 lecture course on the temporalization of immanent time-consciousness is a phenomenological-eidetic examination of how the continuity of consciousness and the consciousness of continuity are possible. It was by way of Husserl’s reading of Hume’s discussion of “flux” or “flow” that his discourse on temporal phenomena led to the classification of a point-like now as a “fiction” and opened up a horizonal approach to the present that Hume’s introspective analyses presuppose but that escaped the limitations of the language that was available to him. In order to demonstrate the radicality of Husserl’s temporal investigations and his inspiration in the work of Hume, I show how his phenomenological discourse on the living temporal flow of consciousness resolves the latter’s concern about the problem of continuity by re-thinking how, in the absence of an abiding impression of Self, experience is continuous throughout the flux of its running off impressions. (shrink)
Recent work in neuroscience indicates that the subcortical mechanisms that generate motives also generate consciousness. As Mark Solms argues, this enables us to integrate neuroscience with the (...) Freudian Ego and Id. If we take full account of the role of conflict, as described in terms of the superego, we can see that the complex role of aggression in human life ensures that much of our emotional life is unconscious. (shrink)
This book will be of great interest to philosophers of mind and epistemologists, historians of philosophy and their students, philosophers of religion, and ...
Japan has absorbed many western ideas since the late nineteenth century, but Japanese philosophers have often been reluctant to accept the western idea of the “I” in (...) its entirety. The I transgresses to the Other more easily than western philosophies think and imports what belongs to the Other as his own. How is this possible? Husserl attempted to explain the constitution of the Other by the intentionality that goes from the I to the Other, mediated by the body. However, Husserl later discovered that the constitution of both the I and the Other is more of a two-way movement. This double-movement is essential for all constitutions and departs from a deep (primal) dimension that is not yet egological. Even in the self-reflection of the I, a similar double-movement between the primal and egological dimensions can be seen. The I is supported, but at the same time threatened, by this movement. (shrink)
The aim of this essay is to Max Stirner's critique of liberalism and to show the ways in which his rejection of essential identities and universal (...) class='Hi'>rational structures allows us to reflect upon the limits and epistemological conditions of liberal political theory. Through his rejection of Feuerbachian humanism, Stirner unmasked the obscurantism and domination behind modern secular political systems like liberalism, which was still trapped in idealist abstractions and universal assumptions derived from Christianity. He showed that liberalism, which is founded on the idea of the autonomous and rational individual, is actually a denial of individual difference and singularity and a mediation and disciplining of subjectivity through the structures of state authority. Moreover, Stirner's extreme individualism, while problematic in many respects, nevertheless points to the possibility of a reformulation of liberalism in terms of a contemporary politics of singularity and difference. (shrink)
In Part One of Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche writes that anyone who believes in “immediate certainties” such as “I think” encounters a series of “metaphysical questions”. (...) The most important of these “problems of intellectual knowledge” concerns the existence of an ‘I’, as much as our believing it to be the cause of thinking. Therefore, any remark about our mental faculties directly follows from our defining what we could call the basic psychical unity, i.e. our view on higher-level psychical functions is strictly related with the properties we attribute to the notion of ‘I’. As we know, the main ideas on this subject that Nietzsche states in his book from 1886 come from the neo-kantian views of Lange, Spir and Teichmüller, and we cannot forget the important (even if hidden) reference to Lichtenberg in § 17 of the same work. Nevertheless, Nietzsche seems to move beyond all these sources, and in many of his writings we can find a new definition of the ‘ego’, finally free from any reference to a thing in itself, and for this reason closer to the ideas of the Austrian scientist Ernst Mach. In this paper I shall carry these remarks out. I’ll show the main properties of the notion of ‘I’ Nietzsche concerns with in his writings and, therefore, the grounds of his view on the mind-body problem. Moreover, I will argue that, once we observe that Nietzsche looks at the ‘ego’ as a mere regulative fiction having no ontological value out of the chain of sensation and representation it brings together, we could find out the close similarity with the way Mach defines it in his Beiträge zur Analyse der Empfindungen (1886). This reference could help us to understand in a better way some statements Nietzsche wrote in his notebooks, and, secondly, to show how strictly was his philosophy of mind related with the main outcomes of 19th century science. Indeed, Nietzsche’s refusal of the belief “that there must necessarily be something that thinks” ‒ a view that results from the anti-metaphysical intent leading his naturalism ‒ seems to be one of the most important assumptions of the new born physiological psychology, an idea out of which many of the 20th century philosophical debates arose. (shrink)
