Online research in philosophy

This article begins with a summary phenomenological analysis of movement in conjunction with the question of “quality” in movement. It then specifies the particular kind of memory involved in a dancer’s memorization of a dance. On the basis of the phenomenological analysis and specification of memory, it proceeds to a clarification of meaning in dance. Taking its clue from the preceding sections, the concluding section of the article sets forth reasons why present-day cognitive science is unable to provide insights into (...) dance, notably because being largely tethered to happenings in the brain, it lacks foundational grounding in experience, specifically, the actual experience of movement, which is to say in kinesthesia. (shrink)

This paper raises fundamental questions about the claims of art historian David Freedberg and neuroscientist Vittorio Gallese in their article "Motion, Emotion and Empathy in Esthetic Experience." It does so from several perspectives, all of them rooted in the dynamic realities of movement. It shows on the basis of neuroscientific research how connectivity and pruning are of unmistakable import in the interneuronal dynamic patternings in the human brain from birth onward. In effect, it shows that mirror neurons are contingent on (...) morphology and corporeal-kinetic tactile-kinesthetic experience. Accordingly, it poses and answers the overlooked but seminally important question of how mirror neurons come to be. The original neuromuscular research of Parma neuroscientists and the findings of Marc Jeannerod concerning kinesthesia support the answer that the "underpinnings" of visual art appreciation are themselves underpinned. An abbreviated phenomenological analysis of movement and its implications regarding the fact that the making of all art is quintessentially contingent on movement, hence a dynamic enterprise, further bolster the given answer as does a brief review of an empirical phenomenological analysis of the natural dynamic congruency of emotions and movement. In the end, the paper shows that movement and life are of a piece in the creation and appreciation of art as in everyday life. (shrink)

[Kinesthetic Memory] This paper attempts to elucidate the nature of kinesthetic memory, demonstrate its centrality to everyday human movement, and thereby promote fresh cognitive and phenomenological understandings of movement in everyday life. Prominent topics in this undertaking include kinesthesia, dynamics, and habit. The endeavor has both a critical and constructive dimension.

chapter 1 Neandertals Experience shows the problem of the mind cannot be solved by attacking the citadel itself. — the mind is function of body. ...

As its title indicates, this article shows animation to be the fundamental, essential, and properly descriptive concept to understandings of animate life. A critical and constructive path is taken toward an illumination of these threefold dimensions of animation. The article is critical in its attention to a central linguistic formulation in cognitive neuroscience, namely, enaction ; it is constructive in setting forth an analysis of affectivity as exemplar of a staple of animate life, elucidating its biological and existential foundations in (...) animation. (shrink)

This article identifies already existing theoretical and methodological commonalities between evolutionary biology and phenomenology, concentrating specifically on their common pursuit of origins. It identifies in passing theoretical support from evolutionary biology for present-day concerns in philosophy, singling out Sartre’s conception of fraternity as an example. It anchors its analysis of the common pursuit of origins in Husserl’s consistent recognition of the grounding significance of Nature and in his consistent recognition of animate forms of life other than human. It enumerates and (...) exemplifies five basic errors of continental philosophers with respect to Nature, errors testifying to a philosophical fundamentalism that distorts the intricate interconnections and relationships of Nature in favor of a preferred knowledge rooted in ontological reductionism. It shows that to discover and appreciate the common ground, one must indeed study “the things themselves.”. (shrink)

This article begins with a critical discussion of the commonly used phenomenological term “self-affection,” showing how the term is problematic. It proceeds to clarify obscurities and other impediments in current usage of the term through initial analyses of experience and to single out a transcendental clue found in Husserl’s descriptive remarks on wakeful world-consciousness, a clue leading to a basic phenomenological truth of wakeful human life. The truth centers on temporality and movement, and on animation. The three detailed investigations that (...) follow – of sensations and dynamics with respect to affectivity and movement, of the experiential connection between affectivity and movement, and of the defining features that Husserl identifies as “the sphere of ownness” – show specifically how temporality and movement are linked and how animation is at the heart of what is called ‘self-affection’. They show further that Nature in the form of the felt dynamics of life itself warrants substantive and assiduous phenomenological elucidation. (shrink)

Genuine reconciliation between first- and third-person methodologies and knowledge requires respect for both phenomenological and scientific epistemologies. Recent pragmatic, theoretical, and verbal attempts at reconciliation by cognitive scientists compromise phenomenological method and knowledge. The basic question is thus: how do we begin reconciling first- and third-person epistemologies? Because life is the unifying concept across phenomenological and cognitive disciplines, a concept consistently if differentially exemplified in and by the phenomenon of movement, conceptual complementarities anchored in the animate properly provide the foundation (...) for reconciliation. Research by people in neuroscience and in dynamic systems theory substantiate this thesis, providing fundamental examples of conceptual complementarity between phenomenology and science. (shrink)

Competition obscures the realities and significance of play, in particular, the bodily play originating in infancy and typical of young children. A multidisciplinary perspective on child's play elucidates the nature of child's play and validates the distinction between competition and play. The article begins with a consideration of ethological research on play in young human and nonhuman animals, proceeds to a consideration of psychological research on laughter as a primary kinetic marker of play, and ends with a philosophical examination of (...) the foundational moral significances of child's play. (shrink)

This article examines immortality ideologies in Western philosophy as exemplified in the writings of Descartes, Heidegger, and Derrida, showing in each instance the distinctiveness of the ideology. The distinctiveness is doubly significant: it broadens understandings of the nature of immortality ideologies generally and deepens comparative understandings of the ideologies of the philosophers discussed. Pertinent writings of Otto Rank, the psychiatrist who first wrote of immortality ideologies, contribute in fundamental ways to the discussion as do pertinent writings of cultural anthropologist Ernest (...) Becker, who elaborated and publicized Rank's thesis concerning immortality ideologies. The notion of an ideology, clarified in the beginning as an empirically unfounded belief structure, hence an illusion, is taken up briefly but pointedly at the end in the context of Rank's distinction between rational and irrational elements of the self as they are played out in the creations of the hero-artist. The article ends by examining his distinction in the context of the philosophic perspectives discussed, most notably the perspective of Heidegger. (shrink)

Developmental and clinical psychological findings on infancy over the past twenty years and more refute in striking ways both Piaget's and Lacan's negative characterizations of infants. Piaget's thesis is that the infant has an undifferentiated sense of self; Lacan's thesis is that the infant is no more than a fragmented piece of goods — a corps morcelé. Through an examination of recent and notable analyses of infancy by infant psychiatrist Daniel Stern, this paper highlights important features within the radically different (...) accounts. In particular, it examines Stern's account of self-agency —a facet of the core self. In doing so, the paper brings to light corporeal matters of fact and shows :how recent developmental-clinical data on infants accord with facets of bodily life described by Husserl. The paper contrasts these corporeal matters of fact and facets of bodily life with Piaget's and Lacan's notion of an infant as incompetent and deficient. On the basis of its empirical-phenomenological findings, the paper underscores the need to recognize the richness of nonverbal life and to give movement and the tactile-kinesthetic body their conceptual due. (shrink)

An examination of animate from reveals corporeal archetypes that underlie both human sexual behavior and the reigning Western biological paradigm of human sexuality that reworks the archetypes to enforce female oppression. Viewed within the framework of present-day social constructionist theory and Western biology, I show how both social constructionist feminists who disavow biology and biologists who reduce human biology to anatomy forget evolution and thereby forego understandings essential to the political liberation of women.