The article deals with the problems discussed in neuroethics a rapidly developing field of applied ethics. The term “neuroethics” is discussed in the article and is suggested to group neuroethical problems into four groups: (1) ethical problems connected with brain imaging technologies, (2) ethical problems connected with the technologies that allow to manipulate the activity and properties of the brain, (3) the influence of the neuroscientific worldview on our considerations on morality, and (4) general metaphilosophical considerations on neuroethics itself. The (...) article concludes with a discussion of the relation between neuroethics and bioethics. (shrink)

The article discusses the uncertainty of legal definitions of aviation safety and and aviation security, the implementation of which often result in certain restrictions of human rights. In the article, a hypothesis is made that, despite usually treated as well-known concepts, safety and security are not so clear and well-defined, often leaving the reader to guess at their precise meaning. The aim of this article is to identify the core features that characterise aviation safety and aviation security and could disclose (...) their legal content when assessing their comparative weight in relation to the protection of human rights. Supported by holistic approach from different perspectives (socio-cultural, historical, etc.), the phenomenological and hermeneutic analysis allowed providing an in-depth understanding of various meanings of safety and security concepts. An overview of the existing linguistic peculiarities of the use of the terms ‘safety’ and ‘security’ with an emphasis on the importance of determining the context in which they are used as primary evidence of their meaning is followed by the analysis of the common features and differences between the concepts of safety and security that supplements the discourse on the dilemma of combining subjective and objective, relative and absolute perceptions of safety and security. The research from the view point of normative jurisprudence reveals the polysemy inherent in aviation safety and aviation security, especially in terms of the values they represent, suggesting the conclusion that legal definitions of ‘aviation safety’ and ‘aviation security’ should in part be treated as a sort of ad hoc definitions, which have to be developed (clarified) in each particular case. (shrink)

The Phenomenology of Pain is the first book-length investigation of its topic to appear in English. Groundbreaking, systematic, and illuminating, it opens a dialogue between phenomenology and such disciplines as cognitive science and cultural anthropology to argue that science alone cannot clarify the nature of pain experience without incorporating a phenomenological approach. Building on this premise, Saulius Geniusas develops a novel conception of pain grounded in phenomenological principles: pain is an aversive bodily feeling with a distinct experiential quality, which (...) can only be given in original first-hand experience, either as a feeling-sensation or as an emotion. Geniusas crystallizes the fundamental methodological principles that underlie phenomenological research. On the basis of those principles, he offers a phenomenological clarification of the fundamental structures of pain experience and contests the common conflation of phenomenology with introspectionism. Geniusas analyzes numerous pain dissociation syndromes, brings into focus the de-personalizing and re-personalizing nature of chronic pain experience, and demonstrates what role somatization and psychologization play in pain experience. In the process, he advances Husserlian phenomenology in a direction that is not explicitly worked out in Husserl's own writings. (shrink)

This volume is the first book-length analysis of the problematic concept of the ‘horizon’ in Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, as well as in phenomenology generally. A recent arrival on the conceptual scene, the horizon still eludes robust definition. The author shows in this authoritative exploration of the topic that Husserl, the originator of phenomenology, placed the notion of the horizon at the centre of philosophical enquiry. He also demonstrates the rightful centrality of the concept of the horizon, all too often viewed (...) as an imprecise metaphor of tangential significance. His systematic analysis deploys both early and late work by Husserl, as well as hitherto unpublished manuscripts. Opening out the question to include that of the origins of the horizon, the book explores the horizon as philosophical theme or notion, as a figure of intentionality, and as a signification of one’s consciousness of the world—our ‘world-horizon’. It argues that the central philosophical significance of the problematic of the horizon makes itself apparent in realizing how this problematic enriches our philosophical understanding of subjectivity. Systematic, thorough, and revealing, this study of the significance of a core concept in phenomenology will be relevant not only to the phenomenological community, but also to anyone interested in the intersections of phenomenology and other philosophical traditions, such as hermeneutics and pragmatism.​. (shrink)

: The purpose of this manuscript is to bring Mead's pragmatism into contact with Jean-Luc Marion's phenomenology. Taking as its focus the question of the I-pole of the self, the paper points to the absence and the need of a concept like auto-affection in Mead's analysis of selfhood. A pragmatic appropriation of this concept does not undermine the social framework of selfhood because the most rudimentary self-givenness is immediate and direct, yet simultaneously a posteriori. The social and biological genesis of (...) mind, self and society reserves a prominent place for auto-affection, which liberates the self from his estrangement within the horizon of objecthood by acknowledging a multiplicity of types of self-givenness besides that of self-objectification. (shrink)

The purpose of this manuscript is to bring Mead's pragmatism into contact with Jean-Luc Marion's phenomenology. Taking as its focus the question of the I-pole of the self, the paper points to the absence and the need of a concept like auto-affection in Mead's analysis of selfhood. A pragmatic appropriation of this concept does not undermine the social framework of selfhood because the most rudimentary self-givenness is immediate and direct, yet simultaneously a posteriori. The social and biological genesis of mind, (...) self and society reserves a prominent place for auto-affection, which liberates the self from his estrangement within the horizon of objecthood by acknowledging a multiplicity of types of self-givenness besides that of self-objectification. (shrink)

In this article the paradoxical role of legal science in legal practice is discussed. On the one hand, legal scientists do not agree on the criterions of the scientific character of legal science. On the other hand, even in the legal cases that are especially complicated it is possible to arrive at theoretically unquestionable decisions. The author of the article concludes that legal practice is based on fundamental theoretical insights; however, in legal practice these insights are used more intuitively than (...) reflectively. Therefore, the aim of the article is to rationally reconstruct these theoretical insights with reference to the ideas of modern schools of legal philosophy. For this purpose the ideas of the theory of natural law are discussed. It is concluded that in legal practice two provisions of natural law are applied: legal decisions ought to be reasonable and must include existential ends (basic values). The evolution of the legal positivism is discussed in the article and it is concluded that legal positivism offers the criterions of the scientific character of legal science by framing the procedural rules of the democratic process of lawmaking. These rules anticipate such conditions: consensus concerning decision making; equal participation of all members of legal discourse confirming normative decisions; the acceptability of consequences after the realisation of normative decisions; the possibility to reaffirm normative decisions, if necessary. The ideas of virtue jurisprudence are discussed and it is claimed that virtue jurisprudence as a criterion of the scientific character of law proposes such theoretical position: the decisions concerning human rights must supply the value system (hierarchy) and the virtues which are formed and justified in the long legal tradition. The article represents the use of these criterions of the scientific character of legal science by Jurgen Habermas to debate about legal prohibition of the improvement of the human genome by using modern technologies of genome engineering in the Convention of Human Rights and Biomedicine (Oviedo, 1997). (shrink)

Although the need of freedom is definite, the concept of individual freedom, while being interpreted with legal terms, causes not only theoretical, but also practical problems. The observed two extremes of freedom are defined as any human self-expression as well as the license, where the state power is generally attributed to disregard personal freedom. In this article the freedom of expression and state enforcement jurisdiction dichotomy are addressed by discussing positive and negative conceptions of freedom and the relationship between the (...) interpretations of political liberalism and Kant and Hegel‘s philosophies. This paper aims to prove that the positive liberty is the assumption of the negative liberty. The paper based on Hegel‘s philosophy shows that freedom is the characteristic of human nature to seek identity. It is also argued that human identity can take many forms and, therefore, a person has a number of inherent rights and liberties. It is human psycho-physical identity that provides the right to life and health care; human creative identity, providing the right to privacy and freedom of occupation; human moral identity, which provides the right of dignity, and the moral autonomy of person’s social and political identity, providing the political and social rights and freedoms. This article concludes that while a person uses the given rights with integrity and the state is limiting people’s arbitrariness, there is no conflict between the freedom and state violation. (shrink)

This paper examines Georg Lukács’s conception of rei????ied subjectivity under capitalism. I claim that Lukács’s transition from his ethical pre-Marxist notion of the reified subject, to his early-Marxist understanding of capitalist reification of the subject contains the elements of a potential Lukácsian anti-critique of any epistemic or normative reinterpretation of his theory of reification. In particular, the shift in Lukács’s conceptualization of the thinglikeness of objects implied in his dialectical social theory points to a historically precise interpretation of the subject’s (...) reification. The paper also suggests that Lukács’s project of dereification is rooted in the affective experience of reified subjects.Cet article examine la conception lukacsienne de la subjectivité réifiée en régime capitaliste. Mon propos est de montrer que le passage de la notion éthique pré-marxiste du sujet réifié à une compréhension marxiste précoce de la réification capitaliste du sujet chez Lukács contient des éléments d’une critique lukacsienne potentielle de toute réinterprétation normative de sa théorie de la réification. Le tournant dans la conceptualisation lukacsienne de l’apparente « choiséité » des objets, implicite dans la dialectique de sa théorie sociale, fait signe vers une interprétation historiquement précise de la réification du sujet. L’article suggère également que le projet lukacsien de la dé-réification est enraciné dans l’expérience affective des sujets réifiés. (shrink)

A number of differences between the dreams of schizophrenia patients and those of healthy participants have been linked to changes in waking life that schizophrenia may cause. This way, the “continuity hypothesis” has become a standard way to relate dreaming and waking experiences in schizophrenia. Nevertheless, some of the findings in dream literature are not compatible with the continuity hypothesis and suggest some other ways how dream content and waking experiences could interact. Conceptually, the continuity hypothesis could be sharpened into (...) the “waking-to-dreaming” and the “dreaming-to-waking” hypotheses, whereas a less explored type of “discontinuity” could embrace the “compensated waking” and the “compensated dreaming” hypotheses. A careful consideration and empirical testing of each of those hypotheses may reveal a multiplicity of the ways how dreaming and waking life interact in schizophrenia. (shrink)

Offering the first book-length study of a central concept in modern European philosophy to appear in the English-speaking world, this book provides an authoritative collection of articles that systematically address the concept of productive imagination in pre-Kantian philosophy, Kant, German Idealism, Phenomenology and Hermeneutics.

This innovative collection traces the heretical development of productive imagination in post-Kantian philosophy. The book offers an original study that comprises unprecedented investigations into the kinaesthetic, pre-linguistic, poetic, historical, artistic, social and political dimensions of the productive power of imagination.

In this paper, we address the different ways in which dream research can contribute to interdisciplinary consciousness research. As a second global state of consciousness aside from wakefulness, dreaming is an important contrast condition for theories of waking consciousness. However, programmatic suggestions for integrating dreaming into broader theories of consciousness, for instance by regarding dreams as a model system of standard or pathological wake states, have not yielded straightforward results. We review existing proposals for using dreaming as a model system, (...) taking into account concerns about the concept of modeling and the adequacy and practical feasibility of dreaming as a model system. We conclude that existing modeling approaches are premature and rely on controversial background assumptions. Instead, we suggest that contrastive analysis of dreaming and wakefulness presents a more promising strategy for integrating dreaming into a broader research context and solving many of the problems involved in the modeling approach. (shrink)

Husserl is the philosopher who transformed the geological metaphor of sedimentation into a philosophical concept. While tracing the development of Husserl's reflections on sedimentation, I argue that the distinctive feature of Husserl's approach lies in his preoccupation with the question concerning the origins of sedimentations. The paper demonstrates that in different frameworks of analysis, Husserl understood these origins in significantly different ways. In the works concerned with the phenomenology of time consciousness, Husserl searched for the origins of sedimentation in the (...) field of subjective experience, and more precisely, in impressional consciousness. By contrast, in the later works concerned with history, he maintained that the origins of sedimentations lie in the field of historical past that stretches beyond the reach of individual experience. Building on the basis of these resources, I argue that the Husserlian concept of sedimentation has three distinct components of senses: static, genetic, and generative. In the static sense, sedimentations are modifications of retentions and necessary conditions of recollection. In the genetic sense, sedimentations are necessary for the formation of types, habits and moods, and as such, they shape present experiences. In the generative sense, sedimentations refer to what consciousness inherits from the historical tradition. (shrink)

The paper explores the meaning of the phenomenological concept of sedimentation in the framework of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. The analysis I offer suggests that Merleau-Ponty initiates a transition from the constitutional problematic of sedimentations that we come across in Husserl’s phenomenology to the analysis of existential sedimentations. Merleau-Ponty accomplishes this transformation by binding the Husserlian conception of sedimentations with the Heideggerian conception of facticity. The distinction Merleau-Ponty draws between originary sedimentations and secondary sedimentations is especially important, for it allows one to (...) claim that Merleau-Ponty recognizes all experiences as sedimented. Against the background of this realization, I offer a reevaluation of Merleau-Ponty’s cryptic remarks in the Phenomenology of Perception regarding the “original past,” also described as “a past that has never been a present.” I argue that these are metaphors for originary sedimentations. In place of a conclusion, I suggest that especially when the concept of sedimentation is universalized, we come to recognize its inherently paradoxical nature. In the final analysis, besides being a genetic concept, sedimentation is also a limit problem and a limit phenomenon. (shrink)

The paper analyses the relevant issue of the relationship of international law and European Union law. Therefore, independent systems of law exist, which inevitably arise the issue of relationship and interaction of these systems. Legal literature analyses the question of the relationship of these two systems of law on the basis of various aspects. The author has chosen the following structure of the paper: first, the general problem of the relationship of international and European Union law is discussed. While describing (...) the problem, the nature of the European Union and international law, as well as the distinguishing features of these systems of law, is analysed. The paper also provides a discussion about the decisions of the Strasbourg court and the Court of Justice of the European Union, which provide the basis of solving the problem of the relationship of these systems of law. In the second part of this paper, the main theories are analysed: the monistic, dualistic and coordination theories, which can be used to answer the issue of interaction of the two systems of law – international law and European Union law. (shrink)

This collection of chapters, written by prominent scholars in their respective fields, re-examines the nature of self-awareness in both Western and Eastern philosophy, inquires into its diverse and variable modes, and significantly broadens the framework of its analysis. The chapters collected focus on reflective and pre-reflective forms of self-awareness, as well as the relation between self-awareness and the awareness of things and the world. Included are examinations of the affective and embodied dimensions of self-awareness, the distinct forms of self-awareness in (...) memory, phantasy, and dreams, as well as the temporal and spatial nature of self-awareness. This edited volume appeals to students and researchers working in phenomenology and on the philosophy of self-awareness. (shrink)

As a phenomenological concept, absorption refers to the ego's capacity to experience the world from a displaced standpoint. The paper traces the emergence and development of this concept in Husserl...

The fundamental goal of this paper is to clarify the importance of Husserl’s reflections on destiny (Schicksal) in the context of his post-WWI ethics. In the first section, I sketch Husserl’s reflections on war in his private correspondence. In the second section, I show that, in his post-WWI research manuscripts on ethics, Husserl conceptualized various forms of meaningless suffering under the heading of destiny. One of the main questions of Husserl’s post-WWI ethics can be formulated as follows: in the dark (...) horizon of senselessness, how is an ethical life possible? In the remaining sections, I show that Husserl’s reflections on this question led him to deformalize his earlier ethics and motivated him to ground his ethics of reason in an ethics of love. In the third and fourth sections, I sketch Husserl’s two fundamental answers to this question, the first of which concerns his phenomenology of love, while the second one – his phenomenological metaphysics in general, and his phenomenological teleology, in particular. While for Husserl, these answers are complementary, after clarifying Husserl’s view on the conflicts of values, I conclude with some reflections on the importance of not overlooking that these answers are analytically distinct. (shrink)

My goal is threefold. First, building on the basis of Husserl’s phenomenology of the imagination, I will argue that phantasy is a specific type of intentional experience, which intends its objects as neutralized presentifications. Second, I will turn to dreams and argue that non-lucid dreams are unconscious phantasies, which cannot be conceived in the above-mentioned way. This realization will bring us to the third task. When recognized as the most extreme form of unconscious phantasy, dreams compel us to raise anew (...) the fundamental question: what is the nature of phantasy experience? According to the perspective I will here develop, phantasy is a specific field of experience that lies between two extremes: the fully translucent mode of the as if consciousness and the thoroughly opaque mode of absorption. Most of our phantasies, both conscious and unconscious, voluntary and involuntary, are lived somewhere between these two extremes. (shrink)

Investigating connections between philosophical hermeneutics and neighbouring traditions of thought, this volume considers the question of how post-Heideggerian hermeneutics, as represented by Gadamer, Ricoeur and recent scholars following in their wake, relate to these traditions, both in general terms and bearing upon specific questions. The traditions covered in this volume-existentialism, pragmatism, poststructuralism, Eastern philosophy, and hermeneutics itself-are all characterized by significant internal diversity, adding to the difficulty in reaching an interpretation that is at once comparative and critical. None of these (...) traditions represent a unified system of belief; all are umbrella terms which are at once useful and imprecise, and the differences internal to each must not to be understated. An innovative work of comparative philosophy, this volume avoids oversimplification and offers specific analyses that treat hermeneutics in relation to particular themes and key figures in each of these traditions of thought. Philosophical hermeneutics is explicitly dialogical, and it is in this spirit that the authors of this book approach their subjects, revealing the important affinities and opportunities for mutually enriching conversations which have until now been overlooked. (shrink)