This paper explores the implications of conceptualising phenomenology as explanatory for the ongoing dialogue between the phenomenological tradition and cognitive science, especially enactive approaches to cognition. The first half of the paper offers three interlinked arguments: Firstly, that differentiating between phenomenology and the natural sciences by designating one as descriptive and the other as explanatory undermines opportunities for the kind of productive friction that is required for genuine ‘mutual enlightenment’. Secondly, that conceiving of phenomenology as descriptive rather than explanatory risks (...) committing us to what Zahavi (2019) identifies as the error of equating the phenomenological with the phenomenal. Finally, that the erroneous reduction to the descriptive occludes the rich resources that the phenomenological tradition can contribute to investigations of non-human cognition. The second half of the paper then turns to focus specifically on the promising relationship between phenomenology and enactive approaches to cognition. It will suggest that phenomenology must be seen as having explanatory capacities if it is to shed light on the structures of “mind in life” (Thompson, 2007), before drawing on the model of explanation put forward by Louis Sass to explore what this might look like. (shrink)

To understand the radical potential of Heidegger’s model of practice, we need to acknowledge the role that temporality plays within it. Commentaries on Heidegger’s account of practical engagement, however, often leave the connection between purposiveness and temporality unexplored, a tendency that persists in the contemporary discourse generated by the interaction between the phenomenological tradition and certain approaches within cognitive science. Taking up a temporality-oriented reading that redresses this can, I want to argue here, reveal new illuminating sites for the intersection (...) between phenomenology and the cognitive sciences, particularly between Heideggerian perspectives and what have become known as enactive approaches to the study of cognition. According to the latter, cognition is an inherently relational process through which the interaction of a living being and its environment generates meaning and, ultimately, a world of significance defined by the cogniser’s self-concern. I will suggest that this emphasis upon the inextricable intertwining of agent and world renders enactive models of cognition particularly congenial to a mutually enriching dialogue with Heidegger’s account of purposiveness, particularly if we read the latter in terms of the temporal framework that Being and Time offers us. (shrink)

This thesis argues that Heidegger’s accounts of practice and temporality in Being and Time are inseparable, and demonstrates the importance of temporality for contemporary dialogues between Heideggerian phenomenology and cognitive science. It proposes that enactive and action-oriented models of cognition are best suited to engaging with a Heideggerian view of the temporality of practice, and will benefit from the latter’s capacity to explain the purposive self-concern, possibility-directedness, and varying complexity of cognition in richly temporal terms. I begin by showing that (...) Heidegger’s account places temporality and practice in a complex reciprocity in which each fundamentally shapes and permeates the other. The Heidegger of Being and Time conceptualises practice as fundamentally temporal and temporality as intrinsically purposive, meaning that we cannot adequately understand or utilise his analysis of either structure without acknowledging the role of the other. In outlining and defending this reading, I draw out two characteristics of Heidegger’s model of temporality; these features, which affect and are affected by the interconnection of temporality and purposiveness, are an inherent connection to the self-concern of the entity and an emphasis upon a radically indeterminate futurity. I then consider which contemporary approaches in cognitive science represent the most promising interlocutors for this temporality-oriented Heideggerian perspective. After rejecting selected in principle objections to the pursuit of a collaborative, rather than primarily critical, dialogue between Heideggerian phenomenology and cognitive science, I put forward two candidates for participation in a ‘temporality-oriented Heideggerian cognitive science’: the enactivist tradition and Michael Wheeler’s model of cognition. I set out each approach’s connections to Heideggerian thought (which involves arguing for as-yet unexplored links as well as defending existing ones) before showing how and why a Heideggerian conception of temporality can be integrated into both. I suggest that the structures of a Heideggerian model of temporality already resonate with and operate in enactivists’ and Wheeler’s analyses of cognition, and outline how I think each framework benefits from explicitly taking up and developing these connections. Rather than ultimately choosing one of these perspectives over the other, I conclude by proposing that they cooperate with one another. A Heideggerian conception of temporality opens up a space for enactivism and Wheeler’s approach to contribute distinct and complementary insights in the pursuit of a collaborative temporality-oriented Heideggerian cognitive science. (shrink)

The canonical texts of the existentialist tradition were written and published before it became common to differentiate between sex and gender. Nonetheless, it has long been recognized that the work of thinkers associated with existentialism – especially, of course, Simone de Beauvoir – provides us with a useful framework for thinking through the complex terrain of gender identity, and indeed for interrogating and problematizing the sex/gender distinction itself.1 The relevance of existentialism to these issues more broadly, even beyond Beauvoir’s more (...) explicit engagement with them, becomes readily apparent when we consider the existentialists’ emphasis on the dynamic friction between freedom and constraint. For the figures explored in the present volume, the human condition is characterized by a simultaneous recognition of ourselves as, on the one hand, self-reflective agents burdened with choice and responsibility and, on the other, ineluctably social and inescapably vulnerable, factical creatures. These complicated dialectics, especially the ways in which they play out in our relation to our own bodies and projects, are only too clearly applicable to a set of phenomena that themselves involve such multifaceted interrelations between self and society, choice and normativity, and embodiment and culture that even defining ‘gender’ is a contested endeavour, arguably even more so today.2 In this context, gender – however defined – can be seen as a manifestation of what Beauvoir, even before she turned to the question of what it means to become ‘woman’, called our fundamental ambiguity (2018 [1947]). The aim of this chapter is to give an overview of those existentialist analyses that are most clearly relevant to discourses about gender. These are Sartre’s account of the body and his brief remarks about sexual differentiation, Beauvoir’s investigation of how one becomes ‘woman’ and Fanon’s explorations of the ways in which racialization and colonization shape how individuals experience and enact masculinity and femininity. (shrink)

This chapter uses one particular proposal for interdisciplinary collaboration – in this case, between early Heideggerian phenomenology and enactivist cognitive science – as an example of how such partnerships may confront and negotiate tensions between the perspectives they bring together. The discussion begins by summarising some of the intersections that render Heideggerian and enactivist thought promising interlocutors for each other. It then moves on to explore how Heideggerian enactivism could respond to the challenge of reconciling the significant differences in the (...) ways that each discourse seeks to apply the structures it claims to uncover. (shrink)

Simone de Beauvoir and Frantz Fanon both argue that oppression fundamentally constrains the subject’s relationship to and embodied experience of time, yet their accounts of temporality are rarely brought together. This paper will explore what we might learn about the operation of different types of reductive temporality if we read Beauvoir and Fanon alongside each other, focusing primarily on the early works that arguably lay out the central concerns of their respective temporal frameworks. At first glance, it seems that these (...) two models of temporality have radically different emphases. While Beauvoir suggests that reductive temporalities work to sever the future from the past and present, Fanon locates this destructive operation in the heightening of their entanglement. However, I will contend that there are deep affinities between these accounts: For both Beauvoir and Fanon, freedom is bound up with futurity, with its lack therefore cashed out in terms of stagnation, repetition, and the entrapment within a hollow moment that prevents authentic projection. Both resist teleological perspectives; problematize the endeavor to describe the structures of lived temporality in neutral terms; and show that temporality is crucial to the pursuit of a political phenomenology. These resonances, however, should only serve to recast rather than dissolve the tension between their approaches; ultimately, we need to acknowledge the distinctiveness of their differing concerns and aims. (shrink)

Heidegger’s brief remarks on the theme of love enable us to reconstruct a view of it as a powerful feeling that both requires and amplifies a truthful recognition of oneself. The emphasis this places on the significance of love for the self and of the self for love, along with the kairological temporality Heidegger associates with love, means the account ends up “both sacralising and marginalising the other” (Tömmel, 2019, 242). I will suggest that this problem arises because Heidegger’s account (...) elevates love’s disruptive possibilities at the expense of its capacity to generate a shared world of everyday experience, and that his account of world-time offers underutilized resources for addressing this issue. This, in turn, generates a picture that resonates in illuminating ways with both Yao’s (2020) model of gracious attentive love, and De Jaegher’s (2021) enactivist account of the relationship between loving and knowing. (shrink)

The enactive approach is becoming increasingly influential within the philosophy of cognition, to the extent that it is now one of the dominant models of embodied cognition—an umbrella term for a varied set of discourses sharing the view that our minds don’t just happen to be ‘in’ bodies, but are enabled, shaped and (at least partly) constituted by the specifics of our physicality. This chapter will argue that the rise of enactivism is particularly relevant to transhumanist discourses, and vice versa, (...) because their concerns intersect and conflict in vital ways. The discussion will use three core enactivist themes—organisational integrity, embodiment, and precarity—to draw out the kinds of tensions and intersections that enable enactivism and transhumanism to problematise one another. Enactivism defines life and cognition in terms of autonomy; that is, it posits that living systems generate and maintain themselves as porous yet bounded self-unities. This sets up a delicate balance—both for the enacting system and for enactivism itself—between the dual imperatives of adaptive self-creation and homeostasis. The system must change constantly in order to sustain itself, yet there is a limit to the system’s flexibility. Beyond a certain point, change means disintegration, and disintegration means death. This balance itself resonates within transhumanist discourses, in the tension between the promise of radical self-transformation and the concern about taking this too far. These discourses, however, also challenge enactivism’s potential to capture the full potential of the kinds of systems it describes. How do we determine the limits of morphological flexibility for cognisers as complex as ourselves? Are those limits fixed or malleable—and must integration always mean death, or can it facilitate redefinition? (shrink)

The art of Simon Finn has always had a markedly temporal dynamic. Vast structures built and annihilated again and again across different media, their fragmentation across space and time simultaneously methodical and darkly chaotic. Roiling waters and eldritch surfaces held captive in their unrest. Finn’s works render cycles of construction and disintegration, of stasis and motion, in ways that shed light upon the underlying structures of our experience of time while shattering simplistic notions of linearity. This is nowhere more apparent (...) than in Instability, through which Finn allows us to explore the intertwining of personal and historical time, ancestral memory and radical futurity, artefactual form and temporal function. (shrink)

The diaries that detail Ernst Jünger’s time in occupied Paris can be as frustrating as they are captivating. Their tone is often both elegiac and detached, at once keenly aware of and distant from the suffering occurring all around their author. This ambiguity becomes particularly apparent in the contrast between the remarkable everyday encounters the diaries describe and their broader cosmic and world-historical ruminations. In this paper, I want to suggest that this tension can be read as a response to (...) the imperatives through which totalising thought shapes how subjects operating under its confines relate to time itself. This dynamic, which can already be found in Jünger’s own earlier work, is dramatized in the way that the diaries construct the alternative temporal perspective of the witness. The witness here is one who survives outside of, and yet also remains caught between, two temporal imaginaries characteristic of modernity: Totalising historicization – the sweeping narrative of progress that demands the sacrifice of the present individual and individual present – and mechanised temporality, that is, instrumentalised clock time. (shrink)

This book reconstructs Heidegger’s philosophy of time by reading his work with and against a series of key interlocutors that he nominates as being central to his own critical history of time. In doing so, it explains what makes time of such significance for Heidegger and argues that Heidegger can contribute to contemporary debates in the philosophy of time. Time is a central concern for Heidegger, yet his thinking on the subject is fragmented, making it difficult to grasp its depth, (...) complexity, and promise. Heidegger traces out a history that focuses on the conceptualisations of time put forward by Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Kant, Hegel, Bergson, and Husserl—an “alternative history of time” that challenges how time has been defined and studied within both philosophy and the sciences. This book explores what happens when we take seriously Heidegger’s claim that these seven figures are essential to any understanding of time, setting out what this can tell us about existence, possibility, and philosophy as a historical discipline. Heidegger’s Alternative History of Time will appeal to scholars and advanced students working on Heidegger, phenomenology, the philosophy of time, and the history of philosophy. (shrink)

In The Weirdness of Being, Ivo De Gennaro stakes out a pilgrimage of sorts through the stark, shadowy terrain mapped out by what he calls the “pentalogy” (2) of recent Heideggerian publications. These are the five works – the Beiträge (GA 65) as well as Besinnung (GA 66), Die Geschichte des Seyns (GA 69), Über den Anfang (GA 70) and Das Ereignis (GA 71) – whose gradual release over the past few decades brought with them so many questions and complications (...) that Heideggerian scholarship birthed a subfield dedicated to their study. De Gennaro’s book touches upon many of the familiar landmarks of that discourse. At its heart, however, The Weirdness of Being is a treatise on translation. According to De Gennaro, something “has happened” (2) in the Beiträge and its companion texts that redefines both the role that we should ascribe to translation within Heidegger’s thought, and the approach that the translator of this thought ought to take. (shrink)

Women have historically been prevented from living autonomously by systematic injustice, subordination, and oppression. The lingering effects of these practices have prompted many feminists to view autonomy with suspicion. Here, Marilyn Friedman defends the ideal of feminist autonomy. In her eyes, behavior is autonomous if it accords with the wants, cares, values, or commitments that the actor has reaffirmed and is able to sustain in the face of opposition. By her account, autonomy is socially grounded yet also individualizing and (...) sometimes socially disruptive, qualities that can be ultimately advantageous for women. Friedman applies the concept of autonomy to domains of special interest to women. She defends the importance of autonomy in romantic love, considers how social institutions should respond to women who choose to remain in abusive relationships, and argues that liberal societies should tolerate minority cultural practices that violate women's rights so long as the women in question have chosen autonomously to live according to those practices. (shrink)

A distinguished philosopher and a practicing minister, Marilyn McCord Adams has written a highly original work on a fundamental dilemma of Christian thought -- ...

Several technological developments, such as self-service technologies and artificial intelligence, are disrupting the retailing industry by changing consumption and purchase habits and the overall retail experience. Although AI represents extraordinary opportunities for businesses, companies must avoid the dangers and risks associated with the adoption of such systems. Integrating perspectives from emerging research on AI, morality of machines, and norm activation, we examine how individuals morally behave toward AI agents and self-service machines. Across three studies, we demonstrate that consumers’ moral concerns (...) and behaviors differ when interacting with technologies versus humans. We show that moral intention is less likely to emerge for AI checkout and self-checkout machines compared with human checkout. In addition, moral intention decreases as people consider the machine less humanlike. We further document that the decline in morality is caused by less guilt displayed toward new technologies. The non-human nature of the interaction evokes a decreased feeling of guilt and ultimately reduces moral behavior. These findings offer insights into how technological developments influence consumer behaviors and provide guidance for businesses and retailers in understanding moral intentions related to the different types of interactions in a shopping environment. (shrink)

Who would the Saviour have to be, what would the Saviour have to do to rescue human beings from the meaning-destroying experiences of their lives? This book offers a systematic Christology that is at once biblical and philosophical. Starting with human radical vulnerability to horrors such as permanent pain, sadistic abuse or genocide, it develops what must be true about Christ if He is the horror-defeater who ultimately resolves all the problems affecting the human condition and Divine-human relations. Distinctive elements (...) of Marilyn McCord Adams' study are her defence of the two-natures theory, of Christ as Inner Teacher and a functional partner in human flourishing, and her arguments in favour of literal bodily resurrection and of a strong doctrine of corporeal Eucharistic presence. The book concludes that Christ is the One in Whom, not only Christian doctrine, but cosmos, church, and the human psyche hold together. (shrink)

If cultures are always in the making, this book catches one kind of culture on the make. Academics will be familiar with audit in the form of research and teaching assessments - they may not be aware how pervasive practices of 'accountability' are or of the diversity of political regimes under which they flourish. Twelve social anthropologists from across Europe and the Commonwealth chart an influential and controversial cultural phenomenon.

Social justice is a concept we take for granted. We assume that it means using state structures to ensure equality and fairness. But is that true? Or, do state structures of social order actually inhibit creativity, freedom, social welfare, and belonging? This collection broadens the boundaries of the ways we think about what constitutes criminality and interrogates issues of social justice and power in new, innovative and critical ways. The essays examine a wide variety of themes, including the deconstruction of (...) concepts of freedom and equality, notions of criminality and deviance, state regulation of social order, and various aspects of feminist criminology. (shrink)

[Marilyn McCord Adams] In this paper I begin with Aristotle's Categories and with his apparent forwarding of primary substances as metaphysically special because somehow fundamental. I then consider how medieval reflection on Aristotelian change led medieval Aristotelians to analyses of primary substances that called into question how and whether they are metaphysically special. Next, I turn to a parallel issue about supposits, which Boethius seems in effect to identify with primary substances, and how theological cases-the doctrines of the Trinity, (...) the Incarnation, and of the human soul's separate survival between death and resurrection-call into question how and to what extent supposits are metaphysically special. I conclude with some reflections on various senses of being metaphysically special and how they pertain to primary substances and supposits. /// [ Richard Cross] Scotus's belief that any created substance can depend on the divine essence and/or divine persons as a subject requires him to abandon the plausible Aristotelian principle that there is no merely relational change. I argue that Scotus's various counterexamples to the principle can be rebutted. For reasons related to those that arise in Scotus's failed attempt to refute the principle, the principle also entails that properties cannot be universals. (shrink)

Stark disparities exist in the United States' health care system. Thirty-five million Americans are uninsured, severely impeding their access to necessary health care. Concurrently, others receive health care services that are of unproven necessity and benefit. We assert that this situation is unjust and morally indefensible.

Christians have often held that on the day of judgment God will condemn some persons who have disobeyed him to a hell of everlasting torment and total unhappiness from which there is no hope of escape, as a punishment for their deeds up to that time. This is not the only way that hell has been or could be conceived of, but it has been the predominant conception in the Christian church throughout much of its history and it is the (...) one on which I shall focus in this paper. (shrink)

Politics of Reality includes nine essays that examine sexism, the exploitation of women, the gay rights movement and other topics from a feminist perspective. -/- The essays "The Problem That Has No Name" and "A Note On Anger" have been translated into Spanish by Maria Lugones for circulation in la Asociacion Argentina de Mujeres en Filosofia.

The problem of evil is one of the most discussed topics in the philosophy of religion. For some time, however, there has been a need for a collection of readings that adequately represents recent and ongoing writing on the topic. This volume fills that need, offering the most up-to-date collection of recent scholarship on the problem of evil. The distinguished contributors include J.L. Mackie, Nelson Pike, Roderick M. Chisholm, Terence Penelhum, Alvin Plantinga, William L. Rowe, Stephen J. Wykstra, John Hick, (...) and Diogenes Allen. Including an introductory essay and a selected bibliography, this comprehensive and completely up-to-date collection is an invaluable guide to current scholarship in this highly debated area of the philosophy of religion. Oxford Readings in Philosophy aims to bring together important recent writings in major areas of philosophical inquiry, selected from a variety of sources, mostly periodicals, which may not be conveniently available. (shrink)

Pediatric participation in non-therapeutic research that poses greater than minimal risk has been the subject of considerable thought-provoking debate in the research ethics literature. While the need for more pediatric research has been called morally imperative, and concerted efforts have been made to increase pediatric medical research, the importance of protecting children from undue research risks remains paramount.United States research regulations are derived largely from the deliberations and report of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical (...) and Behavioral Research. The authors of this report specifically designated children as a vulnerable population and suggested additional protections, most of which became U.S. law. One of the more contested sets of regulations surrounds non-therapeutic research, e.g., research that does not offer the potential for direct benefit to participants. Federal regulations allow local Institutional Review Boards to approve non-therapeutic research posing a minor increase above minimal risk when it involves children who have the disease or medical condition that the research addresses. (shrink)

Some theodicists, skeptical theists, and friendly atheists agree that God-justifying reasons for permitting evils would have to have an instrumental structure: that is, the evils would have to be necessary to secure a great enough good or necessary to prevent some equally bad or worse evil. D.Z. Phillips contends that instrumental reasons could never justify anyone for causing or permitting horrendous evils and concludes that the God of Restricted Standard Theism does not exist—indeed, is a conceptual mistake. After considering Phillips’ (...) and other objections in the neighborhood, I argue that the Expanded Theism of Christian theology does forward a God who ‘digs in’ and eternally answers for horrors. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine how increasing understanding and explicit awareness of social consciousness can develop through transformations in worldview. Based on a model that emerged from a series of qualitative and quantitative studies on worldview transformation, we identify five developmental levels of social consciousness: embedded, self-reflexive, engaged, collaborative, and resonant. As a person's worldview transforms, awareness can expand to include each of these levels, leading to enhanced prosocial experiences and behaviours. Increased social consciousness can in turn stimulate further transformations (...) in worldview. We then consider an educational curriculum to facilitate the understanding of worldview and the cultivation of social consciousness as core capacities for twenty-first century students and global citizens. (shrink)

Background: Brain-dead humans retain many of the physiologic functions of living humans, but they are legally dead and cannot be physically harmed by participation in research. Stakeholder opinions...