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)
Three methodologically distinctive empirical studies of the emotions carry forward Darwin's work on the emotions, vindicate Sperry's finding that the brain is an organ of and for movement, and implicitly affirm that affectivity is tied to the tactile-kinesthetic body. A phenomenological analysis of movement deepens these empirical findings by showing how the dynamic character of movement gives rise to kinetic qualia. Analysis of the qualitative structure of movement shows in turn how motion and emotion are dynamically congruent. Three experiences of (...) fear are presented--phenomenological, ethological, and literary--to demonstrate the dynamic congruency. Five implications follow from the analysis, including the implications that movement is not equivalent to behavior, experience is not physiological activity, and a brain is not a body. (shrink)
This paper attempts to elucidate the nature of kinesthetic memory, demonstrate itscentrality to everyday human movement, and thereby promote fresh cognitive andphenomenological 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.
The basic question cognitivists and most analytic philosophers of mind ask is how consciousness arises in matter. This article outlines basic reasons for thinking the question spurious. It does so by examining 1) definitions of life, 2) unjustified and unjustifiable uses of diacritical markings to distinguish real cognition from metaphoric cognition, 3) evidence showing that corporeal consciousness is a biological imperative, 4) corporeal matters of fact deriving from the evolution of proprioception. Three implications of the examination are briefly noted: 1) (...) the need to re-think the common assumption that unconsciousness historically preceded consciousness; 2) the need to delve as deeply and seriously into natural history as into brains and their computational analogues; 3) the need for a critical stance toward arm-chair judgments about consciousness and a correlative turn toward corporeal matters of fact. (shrink)
Animation is by definition the basis of animate life. Movement is thus of prime significance and its dynamics warrant close study in terms of the tactile-kinaesthetic body, its relation to cognition and affectivity, and its anchorage in ontogeny and phylogeny. Riveted attention on the brain deflects attention from animate movement, as does the degeneration of movement into a motorology and the extensive and broadly indiscriminate use of the lexical band-aid of embodiment and its derivatives. Critical attention is paid to just (...) such present-day practices in neuroscience, and in cognitive science and philosophy, practices that, by impeding investigations of the tactilekinaesthetic body, impede understandings of how kinaesthetic experience is at the core of those synergies of meaningful movement that constitute animate life. (shrink)
This paper takes five different perspectives on kinesthesia, beginning with its evolution across animate life and its biological distinction from, and relationship to proprioception. It proceeds to document the historical derivation of “the muscle sense,” showing in the process how analytic philosophers bypass the import of kinesthesia by way of “enaction,” for example, and by redefinitions of “tactical deception.” The article then gives prominence to a further occlusion of kinesthesia and its subduction by proprioception, these practices being those of well-known (...) phenomenologists, practices that exemplify an adultist perspective supported in large part by the writings of Merleau-Ponty. Following this extended critical review, the article shows how Husserl’s phenomenology enlightens us about kinesthesia and in doing so offers us substantive clues to the phenomenology of learning as it takes place in the development and acquisition of skillful movement. It shows further how phenomenological methodology contrasts markedly with existential analysis, most significantly in its recognition of, and its ability to set forth a developmental history, a veritable genetic phenomenology that is basically a phenomenology of learning anchored in kinesthesia. After showing how that phenomenology of learning finds mutual validation in a classic empirical study of infant movement, the article ends by highlighting how human “I cans” are grounded in “I move,” specifically, in the pan-human ability to learn one’s body and learn to move oneself. (shrink)
This book argues the case for a foundationalist ethics centrally based on an empirical understanding of human nature. For Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, “an ethics formulated on the foundations of anything other than human nature, hence on anything other than an identification of pan-cultural human realities, lacks solid empirical moorings. It easily loses itself in isolated hypotheticals, reductionist scenarios, or theoretical abstractions—in the prisoner’s dilemma, selfish genes, dedicated brain modules, evolutionary altruism, or psychological egoism, for example—or it easily becomes itself an ethical (...) system over and above the ethics it formulates,” such as the deontological ethics of Kantian categorical imperatives, the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, or the ethics of care. Taking her cue from Hume, especially his _Treatise on Human Nature_, where he grounds “the moral sense” in human nature seen as always in tension between the natural tendencies of selfish acquisitiveness and sympathy for others, Sheets-Johnstone pursues her phenomenological investigation of the natural basis of human morality by directing her attention, first in Part I, to what is traditionally considered the dark side of human nature, and then, in Part II, to the positive side. The tension between the two calls for an interdisciplinary therapeutic resolution, which she offers in the Epilogue by arguing for the value of a moral education that enlightens humans about their own human nature, highlighting both the socialization of fear and the importance of play and creativity. (shrink)
This paper attempts to elucidate the nature of kinesthetic memory, demonstrate itscentrality to everyday human movement, and thereby promote fresh cognitive andphenomenological 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.
This article highlights a neglected, if not wholly overlooked, topic in phenomenology, a topic central to Husserl’s writings on animate organism, namely, animation. Though Husserl did not explore animation to the fullest in his descriptions of animate organism, his texts are integral to the task of fathoming animation. The article’s introduction focuses on seminal aspects of animate organisms found within several such texts and elaborates their significance for a phenomenological understanding of animation. The article furthermore highlights Husserl’s pointed recognition of (...) “the problem of movement,” movement being an essential dimension of animation if not definitive of animation itself. Succeeding sections testify to “the problem of movement” and the need to address it. They do so by answering the following basic questions: What indeed is livingly present in the experience of movement, whether our own movement and the movement of other animate beings, or the movement of leaves, clouds, and so on? What distinguishes kinesthetic from kinetic experiences of movement? How are movement and time related? Just what is the problem of movement and how do we address it? In what way is movement pertinent to receptivity and responsivity? Throughout these sections the article encompasses phenomenological analyses, elaborations, and implications of animation. (shrink)
This article shows how the proper question to answer concerning consciousness is not ‘how consciousness arises in matter’, but how consciousness is part and parcel of the evolution of animate forms. The article traces out just such an evolution by consideration of real life forms including bacteria and invertebrates. It vindicates the evolutionary thesis that external proprioceptive organs, as evidenced in their own right, were modified and internalized over time into kinesthetic organs, sustaining, in effect, a directly movement sensitive corporeal (...) consciousness across virtually all forms of evolutionary life. The paper specifies significant consequences of the thesis having to do with the unconscious, with present-day focal studies of the brain that neglect a correlative natural history, and with the need to attend to corporeal matters of fact. (shrink)
This paper considers dimensions of animate life that are readily “embodied” by phenomenologists and by other philosophy and science researchers as well. The paper demonstrates how the practice of “embodying” short-circuits veritable phenomenological accounts of experience through a neglect of attention to Husserl’s basic conception of, and consistent concern with, animate organism. The paper specifies how in doing so, the practice muddies a clear distinction between the body ‘I have’ and the body ‘I am’, and a clear account of their (...) lived conjunction in existential fit. In turn, the paper shows how the practice falls short of recognizing synergies of meaningful movement created by animate organisms; how it is tethered to talk of posture and sensation over kinesthesia and dynamics; and how, in general, the practice of embodying generates static rather than dynamic understandings of everyday life. The paper then critically considers how such liabilities preclude in-depth phenomenological insights into topics such as ‘ownership’ and ‘agency,’ and why inquiries into the nature of animate organisms require nothing less than fine-tuned attention to foundational experiences of animate life, including foundational ontogenetical experiences that undergird adult proficiencies and abilities, and hence fine-tuned attention to learning and to retaining what is learned in kinesthetic memory. (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)
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 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)
The kinetic silence of movement has formidable powers. Observations of a film critic, poet, professor of political history, and medical doctor attest to the fact that that silence is replete with meanings. Those meanings in turn testify to a movement-anchored corporeal semiotics that resounds not merely functionally but experientially in animate forms of life. It does so consistently and directly in kinesthesia, the ever-present sense modality by which we experience the qualitative dynamics of movement and synergies of meaningful movement. Phylogenetic (...) and ontogenetic perspectives attest to these dynamics and synergies. So also does Aristotle’s description of movement as a sensu communis. Because a movement-anchored corporeal semiotics discovers and describes what is existentially meaningful in the lives of animate organisms, such a semiotics is the foundation of a cognitive semiotics. It is so in a number of everyday ways, most notably in terms of thinking in movement and of cognition itself. (shrink)
Descriptive foundations and a concern with origins are integral to both Husserlian phenomenology and Darwinian evolutionary biology. These complementary aspects are rooted in the lifeworld as it is experienced. Detailed specifications of the complementary aspects testify to a mutual relevance of phenomenology to evolutionary biology and of evolutionary biology to phenomenology. Exemplifications of the mutual relevance are given in terms of both human and nonhuman agentive abilities. The experiential exemplifications show that agentive abilities are rooted in the kinetic sequence: I (...) move, I do, I can. The kinetic sequence in turn testifies to an ability to think in movement, a thinking that engenders corporeal concepts. It also, however, attests to the need for a veritable phenomenology of learning on the one hand and for a veritable recognition of mindful bodies on the other, mindful bodies that are a driving force both in the evolution of animate forms of life and in the evolution of repertoires of I cans. (shrink)
‘Phenomenology and Agency,’ an invited response to Galen Strawson's article on ‘The Self,’ shows how Strawson's putative phenomenological approach to the problem of the self fails to qualify as phenomenology and in turn fails to undergird his metaphysics of the self. It shows further how an item on his own list of fundamental experiences or conceptions of the self languishes for want of attention: Strawson virtually ignores ‘agency.’ The phenomenological procedure of bracketing, the concept of the non-alien that Husserl presents (...) in his Fifth Cartesian Meditation, and developmental accounts of the self are discussed. Conclusions and implications are specified, including the dual implication that a metaphyiscs offered in advance of a bona fide epistemology is imprudent and that a recognition of the metaphysical corollary of materialism--animism, in the sense of being imbued with life, animated--is required for a veridical concept of ‘the self.’. (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)
Addressed to educated nonspecialists, they discuss such topics as Eastern bodywork, the body as healer, art as the speech of the body. No index. Paper edition (unseen), $16.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.
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)
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)
A critical assessment of Merleau-Ponty’s conception of phenomenology highlights singular differences between Husserl’s phenomenological methodology and existential analysis, between epistemology and ontology, and between essential and individualistic perspectives. When we duly follow the rigorous phenomenological methodology described by Husserl, we are confronted with the challenge of making the familiar strange and with the challenge of languaging experience. In making the familiar strange, we do not immediately have words to describe what is present, but must let the experience of the strange (...) resonate for some time, and even then, must return to it many times over to pinpoint its aspects, character, or quality in descriptively exacting ways. Moreover as Husserl points out, language can seduce us into thinking we know when we do not know. The methodology thus highlights the import of being true to the truths of experience, and in doing so, authenticates the basic value of a phenomenological methodology to the human sciences. (shrink)
This article is far less a position paper or a descriptive analysis than an attempt to illuminate the lines that connect commonly recognized realities of human life: unfamiliar others in the form of strangers, interpersonal feelings in the form of trust, and organized belief systems in the form of religion. Its epistemological and even ontological conclusion may be sketched as follows: where belief overtakes wonder, religion fails in its mission to enhance life. When fear overtakes wonder, individuals fail in the (...) promise of their aliveness. In particular, when belief overtakes wonder, religion fails in the sense of constraining or even shutting the individual off from investigation and exploration of the unknown or unfamiliar, or from what is not sanctioned as proper. When fear overtakes simple curiosity and the desire to know, the individual fails in the sense of simply reacting, prejudging a situation or a person as threatening or dangerous in advance of actual experience. When belief and fear together take over, human experience is shackled and crippled. It remains ideologically tethered and affectively maimed. The effect of this tethering and maiming has moral consequences having to do with a recognition or non-recognition of the foundational common humanness of humans. (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)
This paper questions the ontological integrity of Dasein as Heidegger specifies Being in Being and Time. It does so with reference to the real-life, real-time realities of Being-in-the-world and Being-toward-Death, thus with entering into the world in the first place and with ensuing developmental realities anchored essentially in bodily change and movement and with ensuing knowledge of the world and of death. Basic Husserlian insights validate answers to Dasein’s ontological deficiencies, raising questions as to Heidegger’s reading of Husserl texts, for (...) example, of a hereness in relation to a thereness in Dasein’s use of “equipment,” hence of Dasein’s “zero point of orientation” with respect to the world. The question of whether Dasein can be a Being-toward-death without Being-a-Body discloses additional insights into Dasein’s ontological deficiencies by clarifying the nature of physical and lived bodies and by drawing on Husserl’s descriptive analyses of Leib, the lived body. The paper ends by detailing an epistemological irony with respect to Heidegger’s subjective account of Dasein’s knowledge of Being-toward-death. (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.
