This book draws connections between recent advances in analytic philosophy of mind and insights from the rich phenomenological tradition concerning the nature of thinking. By combining both analytic and continental approaches, the volume arrives at a more comprehensive understanding of the mental process of "thinking" and the experience and manipulation of objects of thought. Contributors scrutinize aspects of thinking that have a common grounding in both the phenomenological and analytic tradition: perception, language, logic, embodiment and situatedness due to individual history (...) or current experience. This collection serves to broaden and enrich the current debate over "cognitive phenomenology," and lays the foundations for further dialogue between analytic and continental approaches to the phenomenal character of thinking. (shrink)

Violence has become a prominent topic in recent phenomenological investigations. In this paper, I wish to contribute to this ongoing discourse by looking at violence in a literal sense as violation of experiential structures, insofar as it is intentionally, purposefully, and strategically imposed on a subject by another agent. Phenomenology provides the descriptive methodology for elucidating such structures. The violation can take the form of a radicalization, in which one of the aspects of polar experiential spectra becomes predominant, i.e. the (...) balance between them is shifted to one extreme. I focus on the relationship between self and other on the one hand, and the relationship between body-as-subject and body-as-object on the other, as prominent topoi in the phenomenological literature. With regard to torture and solitary confinement as forms of extreme violence, I analyze how these structures are disturbed. (shrink)

Attention is a complex process that modulates perception in various ways. Phenomenological philosophy provides an array of concepts for describing the rich structures of attention, thereby avoiding reductions to singular aspects of an experiential spectrum. By suggesting various modes and levels of attentional experience, we intend to do some justice to its complexity, taking into account sub-personal and personal factors on the side of subjective horizons and feature-oriented as well as context-oriented aspects on the side of objective horizons.

This paper revolves around the question of how we can phenomenologically interpret the application of the mirror metaphor to intersubjectivity. To answer this question, we must first clarify the phenomenon of the mirror itself, and specifically its function and how the objects it reflects appear, as well as the modes of self- and other-relations that it makes possible. We can compare these properties with the characteristics of intersubjectivity in order to find out how sound or significant the mirror metaphor is (...) here. Our goal then is not to show whether the mirror metaphor is a ‘correct’ or ‘false’ descriptive determination of intersubjectivity. Redeeming the metaphor in the phenomenological sense would require that we elucidate which aspects of the mirror phenomenon permit an analogy with the Other and which do not. If the metaphor were to conform perfectly with the analogy, and if one could transform it into a verifiable and complete description, it would no longer be a metaphor. In other words, metaphors live by the dialectic of their resolvable and irresolvable descriptive elements. We must preserve this tension in our phenomenological analysis while bracketing any overarching assessments of the metaphor. Only when we have worked out the individual aspects of the core of the matter, can we examine the adequacy of its application to the sphere of intersubjectivity. In the following, then, our task is a critique of the metaphor, in the sense of unpacking its specific phenomenal features, on the basis of which we may then discuss whether or not we can carry out a metaphorical translation of those features. Indeed, even though the metaphor is such a prominent one, the paper demonstrates its limitations when it comes to determining social relations. (shrink)

Einleitung Im Vorwort zur zweiten Auflage der Stufen des Organischen schreibt Helmuth Plessner über das Verhältnis zwischen der Phänomenologie und seiner Philosophischen Anthropologie: « Man wird Verständnis dafür haben, daß ich das Vorwort zur Neuauflage nicht durch Auseinandersetzungen mit Lehrmeinungen beschwere, die zu diesem Buch keine Beziehung haben. Bei Sartre, vor allem in seinen frühen Arbeiten, und bei Merleau-Ponty finden sich manchmal überraschende Übereinstimmungen mit meinen Formulier­ungen, so daß nicht nur ich mich gefragt habe, ob sie nicht vielleicht doch die (...) Stufen kannten. Aber das gleiche ist mir auch bei Hegel passiert, auf den ich mich hätte berufen müssen, wären mir damals die entsprechenden Stellen bekannt gewesen. Konvergenzen beruhen nicht immer auf Einfluß. Es wird in der Welt mehr gedacht, als man denkt. » 1 Doch nicht nur kannte Plessner, als er die Stufen verfasste, die von ihm selbst angesprochenen Hegel-Stellen nicht, sondern es war ihm auch ein beträchtlicher Teil von Husserls Beiträgen zur Intersubjektivitätsthematik, z.B. die V. Cartesianische Medita­tion , unzugänglich. 2 Aufgabe dieses Aufsatzes ist es, einige nicht auf direktem Einfluss beruhende, aber doch Konvergenzen aufweisende Aspekte der Husserlschen und auf Husserl zurückgehenden Phänomenologie einerseits und der Plessnerschen Position andererseits darzustellen. Im Zentrum der Überlegungen steht neben den Stufen ein zweites Hauptwerk. (shrink)

La présente étude prend son point de départ dans les cours donnés par Husserl à Göttingen dans les années 1904-1905, Hauptstücke aus der Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis . À partir des notions ébauchées dans ces cours de jeunesse, nous aimerions indiquer quelques possibilités encore largement inexploitées concernant l’analyse de l’intersubjectivité. Les thèmes de l’attentionnalité ( Attentionalität ) et de l’interattentionnalité seront ainsi présentés à partir d’une comparaison entre l’attention ( Aufmerksamkeit ) active et passive d’une part, et l’attentivité ( (...) Aufmerksamsein ) à l’égard de l’Autre et la responsivité dans la coexistence humaine d’autre part. L’attentionnalité apparaîtra alors comme la structure fondamentale de l’expérience humaine, constituée de l’alternance d’une formation de sens ( Sinnbildung ) dans l’indisponible et d’une institution de sens ( Sinnstiftung ) de la conscience intentionnelle. Notre réflexion sur la notion de l’interattentionnalité nous amènera à démontrer que cette alternance constitutive de l’expérience possède des caractéristiques spécifiques qui se manifestent dans la rencontre avec l’Autre. Ce sont ces caractéristiques que nous aimerions pouvoir démontrer à partir des analyses phénoménologiques qui suivent. (shrink)

This paper brings neuroscientific experiments into relation with concepts from phenomenological philosophy to investigate phantom sensations from the perspective of embodied subjectivity. Using a mirror device to create intersensory effects in subjects experiencing phantom sensations, one can create illusions aiming at alleviating phantom pain. Neuroplasticity as a general property of the brain and cortical remapping as a specific mechanism underlying the success of this procedure are interpreted with the phenomenological notions of body image, body schema, and body memory. It is (...) argued that a phantom can be understood as an ambiguous unity of body-imagistic neglect and body-schematic remembering. This neurophenomenological approach highlights the significance of the polarity of subjective-objective embodied experience one the one hand, and the spatial and temporal horizons of the emergence of phantoms on the other. Thereby, implicit and explicit forms of remembering, habitual and reflective modes of behavioural and cognitive self-representation and -understanding can be compared according to how the body integrates its various sensations. (shrink)

This article distinguishes between several modifications of perception and perspective-taking in order to grasp the relevance of phantasmatic and imaginatory consciousness for empathy. Drawing on insights from phenomenology, it tries to elucidate the complex process of empathically perceiving and understanding the other by looking at the structures of anticipation and fulfilment from the level of self-affection, to perceptual, personal, and narrative perspective-taking. Thereby, the problem of objectifying the personal background of the other in empathic transposition is addressed and the intertwinements (...) of expectation-driven and stimulus-driven components of the empathic process are reviewed. (shrink)