Continental Philosophy of Mind

Does browsing the world through a screen change a person, especially in the context of COVID-19? Recent studies indicate that self-care, psychological well-being, and empathy may suffer. The “Californian ideology” privileges expression of the self even as digital technology tends to interrupt the modern trend towards elaborating distinct selves via texts that convey knowledge. Meanwhile, digital browsing may be fracturing attention and empathy. -/- As these changes proceed, legislators react to a medical and social crisis. Relaxation of business, community center, (...) and school closures prevailed, under pressure from advocates of liberty, jobs, and pro-market economics. A rival set of regulatory reforms would prioritize fighting the virus and providing more relief to its victims as being forms of care for others. In the international domain, nationalist ideology and economic warfare intensify disparities in access to medical care, imported goods, and livelihoods. At stake is how best to take beings into care. (shrink)

Brentano’s introduction of the concept of intentionality into contemporary philosophy was indebted to scholastic sources. Among these, Suárez has not been sufficiently addressed, even though his idea of transcendental relation is relied upon by Brentano to describe the intentional relation. In addition, in his examination of being as truth in Suárez, Brentano manifests his assumption of the principle of immanence. Finally, this article argues that, even in his reist period, Brentano continued to understand knowledge as a relation.

The organism against its environment. The organism against other organisms, competing and struggling for life. Antagonism and confrontment as the only possible relation in nature. The tendency to anthropomorphize nature and explain it using concepts and facts from the human sphere. A stroll through the worlds of Uexküll and Merleau-Ponty in the search of alternative knowledge that allow us to understand relation from another point of view. A counterpoint and identification of common tonalities between the research programs from both thinkers (...) as a way to demonstrate the possibilities of a more fruitful approach. Umwelt as a generative system of meaningful relations in which its participants are not mutually exclusive, but express a melody that include them all. (shrink)

In this paper, we set out to develop a theoretical and conceptual framework for the new field of Radical Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience. This framework should be able to integrate insights from several relevant disciplines: theory on embodied cognition, ecological psychology, phenomenology, dynamical systems theory, and neurodynamics. We suggest that the main task of Radical Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience is to investigate the phenomenon of skilled intentionality from the perspective of the self-organization of the brain-body-environment system, while doing justice to the phenomenology (...) of skilled action. In previous work, we have characterized skilled intentionality as the organism's tendency toward an optimal grip on multiple relevant affordances simultaneously. Affordances are possibilities for action provided by the environment. In the first part of this paper, we introduce the notion of skilled intentionality and the phenomenon of responsiveness to a field of relevant affordances. Second, we use Friston's work on neurodynamics, but embed a very minimal version of his Free Energy Principle in the ecological niche of the animal. Thus amended, this principle is helpful for understanding the embeddedness of neurodynamics within the dynamics of the system “brain-body-landscape of affordances.” Next, we show how we can use this adjusted principle to understand the neurodynamics of selective openness to the environment: interacting action-readiness patterns at multiple timescales contribute to the organism's selective openness to relevant affordances. In the final part of the paper, we emphasize the important role of metastable dynamics in both the brain and the brain-body-environment system for adequate affordance-responsiveness. We exemplify our integrative approach by presenting research on the impact of Deep Brain Stimulation on affordance responsiveness of OCD patients. (shrink)

French philosopher Henri Bergson produced four major works in his lifetime, the second of which, "Matter and Memory", is a philosophical and complex nineteenth century exploration of human nature and the spirituality of memory. In this work, Bergson investigates the function of the brain, and opposes the idea of memory being of a material nature, lodged within a particular part of the nervous system. He makes a claim early in this essay that Matter and Memory "is frankly dualistic," leading to (...) a careful consideration of the problems in the relation of body and mind. His theories on sense, dualism, pure perception, concept of virtuality and famous image of the memory cone often make Bergson's essay a confusing and challenging existentialist work. However, the years of research and extensive pathological investigations spent in preparation for this and other essays have gained Bergson great distinction as a brilliant, though unjustly neglected, theorist and philosopher. (shrink)

The Hegelian and the Thomistic accounts of self-knowledge are solidly Aristotelian in their origins and motivations. In their conclusions and consequences, however, the two accounts exhibit significant differences. Hegel argues that genuine self-knowledge is necessarily social and historical, while Aquinas says nothing about history or society in his account of self-knowledge. The aim of this paper is not to decide the issue concerning historicity in favor of either Hegel or Aquinas. The aim here is rather to address a prior question: (...) what are the systematic and philosophical reasons for the difference between the two thinkers? In order to articulate this difference between the two, we might begin by considering an underlying similarity: their common Aristotelian background. (shrink)

Some of the most innovative philosophical engagement with cinema and ethics in recent years has come from phenomenological and cognitivist perspectives. This trend reflects a welcome re-engagement with cinema as a medium with the potential for ethical transformation, that is, with the idea of cinema as a medium of ethical experience. This paper explores the phenomenological turn in film theory, emphasizing the ethical implications of phenomenological approaches to affect and empathy, emotion, and evaluation. I argue that the oft-criticized subjectivism of (...) phenomenological theories can be supplemented by cognitivist approaches that highlight the complex forms of affective response, emotional engagement, and moral allegiance at work in our experience of movies. An empathic ethics or “cinempathy” is at work in many films, I suggest, such as Ashgar Farhadi’s A Separation, which offers a striking case study in cinematic ethics. (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)

Early modern automata, understood as efforts to ‘model’ life, to grasp its singular properties and/or to unveil and demystify its seeming inaccessibility and mystery, are not just fascinating liminal, boundary, hybrid, crossover or go-between objects, while they are all of those of course. They also pose a direct challenge to some of our common conceptions about mechanism and embodiment. They challenge the simplicity of the distinction between a purported ‘mechanistic’ worldpicture, its ontology and its goals, and on the other hand (...) an attempt to understand ourselves and animals more broadly as flesh-and-blood, affective entities (that is, not just breathing and perspiring, but also desiring and ‘sanguine’ machines, as La Mettrie might have put it). In what follows I reflect on the complexity of early modern mechanism faced with the (living) body, and its mirror image, contemporary theories of embodiment. At times, embodiment theory seems to be governed by a fascination with what the Artificial Life researcher Ezequiel Di Paolo has called ‘biochauvinism’ (Di Paolo, “Extended Life”): an unquestioned belief that ‘living bodies are special’. Yet how does the theorist define this special status? The question is apparently a simple one, or at least promptly yields an aporia which appears simple: to borrow a provocative phrase from Terry Eagleton, embodiment theory is obsessed by the body but terrified of biology. Yet at the same time, at least since Hubert Dreyfus and Andy Clark’s groundbreaking works, embodiment has been a legit part of cognitive science, yielding the even more recently emerged field of ‘embodied cognition’ (see the work of Larry Shapiro), which seeks to depart from traditional cognitive science, especially the latter’s understanding of cognition as computational, in order to instead underscore “the significance of an organism’s body in how and what the organism thinks,” in Shapiro’s words. (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)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty is one of the few major phenomenologists to engage extensively with empirical research in the sciences, and the only one to examine child psychology with rigor and in such depth. His writings have recently become increasingly influential, as the findings of psychology and cognitive science inform and are informed by phenomenological inquiry. Merleau-Ponty’s Sorbonne lectures of 1949 to 1952 are a broad investigation into child psychology, psychoanalysis, pedagogy, phenomenology, sociology, and anthropology. They argue that the subject of child (...) psychology is critical for any philosophical attempt to understand individual and intersubjective existence. Talia Welsh’s new translation provides Merleau-Ponty’s complete lectures on the seminal engagement of phenomenology and psychology. (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)

Arendt is a philosopher despite herself, and this paper uses the resources of her <<The Life of the Mind>> to develop her comparison of thinking as a 'departure' from the world with the fore-doomed attempt by Orpheus to bring from underground into the light of day. The paper investigates how thinking, though we 'lose' it in the speech and writing that makes it public, still can have the delicate power that Arendt attributes to it.

In this paper, I will argue that the experiential-based approaches of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and William James’s radical empiricism can help inform an account of humanism more rooted in concrete experience. Specifically, I will outline a form of humanism closely connected to the conceptual similarities between James’s radical empiricism and the general character of Husserl’s phenomenology of experience. Whereas many forms of humanism are underscored by an eliminativist impulse, I sketch a humanism of lived-experience more motivated by the restrictive and (...) experiential impetus closer to pragmatism and phenomenology than humanism defended on metaphysically eliminativist grounds.This paper is organized in the following way. In the first section, I explain the general character of Husserl’s phenomenology and explain the methodological commitments that underscore his concept of experience. In the second section, I outline the conceptual similarities between James’s later radical empiricism and Husserl’s thought. Finally, in the third section, James’s critique of metaphysics and his radical empiricism allow for a limited acceptability of religious interests in experience as well as scientific interests. These interests result from how we experience the world and affirm freedom and individuality of every person’s lived-experience. (shrink)

Phenomenology is often described as a paradigm shift that calls for a re-assessment of inherited themes and concepts. One of its most important contributions is the central role given to the embodied subject as opposed to the conception of the disembodied subject that has dominated philosophy since Descartes. If perspectival painting best represents the paradigm of modern philosophy since the Renaissance, it is the multiple perspectives of Cubist painting that best represent the phenomenological paradigm. While the relationship between phenomenology and (...) art has been widely studied, my aim in this article is to focus on the way in which Cubism represents the embodied, horizonal structure of our perception, and then to discuss the new form of contemporary art installation as an actualization of Cubist principles in the age of digital reproduction. The embodiment of the subject necessarily involves intersubjectivity, for others appear in the subject’s contextual frame of public space. While for Arendt the shift from private subjective space to public intersubjective space is effected through dialogue, I argue that it is also effected architecturally, for architecture facilitates dialogue by offering multiple perspectives on common space and shared time. I suggest, finally, that architecture’s multiperspectival strategies offer the humanities a useful model of a multidisciplinary methodology. (shrink)

Phenomenology of religion is among the oldest branches of the discipline founded by Husserl. It has always been difficult to define its outlines: from the very first essays of Scheler, Reinach and Heidegger to the so-called “theological turn” of French phenomenology, one has always feared the transformation of the phenomenology of religion in a religious philosophy that would give up the sacred principle of neutrality. This situation is perhaps behind us thanks to the recent endeavors to renew the field of (...) research. French and American specialists of Husserl’s thought Natalie Depraz and Anthony J. Steinbock try to push back the limits of and to explore new ways in genetic phenomenology by describing religious attitudes by mean of a philosophical-existential methodology especially designed for this task. This paper introduces what might open of a new era of the phenomenology of religion. (shrink)

Simon Glendinning explains the mysteries of phenomenology.

This essay was written on the basis of what I call a ‘happy misunde rstanding’, which is already conspicuous in the first paragraph below. Most misunderstandings have negative consequences. But in this case I was delighted to learn that I was mistaken in believing that phenomenology was just getting going in South Africa, when actually there have been phenomenologists there since before World War II! Why I and my colleagues editing the Encyclopedia of Phenomenology were ignorant of this and failed (...) to include an entry on South Africa I am not yet able to explain, but I was at least able to apologise for this omission at the recent meeting. Beyond the firstclass quality of the presentations that I heard, the colleagues on the program were typically younger than I have seen in meetings of other groups recently and also a higher proportion were women, both factors auguring well for the future. I have not tried to hide my misunderstanding in the following essay and do hope to see two delegates at the meeting of the Organization of Phenomenological Organizations in Australia next year. (shrink)