The spectrum of methods (cf. Osterhoudt 1974) and the modes of thought that are used to analyse the world of sports are enormous. However, in international contexts, the range of philosophical reflections often seems to be reduced to a dichotomous structure, i.e. the analytical and the phenomenological approach. While the analytical position is linked to Anglo-Saxon countries, the phenomenological tradition is ascribed to continental philosophers. In this paper, firstly, I will address this seeming dichotomy of the continental and the Anglo-Saxon (...) positions ? being well aware of the problems of such generalisations. Secondly, I will sketch some key aspects of the phenomenology of movement and, especially, the phenomenological methodology from a German/French/Dutch perspective. Thirdly, I will focus on the existentialist interpretation of sports and how the existential philosophy is rooted in the phenomenological tradition. And finally, I will outline some advantages and limitations of the phenomenological method. (shrink)

Hubert Dreyfus has defended a novel view of agency, most notably in his debate with John McDowell. Dreyfus argues that expert actions are primarily unreflective and do not involve conceptual activity. In unreflective action, embodied know-how plays the role reflection and conceptuality play in the actions of novices. Dreyfus employs two arguments to support his conclusion: the argument from speed and the phenomenological argument. I argue that Dreyfus's argumentative strategies are not successful, since he relies on a dubious assumption about (...) concepts and reflection. I suggest that Dreyfus is committed to a minimal view of conceptuality in action. (shrink)

The paper presents the prevailing understanding of pre-reflective and reflective experience as a “data-description model”. According to this model, pre-reflective experience is the original datum, the meaning of which is fully determined in the very beginning, whereas reflection is a secondary layer that purports to recover faithfully the meaning of the pre-reflective. The paper spells out the difficulty of this model by looking into the scepticism on reflection. Despite its contribution to explicating the basic level of human consciousness, the data-description (...) model merely attends to the epistemological function of reflection and its orientation towards the past. The aim of the paper is thus to propose an alternative model inspired by the phenomenological-hermeneutical tradition, especially the paradigm of “text” Gadamer and Ricoeur emphasize. By understanding pre-reflective experience as a text, we are able to make explicit the essential role reflection plays for human life and its inherent existential dimension. (shrink)

After some opening comments on how I think one should approach the philosophy of mind, I look at what relatively little Gilbert Ryle had to say explicitly about intentionality, that occurring almost exclusively in his several papers on phenomenology. Then, I discuss the notion of intentionality with respect to the doctrines of The Concept of Mind, although neither the word nor the idea, strictly speaking, appears anywhere in the book. Following more exposition of my own views, including an argument I (...) have made for a certain specific theory of intentionality, I close with some reflections on Ryle as a modern-day Aristotelian. (shrink)

This exegesis questions and explores the types of identities that are emerging as a result of human engagement with contemporary communications and media technology. These identities are communicated, shaped and defined by the way we appropriate and engage with a smorgasbord of communications and media consumption technologies which merge in our imaginations to form a technosocial mediascape. As artist and teacher, consumer and prosumer, I participate in the technosocial mediascape, along with colleagues, students, artists, friends and family members. As we (...) produce, communicate and ultimately co-create that technosocial environment, how are we changed by this experience? We contribute to a diverse and globally circulating, but paradoxically transient parade of data and media that apparatuses and humans together bring into existence. How does this mediascape impact on human ontology and sociology? What are the different ‘positions’—relationships with the mediascape—that emerge? My method derives from analysis of my own experience as an engaged and flexible ‘position-taker’ within the technosocial mediascape. I analyse my own creative practice with reference to a range of modernist, postmodernist and media theories. The technosocial enshrines the idea that technology and human behaviour are not separable, and draws on many theoretical sources, including phenomenology, the philosophy of language, design theory and digital media theory. All media, and mediums, are technosocial, because they impact on the praxis of identity. However, a range of contemporary media and mediums are more explicitly technosocial, and that is where my focus lies. I will suggest that the role of language in technosocial contexts is peculiar, important and under-theorised. Our ‘linguistic apparatuses’ offer an alternate concept of technology to the ‘heavy modernism’ of Martin Heidegger. I will explore ways in which technosocial engagement privileges fluid identities which drift in and out of different but co-existing realities. Various types of ‘immersion’—some neo-baroque and some neo-romantic—contribute to technosocially-engaged identity construction. Thus, our engagement with the technosocial mediascape challenges received ideas about personal identity, and indeed, the nature of the real. (shrink)