Experience, God, and theology -- The nature of revelation -- The activity of faith.

Roommate relationships are fundamental to the social environment of many emerging adults. However, no validated, widely used, measure of roommate relationship quality exists for examining the impact of these relationships on individual functioning and health. In this report, we present preliminary evidence of the factor structure, concurrent validity, and construct validity of the Roommate Relationship Scale as a measure of roommate relationship quality using a sample of U.S. college students who participated in a multi-wave study. An exploratory factor analysis at (...) the first wave, and confirmatory factor analyses with independent samples of new participants at each of two subsequent waves showed stable factor loadings and adequate fit. Moreover, the scale demonstrated good fit and reliability in a longitudinal multilevel CFA framework. The RRS significantly positively correlated with relationship length, self-esteem, extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, and negatively correlated with symptoms of anxiety and avoidant attachment style, indicating concurrent validity of the scale with respect to these constructs. Consistent with findings from other relationship types, self-reported RRS scores decrease longitudinally, both across and between semesters of academic life, indicating construct validity of the scale. We conclude that the RRS is useful for evaluating roommate relationship quality among U.S. college students, and hopefully beyond. Further research should validate the scale’s utility in other, more diverse, populations and refine its underlying generating psychological process. (shrink)

Many of the most virulent and problematic eukaryotic pathogens have evolved from photosynthetic ancestors, such as apicomplexans, which are responsible for a wide range of diseases including malaria and toxoplasmosis. The primary barrier to understanding the early stages of evolution of these parasites has been the difficulty in finding parasites with closely related free‐living lineages with which to make comparisons. Parasites found throughout the florideophyte red algal lineage, however, provide a unique and powerful model to investigate the genetic origins of (...) a parasitic lifestyle. This is because they share a recent common ancestor with an extant free‐living red algal species and parasitism has independently arisen over 100 times within this group. Here, we synthesize the relevant hypotheses with respect to how these parasites have proliferated. We also place red algal research in the context of recent developments in understanding the genome evolution of other eukaryotic photosynthesizers turned parasites. (shrink)

: This paper examines ethical issues related to medical practices with children and adults who are members of a linguistic and cultural minority known as the DEAF-WORLD. Members of that culture characteristically have hearing parents and are treated by hearing professionals whose values, particularly concerning language, speech, and hearing, are typically quite different from their own. That disparity has long fueled a debate on several ethical issues, most recently the merits of cochlear implant surgery for DEAF children. We explore whether (...) that surgery would be ethical if implants could deliver close to normal hearing for most implanted children, thereby diminishing the ranks of the DEAF-WORLD. The ethical implications of eugenic practices with the DEAF are explored, as are ethical quandaries in parental surrogacy for DEAF children, and their parallels in transracial adoption. (shrink)

This is an important book by Dermot A. Lane, widely known as one of the leading theologians in Ireland with a notable international profile; recognized for his work in re-positioning Catholic theology through dialogue with other disciplines, worldviews, and insistent social, cultural and political problems. In this his latest work he explores new roads opened up by Laudato Si’ for contemporary theology; and shows how ecological questions should permeate the whole of theology and Christian faith.

In this commentary, we attempt to broaden thinking and dialogue about how our ancestral past might have affected attachment and reproductive strategies. We highlight the theoretical benefits of formulating specific predictions of how different sources of stress might impact attachment and reproductive strategies differently, and we integrate some of these ideas with another recent evolutionary model of human mating.

Sexual behaviour and mate choice are key intervening variables between attachment and life histories. We propose a set of predictions relating attachment, reproductive strategies, and mate choice criteria.

Western feminists, physicians, and ethicists condemn the traditional genital surgeries performed on women in some non‐Western cultures. But coming to moral judgment is not the end of the story; we must also decide what to do about our judgments. We must learn to work respectfully with, not independently of, local resources for cultural self‐examination and change.

Introduction to Phenomenology is an outstanding and comprehensive guide to an important but often little-understood movement in European philosophy. Dermot Moran lucidly examines the contributions of phenomenology's nine seminal thinkers: Brentano, Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, Arendt, Levinas, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida. Written in a clear and engaging style, this volume charts the course of the movement from its origins in Husserl to its transformation by Derrida. It describes the thought of Heidegger and Sartre, phenomenology's most famous thinkers, and introduces and (...) assesses the distinctive use of phenomenology by some of its lesser-known exponents, such as Levinas, Arendt and Gadamer. Throughout, the enormous influence of phenomenology on the course of twentieth-century philosophy is thoroughly explored. Clearly explaining technical terms and avoiding jargon, Introduction to Phenomenology is an indispensable introduction to the history and substance of this vital current in intellectual thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 422-423 [Access article in PDF] Robin Small, editor. A Hundred Years of Phenomenology: Perspectives on a Philosophical Tradition. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2001. Pp. xxix + 191. Cloth, $79.95.The stated aim of this collection of thirteen essays (mostly new—four are reprints) by philosophers resident in Australia is to offer selective perspectives on the phenomenological tradition, correcting misunderstandings and highlighting aspects overlooked in (...) standard commentaries. Presumably, it also wants to exhibit contemporary Australian writing in the phenomenological tradition, and situate phenomenological claims in terms graspable by analytic philosophers.Robin Small's introduction, taking Husserl's conception of eidetic intuition as fundamental, sketches the rise of phenomenology. The collection is then divided into three parts. Part One ("Approaching the Sources") focuses on the sources of phenomenology (Husserl and Heidegger) and opens with a thoughtful essay by Max Deutscher, reprinted from the Canadian Journal of Philosophy (1980), which is replied to by Maurita Harney. Three further, not particularly distinguished, essays deal with the issues of realism, relativism, [End Page 422] and the relation between Ryle and Husserl. Part Two ("Following the Tradition") deals with new themes arising in Heidegger, Sartre, and Derrida, while Part Three ("Making Connections") explores the relation between phenomenology and other disciplines, chiefly sociology, anthropology, and literature. A final essay by Jocelyn Dunphy Bloomfield examines the relevance of phenomenology in the Australian context.The collection is interesting but uneven. Some of the essays are out of date: Small's essay on Ryle and Husserl originally appeared in 1981 and Purushottama Bilimoria's paper, "Heidegger and the Japanese Connection," first published in the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology (1991), is in need of updating given the upsurge of interest in Husserl in Asia in recent years. Deutscher's "Husserl's Transcendental Subjectivity" is helpful in that it introduces Husserl's transcendental idealism through unusually prosaic analogies. He suggests that the transcendental attitude can be grasped in familiar experiences such as "keeping silence" during an awkward or embarrassing moment or adopting a detached or removed stance. An actor on stage can express anger without being angry. The transcendental attitude is such a detached spectator attitude; it is the capacity we have to judge and appraise ourselves (8). Moreover, it is in this attitude that we come to recognize our commitments to others. Deutscher resists the temptation to separate radically the ordinary living in the world from the detached contemplation of it. There never can be total but only intermittent detachment from the life-world; nevertheless the transcendental epoché is important in that it allows us the chance to gain self-awareness about our situation, about our "forms of life." While Deutscher does a terrific job demystifying one of Husserl's central and much misunderstood concepts, he is at risk of oversimplifying and worse of psychologizing Husserl's insights.Richard Campbell's essay on Heidegger's conception of truth as aletheia is also particularly noteworthy in that it is a philosophically sophisticated attempt to cut through Heidegger's somewhat inflated jargon and expresses his central intuitions about truth. Campbell goes to some trouble to elucidate and disambiguate what Heidegger is saying. Furthermore, he believes Heidegger is wrong in his interpretation of Plato; Plato is doing precisely the opposite of what Heidegger says he is doing. Deutscher's essay on Sartre, informed by an analytic rigor and sensitivity to ambiguity, gives a very clear account and partial defence of the relations between positional consciousness of the object and non-positional self-consciounsess. He is critical of Sartre's sweeping concept of the "in itself" and points out that in reality there are many diverse "in-itselves" with different real properties. Crittenden, too, has an interesting essay on Sartre's conception of "the look." Sartre understands the other as the one who looks at (and thereby seeks to objectify me) whereas for de Beauvoir, the other (in the particular case: woman) is the looked at and objectified. The article on sociology and phenomenology attempts to show the relation between their methods... (shrink)

Inspired by Aristotle, Franz Brentano revived the concept of intentionality to characterize the domain of mental phenomena studied by descriptive psychology. Edmund Husserl, while discarding much of Brentano?s conceptual framework and presuppositions, located intentionality at the core of his science of pure consciousness (phenomenology). Martin Heidegger, Husserl?s assistant from 1919 to 1923, dropped all reference to intentionality and consciousness in Being and Time (1927), and so appeared to break sharply with his avowed mentors, Brentano and Husserl. Some recent commentators have (...) sided with Heidegger and have endorsed his critique of Husserl and Brentano as still caught up in epistemological, representationalist approaches to intentionality. I argue that Heidegger is developing Husserl, focusing in particular on the ontological dimension of intentionality, not reversing or abandoning his account. Heidegger?s criticisms of representationalism merely repeat Husserl?s. Furthermore, I argue that Husserl?s account of cognitive intentionality, which recognizes the importance of the disinterested theoretical attitude for scientific knowledge, has been underestimated and misunderstood by Heidegger, who treats scientific cognition as a deficient form of practice. In short, Heidegger is more dependent on Husserl than he ever publicly acknowledged. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Even the Papuan is a Man and not a Beast”: Husserl on Universalism and the Relativity of CulturesDermot Moran (bio)“[A]nd in this broad sense even the Papuan is a man and not a beast.” ([U]nd in diesem weiten Sinne ist auch der Papua Mensch und nicht Tier, Husserl, Crisis, 290/Hua. VI.337–38)1“Reason is the specific characteristic of man, as a being living in personal activities and habitualities.” (Vernunft ist das (...) Spezifische des Menschen, als in personalen Aktivitäten und Habitualitäten lebenden Wesens, Husserl, Crisis, 338/Hua. VI.272)1. Particular Historicities and Universal ReasonIn this paper2 i shall explore—and suggest a way of resolving—the evident tensions to be found in Husserl’s Crisis of European Sciences (and associated texts) [End Page 463] between his commitment to the universality of reason as the goal or telos of European humanity (founded on the ancient Greek “breakthrough” to philosophy and science) and his recognition of the empirical plurality and “relativity” (Relativität) of individual peoples and nations (e.g. Indian, Chinese, Papuan, Bantu) locked into their own particular “socialities” (Sozialitäten), communal worlds, and historical trajectories (what Husserl broadly calls “historicities,” Geschichtlichkeiten, Historizitäten). 3 I shall examine the complex relations and tensions between Husserl’s conception of universality, whereby the same reason functions in every human as animal rationale, “no matter how primitive he is” (“Origin of Geometry,” Crisis, 378/ Hua. VI.385), and his concept of the self-enclosed particularity of individual peoples with their own cultural forms. Indeed, Husserl often emphasizes that the most prominent feature of cultural plurality is precisely its relativity: “relativity belongs to the normal course of life.”4 I shall evaluate Husserl’s response, which defends the project of realizing the ideal of a critical universal rationality, by situating his discussion in terms of the cultural conflict of the time with the rising National Socialist commitment to racial particularism, and by showing Husserl’s commitment to the inherent universality of the one shared life-world.In his research manuscripts of the 1920s and 1930s Husserl frequently discusses the complex relationships that exist between different cultures and traditions; different cultures have their specific historicities (Crisis, 274/Hua. VI.320), dialects, norms, ways of life, and so on. This is simply a matter of fact. There are, furthermore, some well-known and controversial passages in Husserl’s “Vienna Lecture” of May 1935 and also in his Crisis texts (both in the main 1936 published text, Part One [§6] and in the then unpublished Crisis Part Three A §365) where Husserl speaks of the universality inherent in European philosophical culture of the logos and contrasts it with various other communal forms, which are, in his view, merely “empirical-anthropological” types, enclosed in their particular historicities and relativities. Indeed, in this context, Husserl regularly invokes the idea of the “relativity of everything historical” (die Relativität alles Historischen, Crisis, 373/Hua. VI.382). In addition, there are a number of related texts, collected in the Crisis supplementary volume (Hua. XXIX),6 in the Intersubjectivity volumes (especially Hua. XV),7 as well as in the recent volume on the life-world [End Page 464] (Hua. XXXIX),8 which discuss the empirical differences between peoples and also the layers and strata of social groups, nations, and even the idea of larger international collectivities or “supernations” (Übernationen), such as Europe, or the League of Nations. Furthermore, there are—as Husserl indicates in his 1935 letter to the prominent French anthropologist Lucien Lévy-Bruhl—even cultures that are completely “self-enclosed” (abgeschlossene) unities, cut off, some of which know no history. According to Husserl, into this classical world of closed cultures, the ancient Greeks bring a new form of universality, one that leads them, through the grasp of idealization to infinite tasks, to break through the finite horizons of their environing world (Umwelt), which presents itself to them as a “near-world” (Nahwelt, Crisis, 324/Hua. VI.303; Hua. XXVII.228), and to arrive at the highly refined concept of the “true world” or the “scientific world [which] is a purposeful structure (Zweckgebilde) extending to infinity” (Crisis, 382... (shrink)

In what sense can we speak of pluralism regarding the philosophical traditions or styles crudely characterised as ‘Continental’ and ‘Analytic’? Do these traditions address the same philosophical problems in different ways, or pose different problems altogether? What, if anything, do these traditions share?

In what follows, I suggest that it makes good sense to think of the truth of the probabilistic generalizations made in the life sciences as metaphysically grounded in stochastic mechanisms in the world. To further understand these stochastic mechanisms, I take the general characterization of mechanism offered by MDC :1–25, 2000) and explore how it fits with several of the going philosophical accounts of chance: subjectivism, frequentism, Lewisian best-systems, and propensity. I argue that neither subjectivism, frequentism, nor a best-system-style interpretation (...) of chance will give us what we need from an account of stochastic mechanism, but some version of propensity theory can. I then draw a few important lessons from recent propensity interpretations of fitness in order to present a novel propensity interpretation of stochastic mechanism according to which stochastic mechanisms are thought to have probabilistic propensities to produce certain outcomes over others. This understanding of stochastic mechanism, once fully fleshed-out, provides the benefits of allowing the stochasticity of a particular mechanism to be an objective property in the world, a property investigable by science, a way of quantifying the stochasticity of a particular mechanism, and a way to avoid a problematic commitment to the causal efficacy of propensities. (shrink)

In this paper I explore Husserl’s and Foucault’s approaches to the historical a priori and defend Husserl’s richer notion. Foucault borrows the expression ‘historical a priori’ from Husserl and there are continuities, but also significant and ultimately irreconcilable differences, between their conceptions. Both are looking for ‘conditions of possibility,’ forms of ‘institution’ or instauration, and patterns of transformation, for scientific knowledge. Husserl identifies the ‘a priori of history’ with the ‘historical a priori’ and believes that the ‘invariant essential structures of (...) the historical world’ can be identified. Foucault, on the other hand, is less interested in the Kantian inquiry into the limits or legitimization of knowledge than in the relation between knowledge and power. Foucault rejects the idea of universal and necessary a priori structures and denies that the structure of the conceptual framework governing an era can be fully determined. Both Foucault and Husserl contrast ‘inner’ history with external history, but, I argue, Foucault misconstrues Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology as a form of ‘absolute subjectivity’ against which his ‘archaeological’ method reacts. In fact, Foucault’s own conception of the historical a priori is ambiguous and fails to have explanatory value precisely because it misunderstands the need for the a priori to be both universal and necessary, and offers no account of the ‘a priori of historicity’ which, for Husserl, is essential to human cultural life. (shrink)

The twentieth century was one of the most significant and exciting periods ever witnessed in philosophy, characterized by intellectual change and development on a massive scale. _The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century Philosophy_ is an outstanding authoritative survey and assessment of the century as a whole. Featuring twenty-two chapters written by leading international scholars, this collection is divided into five clear parts and presents a comprehensive picture of the period for the first time: major themes and movements logic, language, knowledge (...) and metaphysics philosophy of mind, psychology and science phenomenology, hermeneutics, existentialism, and critical theory politics, ethics, aesthetics. Featuring annotated further reading and a comprehensive glossary, _The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century Philosophy_ is indispensable for anyone interested in philosophy over the last one hundred years, suitable for both expert and novice alike. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 422-423 [Access article in PDF] Robin Small, editor. A Hundred Years of Phenomenology: Perspectives on a Philosophical Tradition. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2001. Pp. xxix + 191. Cloth, $79.95.The stated aim of this collection of thirteen essays (mostly new—four are reprints) by philosophers resident in Australia is to offer selective perspectives on the phenomenological tradition, correcting misunderstandings and highlighting aspects overlooked in (...) standard commentaries. Presumably, it also wants to exhibit contemporary Australian writing in the phenomenological tradition, and situate phenomenological claims in terms graspable by analytic philosophers.Robin Small's introduction, taking Husserl's conception of eidetic intuition as fundamental, sketches the rise of phenomenology. The collection is then divided into three parts. Part One ("Approaching the Sources") focuses on the sources of phenomenology (Husserl and Heidegger) and opens with a thoughtful essay by Max Deutscher, reprinted from the Canadian Journal of Philosophy (1980), which is replied to by Maurita Harney. Three further, not particularly distinguished, essays deal with the issues of realism, relativism, [End Page 422] and the relation between Ryle and Husserl. Part Two ("Following the Tradition") deals with new themes arising in Heidegger, Sartre, and Derrida, while Part Three ("Making Connections") explores the relation between phenomenology and other disciplines, chiefly sociology, anthropology, and literature. A final essay by Jocelyn Dunphy Bloomfield examines the relevance of phenomenology in the Australian context.The collection is interesting but uneven. Some of the essays are out of date: Small's essay on Ryle and Husserl originally appeared in 1981 and Purushottama Bilimoria's paper, "Heidegger and the Japanese Connection," first published in the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology (1991), is in need of updating given the upsurge of interest in Husserl in Asia in recent years. Deutscher's "Husserl's Transcendental Subjectivity" is helpful in that it introduces Husserl's transcendental idealism through unusually prosaic analogies. He suggests that the transcendental attitude can be grasped in familiar experiences such as "keeping silence" during an awkward or embarrassing moment or adopting a detached or removed stance. An actor on stage can express anger without being angry. The transcendental attitude is such a detached spectator attitude; it is the capacity we have to judge and appraise ourselves (8). Moreover, it is in this attitude that we come to recognize our commitments to others. Deutscher resists the temptation to separate radically the ordinary living in the world from the detached contemplation of it. There never can be total but only intermittent detachment from the life-world; nevertheless the transcendental epoché is important in that it allows us the chance to gain self-awareness about our situation, about our "forms of life." While Deutscher does a terrific job demystifying one of Husserl's central and much misunderstood concepts, he is at risk of oversimplifying and worse of psychologizing Husserl's insights.Richard Campbell's essay on Heidegger's conception of truth as aletheia is also particularly noteworthy in that it is a philosophically sophisticated attempt to cut through Heidegger's somewhat inflated jargon and expresses his central intuitions about truth. Campbell goes to some trouble to elucidate and disambiguate what Heidegger is saying. Furthermore, he believes Heidegger is wrong in his interpretation of Plato; Plato is doing precisely the opposite of what Heidegger says he is doing. Deutscher's essay on Sartre, informed by an analytic rigor and sensitivity to ambiguity, gives a very clear account and partial defence of the relations between positional consciousness of the object and non-positional self-consciounsess. He is critical of Sartre's sweeping concept of the "in itself" and points out that in reality there are many diverse "in-itselves" with different real properties. Crittenden, too, has an interesting essay on Sartre's conception of "the look." Sartre understands the other as the one who looks at (and thereby seeks to objectify me) whereas for de Beauvoir, the other (in the particular case: woman) is the looked at and objectified. The article on sociology and phenomenology attempts to show the relation between their methods... (shrink)

Bowler, Gardiner, and Grice have shown a small but significant impairment of autonoetic awareness or remembering involved in the episodic memory experiences of adults with Asperger’s syndrome. This was compensated by an increase in experiences of noetic awareness or knowing. The question remains as to whether the residual autonoetic awareness in Asperger individuals is qualitatively the same as that of typical comparison participants. Three experiments are presented in which manipulations that have shown differential effects on different kinds of conscious awareness (...) in memory in typical populations are employed with a sample of adults with Asperger’s syndrome. The results suggest that the experiences of remembering reported by such individuals, although reduced in quantity, are qualitatively similar to those seen in the typical population. The results are discussed in the context of current theories of awareness in episodic memory. (shrink)

This chapter begins with sketching briefly the emergence of intuition in rationalist philosophy. It focuses on the following problems: First, how are we to understand the defining characteristics of intuition in general, namely immediacy and singularity, and, furthermore, the characteristics of human intuition in particular, namely givenness, passivity and receptivity? Second, what, precisely, is given immediately in intuition? Third, in Immanuel Kant’s distinction between form and content, how can the pure forms of intuition (space and time) be themselves intuitions? The (...) chapter discusses precisely Kant’s intention to overcome Locke and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz by introducing a new notion: intuitions as a separate ‘source of knowledge’. Another important feature of Kant’s departure from the Scholastic and rationalist tradition is his rejection of intellectual intuition, of the immediate apprehension of singular objects by intellect without the mediation of sensibility. (shrink)

Attachment theory ( Bowlby, 1969/1982 ) posits the existence of internal working models as a foundational feature of human bonds. Radical embodied approaches instead suggest that cognition requires no computation or representation, favoring a cognition situated in a body in an environmental context with affordances for action ( Chemero, 2009 ; Barrett, 2011 ; Wilson and Golonka, 2013 ; Casasanto and Lupyan, 2015 ). We explore whether embodied approaches to social soothing, interpersonal warmth, separation distress, and support seeking could replace (...) representational constructs such as internal working models with a view of relationship cognition anchored in the resources afforded to the individual by their brain, body, and environment in interaction. We review the neurobiological bases for social attachments and relationships and attempt to delineate how these systems overlap or don’t with more basic physiological systems in ways that support or contradict a radical embodied explanation. We suggest that many effects might be the result of the fact that relationship cognition depends on and emerges out of the action of neural systems that regulate several clearly physically grounded systems. For example, the neuropeptide oxytocin appears to be central to attachment and pair-bond behavior ( Carter and Keverne, 2002 ) and is implicated in social thermoregulation more broadly, being necessary for maintaining a warm body temperature (for a review, see IJzerman et al., 2015b ). Finally, we discuss the most challenging issues around taking a radically embodied perspective on social relationships. We find the most crucial challenge in individual differences in support seeking and responses to social contact, which have long been thought to be a function of representational structures in the mind (e.g., Baldwin, 1995 ). Together we entertain the thought to explain such individual differences without mediating representations or computations, but in the end propose a hybrid model of radical embodiment and internal representations. (shrink)

In this comprehensive collection of essays, most of which appear for the first time, eminent scholars from many disciplines—philosophy, economics, sociology, political science, demography, theology, history, and social psychology—examine the causes, nature, and consequences of present-day consumption patterns in the United States and throughout the world.

The concept of habit enfolds an enormous richness and diversity of meanings. According to Husserl, habit, along with association, memory, and so on, belongs to the very essence of the psychic.1 Husserl even speaks of an overall genetic “phenomenology of habitualities”. In this paper, as an initial attempt to explicate the complexity of phenomenological treatments of habit, want to trace Husserl’s conception of habit as it emerged in his mature genetic phenomenology, in order to highlight his enormous and neglected original (...) contribution in this area. I shall show that Husserl was by no means limited to a Cartesian intellectualist explication of habitual action (as commentators such as Bourdieu and Dreyfus have claimed), but attempted to characterize its complexity across the range of human individual, sub-personal, personal, social and collective experience. Habit, as we shall see, for Husserl, is intimately involved in the constitution of meaningfulness (Husserl’s Sinnhaftigkeit) and forms of sense (Sinnesgestalten) at all levels, from the level of perceptual experience, through the formation of the ego, to the development of society, history and tradition, indeed to our whole sense of the harmonious course of worldly life and to the genetic constitution of worldhood as such. Habituality, furthermore, is a key structural principle in the genetic constitution of the transcendental ego itself, as it unfolds as a concrete living and acting person in an intersubjective, cultural and historical world. (shrink)

Dermot Moran provides a lucid, engaging, and critical introduction to Edmund Husserl's philosophy, with specific emphasis on his development of phenomenology. This book is a comprehensive guide to Husserl's thought from its origins in nineteenth-century concerns with the nature of scientific knowledge and with psychologism, through his breakthrough discovery of phenomenology and his elucidation of the phenomenological method, to the late analyses of culture and the life-world. Husserl's complex ideas are presented in a clear and expert manner. Individual chapters (...) explore Husserl's key texts including _Philosophy of Arithmetic_, _Logical Investigations_, _Ideas_ I, _Cartesian Meditations_ and _Crisis of the European Sciences_. In addition, Moran offers penetrating criticisms and evaluations of Husserl's achievement, including the contribution of his phenomenology to current philosophical debates concerning consciousness and the mind. _Edmund Husserl_ is an invaluable guide to understanding the thought of one of the seminal thinkers of the twentieth century. It will be helpful to students of contemporary philosophy, and to those interested in scientific, literary and cultural studies on the European continent. (shrink)

... I was many years ago led to define "real" as meaning being such as it is, no matter how you, or, I, or any man or definite collection of men may think it to be; where I use the long and awkward phrase in order to avoid all appearance of meaning independently of human thought. For obviously, nothing that I or anybody ever can mean can be independent of human thought. That is real which men would eventually and finally (...) come to think to be absolutely necessary to be thought in order to understand the truth, supposing the existence and advance in knowledge of the human race to be continued without any limitation, though I cannot pretend that I have as distinct an idea of exactly what that means as I could wish.... (shrink)

Electoral control refers to attempts by an election's organizer to influence the outcome by adding/deleting/partitioning voters or candidates. The important paper of Bartholdi, Tovey, and Trick [1] that introduces control proposes computational complexity as a means of resisting control attempts: Look for election systems where the chair's task in seeking control is itself computationally infeasible.We introduce and study a method of combining two or more candidate-anonymous election schemes in such a way that the combined scheme possesses all the resistances to (...) control possessed by any of its constituents: It combines their strengths. From this and new resistance constructions, we prove for the first time that there exists a neutral, anonymous election scheme that is resistant to all twenty standard types of electoral control. (shrink)

Throughout his career, Husserl identifies naturalism as the greatest threat to both the sciences and philosophy. In this paper, I explicate Husserl’s overall diagnosis and critique of naturalism and then examine the specific transcendental aspect of his critique. Husserl agreed with the Neo-Kantians in rejecting naturalism. He has three major critiques of naturalism: First, it (like psychologism and for the same reasons) is ‘countersensical’ in that it denies the very ideal laws that it needs for its own justification. Second, naturalism (...) essentially misconstrues consciousness by treating it as a part of the world. Third, naturalism is the inevitable consequence of a certain rigidification of the ‘natural attitude’ into what Husserl calls the ‘naturalistic attitude’. This naturalistic attitude ‘reifies’ and it ‘absolutizes’ the world such that it is treated as taken-for-granted and ‘obvious’. Husserl’s transcendental phenomenological analysis, however, discloses that the natural attitude is, despite its omnipresence in everyday life, not primary, but in fact is relative to the ‘absolute’ transcendental attitude. The mature Husserl’s critique of naturalism is therefore based on his acceptance of the absolute priority of the transcendental attitude . The paradox remains that we must start from and, in a sense, return to the natural attitude, while, at the same time, restricting this attitude through the on-going transcendental vigilance of the universal epoché. (shrink)

Subjectivity theories of consciousness take self-reference, somehow construed, as essential to having conscious experience. These theories differ with respect to how many levels they posit and to whether self-reference is conscious or not. But all treat self-referencing as a process that transpires at the personal level, rather than at the subpersonal level, the level of mechanism. -/- Working with conceptual resources afforded by pre-existing theories of consciousness that take self-reference to be essential, several attempts have been made to explain seemingly (...) anomalous cases, especially instances of alien experience. These experiences are distinctive precisely because self-referencing is explicitly denied by the only person able to report them: those who experience them deny that certain actions, mental states, or body parts belong to self. The relevant actions, mental states, or body parts are sometimes attributed to someone or something other than self, and sometimes they are just described as not belonging to self. But all are referred away from self. -/- The cases under discussion here include somatoparaphrenia, schizophrenia, depersonalization, anarchic hand syndrome, and utilization behavior; the theories employed, Higher-Order Thought, Wide Intrinsicality, and Self-Representational. Below I argue that each of these attempts at explaining or explaining away the anomalies fails. Along the way, since each of these theories seeks at least compatibility with science, I sketch experimental approaches that could be used to adduce support for my position, or indeed for the positions of theorists with whom I disagree. -/- In a concluding section I first identify two presuppositions shared by all of the theorists considered here, and argue that both are either erroneous or misleading. Second, I call attention to divergent paths adopted when attempting to explain alienation experiences: some theorists choose to add a mental ingredient, while others prefer to subtract one. I argue that alienation from experience, action, or body parts could result from either addition or subtraction, and that the two can be incorporated within a comprehensive explanatory framework. Finally, I suggest that this comprehensive framework would require self-referencing of a sort, but self-referencing that occurs solely on the level of mechanism, or the subpersonal level. In adumbrating some features of this “subpersonal self,” I suggest that there might be one respect in which it is prior to conscious experience. (shrink)

In recent years there have been attempts to integrate first-person phenomenology into naturalistic science. Traditionally, however, Husserlian phenomenology has been resolutely anti-naturalist. Husserl identified naturalism as the dominant tendency of twentieth-century science and philosophy and he regarded it as an essentially self-refuting doctrine. Naturalism is a point of view or attitude (a reification of the natural attitude into the naturalistic attitude) that does not know that it is an attitude. For phenomenology, naturalism is objectivism. But phenomenology maintains that objectivity is (...) constituted through the intentional activity of cooperating subjects. Understanding the role of cooperating subjects in producing the experience of the one, shared, objective world keeps phenomenology committed to a resolutely anti-naturalist (or ) philosophy. (shrink)

Electoral control refers to attempts by an election's organizer to influence the outcome by adding/deleting/partitioning voters or candidates. The important paper of Bartholdi, Tovey, and Trick [1] that introduces control proposes computational complexity as a means of resisting control attempts: Look for election systems where the chair's task in seeking control is itself computationally infeasible.We introduce and study a method of combining two or more candidate-anonymous election schemes in such a way that the combined scheme possesses all the resistances to (...) control possessed by any of its constituents: It combines their strengths. From this and new resistance constructions, we prove for the first time that there exists a neutral, anonymous election scheme that is resistant to all twenty standard types of electoral control. (shrink)