This book aims to offer an account of conscious experience and of concepts that help us understand empirical reasoning and empirical dialectic. The account offered possesses, it is claimed, two virtues. First, it provides great theoretical freedom. It allows the theoretician freedom to radically reconceive the world. The theoretician may, for example, begin with the conception that colors are genuine qualities of physical bodies and may, in light of empirical findings, shift to the conception that colors are not genuine qualities (...) at all. Second, the account grants empirical reason a great power to constrain: empirical reason can force a particular conception of the self and the world on the rational inquirer. These seemingly contrary virtues are reconciled through a novel treatment of presentation and appearances in the account offered of conscious experience and a novel treatment of ostensive definitions in the account offered of concepts. The argument of the book is buttressed by a critical study of the principal approaches to experience and reason found in the philosophical literature.--. (shrink)

Chris Voparil’s Reconstructing Pragmatism builds the best case to date that the neopragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty decisively and productively reshaped the lineage of pragmatist philosophy. In developing new directions for pragmatism, the book seeks to press past a number of recent debates. One such debate concerns the relative priority of experience and language as methodological starting points for pragmatist philosophy. While Voparil seeks to abandon this debate as outworn, this review argues that the issue of pragmatism’s methodological apparatus cannot be (...) easily set aside. Only by addressing head-on the disadvantages of experience-first pragmatism and language-first pragmatism can a next iteration of pragmatist philosophy properly develop a third methodological option, tantalizingly noted by Voparil, of a practice-first pragmatism. (shrink)

We develop a broader, more fine-grained taxonomy of forms of ‘transformative experience’ inspired by the work of L.A. Paul. Our vulnerability to such experiences arises, we argue, due to the vulnerability, dependence, and affliction intrinsic to the human condition. We use this trio to distinguish a variety of positively, negatively, and ambivalently valenced forms of epistemically and/or personally transformative experiences. Moreover, we argue that many transformative experiences can arise gradually and cumulatively, unfolding over the course of longer periods of time.

Thinking, Language, and Experience was first published in 1989.Hector-Neri Castañeda's intricate and provocative essays have been widely influential, especially his work in epistemology and ethics, and his theory on the relation of thought to action. The fourteen essays in Thinking, Language, and Experience -- half of them written expressly for this volume -- demonstrate the breadth and richness of his recent work on the unitary structure of human experience.A comprehensive, unified study of phenomena at the intersection between experience, thinking, language, (...) and reality, this book focuses on singular reference -- that is, reference to individuals insofar as they are thought of as individuals: indicators, quasi-indicators, proper names, singular descriptions. Castañeda establishes a large number of new facts -- linguistic, semantic, psychological, and sociological -- about the workings of language in human experience, and from them develops a network of new theories, all grounded in his comprehensive Guise Theory.These theories offer a systematic account for: the structure of human experience and the world at large; the mental powers required to think of the world and to undergo experiences; self-consciousness; the language for thinking of other minds; perception and the interaction between indexical reference and perceptual fields; and the role of subjectivity in perception and intentional action. (shrink)

This text explores how human beings construe experience: experience as a resource, as a potential for understanding, representing and acting on reality.

In examining the puzzle of experience, and its possible solutions, Valberg discusses relevant views of Hume, Kant, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Strawson, as well as ideas from the recent philosophy of perception. Finally, he describes and analyzes a manifestation of the puzzle outside philosophy, in everyday experience.

A number of philosophers claim that reflection on the subjective or phenomenal character of conscious experience reveals the universal involvement of a certain feature—‘for-me-ness’, or ‘mine-ness’, or ‘a sense of mine-ness’—whose presence is often overlooked or denied. The first half of this chapter canvasses several possible interpretations of these phrases, identifies some ways in which their use tends to be problematically equivocal, and ends with a clear and minimal statement of what the feature is supposed to be. The second half (...) questions some of the grounds on which the universality of this feature has been upheld in recent analytic work, addressing both a cluster of explanatory motivations (appealing to immunity to error though misidentification, epistemic asymmetry, and ease of judgment or reportability) and a more direct descriptive or conceptual case for this view. (shrink)

Truth happens to an idea." So wrote William James in 1907; and twenty-four years later John Dewey argued that artistic experience entailed a process of "doing and undergoing." But what do these ideas have to do with music, or with research conducted in and through music - that is, with "artistic research?" In this collection of essays, fourteen very different authors respond with distinct and challenging perspectives. Some report on their own experiments and experiences; some offer probing analyses of noteworthy (...) practices; some view historical continuities through the lens of pragmatism and artistic experiment. The resulting collection yields new insights into what musicians do, how they experiment, and what they experience - insights that arise not from doctrine, but from diverse voices seeking common ground in and through experimental discourse: artistic research in and of itself. (shrink)

This book explores how the immediate experience of musical sound relates to processes of meaning construction and discursive mediation. A unique multi-authored work that both draws on and contributes to current debates in ethnomusicology, musicology, psychology, and cognitive science, it presents a novel and productive view of how cultural practice relates to the experience and meaning of musical performance.

Julian Wolfreys starts with loss. All memory is the memory of loss... All that we are, all we experience, all we remember, all that we forget but which leaves nevertheless a trace on us, in us, a trace that countersigns and writes us as who we are (in effect the constellated matrix of Being's becoming): this is a process of loss. This just is loss. Loss is who we are. Loss is authentically the necessary and inescapable inessential essence of Being. (...) Loss names the ghosts, the revenants of Being, Being's others. Neither there nor not there, loss persists as the always already becoming of the thinking of Being. There is more than one loss. There is no one loss. Loss never arrives for a first time. All loss is the return of what is lost to Being's being in the world. From that starting point, the author explores the nature of being and dwelling... of memory and the nature of the traces of the past... of apparition and appearance and perception... of touch and being touched... of the material and the (a)material. In a book that draws in multiple threads from 19th- and 20th-century European literature, he references extensively Heidegger, Derrida, Lacan, Cixous, Celan, Husserl, Woolf, Joyce, Hegel, Badiou, Rilke, Merleau-Ponty, Winterson, Stockhausen and True Detective in an impressive and eclectic tour of the being-becoming-loss.". (shrink)

Since the publication of Chalmer’s influential work, The Conscious Mind, it has been customary to divide the philosophical problems of consciousness into two groups. Whereas the so-called ‘hard problem’ of consciousness concerns the nature of phenomenal awareness and the first-person perspective, the ‘easy problems of consciousness’ mainly concern the notion of intentionality. But is it really possible to investigate intentionality thoroughly without taking the experiential dimension into account? And vice versa, is it possible to understand the nature of subjectivity and (...) experience if we ignore intentionality, or do we not run the risk of thereby reinstating a Cartesian subject-world dualism that ignores everything captured by the phrase “being-in-the-world”? In my article, I will inquire whether phenomenal consciousness and intentionality are two sides of the same coin that cannot be separated without committing a fallacy of division. (shrink)

I take the opportunity that Froese, Gould, and Seth provide to clarify further , 2011) some aspects of Descriptive Experience Sampling by distinguishing DES from the Explicitation Interview method ; and to comment on Froese and colleagues' suggestion of the Double Blind Interview as a way of evaluating DES, EI, and other methods.

The presence or absence of consciousness is the linchpin of taxonomy for disorders of consciousness (DOCs), as well as a focal point for end-of-life decision making for patients with DOCs. Focus on consciousness in this latter context has been criticized for a number of reasons, including the uncertainty of the diagnostic criteria for consciousness, the irrelevance of some forms of consciousness for determining a patient’s interests, and the ambiguous distinction between consciousness and unconsciousness. As a result, there have been recent (...) suggestions that perhaps consciousness ought not to play the focal role that it does in decision making for persons with DOCs, and that other considerations, such as patient and family values, ought to take center stage. In this article, I take a step back and reexamine the meaning of consciousness in the DOC taxonomy. I propose that, while consciousness in DOC taxonomy is defined as “wakeful awareness,” this definition, while clinically expedient, occasions ethical misunderstanding. Using resources from non-Western philosophy of mind, I argue that the form of consciousness that is ethically relevant in DOCs is intransitive, or pure. I contrast this pure experience with transitive consciousness to highlight why ethical conclusions ought not define consciousness solely as “wakeful awareness,” even if clinical criteria do. (shrink)

For three years in a row, an international group of philosophers of education came together to reflect and promote a conception of philosophy as a lived experience. This book is a result of their discussions and makes an original contribution to the field. The book presents conceptual and critical works relevant to the current theoretical developments and debates within the fields of philosophy and education. The articles contribute both to philosophical clarifications and the advancement of research with solid arguments for (...) theoretical and practical redirections. To deploy their arguments, the contributors draw on classical thinkers - such as Plato, Kant, and Dewey - and on contemporary prominent theorists - such as Derrida, Badiou, and Deleuze - with fresh and critical perspectives. (Series: Studies on Education - Vol. 3). (shrink)

In this book, translated from the German by the author, Joachim Schulte uses the discussions of psychological concepts in Wittgenstein's late manuscripts as a basis of reconstructing the central arguments and ideas developed by Wittgenstein during that period. This reconstruction yields valuable insights not only in the philosophy of psychology, but also in aesthetics and the theory of meaning.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the experience of hope that appears in a parent's blog presenting everyday life while caring for a child with Trisomy 18 (Edwards syndrome). The author, Rebekah Peterson, began her blog on 17 March 2011 and continues to post information on her son Aaron's care. The analysis of hope in the blog is carried out using a mixed methodology: initial and focused coding using Charmaz's constructed grounded theory and elements of Colaizzi's method. Each (...) aspect of hope is coded through the blog author's statements, from which three main aspects of hope emerge: hope for the longest possible presence of Aaron with his family, hope for control over situations, pain, and symptoms, and existential facets of hope. These various aspects reveal to what extent the experience of hope is unique. Additionally, analyzing the experience of parental hope uncovers the additional problem of inappropriate communication by health care professionals (HCPs) in intensive care units, particularly when discussing the termination of causal treatment. The problem may be solved through proper education for HCPs and serious consideration of parental involvement in order to properly elaborate guidelines on this issue. The three main aspects of parental hope discussed in this paper might expand knowledge on the issue, helping HCPs to better understand the parents' experience of care and to help sustain parental hope in pediatric palliative care. (shrink)

While the formulation of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow, including the experience dimensions, has remained stable since its introduction in 1975, its dedicated measurement tools, research methodologies, and fields of application, have evolved considerably. Among these, education stands out as one of the most active. In recent years, researchers have examined flow in the context of other theoretical constructs such as motivation. The resulting work in the field of education has led to the development of a new model for understanding (...) flow experience in education, specifically dedicated to adult learning. As a result of both a meticulous analysis of existing models and consideration of more recent developments, a new flow scale has thus been developed. The aim of this study is therefore twofold: to validate the new flow measurement scale dedicated to the educational environment, EduFlow-2, and to test a new theoretical model. Students taking a course, some on-site and others in a MOOC, participated. Several scales were administered online at the end of the participants' course during the 2017 academic year. The factor structure of EduFlow-2 was tested using Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling. Several models were tested. The model with a second-order factor best fit the data. We tested the invariance of the flow scale measure for gender and for the type of training. We were able to show that the flow scale is invariant of the modalities of these two variables. Results revealed good psychometric qualities for the scale, making it suitable for both on-site and distance learning. The analysis also revealed significant relationships with the classic variables of motivation, self-efficacy, learning climate, and life satisfaction. Furthermore, all four dimensions of the model were found to be adequate and consistent with the underlying theoretical arguments. In the end, this new, short flow scale and the theoretical model were demonstrated to be promising for future studies in the field of education. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This essay locates Jean-Luc Nancy's analyses, developed in relation to three invented terms, expeausition, excription, sexistence, in a threefold context: between Immanuel Kant on experience and Heidegger on existence; with Derrida on rethinking life and death ( lavielamort); and as a response to the alteration in phenomenology consequent on a transposition of key themes out of the German speaking context of the analyses of Husserl and Heidegger into the French language context of the French reception. An intensification ( survie) of (...) life forces may arrive in a ‘living on’ ( survivre) where thought processes only partially brought to expression in the lifetimes of their originators acquire precision and definition in moments of extremity, danger and horror, adding a fourth dimension to the initial three. (shrink)

This paper develops a phenomenological analysis of the disturbances of self-experience in dementia. After considering the lack of conceptual clarity regarding the notions of self and person in current research on dementia, we develop a phenomenological theory of the structure of self-experience in the first section. Within this complex structure, we distinguish between the basic level of pre-reflective self-awareness, the episodic sense of self, and the narrative constitution of the self. In the second section, we focus on dementia and argue (...) that, despite the impairment of narrative self-understanding, more basic moments of self-experience are preserved. In accordance with the theory developed in the first part, we argue that, at least until the final stages of the illness, these self-experience in dementia goes beyond the pure minimal self, and rather entail forms of self-reference and an episodic sense of self. (shrink)

The Metaphysics of Experience styles itself as "a Sherpa guide to Process and Reality, whose function is to assist the serious reader in grasping the meaning of the text and to prevent falls into misinterpretation." Although originally published in 1925, Process and Reality has perhaps even more relevance to the contemporary scene in physics, biology, psychology, and the social sciences than it had in the mid-twenties. Hence its internal difficulty, its quasi-inaccessibility, is all the more tragic, since, unlike most metaphysical (...) endeavors, it is capable of interpretating and unifying theories in the above sciences in terms of an organic world view, instead of selecting one theory as the paradigm and reducing all others to it. Because Alfred North Whitehead is so crucial to modern philosophy, The Metaphysics of Experience plays an important role in making Process and Reality accessible to a wider readership. (shrink)

According to its quietist readings, skepticism can be dissolved by demonstrating that the notion of ‘absolute objectivity’ is confused. The dissolution of this confusion is supposed to lead us to acquiesce in our finite and plain everyday life without being bothered anymore about the supposed need for objective knowledge. In contrast, I want to propose a transformative reading of skepticism according to which the philosophical practice of skepticism can be ‘epistemically transformative’. To this end, I will transpose L.A. Paul's notion (...) of ‘epistemically transformative experience’ from decision theory to the realm of philosophical practice and argue that the modern skeptical problem of an external standpoint can evoke transformative experiences that lead to a new, albeit non-propositional, insight into the finitude of the human condition. (shrink)

The experience of computer use can be productively articulated with concepts developed in the phenomenological tradition of philosophy. Building on the insights of classical phenomenologists, Ihde has advanced a sophisticated view of the ways humans relate to technology. I review and expand on his notions of “technological mediation,” “embodiment,” and “multistability,” and apply them to the experience of computer interface. In particular, I explore the experience of using a computer that fails to work properly. A revealing example is the experience (...) of a user who suddenly and unexpectedly encounters a slowly-loading webpage while using the Internet. This phenomenological framework provides an account of the ways a suddenly failing technology changes our relationships to the device, to the world, and to ourselves, and it also suggests how this experience can be usefully reconceptualized. (shrink)

The experience of agency refers to the feeling that we control our own actions, and through them the outside world. In many contexts, sense of agency has strong implications for moral responsibility. For example, a sense of agency may allow people to choose between right and wrong actions, either immediately, or on subsequent occasions through learning about the moral consequences of their actions. In this study we investigate the relation between the experience of operant action, and responsibility for action outcomes (...) using the intentional binding effect as an implicit, quantitative measure related to sense of agency. We studied the time at which people perceived simple manual actions and their effects, when these actions were embedded in scenarios where their actions had unpredictable consequences that could be either moral or merely economic. We found an enhanced binding of effects back towards the actions that caused them, implying an enhanced sense of agency, in moral compared to non-moral contexts. We also found stronger binding for effects with severely negative, compared to moderately negative, values. A tight temporal association between action and effect may be a low-level phenomenal marker of the sense of responsibility. (shrink)

Examines the role of experience within Adorno’s philosophy of language and epistemology.

This paper has two aims. First, to bring together the models of temporal phenomenology on offer and to present these using a consistent set of distinctions and terminologies. Second, to examine the methodologies currently practiced in the development of these models. To that end we present an abstract characterisation in which we catalogue all extant models. We then argue that neither of the two extreme methodologies currently discussed is suitable to the task of developing a model of temporal phenomenology. An (...) entirely top-down methodology is largely insensitive to empirical findings, while one that is entirely bottom-up is insensitive to both introspective evidence and more general philosophical considerations. We recommend a methodology that falls between these two extremes. (shrink)

Emotion experience reflects some of the outcomes of the mostly nonconscious processes that compose emotions. In my view, the major processes are appraisal, affect, action readiness, and autonomic arousal. The phenomenology of emotion experience varies according to mode of consciousness (nonreflective or reflective consciousness), and to direction and mode of attention. As a result, emotion experience may be either ineffable or articulate with respect to any or all of the underlying processes. In addition, emotion experience reflects the degree to which (...) the emotion processes control perception, thought, action and bodily arousal. (shrink)

What reasons and resources can Christian theology find for developing a panentheist position that is also able to engage with contemporary science? By taking its point of departure in basic human experiences, Christian theology can, even in a Trinitarian fashion, be developed as a way to understand God's presence in the world as a presence where the actual occurrences point towards God's own work. This point is especially related to the experience of love. Furthermore, God's presence can be understood as (...) sacramental in the Augustinian sense. Moreover, the contributions of the Danish philosopher of religion Knud E. Løgstrup on God's presence and transcendence, as well as Niels Henrik Gregersen's elaborations on deep incarnation. Prove to offer important reasons for considering panentheism a viable option for the articulation of Christian theology. (shrink)

Conciliationism is the view that says when an agent who believes P becomes aware of an epistemic peer who believes not-P, that she encounters a defeater for her belief that P. Strong versions of conciliationism pose a sceptical threat to many, if not most, religious beliefs since religion is rife with peer disagreement. Elsewhere I argue that one way for a religious believer to avoid sceptical challenges posed by strong conciliationism is by appealing to the evidential import of religious experience. (...) Not only can religious experience be used to establish a relevant evidential asymmetry between disagreeing parties, but reliable reports of such experiences also start to put pressure on the religious sceptic to conciliate toward her religious opponent. Recently, however, Asha Lancaster-Thomas poses a highly innovative challenge to the evidential import of religious experience. Namely, she argues that an evil God is just as likely to explain negative religious experiences as a good God is able to explain positive religious experiences. In light of this, religious believers need to explain why a good God exists instead of an evil God. I respond to Lancaster-Thomas by suggesting that, at least within the context of religious experience, that the evil God hypothesis is only a challenge to certain versions of theism; and that the existence of an evil God and good God are compossible. (shrink)

The standard interpretation of Hume on testimony takes him to be a reductionist; justification of beliefs from testimony ultimately depends on one's own first-person experience. Yet Hume's main discussions of testimony in the Treatise and first Enquiry suggest a social account. Hume appeals to shared experience and develops norms of belief from testimony that are not reductionist. It is argued that the reductionist interpretation rests on an overly narrow view of Hume's theory of ideas. By attending to such mechanisms of (...) the imagination as abstraction and fictions, it is shown that Hume's theory of ideas does not forestall a non-reductionist social epistemology. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the question of whether there is a way to engage the question of democratic citizenship while refusing the invitation to subordinate political activity to the disposing power of expert thought. It explores this possibility with the help of Arendt's On Revolution, and in particular by attending to some of her characterizations of the American revolutionaries' experiences of, and in, political action. These characterizations throw a distinctive light both on the question of what threatens, and what might help (...) sustain, the activity of democratic citizenship, and on the question of the relations among political activity, thinking, and theory. They do so not only in virtue of what they say about the American revolutionaries, but also by exemplifying the generatively idiosyncratic way Arendt uses the fraught idea of “experience.” It begins with some general words about On Revolution and its context. (shrink)

Apophaticism in mainstream analytic theology and philosophy of religion has come to denote a metaphysical and semantic thesis: that, due to divine transcendence, God is ineffable, inconceivable, or incomprehensible. But this conception fails to properly take account of the central claim of apophaticism as a special type of _mystical _theology. As such, the apophatic commitments to divine ineffability are instrumental. More fundamental is the function of theological ignorance to uniquely inform the task of theology and transform the theologian in union (...) with God. Taking Jonathan Jacobs’ recent account as a test case, I argue that reconstructions of apophaticism need to be supplemented by an account of this informational and personally transformative value that apophatic mysticism places on its commitment to divine incomprehensibility. I supply the needed account of apophatic valuing in terms of wonder as the appropriate emotional attitude toward divine transcendence. (shrink)

Introduction to the Focus “Practicing William James”.

One of the most pressing and debated issues in contemporary sport is the inclusion of transgender athletes in competition. This is especially the case of transgender women who seek to compete in th...