Мета. У цій статті передбачено провести морфологічне дослідження життя Григорія Сковороди як самоконструювання філософа порівняно з життям таких філософів, як Іммануїл Кант, Фрідріх Ніцше, Мартін Гайдеґґер і Генрі Торо. Теоретичний базис. В основі дослідження лежить застосування монадологічного підходу до історії у сполученні з біографічним методом. Ідеї класичних філософських систем Ґотфріда Ляйбніца та Освальда Шпенглера застосовано з урахуванням їхнього переосмислення українськими філософами Іваном Бойченком та Вадимом Менжуліним. Завдяки цьому життя українського філософа Григорія Сковороди розглянуто як монаду, яка невпинно здійснює власне смислове (...) саморозгортання. Наукова новизна. Наскрізну парадоксальність філософії Григорія Сковороди, яку приписують йому, виходячи з інших філософських систем, повністю знімає перформативна послідовність його життя як філософа, що показують системні порівняння основних характеристик його життя з життям інших видатних філософів, які підпорядкували свої дії своїй філософській концепції. Висновки. Філософія Григорія Сковороди є монадою, тобто таким першофеноменом, який неможливо пояснити з інших феноменів: порівняння з іншими монадами є лише приводом для виявлення власних характеристик досліджуваної монади, які поступово розкриваються як прояв її самобутності й неповторності. Оригінальність філософської концептуалізації життя Сковороди варто здійснювати в поетапному порівнянні зі свідомим життям інших філософів, і таке порівняння потребує продовження, постійного здійснення. Особливістю цього дослідження є спроба надати методологічне обґрунтування такому компаративному морфологічно-біографічному філософському дослідженню. (shrink)

This volume develops a fundamentally different categorical framework for conceptualizing time and reality. The actual taking place of reality is conceived as a “constellatory self-unfolding” characterized by strong self-referentiality and occurring in the primordial form of time, the not yet sequentially structured “time-space of the present.” Concomitantly, both the sequentially ordered aspect of time and the factual aspect of reality appear as emergent phenomena that come into being only after reality has actually taken place. In this new (...) framework, time functions as an ontophainetic [H1] platform, i.e., as the stage on which reality can first occur. Events are merely the “tracks” that the actual taking place of reality leaves behind on the co-emergent “canvas’’ of local spacetime. -/- The view of time proposed here is particularly relevant to the recent debate over the “ER=EPR” conjecture targeting the relation between quantum physics and general relativity theory. The novelty of this radically different framework is that it allows quantum reduction and singularities to be addressed as inverse transitions into and out of the factual layer of reality: In quantum physical state reduction, reality “gains” the chrono-ontological format of facticity, and the sequential aspect of time becomes applicable. In singularities, by contrast, the opposite happens: Reality loses its local spacetime formation and reverts back to its primordial, pre-local shape – making the use of causality relations, Boolean logic and the dichotomization of subject and object obsolete in the process. -/- For our understanding of the relation between quantum and relativistic physics, this new view opens up fundamentally new perspectives: Both are legitimate views of time and reality; they simply address very different chrono-ontological portraits, and thus should not lead us to erroneously prefer one view over the other. -/- The task of the book is to provide a formal framework in which this radically different view of time and reality can be suitably addressed. The mathematical approach is based on the logical and topological features of the Borromean Rings, and draws upon concepts and methods from algebraic and geometric topology – especially the theory of sheaves and links, group theory, logic and information theory in relation to the standard constructions employed in quantum mechanics and general relativity, shedding new light on the problems of their compatibility. The intended audience includes physicists, mathematicians and philosophers with an interest in the conceptual and mathematical foundations of modern physics. (shrink)

When do children become aware of themselves as differentiated and unique entity in the world? When and how do they become self-aware? Based on some recent empirical evidence, 5 levels of self-awareness are presented and discussed as they chronologically unfold from the moment of birth to approximately 4-5 years of age. A natural history of children's developing self-awareness is proposed as well as a model of adult self-awareness that is informed by the dynamic of early development. (...) Adult self-awareness is viewed as the dynamic flux between basic levels of consciousness that develop chronologically early in life. (shrink)

Is self-consciousness intentional? Consciousness of oneself-as-object is, in the sense that the subject is there taken as its own object of intentional consciousness. Contrastively, it has been argued that consciousness of oneself-as-subject is not intentional, precisely in that it does not involve taking oneself as an intentional object. Here, it is rather proposed that consciousness of oneself-as-subject is tied to intentionality in that it involves being conscious of oneself as an intentional subject, i.e. as a subject directed at intentional (...) objects transcending oneself-as-subject. This form of self-consciousness is neither reflective, in the sense that it does not involve to take oneself as an object of reflection, nor reflexive, in the sense that it does not involve to be related to oneself but to what-one-is-not, i.e. to the transcending intentional object. It is further argued that consciousness of oneself-as-subject involves two dynamics, as the subject would be indicated to himself by the objects towards which he directs himself. These considerations are here unfolded to consider in particular bodily self-consciousness. (shrink)

In this paper it is championed that a two stages hypothesis for the evolution of language must take into account a qualified approach to heterochrony and the available information from the archaeological record. As it seems, a protracted childhood and youth was already at work in Homo erectus, but early postnatal brain growth was only available to Homo sapiens. According to these facts, the term hysteron proteron is given here to the reversal that sets off linguistic capacity during the first (...) three years of life, upon the ancient abilities for social, natural and technological knowledge, which were already established during the last 2 Mya BP. The unfolding of linguistic capacity creates the typical effect that ontogeny reverses phylogeny: since late postnatal brain growth, quite recent in evolution, launches in ontogeny before the phylogenetically old processes of playing and learning take place during childhood and youth. Full symbolic abilities may be explained as emerging from older semiotic competences based on iconicity and indexicality, which would have presumably sustained human life for millennia. Furthermore, it is argued that the formation of linguistic categories follows from that overlaying of extended connectivity linked to early postnatal brain growth, inasmuch as it entangles and transforms previous iconic and referential information: i.e. the ancient semiotic capacities for proprioception, embodiment, extended mimesis and pragmatic knowledge, shaping a sort of self-organization process that provides the formal and semantic properties we find in articulated languages. (shrink)

"Ubuntu is the African idea of personhood: persons depend on other persons in order to be. This is summarised in the expression: umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, that is, a person is a person through persons. This edited collection illustrates the power of fictionalised representation in reporting research conducted on Ubuntu in Southern Africa. The chapters insert the concept of Ubuntu within the broad intellectual debate of self and community, to demonstrate its intellectual and philosophical value and theoretical grounding in known (...) practices emanating from the African continent, and indeed how it works to unsettle some of our received notions of the self. The contributors look at Ubuntu from an array of viewpoints, illustrated by its applicability in different contexts and facets explored in the four research clusters of African literature, law, political science and theology"--. (shrink)

Researchers often claim that self-control is a skill. It is also often stated that self-control exertions are intentional actions. However, no account has yet been proposed of the skillful agency that makes self-control exertion possible, so our understanding of self-control remains incomplete. Here I propose the skill model of self-control, which accounts for skillful agency by tackling the guidance problem: how can agents transform their abstract and coarse-grained intentions into the highly context-sensitive, fine-grained control processes (...) required to select, revise and correct strategies during self-control exertion? The skill model borrows conceptual tools from ‘hierarchical models’ recently developed in the context of motor skills, and asserts that self-control crucially involves the ability to manage the implementation and monitoring of regulatory strategies as the self-control exercise unfolds. Skilled agents are able do this by means of flexible practical reasoning: a fast, context-sensitive type of deliberation that incorporates non-propositional representations into the formation and revision of the mixed-format intentions that structure self-control exertion. The literatures on implementation intentions and motivation framing offer corroborating evidence for the theory. As a surprising result, the skill of self-control that allows agents to overcome the contrary motivations they experience is self-effacing: instead of continuously honing this skill, expert agents replace it with a different one, which minimizes or prevents contrary motivations from arising in the first place. Thus, the more expert you are at self-control, the less likely you are to use it. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to bring philosophical thinking closer to practice-based empirical work. Using Martin Heidegger’s philosophy, it offers a bridge between these two worlds, attempting to provide philosophical depth to the findings of a hermeneutic phenomenological study. This process unfolded through the appearance of three intertwined, potential, meaningful modes of being in the lifeworld: space as a condition for being and being for worlding the world; temporal and spatial self-being, the existence of multiple selves in (...) time and space; and suffering and thriving as modes of being. The article extends the dialogue and concludes with key reflections and insight for research practice. (shrink)

In this article, I outline various ways in which artifacts are interwoven with autobiographical memory systems and conceptualize what this implies for the self. I first sketch the narrative approach to the self, arguing that who we are as persons is essentially our (unfolding) life story, which, in turn, determines our present beliefs and desires, but also directs our future goals and actions. I then argue that our autobiographical memory is partly anchored in our embodied interactions with (...) an ecology of artifacts in our environment. Lifelogs, photos, videos, journals, diaries, souvenirs, jewelry, books, works of art, and many other meaningful objects trigger and sometimes constitute emotionally-laden autobiographical memories. Autobiographical memory is thus distributed across embodied agents and various environmental structures. To defend this claim, I draw on and integrate distributed cognition theory and empirical research in human-technology interaction. Based on this, I conclude that the self is neither defined by psychological states realized by the brain nor by biological states realized by the organism, but should be seen as a distributed and relational construct. (shrink)

To examine the underlying processes of an innovative mind-body practice, Mindful Body Awareness, this exploratory study involved four case studies analyzed phenomenologically using the dialogal method. Mindful Body Awareness combines manual and verbal processing, and is focused on facilitation of client body awareness. Four individuals were recruited to receive weekly 1.25 hour sessions over four weeks. The Helpfulness Aspects of Therapy form was administered immediately after each session to access participants’ perceptions of the therapy experience. In addition, the Scale of (...) Body Connection was used to examine pre- and post-body awareness and bodily dissociation. Analysis involved phenomenology and descriptive statistics. The overall perceived helpfulness of the intervention was evident in the four themes that emerged from the analysis. These themes were gaining interoceptive awareness, personal agency, therapist trust and conceptual framing, and transformation. The participants’ responses were also used to investigate the therapy process across time. A pattern of increased interoceptive depth was apparent, as was a concomitant progression in embodied sense of self. Improvements in body awareness and bodily dissociation were evident for two of the four participants. These findings help to identify primary components of Mindful Body Awareness and suggest the role of these components in the embodiment process. (shrink)

Since the 1950s, the common view of development has been internalist: development is seen as the result of the unfolding of potentialities already present in the egg cell. In this article, I show that this view is incorrect because of the crucial influence of the environment on development. I focus on a fascinating example, that of the role played by symbioses in development, especially bacterial symbioses, a phenomenon found in virtually all organisms (plants, invertebrates, and vertebrates). I claim that (...) we must consequently modify our conception of the boundaries of the developing entity, and I show how immunology can help us in accomplishing this task. I conclude that the developing entity encompasses many elements traditionally seen as “foreign,” while I reject the idea that there is no possible distinction between the organism and its environment. (shrink)

As the pre-eminent Enlightenment philosopher, Kant famously calls on all humans to make up their own minds, independently from the constraints imposed on them by others. Kant's focus, however, is on universal human reason, and he tells us little about what makes us individual persons. In this book, Katharina T. Kraus explores Kant's distinctive account of psychological personhood by unfolding how, according to Kant, we come to know ourselves as such persons. Drawing on Kant's Critical works and on his (...) Lectures and Reflections, Kraus develops the first textually comprehensive and systematically coherent account of our capacity for what Kant calls 'inner experience'. The novel view of self-knowledge and self-formation in Kant that she offers addresses present-day issues in philosophy of mind and will be relevant for contemporary philosophical debates. It will be of interest to scholars of the history of philosophy, as well as of philosophy of mind and psychology. (shrink)

The drama of the unfolding of the spirit, Corrington argues, is one of the most powerful struggles within the human process. The spirit is in and of nature and can never lift the self outside of nature. For Corrington's ecstatic naturalism, there is no realm of the supernatural, only dimensions and orders within nature.

Self-identity, in the sense of who one now is or who one may become, is widely recognized as a matter of both discovery and creativity. This understanding of self-identity is reflected in the often repeated admonition of Friedrich Nietzsche to become who one is. Against the background of a brief discussion of Nietzsche's admonition, two claims are advance. First, noting the role others play in our becommg who we are helps explicate the notion that self-identity involves both (...) discovery and creativity. Second, emphasizing that self formation involves both discovery and creativity illummates several moral dimensions of the unfolding drama, perhaps the most important of which is the importance of creating a self which makes ongoing recreations of the self possible. (shrink)

Purpose. Based on tracing dualistic tendencies in the history of the concept “self” formation, the paper aims to clarify in what way dualism – contradistinction of the self and sociality, in particular – is being overcome in phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches to the self. Methodology. The systematic and integrative approaches, hermeneutic, phenomenological and retrospective methods, comparative analysis, description and synthesis underlie the research conducted in this paper. Theoretical basis. The development of the concept “self” is traced (...) based on historical retrospective of its definitions. The paper shows the influence of Kantian interpretation of the self upon the contemporary approaches, presents the comparative analysis of the most recent definitions of the self and illustrates the study results on the relation of the self to the body, the world, the narration and the identity with reference to Martin Heidegger, Paul Ricoeur and Charles Taylor in particular. Originality. An integration of phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches to the self is introduced in the paper. It is argued that phenomenological and hermeneutic interpretations can be represented as complementing each other, since they share the anti-dualist perspective and interweave in description of the key aspects of the self, particularly sociality and language. Conclusion. Dualism is overcome in the contemporary interpretations of the self as it is clear from the phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches example. There is no more acute opposition between the self and the world, the self and the body, the self and the social life of a person. The self is considered as “being-in-the-world” which unfolds through intersection of different dimensions: subjectivity, body, temporality, language and sociality. Sociality provides the self with a moral framework through identity and enables conditions for person’s self-fulfillment, since the self reaches completeness only by transcending itself towards the others. The modern discovery of the self entails the need to invent a new type of solidarity. (shrink)

The self-communication of being and the human person’s intellectual vocation to draw it gradually into logos are important themes in the writing of W. Norris Clarke. This paper addresses two related obstacles to understanding the person’s individual essence: (1) the limited intellectual reach of the potential knower, who has no access to another’s subjectivity, (2) the person’s inability to reveal her individual essence in any one act and the need for it to be gradually unfolded. These obstacles can be (...) partially surmounted through motivational narrative, as developed by Arthur Miller, wherein persons describe those actions to which they are uniquely inclined and that bring profound fulfillment. The privileged recipient has rich access into the narrator’s subjectivity and opportunity to see in the story an ontologically stable pattern of motivated behavior that expresses her individual essence. (shrink)

This article analyzes narratives about encounters between police officers and domestic violence victim/survivors in the context of domestic violence calls. Narratives are sites in which individuals create relationships between themselves and others, oriented around a set of unfolding events. Narrative is a motivated, engaged retelling of prior or anticipated events produced in interaction with others, in a particular context stocked with constraints and affordances. In the process of telling stories, identities emerge. In order to understand the relationship between narrative (...) and identity, I analyze stories told about police interactions with domestic violence victim/survivors from the perspectives of both the police and the victim/survivors. Working empirically with a data set of 48 interviews, I use critical discourse analysis and discourse analysis to analyze the ways both groups narrate domestic violence and confrontations with police officers, the ways they create story worlds stocked with characters, the ways story characters are formed and deployed, and the ways those characters are positioned against/with/by the storyteller, allowing the storyteller’s identity to emerge. This article is an analysis of the relationship between the storyteller and the story world and the storyteller’s process of constructing an/other in order to position in relation to that other. Ultimately, I argue that identity emerges for the storyteller in the way she or he constructs characters in a story and then positions in relation to those characters. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. If critical theory is to challenge capitalism’s corrosive commodification of labor and nature, then it should renew a sense of labor as a real bodily power with an internal telos, along the lines of an Aristotelian normativity of praxis. Recent thought however either rejects normativity altogether, or pits normative praxis against labor uncritically reduced to its commodification. Habermas’s work provides an exemplary case of the latter. While he rightly found the ‘production paradigm’ of (...) normativity problematic, his acceptance of the reified form of labor as total led to a severe divorce of praxis from the emerging contents of the body and nature. Although Aristotle also separated praxis from poiesis, his thought nevertheless harbors views of their dialectical integration without falling into the problematic production paradigm. Here the normativity of praxis emerges from poiesis understood non-reductively as the form of the self-organizing body already transforming nature and itself toward higher interactions. (shrink)

If critical theory is to challenge capitalism’s corrosive commodification of labor and nature, then it should renew a sense of labor as a real bodily power with an internal telos, along the lines of an Aristotelian normativity of praxis. Recent thought however either rejects normativity altogether, or pits normative praxis against labor uncritically reduced to its commodification. Habermas’s work provides an exemplary case of the latter. While he rightly found the ‘production paradigm’ of normativity problematic, his acceptance of the reified (...) form of labor as total led to a severe divorce of praxis from the emerging contents of the body and nature. Although Aristotle also separated praxis from poiesis, his thought nevertheless harbors views of their dialectical integration without falling into the problematic production paradigm. Here the normativity of praxis emerges from poiesis understood non-reductively as the form of the self-organizing body already transforming nature and itself toward higher interactions. (shrink)

Reflective processing is a joint social action that develops in interaction. Using conversation analysis and discursive psychology, this article focuses on self-reflective turns of talk in group counselling for adults at risk of type 2 diabetes. We show how reflective processing unfolds in patterns of interaction, wherein group members take an observing, evaluating or interpreting position towards their own actions and experiences. Self-reflective talk is neither exclusively dependent on counsellors’ actions nor limited to the niches the counselling programme (...) structure offers. Self-reflective talk is one method of generating joint reflective processing. Such talk makes a topic available for discussion by connecting details of counselling with individuals’ experiences and enabling sharing. Self-reflective talk thus serves as a way for group members to participate in constructing a lifestyle problem, to invite or provide sharing of experiences and to display their orientation to the institutional task at hand. (shrink)

It is sometimes argued that the concept of the self is the unifying thread that ties together the rich diversity of philosophical and theological themes in Kierkegaard's works.1 In his conception of the self he provides us with a coherent and unified view of human existence. For Kierkegaard the self is not a static entity but a dynamic and unfolding reality, something I must strive to become. One is not a self but becomes a (...) class='Hi'>self as an ethico‐religious task to be actualized. The purpose of this paper is to outline Kierkegaard's anthropology of the self with particular emphasis on the ethical and religious dimensions of selfhood. I will first elucidate the structure and dynamic character of the self, and then will examine the dialectical development of the self in the ethical and religious stages of existence. Finally I will address the widespread criticism of Kierkegaard's conception of the self as being radically individualistic and asocial. (shrink)

This work is a collective reflection on the modern self as a narrative. Modernity as a metamorphic conglomeration of permeating discourses, new practices and institutional forms, a historical unfolding of centrifugal and centripetal discursive dynamics of regulation and normalization offers limitless grounds for a critical investigation. The modern self, both as the revelation of the inner self and as a reflection of the collective, arises from the dialogical interplay within the intersubjective communicative space of social discourse. (...) The bestiary proposed in this series of articles attempts to rethink the spectacle consisting of modern dichotomies by which the self is declined along ontological, metaphysical, and ethical premises: the real and the ideal, the said and the unsaid, the rational and the irrational, the bound and the free, the familiar and the exotic, the universal and the particular, self and world. The reader is therefore encouraged to engage in a multiple reading of the articles presented in this collection. As individual scholarly pieces of inquiry, these articles provide thoughtful insights into the inexhaustible topic of modernity and the modern subject-they tell stories of the past, the present, and of a prospective future. As academic works, however, they also reflect and/or unsettle disciplinary paradigms and scholarly practices, from which they acquire legitimacy and visibility; they conform, apply, reconfigure and/or experiment with new grounds by borrowing from an eclectic mix of various thinkers, their tools, and their axiomatic propositions that constitute their theoretical and critical apparatus. This exercise is ultimately an introspective journey in which we are placed not only as the spectator-the one who gazes through the bars-but also the spectacle-the beast subject to the gaze-finding itself in a predicament of which the subject, itself, is the architect. (shrink)

Before the twentieth century, the Universe was usually imagined as a large spatially extended thing unfolding in time. The past was fixed and the future was open; unfolding was conceived as an asymmetric process of coming into being. Relativity introduced a new vision in which space and time are presented together as a single four-dimensional manifold of events. That, together with the fact that the fundamental laws of our classical theories are symmetric in time, made understanding why the (...) past and future present themselves so differently in our experience one of the central challenges of physics. The last two centuries have seen a great deal of progress in understanding various of the so-called arrows of time: the thermodynamic arrow, the cosmological arrow, the arrow of knowledge or information. There remains an outstanding piece of this puzzle that has seen little progress, one that Roger Penrose described in his beautiful paper Singularities and Time-Asymmetry in 1979 as: “The arrow most difficult to comprehend … namely the feeling of relentless forward temporal progression, according to which potentialities seem to be transformed into actualities.”I will propose that the insight needed to resolve the problem involves taking into account that we are part of the universe and that any attempt to model it as a totality involves self-reference. I will argue specifically that self-reference, against the background of a thermodynamic gradient, creates an instability in an embedded agent’s ability to know the future or even treat it as a potential object of knowledge. That instability captures the sense in which the future remains for her perpetually open and the passage of time resolves openness into the fixity of fact. (shrink)

This chapter tracks the development of the concept of self-awareness (jikaku, 自覚) in the thought of the Japanese modern philosopher Nishida Kitarō (西田幾多郎) (Kitarō Nishida) (1870–1945), founder of the Kyoto School. Nishida’s oeuvre can be divided into distinct periods, from the 1910s to the 1940s until his passing, during which he thematized and focused on different issues. Nevertheless, self-awareness is a unifying theme throughout. In the chapter we trace how Nishida develops this concept through distinct periods in his (...) career. His initial focus upon pure experience gives way to his focus upon its articulation in reflection vis-à-vis intuition as the unfolding of the will. This then leads to his thematization of the place wherein judgment or propositional thought unfolds and the broader contextual place wherein that place is situated. That thematization of place, in turn, develops into a look at the world where we interact as historical and social bodies with others (nature, other people, etc.). Nishida understands self-awareness in accordance with each of these themes in the respective periods of his oeuvre. But common to all of them is how Nishida understands self-awareness as a self-mirroring – self-reflection as reflexivity – founded upon the premise assumed by the articulated image or object of awareness, a premise necessarily irreducible to, and in excess of, the image or object. This is the a priori that Nishida for the most part calls the “absolute nothing” (zettai mu, 絶対無). To explain this Nishida makes use of Josiah Royce’s notion of a self-representative system as well as Richard Dedekind’s notion of an infinite system in his set theory. On the basis of Nishida’s references to the mathematics of set theory, I further compare his understanding of self-awareness to Kurt Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems as well as to more recent mathematical theorists, influenced by Gödel, whose understanding of the infinite resonates with Nishida’s understanding of the absolute nothing as assumed by self-awareness. (shrink)

Truth, Rationality, and Self-Control incorporates work from seven previously published essays and five chapters of new material. Sometimes collections of this sort lack continuity. This is not the case with Hookway’s text. With only a few minor exceptions, the essays work well together, developing ideas in increments as the text unfolds. Although Hookway offers no single theme as the book’s project, his decision to focus on Charles Peirce’s notions of truth, rationality, and pragmatism indicates an investigation of Peirce’s overall (...) approach to inquiry. Specifically, he attends to all the features of human experience, from instinctive beliefs to logical constraints, that make scientific inquiry possible. What gives the book a feel of coherence and presence are Hookway’s persistence and penetrating style. He carefully pursues Peirce’s ideas among the manuscripts and published texts to find reasonable interpretations of even the most perplexing issues. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: An Unfolding DialogueDavid R. LoyPsychoanalysis and Buddhism: An Unfolding Dialogue. Edited by Jeremy D. Safran. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003, Pp. xvii + 443.In the burgeoning literature on Buddhism and psychoanalysis/psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: An Unfolding Dialogue stands out. True to its subtitle, the format is designed to encourage genuine dialogue. Following an excellent introduction by the editor, Jeremy D. Safran, all of (...) its nine chapters are by experienced therapists who are also committed to Buddhist practice; several of them are teachers within their respective traditions. Each chapter is followed by the commentary of an established psychoanalyst (many of them associated with the journal Psychoanalytic Dialogues), and after that there is a reply by the original chapter author. The conversations are given plenty of space to develop; several chapters are over fifty pages long. In most cases the commentators rise to the occasion, with sympathetic but trenchant interrogations. The result is a fascinating discussion that raises the interaction between Buddhism and psychology to a higher level of intensity and insight.Safran's introduction looks at the different cultural contexts of psychoanalysis and Buddhism. He focuses on their own internal tensions, especially a shared one between agnosticism and faith. Recent psychoanalysis has shifted from a rationalistic, ego-oriented approach toward a relational and constructivist understanding of [End Page 363] the multiple self, a perspective more open to various narratives. "It has become clear that psychoanalysis is not a science in the same sense that physics or chemistry are, but rather a secular form of spirituality. In some ways it functions to fill the void once filled by religion" (p. 2). This shift to a therapy of faith and commitment highlights a similar tension within Buddhism, for example between the rationalist approach of Nāgārjuna's Karikas and the devotionalism of Pure Land Buddhism. In contrast to the classical Freudian emphasis on the reality principle controlling the pleasure principle and the Mādhyamikas' radical deconstruction of all narratives, letting go of the need to understand and control can lead to awe and reverence in the face of life's mystery. The advantage of a comparison between psychoanalysis and Buddhism is that each can help the other avoid crystallizing into an orthodoxy that tends to lose its liberative power.Several of the contributors refer to Freud's recommendation that the analyst keep an "evenly-suspended attention," and they emphasize how their Buddhist practice helps them to do this. In chapter 4, "An Analyst's Surrender," Sara Weber describes a difficult case study that began to flourish when there was "a shift in the nature of holding." Instead of trying to "fix" the patient, she surrendered herself to deeper, lesser-known areas of her patient's being and her own. She refers to Lacan: although we need others as mirrors, there is always an element of illusion in any organized meaning we frame for ourselves. The solution is to employ models loosely, allowing one's therapeutic techniques as well as one's clients to be in flux. She concludes by emphasizing that the analyst's role as "holder" of the patient "is insufficient unless we see it as a special case of that more profound faith in being that is temporarily embodied in ourselves" (p. 189). In chapter 3, "The Dissolving of Dissolving Itself," Robert Langan offers a personal and phenomenological meditation that plays with multiple perspectives as a way to reflect on the "in-between," the openness that both Buddhism and psychoanalysis at their best encourage: keeping room in the analytic process for paradox and contradiction, for gaps and emptiness.In chapter 6, Barry Magrid eloquently defends the need for analytic work as well as Buddhist practice. "Too often, it seems that both students and teachers have mastered their pain but succumbed to their impulses, experienced a oneness with all beings but remained in conflict with their families, discovered the emptiness of the self but continued to abuse their authority, found peace on their cushions but not in their lives" (p. 257). Yet we should not conclude that Buddhism and analysis are concerned with different aspects of our lives. "Like psychoanalysis, Zen practice is a... (shrink)

Ayahuasca is a psychoactive beverage that is mostly used in ritualized settings (Santo Daime rituals, neo-shamanic rituals, and even do-it-yourself-rituals). It is a common practice in the investigated socio-cultural field to call these settings “healing rituals.” For this study, 15 people who underwent ayahuasca (self-)therapy for a particular disease like chronic pain, cancer, asthma, depression, alcohol abuse, or Hepatitis C were interviewed twice about their subjective concepts and beliefs on ayahuasca and healing. Qualitative data analysis revealed a variety of (...) motivational patterns, subjective effects, and user types. Most participants were convinced that ayahuasca had influenced their illness positively or improved their coping with their illness. More importantly, it had enhanced their well being in general. As a result, we concluded that the effects of ayahuasca should not be reduced to a pharmacological model. The substance should be conceptualized as a psychological catalyst that unfolds within different fields of sociocultural ideas. (shrink)

To take up only the most beautiful, as yet to be made manifest in the realm of time and space, there are angels. These messengers who never remain enclosed in a place, who are also never immobile .... Endlessly reopening the enclosure of the universe, of universes, identities, the unfolding of actions, of history.The angel is that which unceasingly passes through the envelope(s) or container(s), goes from one side to the other, reworking every deadline, changing every decision, thwarting all (...) repetition ... they come' to herald the arrival of a new birth, a new morning. (Irigaray, ESD, 15)In the absence of civil laws positively defining their real rights and duties, the only criteria women have to refer to are subjective ones....But as long as there are no laws or rules which all women-and all men-may refer to and invoke when making their decisions, there can be no democracy, however attractive the immediate allegiance of a collectivity to a proposition may be. (Irigaray, ILTY, 1-2). (shrink)

With “The Zadeh Scenario,” Finder offers us a gift…a rich and thoughtful first-person account of the gradual unfolding of a specific ethics consultation conducted by a specific ethics consultant in a specific context. This is not your average case report, stripped to the bare facts and devoid of the ambiguity of real-time human interactions. It’s also not simply an example of thick description, offering the reader a detailed account of the context out of which an abstract ethical dilemma has (...) emerged, with the ethics consultant describing all from a distance, above the fray. What Finder offers and models for us instead is something entirely new and different. He offers us a case narrative into which he has chosen to place himself squarely and explicitly. And in the spirit of “peer review” he has generously revealed his own inner dialogue in response to twists and turns in the case, sharing his personal reflections as events unfolded, and his musings about various actions he took and choices he made in his role. By inviting us to ponder his story about the story of the case, he generously extends a gift to us: the opportunity to reflect on his—and therefore our own—consultation practice, and the opportunity to try a new kind of peer review. (shrink)

When faced with intertemporal choices, which have consequences that unfold over time, we often discount the future, preferring smaller immediate rewards often at the expense of long-term benefits. How psychologically connected one feels to one’s future self-influences such temporal discounting. Psychological connectedness consists in sharing psychological properties with past or future selves, but connectedness comes in degrees. If one feels that one is not psychologically connected to one’s future self, one views that self like a different person (...) and is less likely to wait for the future reward. Increasing perceived psychological connectedness to one’s future self may lead to more far-sighted decisions. Episodic prospection may help in this regard. Episodic prospection is our ability to ‘pre-experience’ the future by mentally simulating it, drawing on information from episodic memory and other sources. Episodic memory and prospection are thought to involve a special form of consciousness, which underpins the capacity to appreciate the connection between one’s past, present, and future selves. Simulating the future self through prospection may increase felt psychological connectedness and support future-oriented decision-making. Yet this is where a puzzle arises. The imagery of episodic memory and prospection is perspectival: often one views the visualised scenario from a detached perspective, seeing oneself from-the-outside as if viewing another person. The aim of this paper is to characterise how the perspectival imagery of prospection relates to psychological connectedness, and to show that even though such imagery involves a detached perspective it can still be used to help reward one’s future self. (shrink)

This paper establishes that the contemporary figures of organizational leadership are at best excellent examples of 'dealership' characterized by high skills-competence and low values-commitment. The author points out that managerial and organizational psychology for leadership is yet to grapple with the most fundamental of all the themes: the complete model of man which places the spirit-core of SELF in the centre. The paper upholds the classical Indian concept of wisdom leadership and introduces the rajarshi model of the leader as (...) the very embodiment of satya and rita. The author then dwells on the nature of'rishi-consciousness' and elaborates on the 'rishi' process which leads to the unfoldment of unitive SELF-awareness or ekatmanubhuti. Speaking on behalf of one of the most enduring civilizations of the world, the author asserts that wisdom leadership comes from the ability to perceive the indivisible whole and this ability is not a function of the thinking, reasoning mind but of the intuitive, spiritual mind. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.1 (2005) 27-29 [Access article in PDF] Community, Consciousness, and Dynamic Self-Understanding Marya Schechtman Keywords consciousness, unconscious, self-understanding, embedded consciousness, personal identity I would like to thank both of my commentators for their generous and insightful comments. After an extremely clear and accurate summary of my position, Grant Gillett suggests that it should be supplemented with a recognition that the self-understanding I (...) describe is rooted in culture and social practice. I agree wholeheartedly with the need for such a supplement. In this paper, I try to switch from the emphasis on contents of consciousness found in traditional developments of the Lockean insight to an emphasis on the fact of reflective self-consciousness, which I think better captures what seems right in Locke's view. My suggestion is that we take up Locke's claim that the essential feature of personhood is awareness of oneself as a self, and understand this self-awareness in terms of an implicit demand for intelligibility in one's conscious experience. Considering oneself as a self requires that one view one's current state not as a free-standing moment that might or might not be related in appropriate ways to the states of a freestanding past or future self, but rather as part of an unfolding life story. This involves, among other things, an acknowledgment of our obligation to questions such as: "Why do I feel this way?" or "Why am I doing this?" Being a self involves holding oneself accountable for what one is doing and feeling. In this case the accountability is to oneself.The possibility of being accountable to oneself obviously depends, however, on a cultural context in which there is such a thing as accountability to others. It is only against a backdrop where others may call for an explanation of one's behavior or speech—and where not all explanations count as legitimate—that one can demand intelligibility from oneself. Children must be socialized into personhood by learning the right questions to ask about how their lives hang together, and what kinds of answers count as answers to those questions. Person, in Locke's sense, is a normative and forensic term, and is therefore inherently bound up with public standards. My point here is the somewhat limited claim that the attitude toward our own lives and experience, which is self-constituting, giving us a sense of ourselves as persisting beings, will involve this kind of accountability to oneself. I agree, however, that the tools for achieving this sort of attitude come in with mother's milk and early socialization. A fuller development of my claim thus [End Page 27] requires much more discussion of the role of culture and society in self-constitution. I begin such a discussion in my Constitution of Selves (1996), and hope to take it up in more detail in future work.Markus Heinimaa (2005) wonders if I have gone far enough in rejecting traditional approaches to the problem of personal identity. Although I say that the perceiver-self is not a homunculus, I do talk about it as if it is an entity, and about the unconscious as if it is a place inside this entity where psychological states can hide. Heinimaa's suggestion is that both the perceiver self and the unconscious are unnecessary complications, and that I can achieve my goal without them. Locke's insight can be better (or at least as well) captured, he suggests, with a kinetic view of the person as a process of self-understanding. These challenges are well taken. Although I cannot fully answer them here, perhaps I can clarify my position somewhat, and in so doing motivate some of my assumptions.I begin with my assumption of unconscious mental states and processes. My discussion starts from the idea that there are considerations pulling us toward the claim that the person must be identified with consciousness, and also considerations pulling us toward the view that the person must be more than conscious experience. The first set of considerations is laid out in some detail in... (shrink)

It has been widely theorized and empirically proven that self-regulated learning is related to more desired learning outcomes, e.g., higher performance in transfer tests. Research has shifted to understanding the role of SRL during learning, such as the strategies and learning activities, learners employ and engage in the different SRL phases, which contribute to learning achievement. From a methodological perspective, measuring SRL using think-aloud data has been shown to be more insightful than self-report surveys as it helps better (...) in determining the link between SRL activities and learning achievements. Educational process mining on the basis of think-aloud data enables a deeper understanding and more fine-grained analyses of SRL processes. Although students’ SRL is highly contextualized, there are consistent findings of the link between SRL activities and learning outcomes pointing to some consistency of the processes that support learning. However, past studies have utilized differing approaches which make generalization of findings between studies investigating the unfolding of SRL processes during learning a challenge. In the present study with 29 university students, we measured SRL via concurrent think-aloud protocols in a pre-post design using a similar approach from a previous study in an online learning environment during a 45-min learning session, where students learned about three topics and wrote an essay. Results revealed significant learning gain and replication of links between SRL activities and transfer performance, similar to past research. Additionally, temporal structures of successful and less successful students indicated meaningful differences associated with both theoretical assumptions and past research findings. In conclusion, extending prior research by exploring SRL patterns in an online learning setting provides insights to the replicability of previous findings from online learning settings and new findings show that it is important not only to focus on the repertoire of SRL strategies but also on how and when they are used. (shrink)

The central questions that guide phenomenological investigations of daydreaming can be formulated as follows: What must consciousness be if it is to be capable of daydreaming? How does daydreaming relate to other modes of experience, especially mind-wandering, lucid and non-lucid dreaming, and phantasizing? What are the eidetic features and constitutive functions of daydreaming in the overall life of consciousness? My goal in this chapter is to show that a phenomenological analysis of daydreaming can make an important contribution to the cross-disciplinary (...) science of daydreaming precisely because it directly addresses these fundamental questions. The phenomenological analysis of daydreaming developed here suggests the following: (1) The life of consciousness is characterized by the intertwining of sleep and wakefulness. Just as there is wakefulness in sleep, so also is there sleep in wakefulness. (2) The life of consciousness is not confined to the here and now. Besides those experiences which unfold from the present standpoint, there is also another group of experiences that can be qualified as absorbed, or displaced, experiences. (3) A phenomenological analysis of daydreaming brings to light how different modes of experience are characterized by different modes of self-awareness. (shrink)

This paper contributes to a debate that has arisen in the recent self-knowledge literature between agentialists and empiricists. According to agentialists, in order for one to know what one believes, desires, and intends, rational agency needs to be exercised in centrally significant cases. Empiricists disagree: while they acknowledge the importance of rationality in general, they maintain that when it comes to self- knowledge, empirical justification, or warrant, is always sufficient. In what follows, I defend agentialism. I argue that (...) if we could only come to know our judgement-sensitive attitudes in the way described by empiricism, then we would be self-estranged from them when we acquire knowledge of them. We would relate to our own attitudes as if we were watching the movies of our inner lives unfold. Given that this is not the position we typically inhabit, with respect to our judgement-sensitive attitudes, I conclude that empiricism fails. This is the self-estrangement argument against empiricism. I then consider a response that Brie Gertler, an empiricist, offers to the objection that empiricism fatally portrays us ‘mere observers of a passing cognitive show’ (2016, p. 1). I argue that her response is unsuccessful. Hence, we should endorse agentialism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.1 (2005) 27-29 [Access article in PDF] Community, Consciousness, and Dynamic Self-Understanding Marya Schechtman Keywords consciousness, unconscious, self-understanding, embedded consciousness, personal identity I would like to thank both of my commentators for their generous and insightful comments. After an extremely clear and accurate summary of my position, Grant Gillett suggests that it should be supplemented with a recognition that the self-understanding I (...) describe is rooted in culture and social practice. I agree wholeheartedly with the need for such a supplement. In this paper, I try to switch from the emphasis on contents of consciousness found in traditional developments of the Lockean insight to an emphasis on the fact of reflective self-consciousness, which I think better captures what seems right in Locke's view. My suggestion is that we take up Locke's claim that the essential feature of personhood is awareness of oneself as a self, and understand this self-awareness in terms of an implicit demand for intelligibility in one's conscious experience. Considering oneself as a self requires that one view one's current state not as a free-standing moment that might or might not be related in appropriate ways to the states of a freestanding past or future self, but rather as part of an unfolding life story. This involves, among other things, an acknowledgment of our obligation to questions such as: "Why do I feel this way?" or "Why am I doing this?" Being a self involves holding oneself accountable for what one is doing and feeling. In this case the accountability is to oneself.The possibility of being accountable to oneself obviously depends, however, on a cultural context in which there is such a thing as accountability to others. It is only against a backdrop where others may call for an explanation of one's behavior or speech—and where not all explanations count as legitimate—that one can demand intelligibility from oneself. Children must be socialized into personhood by learning the right questions to ask about how their lives hang together, and what kinds of answers count as answers to those questions. Person, in Locke's sense, is a normative and forensic term, and is therefore inherently bound up with public standards. My point here is the somewhat limited claim that the attitude toward our own lives and experience, which is self-constituting, giving us a sense of ourselves as persisting beings, will involve this kind of accountability to oneself. I agree, however, that the tools for achieving this sort of attitude come in with mother's milk and early socialization. A fuller development of my claim thus [End Page 27] requires much more discussion of the role of culture and society in self-constitution. I begin such a discussion in my Constitution of Selves (1996), and hope to take it up in more detail in future work.Markus Heinimaa (2005) wonders if I have gone far enough in rejecting traditional approaches to the problem of personal identity. Although I say that the perceiver-self is not a homunculus, I do talk about it as if it is an entity, and about the unconscious as if it is a place inside this entity where psychological states can hide. Heinimaa's suggestion is that both the perceiver self and the unconscious are unnecessary complications, and that I can achieve my goal without them. Locke's insight can be better (or at least as well) captured, he suggests, with a kinetic view of the person as a process of self-understanding. These challenges are well taken. Although I cannot fully answer them here, perhaps I can clarify my position somewhat, and in so doing motivate some of my assumptions.I begin with my assumption of unconscious mental states and processes. My discussion starts from the idea that there are considerations pulling us toward the claim that the person must be identified with consciousness, and also considerations pulling us toward the view that the person must be more than conscious experience. The first set of considerations is laid out in some detail in... (shrink)

Theoretically, this study is framed within the semiotic tradition of communication theory, which theorizes communication as the intersubjective mediation by signs. Methodologically, this study is guided by Peirce’s semiotic ideas, especially his writing about the commens and commind, or the sign and the object, and the power of a community as the final interpretant performing the process of sensemaking. Results showed how the survivors of a natural calamity symbolically interacted with such calamity, and how this led to a reformation of (...) the way they view themselves and the world. The survivors’ symbolic images captured in narratives, in sketches and drawings, and in poetry helped them to reframe their sense of self and their worldview by believing in common sense and intuition, and by valuing the power of courage, initiative, preparedness, hope, and resilience. An unfortunate irony emerged in their symbolic interaction with the disaster such that their sinning and self-inflicted blame made them think they were worthy of punishment. Nonetheless, this unfortunate irony will change if the survivors continue to reflect on their civic roles, interrogate their environmental and political contexts, and expand their awareness and social consciousness. As these unfold, the survivors will be able to accomplish empowerment, emancipation, and an independent mind. (shrink)

In this text I suggest the possibility of the strategic-philosophical closeness between Husserl and Kracauer,by closely reading Husserl’s Third Logical Investigation and Kracauer’s essay «The Mass Ornament». Although the both thinkers come from the traditionally different and often mutually opposing philosophical schools, neither of them simply dismisses or crosses out the position they criticize. To the contrary, I propose that both thinkers exaggerate the seeming self-evidentiality of the phenomenon they analyze. In the Third Logical Investigation Husserl rearticulates the whole-part (...) relation as it is conceived within the formal ontology and psychologistic logic. The connection between parts is available to us only as the relational tension, which is «accumulated» in the mutuality between the irreparably self-enclosed parts. Fusion is therefore a modification in the unfolding of the relation between parts, where every «term in relation» conditions another one through its own positional completion, while being conditioned by another term. The phenomenological analysis, which is conducted through the intensification of the fixity of the above-mentioned poles, is «measured» by the inability of these poles to be self-evidentially isolated and subsequently reconciled. In the second part of my essay I pay attention to Kracauer’s suggestion that the vitality of the mass ornament is reflected in the contextual insignificance of its parts. Kracauer addresses the problem of mass depersonalization through the close and sarcastic inspection of the role of abstract rationality in the capitalist mode of production. This close inspection adopts the strategy of exaggeration, where the critical distance must not be considered beyond its ability to disclose the selfobscuring apparatus of the mass performances and spectacles. This disclosure, as Kracuaer suggests,must therapeutically lead through the center of the mass ornament, and not away from it. (shrink)

In this text I suggest the possibility of the strategic-philosophical closeness between Husserl and Kracauer,by closely reading Husserl’s Third Logical Investigation and Kracauer’s essay «The Mass Ornament».Although the both thinkers come from the traditionally different and often mutually opposing philosophical schools, neither of them simply dismisses or crosses out the position they criticize. To the contrary, I propose that both thinkers exaggerate the seeming self-evidentiality of the phenomenon they analyze. In the Third Logical Investigation Husserl rearticulates the whole-part relation (...) as it is conceived within the formal ontology and psychologistic logic. The connection between parts is available to us only as the relational tension, which is «accumulated» in the mutuality between the irreparably self-enclosed parts. Fusion is therefore a modification in the unfolding of the relation between parts, where every «term in relation» conditions another one through its own positional completion, while being conditioned by another term. The phenomenological analysis, which is conducted through the intensification of the fixity of the above-mentioned poles, is «measured» by the inability of these poles to be self-evidentially isolated and subsequently reconciled. In the second part of my essay I pay attention to Kracauer’s suggestion that the vitality of the mass ornament is reflected in the contextual insignificance of its parts. Kracauer addresses the problem of mass depersonalization through the close and sarcastic inspection of the role of abstract rationality in the capitalist mode of production. This close inspection adopts the strategy of exaggeration, where the critical distance must not be considered beyond its ability to disclose the selfobscuring apparatus of the mass performances and spectacles. This disclosure, as Kracauer suggests,must therapeutically lead through the center of the mass ornament, and not away from it. (shrink)

My focus is the possibility of a unitary account of freedom that respects the major insights of both Kant and Hegel. I use Hegel’s remark from §22 in the Introduction to the Rechtsphilosophie as my central text. The argument unfolds over three parts: first, I use the passage to unpack key aspects of Hegel’s view of freedom, including its self-generating nature; second, I show how the passage can be read as a criticism of Kant; and third, I reposition Kant’s (...) view to elude this criticism. I conclude by suggesting that Hegel’s remark from §22 is better read as a criticism of empiricism that Kant would also endorse. Any significant differences between their respective accounts of freedom will thus lie further downstream from this broader unity. (shrink)

Induction arrangements are implemented in schools all over the world to support beginning teachers (BTs) (novices) in gradually growing into their profession. The aim of this study is to gain more insight into two key psychological processes involved in the work of a qualified beginning teacher, namely perceived stress and self-efficacy. This unfolding is necessary to find a path of influence to lead the way to meaningful support interventions. Support in the form of induction arrangements is hypothesised to (...) decrease perceived stress and to increase self-efficacy and, thus, decrease stress outcomes. To test our hypotheses 30 BTs and their school-based educators, working in 13 different schools, were surveyed. The analyses revealed that stress causes and stress outcomes are indeed interrelated and that self-efficacy affects this relationship in a mediating way. However, besides decreasing a beginning teachers? perceived lack of learning opportunities, no other influences of induction arrangements were obtained. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kant’s Theory of SelfApaar KumarArthur Melnick. Kant’s Theory of Self. New York-London: Routledge, 2009. Pp. viii + 186. Cloth, $118.00.Melnick interprets the Kantian self from the first-person perspective as real abiding intellectual action. It unfolds in time but does not arise in inner or outer attending. Hence, it is neither a noumenal entity nor Kantian intuitable substance. Melnick thinks that his interpretation not only clarifies Kant’s (...) arguments in the Paralogisms of the first Critique, but also illuminates Kant’s positive theory of self.Melnick argues that a thought is inchoate, unformed, and unsettled until the thinking self as intellectual marshaling action brings it into focus and “coalesces” around it a series of related but out-of-focus thoughts ready to replace the focal thought if necessary. This marshaling action is temporal because it shifts/adjusts (“accompanies”) progressive attending but cannot be intuited in time. Its shifting/adjusting constitutes its only reality, for it would have to be in objective time if it were intrinsically real, which Kant’s transcendental idealism does not allow.As intellectual marshaling action, the thinking self cannot know itself as simple substantial entity. Instead, it knows itself as always-subject-and-never-predicate because it is constant and never swallowed up by particular thoughts, and as indivisible because its self-awareness as marshaling action in a whole thought is not the sum of its self-awareness in each part of that thought. Self-consciousness is a structural possibility of this marshaling action. It occurs when the subject has to report its thoughts, which it does by distancing-itself-from-but-still-encompassing its thought/s in reflection.The same marshaling action makes for the identity of the cognizing subject by constantly regulating thinking. Thinking is “proneness” to standardize or regulate. If I am unifying/regulating a synthesis of outer apprehension (empirical-object-dog) through my prior grasp of a thought or rule (empirical-dog-concept), I am self-identical in empirical apperception. If I am unifying/regulating outer or inner attending per se according to pure rules of space and time in a synthesis of outer apprehension, then I am self-identical in pure apperception.In the synthesis of inner apprehension, I can be self-identical only if I, as intellectual marshaling action, set representations of inner sense in time. Personal identity is the extension of this identity. It is to be construed as a “thin” capacity contingent upon the fulfillment of its activation conditions, rather than as a metaphysical entity. Given that time-consciousness [End Page 535] demands outer bodily representations in Kant, and bracketing his abstraction from the body, self-identical persons must necessarily be construed as embodied. Finally, contra the rationalists, intellectual marshaling action is neither material nor separable from material reality, and our capacity for such action relates immediately to the capacity of material things to affect us.The problem with this argument, which Melnick admits Kant himself never articulated, is that at key moments, it is neither a comprehensive interpretation of Kant (especially since Melnick relies principally on the first Critique, but not exhaustively so: for instance, he does not discuss the important distinction between the analytic and synthetic unity of apperception, etc.), nor a stand-alone first-person account of the self.First, Melnick’s use of several Kant-independent spatial analogies to explain crucial mental concepts is disconcerting: to some extent, self as “marshaling” action, consciousness as “awning” that envelops affection from outside, and (most obscurely) self-conscious subjects ostensibly require reflection to “mirror” a thought into a verbal report (56–57), but it remains unclear what mirroring into involves.Second, Melnick uncritically accepts Kant’s obscure equation of the unities of act and consciousness (7–8, 97), and hence sidesteps the thorny problem of relating/distinguishing activity and consciousness. Since he categorically interprets self as activity, Melnick appears to presuppose the priority of activity over consciousness. But this needs justification, which, in turn, requires further investigating the relationship between attention, consciousness, and intellectual marshaling action.Finally, although Kant never says this, Melnick offers a two-step argument that we possess a capacity for personhood, which seems rather unconvincing... (shrink)

From Aristotle to the present, memory has been grasped as a trace or impression of lost reality – bridging physiological experience and consciousness. Philosophers have vainly sought the nature of this bridge. The present-day physiologizing/naturalizing of consciousness is not resolving their congenital continuity, in which the very existence and practice of life is rooted. We have to change our approach. The Aristotelian congenital ties between memory and temporality, acquire crucial significance in our primogenital ontopoiesis of life. It reveals memory to (...) be the factor that carries this coalescence and the becoming of life itself. This can be the fruit only of the generative springs of life, first phenomenology/philosophy, the ontopoietic logos of life. In this collection we explore memory in the constitution of reality: rememorizing and interpretation, consciousness/action, facts/imagination, history/myths, self-realization/metamorphosis. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen's Logic of Pure Knowledge and G. W. F. Hegel's Science of Logic each use in their way the means of thought of negation and contradiction to unfold the philosophical dynamic: a fragile interplay between self-endangerment and self-preservation of thought. Here, the proximity and difference of the two authors are extended. The proximity lies in methodological negativism. The difference is in the significance of the principle of continuity. According to Cohen and Hegel as well, thinking proceeds exclusively, (...) as Kant called it, synthetically. The exclusion of contradiction, limited to analytical judgments, has only marginal significance. But the commonality does not eliminate the differences. As Hegel puts it, contradiction is a principle of mediation and finally results in "self-dissolution"; it carries within itself a direction of logical "reconciliation." Per Cohen, contradiction is a principle of "annihilation" of approaches to a determination that threatens any form of "identity." The turn Hegel put in contradiction itself, regarding in it a unity of positivity and negativity, has no direct counterpart in Cohen. Nevertheless, for him, too, the "judgment of contradiction" becomes the active basis of all cognitive thought. By exercising a contradiction-destroying "activity," the judgment of contradiction "protects," indeed "generates," the real possibility of cognition. The annihilation of the non-identical sets free the fundamental "judgment of origin" with which cognition finds its beginning. The principle of continuity taken over from Leibniz corresponds to it. Just this principle has now again no direct correspondence with Hegel. (shrink)

The ability of the mind to conceptualize what is not present is essential. It allows us to reason counterfactually about what might have happened had events unfolded differently or had another course of action been taken. It allows us to think about what might happen – to perform 'Gedankenexperimente' (thought experiments) – before we act. However, the cognitive and neural mechanisms mediating this ability are poorly understood. We suggest that the frontopolar cortex (FPC) keeps track of and evaluates alternative choices (...) (what we might have done), whereas the anterior lateral prefrontal cortex (alPFC) compares simulations of possible future scenarios (what we might do) and evaluates their reward values. Together, these brain regions support the construction of suppositional scenarios. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the relationship between bodily experiences in dreams and the sleeping, physical body. I question the popular view that dreaming is a naturally and frequently occurring real-world example of cranial envatment. This view states that dreams are functionally disembodied states: in a majority of dreams, phenomenal experience, including the phenomenology of embodied selfhood, unfolds completely independently of external and peripheral stimuli and outward movement. I advance an alternative and more empirically plausible view of dreams as weakly (...) phenomenally-functionally embodied states. The view predicts that bodily experiences in dreams can be placed on a continuum with bodily illusions in wakefulness. It also acknowledges that there is a high degree of variation across dreams and different sleep stages in the degree of causal coupling between dream imagery, sensory input, and outward motor activity. Furthermore, I use the example of movement sensations in dreams and their relation to outward muscular activity to develop a predictive processing account. I propose that movement sensations in dreams are associated with a basic and developmentally early kind of bodily self-sampling. This account, which affords a central role to active inference, can then be broadened to explain other aspects of self- and world-simulation in dreams. Dreams are world-simulations centered on the self, and important aspects of both self- and world-simulation in dreams are closely linked to bodily self-sampling, including muscular activity, illusory own-body perception, and vestibular orienting in sleep. This is consistent with cognitive accounts of dream generation, in which long-term beliefs and expectations, as well as waking concerns and memories play an important role. What I add to this picture is an emphasis on the real-body basis of dream imagery. This offers a novel perspective on the formation of dream imagery and suggests new lines of research. (shrink)

Imagination is the art of exploring beyond the depths of one’s body. Imagination allows one to peek into the void to realize the true existence of its self and feel the existence of eternity. The experience of imagination is a subjective experience of one’s own consciousness and it is this experience makes the experiencer worthy. Creation and creativity are the end aspects of imagination and unfold the hidden mysteries of the cosmos. This essay is a trip across the cosmic (...) energy that creates the self for experiencing its self - a first-hand experience through the virtuosity of imagination. (shrink)

Sebastian Rödl’s 2018 book articulates and unfolds the thought that judgment’s self-consciousness is identical with its objectivity. This view is laid forth in a Hegelian spirit, against the spirit of Kant’s merely formal or transcendental idealism. I review Rödl’s central theses and then offer a criticism of his reading of Kant. I hold that we can agree with Rödl that self-consciousness is identical with objectivity (though only in a ‘formal’ sense). We can also agree with Rödl that this (...) identity enables us to see the completeness and the incompleteness of judgment as two sides of one coin. And, it is not necessary to reject the formality or ‘emptiness’ of Kant’s ‘I think’ in order to establish these points. Indeed, the virtues of these theses flows directly from such notions in Kant. And, because Rödl need not reject the central features of Kant’s formal idealism, he also need not locate them as the source of the need for a turn to Hegel. (shrink)