This article is devoted to the description of the experience associated with listening to a sound. In the first part, we describe the method we used to gather descriptions of auditory experience and to analyse these descriptions. This work of explicitation and analysis has enabled us to identify a threefold generic structure of this experience, depending on whether the attention of the subject is directed towards the event which is at the source of the sound, the sound in (...) itself, considered independently from its source, the felt sound. In the second part of the article, we describe this structure. The third part is devoted to a discussion of these results and the paths they open up in various fields of theoretical and applied research. (shrink)

Context: The use of first-person micro-phenomenological interviews and their productive interaction with third-person physiological data is a challenging and pressing issue in order to offer an effective and fruitful application of Varela’s neurophenomenological hypothesis. Problem: We aim at offering a generative method of analysis of first-person micro-phenomenological interviews using third-person physiological data. Our challenge is to describe this generative first-person analysis with the third-person physiological framework rather than put Varela’s hypothesis into (...) practice in a generative way (as we did in another paper. Method: The present contribution is a first pioneering study as far as the exposition of such an interactive generative methodology is concerned. It is also a new issue insofar as it deals with a case study, surprise in depression, that has not been thoroughly dealt with so far, either in philosophy or in psychopathology. Results: We show that the analysis of first-person data is an intrinsic generative one, insofar as new refined categories and multifarious circular micro- and macro-processes were discovered in the very process of analyzing. They provide the initial structural generic third-person description of surprise inherited both from philosophical phenomenological a priori categories and from the experimental startle setting with a refined micro-segmentation of the dynamic of the experience. Implications: Our article could be of interest to neurophenomenologists looking for an effective application and to researchers in quest of a method of analysis of first-person data. The present limitations are due to the still preliminary data-results we need to complete. Constructivist content: The article is directly linked to Varela’s neurophenomenological program and aims at extending and reforming it with a cardio-phenomenological approach. Keywords: First-person micro-phenomenological interviews, surprise, generative analysis of first-person data, depression, cardio-phenomenology, generative categories. (shrink)

The recent publication of The New Wittgenstein signals the arrival of a distinctive "therapeutic" reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein"s philosophical enterprise. As announced in its Preface, this collection presents the "nonsense" of philosophy as the subject of Wittgenstein"s therapeutic work. The simple, plain nonsense of many philosophical remarks is revealed under the scrutiny of Wittgenstein"s investigations, according to this interpretation, leading us to see that such remarks "fail to make any claim at all" (Crary 6). This view of Wittgenstein"s use of (...) "nonsense" as a term of criticism begins with the work of Stanley Cavell, on this account, and has extended more recently to work on a wide area of Wittgenstein"s concerns, elevating "nonsense" to a central position in his philosophy. This paper argues that, in at least one case of Wittgenstein"s talk of nonsense, this "therapeutic reading" (Crary 7) oversimplifies the subtlety of Wittgenstein"s writing. Indeed, one of the most prominent cases of "nonsense" in the later Wittgenstein concerns the remark "I know I am in pain". Though Wittgenstein repeatedly treats this remark as nonsense, this treatment is not final in his philosophy of psychology. Rather, though his rich discussion in the later manuscripts of the indeterminacy of psychological judgments, the relation of these judgments to knowledge, and the role of first-person psychological descriptions, Wittgenstein is able to find what sense a remark such as "I know I am in pain" might perhaps have. "I know I am in pain" may be called nonsense, but this is not the last word on the matter in Wittgenstein"s text: as Cavell says, ""it makes no sense to say these things" (in the way we think it does)" (Cavell 70). Wittgenstein is able to find what sense our remarks of first person psychological knowledge might have, contrary to what the therapeutic reading in The New Wittgenstein would have us suppose. Therefore, at least in one case, the therapeutic reading of Wittgenstein goes wrong. (shrink)

The first-person perspective is a challenge to naturalism. Naturalistic theories are relentlessly third-personal. The first-person perspective is, well, first-personal; it is the perspective from which one thinks of oneself as oneself* without the aid of any third-person name, description, demonstrative or other referential device. The exercise of the capacity to think of oneself in this first-personal way is the necessary condition of all our self-knowledge, indeed of all our self-consciousness. As important as (...) the first-person perspective is, many philosophers have not appreciated the force of the data from the first-person perspective, and suppose that the first-person perspective presents no particular problems for the naturalizing philosopher. For example, Ned Block commented, “It is of course [phenomenal] consciousness rather than...self-consciousness that has seemed such a scientific mystery.” And David Chalmers says that self-consciousness is one of those psychological states that “pose no deep metaphysical enigmas.”. (shrink)

This paper explores Wittgenstein's attempts to explain the peculiarities of the first-person use of 'believe' that manifest themselves in Moore's paradox, discussed in, Part II, section x. An utterance of the form 'p and I do not believe that p' is a kind of contradiction, for the second conjunct is not, as it might appear, just a description of my mental state, but an expression of my belief that not-p, contradicting the preceding expression of my belief that (...) p. Thus, 'I believe that p' is just a stylistic variant of 'p'; the word 'believe' doesn't seem to have a substantial role to play in such an utterance. Following Wittgenstein, I discuss why there could not be a first-person present-tense use of the word that was more akin to its use in the third person: why it is impossible to describe one's own current beliefs in a detached manner without thereby expressing them. In the final section, I try to develop Wittgenstein's suggestion that the non-epistemic authority we have regarding the contents of our beliefs can be clarified by considering its link with intention and action. (shrink)

Wide agreement exists that self-ascriptions that one would express with the first-person pronoun differ in kind from those one would express with other self-designating expressions such as proper names and definite descriptions. At least some first-person self-ascriptions, many argue, are nonaccidental---that is, they involve no self-identification, and hence in making them one cannot accidentally misidentify the subject of the ascription. I examine the support for this claim throughout the literature, paying particular attention to Sydney Shoemaker's proposal (...) that self-ascriptions are nonaccidental in virtue of being immune to error through misidentification relative to the first-person pronoun. According to Shoemaker, such immunity results from the special way in which one is introspectively aware of the psychological property or state ascribed, a way that leaves no room for questions to arise as to whether oneself is its bearer. I contend that though it may seem from the point of view of consciousness that we are directly and immediately aware of the states of our bodies and minds as our own, both theoretical and empirical considerations strongly suggests that we have no such direct awareness. Proprioception and introspection prove in the end to be better described as types of informed, conscious self-interpretation. Taking inspiration from Dennett, Rosenthal, and Nozick, I offer the naive proposal as an alternative that explains all self-ascriptions in terms of one's relying upon a battery of commonsense self-specifying beliefs to interpret both which state or property one has and who has it. As a result, first-person self-ascriptions differ from others only in degree and not in kind, and self-misidentification always remains a possibility---even when self-ascribing properties with the first-person pronoun. (shrink)

In The Varieties of Reference, Gareth Evans describes the acquisition of beliefs about one’s beliefs in the following way: ‘I get myself in a position to answer the question whether I believe that p by putting into operation whatever procedure I have for answering the question whether p.’ In this paper I argue that Evans’s remark can be used to explain first person authority if it is supplemented with the following consideration: Holding on to the content of a (...) belief and ‘prefixing’ it with ‘I believe that’ is as easy as it is to hold on to the contents of one’s thoughts when making an inference. We do not, usually, have the problem, in going, for example, from ‘p’ and ‘q’ to ‘p and q’, that one of our thought contents gets corrupted. Self-ascription of belief by way of Evans’s procedure is based on the same capacity to retain and re-deploy thought contents and therefore should enjoy a similar degree of authority. However, is Evans’s description exhaustive of all authoritative self-ascription of belief? Christopher Peacocke has suggested that in addition to Evans’s procedure there are two more relevant ways of self-ascribing belief. I argue that both methods can be subsumed under Evans’s procedure. (shrink)

Recent social psychology is skeptical about self-knowledge. Philosophers, on the other hand, have produced a new account of the source of the authority of self-ascriptions. On this account, it is not descriptive accuracy but authorship which funds the authority of one's self-ascriptions. The resulting view seems to ensure that self-ascriptions are authoritative, despite evidence of one's fallibility. However, a new wave of psychological studies presents a powerful challenge to the authorship account. This research suggests that one can author one's attitudes, (...) but one's self- ascriptions may lack authority. I present this new challenge from social psychology and use it to argue that first-person authority is agential authority: one's self-ascriptions are authoritative, in part anyway, because they are reliable expressions of those attitudes that govern further choices and behavior. (shrink)

Physicalistic theories of psychology are a classic case of scientific imperialism: the explanatory capacity of physics, both with respect to its methods and to its domain, is taken to extend beyond the traditional realm of physics, and into that of psychology. I argue in this paper that this particular imperialistic venture has failed. Contemporary psychology uses methods not modelled on those of physics, embracing first-personal methodology where physics is strictly impersonal. I make the case that whether or not scientific (...) imperialism is in general harmful, in this instance naturalists who reject first philosophy should give up physicalist imperialism. Using only general principles from the philosophy of logic plus accepted physicalist criteria of identity, I show that first-personal psychology embodies a minor but fruitful increase in expressive strength compared to impersonal psychology: the ability to distinguish descriptively indiscriminable posits. (shrink)

Subjects have various ways of thinking about themselves. Here are three examples: a subject can think of herself under an appropriate description (the hiker), d.

I defend the thesis that identification-free self-reference is immune to error through mis-identification because even though self-reference and self-identification are distinct, they are not separable. This provides a critique and a reductio of Carol Rovane’s neo-Lockean analysis of ‘I’ in terms of a definite description, since no definite description or proper name can be substituted salva sensu or salva veritate for the singular term ‘I’. Furthermore, I distinguish between self-identification and self-ascription, and argue that even if there may (...) be an error in self-ascription, the self-identification component – that is, the reference and identity of ‘I’ – remains unshaken. There is no way of losing track of the subject in ‘I’-thoughts, since there is no way of forming dynamic Fregean thoughts. I conclude by arguing that one’s capacity to think of oneself self-consciously is not exhausted by the presence or absence of linguistic devices such as ‘I’. Rather, it has to do with the metaphysics concerning the nature of the self. (shrink)

Phenomenology and analytical philosophy share a number of common concerns, and it seems obvious that analytical philosophy can learn from phenomenology, just as phenomenology can profit from an exchange with analytical philosophy. But although I think it would be a pity to miss the opportunity for dialogue that is currently at hand, I will in the following voice some caveats. More specifically, I wish to discuss two issues that complicate what might otherwise seem like rather straightforward interaction. The first (...) issue concerns the question of whether the current focus on the first-person perspective might have a negative side-effect by giving us a slanted view of what subjectivity amounts to. The second issue concerns the question of whether superficial similarities in the descriptive findings might actually conceal some rather deep-rooted differences in the systematic use these findings serve. (shrink)

This paper provides a concise description and discussion of bottom–up and top–down approaches to misattribution of agency in schizophrenia. It explores if first-person accounts of passivity phenomena can provide support for one of these approaches. The focus is on excerpts in which the writers specifically examine their experiences of external influence. None of the accounts provides arguments that fit easily with only one of the possible approaches, which is in line with current attempts to theoretical integration.

The experience I am going to go into refers to a process of emergence of meaning in consciousness. More particularly, what was given to me in terms of 'meaning' was the very lack of meaning of what was happening to me in the very moment. There is a crucial hypothesis here: this is the discovery of one's own experience and the production of a personal description of it within the framework of a disciplined practice. It is the only way (...) to check the effectiveness of my first-person access to my unique and irreducible experience. After having written a lot 'about' the necessity of such a putting into practice, after having 'claimed' it as an absolute requirement, after having checked it recently in the light of a step-by-step reading of a book of Husserl and having contended that as the genuine approach of Husserlian phenomenology, here I am one who ends up revealing a bit of herself while risking such a putting into practice. It is one thing indeed to 'account' for the first-person experience by relying upon the utterances of the phenomenologists who write about it, as is often done today in the context of crossings between phenomenology and the cognitive sciences; it is quite another thing, which is epistemologically quite different, to practise such a first-person experience while accounting via a self-elicitation for a unique example, which is hic et nunc situated, i. e., while using a descriptive tool which is faithful to it and thus closely attests to the practice in question by working with it. (shrink)

The descriptions in the literature of mystical experience and psychedelic experience, such as that induced by LSD, are usually written by persons who have actually experienced only one or perhaps neither of the two states. Because many of the most important effects can be understood by direct experience but only partially described in ordinary language, such lack of direct experience is a major drawback. Since there is disagreement over the question of whether mystical experience and LSD experience can be ‘the (...) same’, it would be helpful if an individual who has experienced aspects of both states would compare them. One of the authors describes his experience with both states. A particular form of mystical experience, cosmic consciousness , occurred spontaneously; no mind altering drugs were used. ALS later took LSD on 12-15 occasions. Both states of consciousness involved alterations in time sense, subject/object boundary, cognition, mood and perception. However, the changes with CC were qualitatively and quantitatively different from those of LSD. The authors conclude that CC and LSD can be quite different states of consciousness, although we cannot completely rule out the possibility that psychedelics might sometimes induce the same kinds of mystical experiences that occur for non-drug reasons. (shrink)

The well-known experiments of Nisbett and Wilson lead to the conclusion that we have no introspective access to our decision-making processes. Johansson et al. have recently developed an original protocol consisting in manipulating covertly the relationship between the subjects’ intended choice and the outcome they were presented with: in 79.6% of cases, they do not detect the manipulation and provide an explanation of the choice they did not make, confirming the findings of Nisbett and Wilson. We have reproduced this protocol, (...) while introducing for some choices an expert guidance to the description of this choice. The subjects who were assisted detected the manipulation in 80% of cases. Our experiment confirms Nisbett and Wilson’s findings that we are usually unaware of our decision processes, but goes further by showing that we can access them through specific mental acts. (shrink)

Roughly, behaviorist accounts of self-knowledge hold that first persons acquire knowledge of their own minds in just the same way other persons do: by means of behavioral evidence. One obvious problem for such accounts is that the fail to explain the great asymmetry between the authority of first person as opposed to other person attributions of thoughts and other mental states and events. Another is that the means of acquisition seems so different: other persons must infer (...) my mental contents from my behavior, whereas I need not. In this paper, I articulate a specifically Sellarsian behavioristic account of our knowledge of our own and others’ minds, and defend it against these two obvious objections. I further defend it against objections from Davidson, to the effect that Sellars’ account in particular cannot properly formulate the asymmetry at issue, and that behaviorism in general cannot account for the a priori character of the asymmetry. I argue that Davidson misinterprets Sellars at key points, and also misconstrues his own explanandum: What Sellars account can explain is an asymmetry in the reliability of first and other person attributions, but this asymmetry is not a priori. What is a priori is an asymmetry in the practice of according epistemic authority to such attributions. I argue that this asymmetry is what Davidson can and does explain, by appeal to the constitutive features of radical interpretation. But accepting this explanation does not require the rejection of Sellars’ account of the way that first and other persons in fact arrive at beliefs about their mental contents. The two approaches — one descriptive and empirical, the other constitutive and ideal — are compatible. (shrink)

Upshot: Thanks to the commentaries we have been able to further clarify the situation of generative first-person analysis in the general framework of neurophenomenology and more specifically of cardio-phenomenology as its extension and reformulation. We have also provided more detailed information about the way phenomenology as transcendental philosophy is genuinely operating as a practice in cardio-phenomenology and has a central function regarding the creation of categories and their suspensive questioning thanks to the epoché method. We have also drawn (...) great benefits from the questions about how micro-phenomenology allows a refinement of descriptive categories and the way new categories are generated, and we have been able to provide some answers about different scales of newness in the generative process. (shrink)

This paper provides a concise description and discussion of bottom–up and top–down approaches to misattribution of agency in schizophrenia. It explores if first-person accounts of passivity phenomena can provide support for one of these approaches. The focus is on excerpts in which the writers specifically examine their experiences of external influence. None of the accounts provides arguments that fit easily with only one of the possible approaches, which is in line with current attempts to theoretical integration.

This chapter is concerned with the mischaracterization of avowals of experience as descriptions of experience and the misconception of avowals and reports of experience as a matter of reading a description off the facts presented to one in introspection. One paradigm of description which Wittgenstein often employed as an object of comparison is giving a word‐picture of perceptible states of affairs, events or objects. To view avowals of pain as forms of pain‐behaviour akin to moans or cries of (...) pain is not to identify pain with pain‐behaviour. The affinity between spontaneous avowals and natural expressive behaviour must not mask the fact that the uses of first‐person psychological sentences are heterogeneous. Some approximate to primitive cries and gestures, and others are far removed from those paradigms. The spectrum of uses of first‐person psychological sentences to which Wittgenstein drew attention involves subtle gradations. (shrink)

Context: There is a growing recognition in consciousness science of the need for rigorous methods for obtaining accurate and detailed phenomenological reports of lived experience, i.e., descriptions of experience provided by the subject living them in the “first-person.” Problem: At the moment although introspection and debriefing interviews are sometimes used to guide the design of scientific studies of the mind, explicit description and evaluation of these methods and their results rarely appear in formal scientific discourse. Method: The (...) recent publication of an edited book of papers dedicated to the exploration of first-and second-person methods, Ten Years of Viewing from Within: The Legacy of Francisco Varela, serves as a starting point for a discussion of how these methods could be integrated into the growing discipline of consciousness science. We complement a brief review of the book with a critical analysis of the major pilot studies in Varela’s neurophenomenology, a research program that was explicitly devised to integrate disciplined experiential methods with the latest advances in neuroscience. Results: The book is a valuable resource for those who are interested in impressive recent advances in first- and second-person methods, as applied to the phenomenology of lived experience. However, our review of the neurophenomenology literature concludes that there is as yet no convincing example of these specialized techniques being used in combination with standard behavioral and neuroscientific approaches in consciousness science to produce results that could not have also been achieved by simpler methods of introspective reporting. Implications: The end of behaviorism and the acceptance of verbal reports of conscious experience have already enabled the beginning of a science of consciousness. It can only be of benefit if new first- and second-person methods become well-known across disciplines. Constructivist content: Constructivism has long been interested in the role of the observer in the constitution of our sense of reality, so these developments in the science of consciousness may open new avenues of constructivist research. More specifically, one of the ways in which the insights from first- and second-person methods are being validated is by recursively applying the methods to themselves; a practical application of an epistemological move that will be familiar to constructivists from the second-order cybernetics tradition. (shrink)

To understand the dynamics of the verbalization of surprise, I will start with the philosophical theoretical place that is, in my opinion, the most remarkable in terms of the descriptive phenomenology of surprise, namely, its approach by Paul Ricœur in Freedom and Nature in terms of what he calls “emotion-surprise.” This theoretical position will lead me to retrace, in a second step, the archeology of what Ricoeur calls the “circular phenomenon” or the “circular process” of surprise, which includes body language (...) in a burst of "shaking" and the language of cognitive as well as aesthetic "shock". There is an a priori antinomy here that is based on a post-Cartesian duality of the body and the mind, but it is circularized by Ricoeur. On the basis of this dual model of surprise, I will retrace its genealogy in a number of authors and will analyze some first-person descriptions that come from “microphenomenological interviews” [ entretiens d’explicitation ]. (shrink)

Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) is a method for exploring inner experience. DES subjects carry a random beeper in natural environments; when the beep sounds, they capture their inner experience, jot down notes about it, and report it to an investigator in a subsequent expositional interview. DES is a fundamentally idiographic method, describing faithfully the pristine inner experiences of persons. Subsequently, DES can be used in a nomothetic way to describe the characteristics of groups of people who share some common characteristic. (...) This paper describes DES and compares it to Petitmengin’s [Phenomenol Cogn Sci, this issue] second-person interview method. (shrink)

In this book Frank Dumont presents personality psychology with a fresh description of its current status as well as its prospects. Play, sex, cuisine, creativity, altruism, pets, grieving rituals, and other oft-neglected topics broaden the scope of this fascinating study. This tract is imbued with historical perspectives that reveal the continuity in the evolving science and research of this discipline over the past century. The author places classic schemas and constructs, as well as current principles, in the context of (...) their socio-political catalysts. He further relates this study of the person to life-span developmental issues and to cultural, gender-specific, trait-based, genetic/epigenetic, and evolutionary research findings. Personality psychology has recently reconciled itself to more modest paradigms for describing, explaining, and predicting human behaviour than it generated in the 19th and 20th centuries. This book documents that transformation, providing valuable information for health-service professionals as well as to teachers, researchers, and scientists. (shrink)

Although recent cognitive science and traditional phenomenology has placed great importance on first-person descriptions, exactly what this entails goes undefined. I will seek to answer what's involved in phenomenological description, with reference to Husserl. I define phenomenological description according to its genus and differentia. I compare description in the natural sciences with description in phenomenology. I discuss how the basic particulars for Husserlian phenomenological description stem from the intentional relation -- particularly the distinction (...) between noesis and noema. I discuss the pivotal role of reflection in phenomenological description. I further argue that a phenomenological description is more than a statement which utilizes the 'I-[verb]' template. The final section analyses the difficulties inherent in describing intersubjectivity and argues these difficulties may have influenced Husserl's early, descriptive account of this topic. (shrink)

Derek Parfit's “reductionist” account of personal identity (including the rejection of anything like a soul) is coupled with the rejection of a commonsensical intuition of essential self-unity, as in his defense of the counter-intuitive claim that “identity does not matter.” His argument for this claim is based on reflection on the possibility of personal fission. To the contrary, Simon Blackburn claims that the “unity reaction” to fission has an absolute grip on practical reasoning. Now David Lewis denied Parfit's claim that (...) reductionism contravenes common sense, so I revisit the debate between Parfit and Lewis, showing why Parfit wins it. Is reductionism about persons then inherently at odds with the unity reaction? Not necessarily; David Velleman presents a reductionist theory according to which fission does not conflict with the unity reaction. Nonetheless, relying on the distinction between person level descriptions of first-person states and the first-person perspective itself, I argue that Velleman's theory does not eliminate fission-based conflict with the unity reaction. Footnotesa * Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the philosophy departments at Rutgers University and Bowling Green State University. I am indebted to many members of these audiences, and to the other contributors to this volume, for their comments—especially Frank Arntzenius, Michael Bradie, David Copp, John Finnis, Jerry Fodor, Brian Loar, Barry Loewer, Colin McGinn, Fred Miller, Mark Moyer, David Oderberg, Marya Schechtman, David Schmidtz, David Sobel, and Sara Worley. Special thanks to David Sanford. I am also grateful to graduate students in my seminar at Bowling Green during the spring of 2003, for urging me to take seriously the grip of the unity reaction; I am especially grateful for the comments of Nico Maloberti, Jonathan Miller, John Milliken, Robyn Peabody, Jennifer Sproul, Jessica Teaman, and Sherisse Webb. (shrink)

Jonardon Ganeri’s The Self: Naturalism, Consciousness, and the First-Person Stance is a trailblazing study in cross-cultural philosophy of mind. Its liberal conception of naturalism makes room for a rich analytic taxonomy of conceptions of personal identity that go well beyond the standard models of Cartesianism, Physicalism, and Reductionism. But this naturalistically respectable model of the self must contend with the fact that the findings of the cognitive sciences are also compatible with ontological antirealism about the self. And while (...) the book opens new avenues for systematic reflection that thoroughly engages the historical material, its solutions to the problem of personal identity and the problem of self-knowledge often shortcut descriptive accounts that take agency and self-awareness to be constituted by their proprietary phenomenology. (shrink)

Social effects represent the psychological reactions evoked in other people by the expression of traits in behavior and emotion. From the transactional view on personality, studying the psycholexical structures of social effects can help to discover unique vs. common thought and behavior patterns, affects, and motivations, which are primarily related to personality dispositions. Thus, we developed the comprehensive taxonomy of social effects following the principles of the psycholexical approach. In the first study, two judges selected 9,625 person-descriptive terms—adjectives, (...) type-nouns, attribute-nouns, and participles—from the Dictionary of the Standard Lithuanian Language. In the second study, six judges classified all the selected descriptors using German psycholexical methodology. Finally, a principal component analysis was performed, followed by varimax rotation for the 208 social-effect descriptors, separately for ipsatized self-ratings and observer-ratings from 203 to 204 Lithuanian students, respectively. We found out that the five-component solution was the best fit for self-ratings, whereas for observer-ratings it was a four-component structure. In this article, we present the results from the factor analyses and discuss our findings in the context of previous studies, as well as cross-language personality models. (shrink)

In ethology, and more generally in the study of animal behavior, observations are _theory-laden_. A review of theories of animal behavior reveals that the animal is a variable _object_, shaped by variable levels of causality. This approach to animal behavior, which differs radically from the way psychology studies human behavior, is a consequence of the difficulty of treating animals as _subjects_ in ethology, where they are most often studied _in the third person_. However, there is a subjectivist tradition in the (...) study of animal behavior, influenced by a phenomenological background. Our aim to promote a _at first person_ approach has led us to propose an etho-phenomenology based on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, Francisco Varela’s enaction theory and constructivist psychology. However, in order to legitimize this approach to animal behavior, we apply it here to behaviors that seem abnormal according to traditional explanatory frameworks, such as actospatiality, tail carrying in mice or expressing ambivalence displayed through color in octopuses. Furthermore, to explore issues such as human-animal communication, the etho-phenomenological perspective is combined with the notion of participatory sense-making, leading us to propose a theory of emotional hybridization. (shrink)

The distinction between the personal and the subpersonal is often invoked in philosophy of psychology but remains surrounded by confusion. Building on recent work by Zoe Drayson, this paper aims to help further improve this situation by offering a satisfactory explication of the distinction that remains close to Dennett's original intentions. Reasons are offered for construing the distinction as applying to representational (as opposed to worldly) items, for not building contested theoretical assumptions into it, and for taking it to apply (...) in the first instance to descriptive statements and only derivatively to explanations. An explication of the distinction that accords with these points is then developed, according to which the distinction should be drawn in terms of what personal and subpersonal-level statements are ‘transparently about’. The theoretical role of this explication is discussed, and potential objections are addressed. (shrink)

Perhaps no philosopher has so fully explored the nature and conditions of historical understanding as Wilhelm Dilthey. His work, conceived overall as a Critique of Historical Reason and developed through his well-known theory of the human studies, provides concepts and methods still fruitful for those concerned with analyzing the human condition. Despite the increasing recognition of Dilthey's contributions, relati vely few of his writings have as yet appeared in English translation. It is therefore both timely and useful to have available (...) here two works drawn from different phases in the development of his philosophy. The "Ideas Concerning a Descriptive and Analytic Psychology" (1894), now translated into English for the first time, sets forth Dilthey's programma tic and methodological viewpoints through a descriptive psychology, while "The Understanding of Other Persons and Their Expressions of Life" (ca. 1910) is representative of his later hermeneutic approach to historical understanding. DESCRIPTIVE PSYCHOLOGY AND THE HUMAN STUDIES Dilthey presented the first mature statement of his theory of the human studies in volume one of his Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften (Introduction to the Human Studies), published in 1883. He argued there that for the proper study of man and history we must eschew the metaphysical speculation of the absolute idealists while at the same time avoiding the scientistic reduction of positivism. (shrink)

This article explores the phenomenon of “phantom pain.” The analysis is based on personal experiences elicited from individuals who have lost a limb or live with a paralyzed body part. Our study reveals that the ways in which these individuals express their pain experience is an integral aspect of that experience. The material consists of interviews undertaken with men who are living with phantom pain resulting from a traumatic injury. The phenomenological analysis is inspired by Zahavi :151–167, 2001) and Merleau-Ponty. (...) On a descriptive level the metaphors these patients invoke to describe their condition reveal immense suffering, such as a feeling of being invaded by insects or of their skin being scorched and stripped from their body. Such metaphors express a dimension of experience concerning the self that is in pain and others whom the sufferer relates to through this pain, as well as the agony that this pain inflicts in the world of lived experience. This pain has had a profound impact on their lives and altered their relationship with self, others and the world. Their phantom pain has become a reminder of their formerly intact and functioning body; they describe the contrast between their past and present body as an ambiguous and disturbing experience. We conclude that these sensitive and personalized experiences of phantom pain illuminates how acts of expression—spoken pain—constitute a fundamental dimension of a first-person perspective which contribute to the field of knowledge about “phantom pain”. (shrink)

I would like to propose an interpretation of Ricœur’s first phenomenological works in the light of what I call an “experiential phenomenology”, by answeringthree important questions. The first is a factual and historical interrogation: why has Ricœur abandoned his project of a descriptive phenomenology after publishing his first volume of the The Voluntary and the Involuntary and why did he afterwards direct his philosophical research towards the problem of interpretation? The second interrogation is an epistemological and a (...) methodological one: in what way is the Husserlian phenomenology a first-person approach and how does Ricœur’s phenomenology of the will lead us towards an experiential phenomenology in first person? The final question is heuristical: what criteria should we point out in order to establish a phenomenological science that is 1) descriptive and 2) approaching the experience in first-person? (shrink)

Despite considerable recent attention, important features of Schelling’s famous work, the 1809 treatise On the Essence of Human Freedom, remain under-explored. One of these is the methodological dualism which Schelling advocates at the very start of the text. Schelling aims to weld together into a coherent position a first-person phenomenology of freedom and an explanation achieved by locating freedom within a conceptual system articulating the basic structure of the world. Most interpretations of the Freiheitsschrift, however, concentrate on only (...) one of these approaches, thus foreshortening their understanding of Schelling’s enterprise. The article explores this tendency towards one-sidedness by considering two sophisticated recent interpretations of the work, taking opposite tacks. One, by Markus Gabriel, focuses on the distinctive, self-reflexive metaphysics which Schelling proposes, while the other, by Sebastian Gardner, claims that Schelling’s ontology is extrapolated entirely from his account of our moral consciousness, a procedure pioneered by Kant. The article argues that neither of these interpretations can do full justice to Schelling’s project. Furthermore, although the Freiheitsschrift is not entirely successful, and hence points towards later developments in Schelling’s thinking, its treatment of freedom is superior to the ‘soft naturalism’ pioneered by Peter Strawson, and currently influential across various philosophical traditions. (shrink)

This paper is a discussion of Claire Petitmengin and Michel Bitbol's article 'The validity of first-person descriptions as authenticity and coherence' . In section I, I present what I take as being the main points they defend in that article, and put them in relation with the global purpose of the special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies in which their article is included. In section II, I start discussing the paper by comparing the conception of (...) class='Hi'>description they defend with a constructivist/pragmatist account of description and knowledge. This leads me, in section III, to introduce very briefly the pragmatist conception of experience that underlies that latter account. As that pragmatist conception of experience insists on the fact that lived experience goes beyond the subjective/objective duality, and as it therefore calls for a redefinition of what lived experience is, I naturally wonder whether B&P might endorse that pragmatist conception of experience, somehow standing in tension with the importance of subjectivity in the definition of what lived experience is for many first-person approaches to lived experience. (shrink)

This volume grew out of a dissatisfaction with some issues that seem to be rooted in the Empiricist tradition. At least since Locke, that which is perceived has enjoyed a major share in any systematic account of what we claim to know. A main purpose of this study therefore is first to distinguish, and subsequently to relate, what can be perceived and what can be under stood. To this end, the account of persons and personal identity begins with a (...) description of selected types of sense perceptions. While writing a good part of the discussion on vision, I had the advantage of questioning Dr. P. B. Loder about the properties of light. She not only clarified some issues, but prevented several errors from creeping into the text, a result for which I am very grateful. I should like also to express my appreciation to Mrs. G. K. Stamm-Okkinga, who provided hospitality and a friendly interest from the beginning of this study. Finally I wish to thank Miss I. Ris and Mr. W. de Regt for their careful and resourceful preparation of the typescript. (shrink)

'Material thing' is a two-level concept. In 'first-order extension' - the field of perceptual experience - it is a 'body' that may 'body forth' (show, express) a 'content', like the bodies of persons or pictures. In 'second-order extension' -the physical field or space - it is a 'physical object' whose micro-constitution is the target of the reference of theoretical terms or formulae. As such, it has no content - nothing to 'express'. In the description of a material thing (...) in first-order extension, terms are used whose reference is fixed by ostension. (The picture's pigment is cracked, the person's eyes are blue.) The reference of theoretical terms - to the material thing in second-order extension - is fixed by their interrelationships in the theory. (shrink)

Hegel’s Philosophy of Law deals in theLaw section of the categories: person, property and contract. Research critically reconstructs this theory from a Marxist perspective. In the concept of person, first of all, the singular will is reduced to a solipsist will unrelated to intersubjectivity. Then, the concept of Hegelian property bases the private appropriation of property as the externalization of the singular will. This legal property guarantees the maintenance and reproduction of private property, that is, it will (...) guarantee the private accumulation of capital, Marx will say. Anyway, the theory of the contract would link the autonomy of the contracting wills, however, it is a mere appearance, because, in fact, the owners’ wills are under the domination of the capitalist market, as it is explained in Marx’s Capital. The theoretical deficit of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law in general is that the legal concepts of person and property correspond to the abstract will. Hegel describes the juridical description of the legal system of the modern state as the development of free will that legitimizes the asymmetry of civil society in its socioeconomic inequalities. (shrink)

This article defends the thesis that in theorizing about the mind we need to accord first-person (“introspective” or “reflective”) judgments about experience a “selective provisional trust.” Such an approach can form part of a descriptive psychology. It is here so employed to evaluate some influential interpretations of research on attention to conclude that—despite what conventional wisdom suggests—an “introspection-positive” policy actually offers us a better critical perspective than its contrary. What supposedly teaches us the worthlessness of introspection actually shows (...) us why we need to take it seriously. (shrink)

RESUMEN La tesis central de este artículo es que la esclavitud es fenomenológicamente descriptible como reducción del esfuerzo a fuerza física, a través de la imposición de la imposibilidad, como fuente de reconocimiento del sí mismo en la derrota. El esclavo se reconoce desde la negación de lo posible para sí en el mundo. Expongo esta tesis en tres momentos principales, en la primera parte desarrollo el concepto de esfuerzo, con base en los análisis husserlianos de la constitución, expuestos en (...) Ideas II. En el segundo apartado expongo el modo en que el esfuerzo, como concreción de una voluntad egoica-encarnada, es reducido a fuerza fisica -productiva- mediante la alienación de las posibilidades del 'yo-puedo'. El correlato de este modo de constitución del cuerpo propio, en la enajenación de su poder, de lo posible para si, es un horizonte que se presenta para el yo en el modo de la clausura o la imposibilidad, desde la que yo se reconoce como derrotado, tema que trato en el último y tercer apartado. La descripción de la derrota pone de manifiesto la condición de la voluntad corporal como limite resistente ante la esclavitud. ABSTRACT The central thesis of this paper is that slavery is phenomenologically describable as a reduction of the effort to a physical force through the imposition of impossibility as a fountain of self-recognition of the ego in the defeat. The slave is constituted from the defeat of its egoic, personal, and concrete possibilities. I develop this thesis in three moments. First, I explore the effort concept on the phenomenological basis of Husserlian analyses of the constitution into Ideas II. In the second part, I describe how effort-as a concretion of an egoic-embodied will-is reduced to physical force-productive-in the slavery, though the alienation of the possibilities for de 'I-can'. The correlate of this way of constitution of the own body, in the alienation, is a horizon of possibilities are present for the ego in the canceled, or impossibility way in which the ego recognizes itself as defeated, issue of the third and last part. The description of the defeat manifests the condition of the embodied will as a resistant limit against slavery. (shrink)

Person‐specific evidence was developed as a grounded theory by analyzing 20 selected case descriptions from interventions using the guided self‐determination method with people with various long‐term health conditions. It explains the mechanisms of mobilizing relational capacity by including person‐specific evidence in shared decision‐making. Person‐specific self‐insight was the first step, achieved as individuals completed reflection sheets enabling them to clarify their personal values and identify actions or omissions related to self‐management challenges. This step paved the way for (...) sharing these insights and challenges in a relationship with a supportive health professional, who could then rely on person‐specific evidence instead of assumptions or a narrow disease perspective for shared decision‐making. Trust in the evidence encouraged the supportive health professional to transfer it to the interdisciplinary team. Person‐specific evidence then enhanced the ability of team members to apply general evidence in a meaningful way. The increased openness achieved by individuals through these steps enabled them to eventually share their new self‐insights in daily life with other people, decreasing loneliness they experienced in self‐management. Relational capacity, the core of the theory, is mobilized in both people with long‐term health conditions and healthcare professionals. Further research on person‐specific evidence and relational capacity in healthcare is recommended. (shrink)

In this volume, Geoffrey Madell develops a revised account of the self, making a compelling case for why the "simple" or "anti-criterial" view of personal identity warrants a robust defense. Madell critiques recent discussions of the self for focusing on features which are common to all selves, and which therefore fail to capture the uniqueness of each self. In establishing his own view of personal identity, Madell proposes that there is always a gap between ‘A is f and g’ and (...) ‘ I am f and g’ ; , that a complete description of the world offered without recourse to indexicals will fail to account for the contingent truth that I am one of the persons described; and , that an account of conscious perspectives on the world must take into account what it means for an apparently arbitrary one of these perspectives to be mine . Engaging with contemporary positions on the first person, embodiment, psychological continuity, and other ongoing arguments, Madell contends that there can be no such thing as a criterion of personal identity through time, that no bodily or psychological continuity approach to the issue can succeed, and that personal identity through time must be absolute, not a matter of degree. Madell’s view that the nature of the self is substantively different from that of objects in the world will generate significant discussion and debate among philosophers of mind. (shrink)

In her editorial introduction to the special issue 10 years of Viewing from Within: the Legacy of Francisco Varela as well as in her co-authored contribution 'The validity of first-person descriptions as authenticity and coherence' , Claire Petitmengin expresses some reservations about the way I have been characterizing reflection in some of my earlier writings. In replying to the criticism, I will use the occasion to amplify some of my previous remarks, pinpoint what I take to be some (...) ambiguities in Petitmengin and Bitbol's own positive proposal, make some additional points that relate directly to the important questions that they raise in their joint paper, and finish off with a few remarks regarding one of the central claims made by Vermersch in his contribution to the special issue. (shrink)

Individuals is divided into two parts. In Part I, Strawson tries to show that there is an important sense in which material objects and persons are basic particulars. In Part II "the aim is to establish and explain the connexion between the idea of a particular in general and that of an object of reference or logical subject". Part II contains a wealth of interesting material and ingenious argumentation. Most important here, perhaps, is Strawson's attempt to provide criteria for distinguishing (...) subjects from predicates and particulars from universals, and to show a philosophically important link between the subject-predicate distinction and the particulars-universals distinction. What he says on this head is of considerable interest indeed. Nevertheless, I shall deal only with Part I. First I shall recount and comment upon the argument for the view that material objects are basic; then I shall state and examine what Strawson has to say about persons in more detail. (shrink)

‘The work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for particular purposes.’ Among the many purposes for which Wittgenstein assembled reminders, the deeper understanding of the religious life would have to qualify as one. Though on first reading this would hardly seem obvious, I hope to make this abundantly clear through an examination of his later literature. There are two ways in which he sheds light on religious issues: first , by the personal passion of his own life (...) and the forthright display of intellectual integrity expected of any professional thinker toward any discipline , and, second , by making his philosophical investigations descriptive. Any analysis of religious issues or the understanding of the religious life should involve the high degree of personal integrity and the rigorously descriptive method which Wittgenstein makes apparent throughout his writing. (shrink)

Phenomenology has remained a sheltering place for those who would seek to understand not only their own “first person” experiences but also the first person experiences of others. Recent publications by renowned scholars within the field have clarified and extended our possibilities of access to “first person” experience by means of perception (Lingis, 2007) and reflection (Zahavi, 2005). Teaching phenomenology remains a challenge, however, because one must find ways of communicating to the student how (...) to embody it as a process rather than simply to learn about it as a content area. Another challenge issues from the fact that most writings on applied phenomenology emphasize individual subjectivity as the central focus, while offering only indirect access to the subjectivity of others (for example, by way of analyzing written descriptions provided by the individual under study). While one finds in the literature of psychotherapy plentiful elucidations of the “we-experience” within which therapists form impressions of their clients’ experience, there is still need for a more thoughtful clarification of our rather special personal modes of access to the experience of others in everyday life. This paper will present “second person perspectivity” as a mode of resonating with the expressions of others and will describe class activities that can bring students closer to a lived understanding of what it means to be doing phenomenology in the face of the other. (shrink)

Shun Kwong-loi argues that the distinction between first- and third-person points of view does not play as explanatory a role in our moral psychology as has been supposed by contemporary philosophical discussions. He draws insightfully from the Confucian tradition to better elucidate our everyday experiences of moral emotions, arguing that it offers an alternative and more faithful perspective on our experiences of anger and compassion. However, unlike the distinction between first- and third-person points of view, Shun’s (...) descriptions of anger and compassion leave unarticulated what would be necessary to differentiate these responses from non-moral responses. Here, I make a friendly suggestion on how this explanatory gap might be filled, providing complementary grounding for Shun’s observations by way of K. C. Bhattacharyya’s phenomenological analysis of feeling. It fills the gap by means of a gradation in the possible depth of emotional responses found in the a priori structure of a feeling experience for any subject. The payoff of such a comparison between Shun’s explication of Confucian moral psychology and Bhattacharyya’s explication of rasa theory is not only a possible phenomenological grounding for the former but also a potential way to articulate a missing ethics in Bhattacharyya’s thought. (shrink)

The research described in this article was a descriptive study for determining the relationship between the degree of burnout experienced by nurses working in Kocaeli (Turkey), and their personal and professional values. A questionnaire was developed by using information gained from the literature on this subject and from the Maslach Burnout Inventory. The questionnaire was delivered to nurses working in two different hospitals (State Hospital of I.zmit and the Gölçük Sea Hospital) in Kocaeli. The sample group was formed from all (...) nurses working in the two hospitals, of whom 160 participated in the study during December 1999 and January 2000. The results showed that nurses’ personal and professional values play an important role in the degree of burnout they experience. Equality, altruism and aesthetics were ranked first by those experiencing high levels of emotional exhaustion, and freedom was a priority value for those with a low degree of emotional exhaustion. Freedom, altruism and truth were ranked first by those with prominent feelings of personal accomplishment, and equality and aesthetics were priority values for those with less feeling of personal accomplishment. All nurses, therefore, need to identify and clarify their own personal values, beliefs and assumptions about basic truths. (shrink)

Reference to persons with personal pronouns raises the issue of the primary referent and its nature. “I” does not refer to a property or cluster of properties. This contrasts with our identifying grasp of persons. A person is a radical singularity and thus stands in contrast to a kind or sortal term. The individuation of persons is not adequately grasped by “definite descriptions” or “eidetic singularities.” In spite of the seeming possibility of persons being wholly identical in terms of (...) properties, in other words, “doubles,” the core referent of reference to persons is not to what is individuated merely by mere numerical differences or spatial-temporal, and essential-eidetic determinations. Rather we have to do with a “non-sortal unique essence.” What “I” refers to is a self-individuating substance. This raises questions for the proper referent of “love.” What is it that love intends or loves if persons are basically radical singularities. What does one love and why does one love if whom one loves is most essentially non-sortal? The question of the ontological status of persons requires integrating the status of being transcendental I’s, and thus being non-temporal, non-spatial, non-sortal, simple substances and thus not homogenous with the experienced world. (shrink)

When describing the person, the general tendency is to rely upon the assumption that the quality of “person” is always constituted from “outside” to “inside” either by being determined to re-project the content of emotional experiences, or by simply transferring existent theoretical constructions. I have explored this way of thinking in a previous occasion and made more or less clear why it ultimately leads to the rejection of the inner dimension of person in the absence of which (...) no serious discussion of this matter is possible. In the first part of the paper I follow the premise that “reasoning”, in Husserl’s sense, is the characteristic of person, and discuss some of the obstacles one encounters when attempting to describe the person as “reasoning” entity. In the second part, I will lay the path for a future eidetic analysis of cognitive descriptions. The overall purpose remains the same, namely the search for ways to objectively describe the person via classical phenomenology. (shrink)