Bodily Nature Research Articles

Affective intentionality and the feeling body

This text addresses a problem that is not sufficiently dealt with in most of the recent literature on emotion and feeling. The problem is a general underestimation of the extent to which affective intentionality is essentially bodily. Affective intentionality is the sui generis type of world-directedness that most affective states – most clearly the emotions – display. Many theorists of emotion overlook the extent to which intentional feelings are essentially bodily feelings. The important but quite often overlooked fact is that the bodily feelings in question are not the regularly treated, non-intentional bodily sensations (known from Jamesian accounts of emotion), but rather crucial carriers of world-directed intentionality. Consequently, most theories of human emotions and feelings recently advocated are deficient in terms of phenomenological adequacy. This text tries to make up for this deficit and develops a catalogue of five central features of intentional bodily feelings. In addition, Jesse Prinz’s embodied appraisal theory is criticized as an exemplary case of the misconstrual of the bodily nature of affective experience in naturalistic philosophy of mind.

Kathleen V. Wider: The bodily nature of consciousness: Sartre and contemporary philosophy of mind

Kathleen V. Wider: The bodily nature of consciousness: Sartre and contemporary philosophy of mind

Eating Terms: What the Category Reveals About the Thai Mind

The study surveys eating terms in Thai to find out complexities of the way the Thai people really categorize. It employs devices of a new view that takes more complex categorization as the main way in which we make sense of experience. That is, categories in this study are characterized depending on the bodily nature of the beings doing the categorizing, with imaginative mechanisms such as metaphor, metonymy, and mental imagery, on the one hand, and the theory of prototypes, on the other hand.

No Body, Never Mind

No Body, Never Mind

Explaining Medically Unexplained Symptoms

Patients with medically unexplained symptoms comprise from 15% to 30% of all primary care consultations. Physicians often assume that psychological factors account for these symptoms, but current theories of psychogenic causation, somatization, and somatic amplification cannot fully account for common unexplained symptoms. Psychophysiological and sociophysiological models provide plausible medical explanations for most common somatic symptoms. Psychological explanations are often not communicated effectively, do not address patient concerns, and may lead patients to reject treatment or referral because of potential stigma. Across cultures, many systems of medicine provide sociosomatic explanations linking problems in family and community with bodily distress. Most patients, therefore, have culturally based explanations available for their symptoms. When the bodily nature and cultural meaning of their suffering is validated, most patients will acknowledge that stress, social conditions, and emotions have an effect on their physical condition. This provides an entree to applying the symptom-focused strategies of behavioural medicine to address the psychosocial factors that contribute to chronicity and disability.

Jean-Paul Sartre and the HOT Theory of Consciousness

Jean-Paul Sartre believed that consciousness entails self-consciousness, or, even more strongly, that consciousness is self-consciousness. As Kathleen Wider puts it in her terrific book The Bodily Nature of Consciousness: Sartre and Contemporary Philosophy of Mind, ‘all consciousness is, by its very nature, self-consciousness.’ I share this view with Sartre and have elsewhere argued for it at length. My overall aim in this paper is to examine Sartre's theory of consciousness against the background of the so-called ‘higher-order thought theory of consciousness’ (the HOT theory) which, in turn, will shed light on the structure of conscious mental states as well as on Sartre's theory of (self-) consciousness and reflection. Another goal of this paper is, following Wider, to show how Sartre's views can be understood from a contemporary analytic perspective. Sartre's theory of consciousness is often confusing to the so-called ‘analytic Anglo-American’ tradition, but I attempt to show how this obstacle can be overcome against the backdrop of a specific contemporary theory of consciousness.

Context-Aware Technology: A Phenomenological Perspective

Context-aware systems are currently to a large extent designed from a systems perspective. Research on these technologies has so far mostly been focused on exploring what can be built and less on how it will show up in people's lives. The existing theory and practice in human-computer interaction has mainly evolved from work on graphical user interfaces, and additional theory is required to enable user-centered design of context-aware systems. Interaction with such systems is to a larger extent physical, and an appropriate theory consequently needs to account for the user's bodily nature. We have found the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty to be a good starting point for the development of such theory. With its first-person focus on the lived body and its relation to the environment, it provides a conceptual framework well suited for understanding context-aware systems from the user's perspective. The perspective moves the focus from seeing a context-aware system as an artifact "sensing" information, to seeing it as an interactive system with a physical user interface. This makes the distinction between foreground and background interaction a property not of the system, but of the situation. A consequence of this philosophical standpoint is that context can never be a property of the world, but that context rather is the horizon within which the user makes sense of the world. The phenomenological perspective enables a systematic exploration of the design space for context-aware systems-as they appear to the user. It further enables an analysis of the requirements for a seamless integration between screen-based and context-aware systems. The essay ends by pointing to the need for making the technology available in a form that can be easily utilized by interaction designers.

Book Review. The Bodily Nature of Consciousness: Sartre and Contemporary Philosophy of Mind Kathleen Wider

Book Review. The Bodily Nature of Consciousness: Sartre and Contemporary Philosophy of Mind Kathleen Wider

Cyber Ethics: Bodies or Bytes?

Information ethics requires: (1) an ethical theory that recognizes the importance of the body; and (2) a materialist theory of information. Alasdair MacIntyre's ethics of acknowledged dependence is an example of the former. It holds that the virtues we need to achieve both personal and common moral goods recognize networks of dependence based upon bodily vulnerability and disability. Pierre Lévy's theory of collective intelligence is an example of a view that disregards both requirements. Based upon a secular appropriation of medieval angelology, it holds that in cyberspace, social relations are dematerialized, and that information is an incorporeal substance flowing between disembodied minds. The new anthropological space of virtuality that Lévy holds to be ushered in by new electronic information technologies proposes a radical rethinking of ethics. But on close inspection, his information ethics turns out to be stripped of any serious moral dimension. To address serious moral issues, information ethics cannot abstract from our bodily animal nature. Several recent studies recognize that information is an effect of social relations between embodied subjects. They provide the materialist information theory required for meaningful information ethics.

Heidegger and Dasein’s ‘Bodily Nature’: What is the Hidden Problematic?

In Being and Time, Heidegger explicitly defers any consideration of ourselves (Dasein) as embodied. I try to account for Heidegger's reluctance to talk about 'the body' in connection with his explication of Dasein, by arguing that doing so would be at odds with the kind of investigation his 'phenomenology of everydayness' is meant to be. That Heidegger omits discussion of the body in Being and Time might lead one to think of the human body in terms of the other categories Heidegger deploys: readiness-to-hand and presence-at-hand (Being and Time) and biological organisms (Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics). I argue that any such identification ought to be resisted, as these categories serve only to deprive our bodies of their specifically human dimension. Indeed, by surveying the failure of these categories as proper to the human body, we gain further insight into Heidegger's initial deferral: only given the existential analytic can one begin to offer a proper account of ourselves in bodily terms.

Sensibility and Transcendence in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics

In Sein and Zeit (= SZ), Heidegger mentions only very briefly connection with his project of a fundamental ontology. In fact, with exception of his critical discussion of Cartesian account of senses, Heidegger offers only a single, laconic sentence which he explicitly brings together status of and of human existence.' Consequently, apparent paucity SZ of any detailed thematic elaboration concerning significance of what may broadly be termed the has led many to claim that this aspect of human existence is ignored by Heidegger. And yet, Kant and das Problem der Metaphysik (= KPM), a work immediately following Sein and Zeit and very much concerned with same fundamental questions as earlier work, problematic surrounding what could be called an ontology of sensibility occupies a position that is far from being merely tangential. We find instead that reflections on nature of very much inform core of problematic pursued throughout KPM. In Heidegger's retrieval of Kant, bodily nature of human existence, which this book falls under rubric of sensibility, is neither ignored nor eliminated from of Dasein.2 Heidegger understands Kant's project Kritik der reinen Vernunft (= KrV) to be ultimately an one: it is an inquiry into essence and possibility of transcendence and knowledge.' In sense used by Heidegger, transcendence names fact that entities are given to human existence not as they are in themselves, but rather always terms of their beingness. Heidegger demonstrates his interpretation of Kant that is essential to possibility of transcendence insofar as forms site of correspondence or conjunction of essence (ontological structure) of finite knower and essence (ontological structure) of entities. In other words, understood its (rather than merely empirical) significance is both a condition for possibility of our finite access to entities as well as a condition for possibility of entities themselves appearing their beingness. In language of SZ site which encountering of entities becomes possible is called world (SZ 65ff.). And insofar as forms this correspondence which entities are encounterable, we can say a specific sense that is world. The presentation of will be carried out two steps: after some brief preliminary comments I will situate within grounding of metaphysics. I will show this section that meaning of resides finitude's full import for question of transcendence. I will then establish that is a necessary element structure of transcendence, and I will show how ontological forms site of correspondence for structure of knower and structure of known. Preliminary Comments A few preliminary comments are order regarding both what Heidegger is up to KPM as well as what my thesis entails vis-a-vis Kant's critical philosophy. To begin with, position Heidegger puts forth KPM should by no means be understood as a faithful account of what Kant's own position is. Although Heidegger is writing on Kant, Kantian philosophy is more of an occasion for development of Heidegger's own thinking than an exegetical goal of his text. Because Heidegger is more concerned with problem of metaphysics (KPM 301f.) than he is with what Kant explicitly understood of this problem, he does not try simply to Kant right. On this point Heidegger is very clear: not only does he say that he will not follow Kant's own paths of thinking-he prefers instead to expose original impetus (KPM 70/47) driving problematic and to get at unsaid set before our eyes Kant's explicit formulation (KPM 201/137)-but he also freely concedes violence of his interpretation relation to Kant's expressed philosophy (KPM Preface to Second Edition, 202/138, 302). …

The Mind–Body Problem after Fifty Years

It was about half a century ago that the mind–body problem, which like much else in serious metaphysics had been moribund for several decades, was resurrected as a mainstream philosophical problem. The first impetus came from Gilbert Ryle'sThe Concept of Mind, published in 1948, and Wittgenstein's well-known, if not well-understood, reflections on the nature of mentality and mental language, especially in hisPhilosophical Investigationswhich appeared in 1953. The primary concerns of Ryle and Wittgenstein, however, focused on the logic of mental discourse rather than the metaphysical issue of how our mentality is related to our bodily nature. In fact, Ryle and Wittgenstein would have regarded, each for different reasons, the metaphysical problem of the mind-body relation as arising out of deplorable linguistic confusions and not amenable to intelligible discussion. There was C. D. Broad's earlier and much neglected classic,The Mind and Its Place in Nature, which appeared in 1925, but this work, although robustly metaphysical, failed to connect with, and shape, the mind–body debate in the second half of this century.

The Role of Guided Imagery and Music in Diagnosing Physical Illness or Trauma

This article addresses the use of the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music (GIM) with problems of a bodily nature, including physical illness or trauma. Connections between mind and body are outlined from the literature. The technique of GIM is described, its clinical application to physical illness and trauma is outlined and explained, and excerpts from three indicative case studies are presented. GIM-produced imagery sequences are discussed and analyzed in detail with regard to the nature and possibilities of preliminary diagnostic information concerning the physical status of the client. Of the three cases presented, the first addresses recalled memories of physical/sexual trauma elicited by the imagery; the second addresses current acute pain and possible cancer recurrence; the third deals with the ongoing physical status of a client in remission from cancer. In all cases, links between imagery and the body are established and interpretations made regarding physical status. The article concludes with ethical considerations, implications for treatment, and suggestions for further investigation in the use of the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music with physical illness or trauma.

Der Begriff des Lebens bei Plotin (review)

116 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Der Begriff des Lebens bei Plotin. By Grigorios Ph. Kostaras. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1969. Pp. ix+139. DM 36) In his excellent book, The Concept of Life in Plotinus, Mr. Grigorios Ph. Kostaras presents the thesis that it is the problem of life which lies at the center of the thought of Plotinus, that it permeates it in its entirety and that he views all other philosophical problems from its perspective. The two main metaphysical questions of Greek philosophy , "Why is there something rather than nothing?" and "What then is man?" appear in a new light when seen from this central concept. The result is a universe which is like a living organism, a unity in its multiplicity whose many forms of life are held together by one life principle, the soul. Human life, the human soul is part of this organism and therefore able to find in it its greatest bliss. The soul, for Plotinus, is the necessary condition that there be life. It is the ground of all macrocosmic and microcosmic entities, being essentially movement, it is the creative and formgiving principle of all that is, it is the law of life. The reduction of the many to the one seemed to Plotinus a logical necessity if man is to grasp the origin and continuity of the cosmos. His new reality, "The One," fills this logical need. Out of its perfection and fullness emanates Mind (Nous) "like light from the sun." This gives rise to the soul as its logos and substance. The physical universe is the result of the soul's movement towards "the Other," matter on which it imprints the forms of the intelligible world .thus shaping and ordering the world as we know it. In this activiO/ the soul remains one and whole; the "many," the concrete life forms of reproduction and perception appear as a result of its relation to matter. What makes for this creative, formgiving activity which is its movement away from the One and lqous, from identity towards diversity, from eternity to time? The Plotinian answer, as Mr. Kostaras sees it, is both exuberant and tragic. The soul becomes the shaper of all there is through its striving towards freedom and independence and its joy in the manifold appearances which its relation to matter brings about. The soul's biological movement then is an affirmation and celebration of temporal life as one of its manifestations. Yet, at the same time, this movement is unfree since it follows a need the soul cannot avoid. Thus it means estrangement from its true life of the logos. The soul is isolated and "sick" of which the incessant movement of becoming, of changing from one form of life to another is the result. It leads a negative or pseudo life. Suffering, then, must be inextricably joined to the beauty of temporal life. True life, therefore, is the life of the mind. It is life as the soul's movement toward itself rather than the outer world, life become conscious of itself, leading out of the sensible world, back to identity with Nous and ultimately with the One. In this, its highest movement, the soul severs itself from time. In it there is no past nor future but an eternal Now, no moving image but reality itself. Such is the ground and explanation of the universe, the metaphysical framework within which man may choose his being. As microcosm within the macrocosm, he is a composite of Nous, soul-substance and bodily nature. The relation between these three principles forms the ground of human life; the manner in which man chooses to link them to one another makes for the differences between the modes of life of human beings. The movement of the human soul towards the outer world and its absorption in becoming means the realization of man as bodily being only. His life is ruled by perceptions and the beliefs based upon them. His feelings are uncontrolled, his mind inactive. He lives the life of the fleeting moment, a mere shadow of its reality. Just as the soul or life principle of the cosmos links the intelligible to the sensible...

The Wisdom of Evolution by Raymond J. Nogar, O. P., Ph. D.

BOOK REVIEWS The Wisdom of Evolution. By RAYMOND J. NoaAR, 0. P., Ph. D. Foreword by Theodosius Dobzhansky. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1963. Pp. 408, with index. $5.75. Publication of works on every aspect of evolution continues in undiminished flow to meet and stimulate interest in this engrossing subject. Not many authors, however, can match Father Nogar's competence in the various disciplines that contribute importantly to a balanced presentation of evolutionary doctrine. His scientific studies, concentrating on biology, are crowned by a graduate degree in theology and a doctorate in the philosophy of science. Such preparation has equipped him to write a book having a definite objective which he himself regards as unique in the field. The point of view dominating the exposition is not that of the research biologist or anthropologist, but rather that of the philosopher of science who is concerned with the whole range of implications suggested by the fact of evolution. Consequently the book is neither a specialized scientific treatise nor a professional course in philosophy. The aim is threefold, corresponding to the three major divisions of the volume. First, the proofs for the fact of evolution are examined. Secondly, the limits of evolution are carefully marked off. Thirdly, an attempt is made to give a synthesis of scientific evolution and to outline a sound philosophy of life in agreement with the facts as known at present. The exposition is clear throughout and many technical terms, inevitable in such an enterprise, are lucidly explained; the educated reader will seldom find himself beyond his depth. Part One is a truly remarkable review of the evidence for evolution. Beginning with paleontology, as is right, Fr. Nogar applies the "principle of economy": God ordinarily works in an orderly fashion through natural causes, not by miraculous intervention. The study leads to the reasonable conclusion that creationism in the Linnaean sense is a wholly unsatisfactory hypothesis. Unless one is willing to assume a host of creative acts to account for the hundreds of thousands of different origins of species, some form of evolution must be admitted. The only adequate explanation of the facts unearthed by paleontology is organic evolution, defined as descent with modification from common ancestry. The witness of paleontology, strong though it is, merely opens the case. A verdict in favor of evolution is the product of many lines of proof, marshaled with mounting force in successive chapters. Perception that all organisms which now live or have ever lived are the issue of genetic descent from remote and simple beginnings gains increasing clarity. The evidence 382 BOOK REVIEWS 383 brought forward by paleontology, genetics, biography, taxonomy, comparative anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, embryology, and other sciences, converge inexorably on a single conclusion: the evolution of life is undoubtedly the best explanation of the facts adduced by all these sciences. The very power of evolution raises a question: is the process of evolution limitless in extent, or does the mind in quest of truth have to recognize limits in its applicability? Part Two faces this problem, and starts out with an enquiry into human evolution. Has biological man originated from a biological stock in common with other anthropoids? Biological methods exhibit man's close structural and functional similarity to nonhuman primates. The same life procedures operate in man as in other mammals, and the similarity increases as we come to the great apes. The sciences of prehistory and biology, along with others, contribute testimony pointing to the same general conclusion: descent with modification. Nevertheless, the origin of man cannot be decided on the basis of his bodily nature alone. Evidence fumished by psychology and the cultural sciences brings out man's psychosocial superiority. Some of man's faculties and his behavior must have a spiritual source. The human soul, the spiritual principle of man's distinctive activities, lies beyond the scrutiny of the natural sciences. The theory of evolution cannot explain the origin of man as a whole, since it is unable to account fully for his spiritual and intellectual life, his history, and his destiny. In connection with the limits of evolution, Fr. Nogar takes pains to describe the various senses and values of the term " evolution...

Responsibility Again III

Responsibility implies in the responsible person a nature to be served : our own human nature and that of our fellow men in all its kinship with other creatures and all its dependence on God. The service of nature in this sense involves service in and with our bodies : and it involves the service of bodily nature in others—not only in other persons but in all the bodily creation. For bodily nature, although indeed it is fashioned in accordance with the divine intellect, is answerable to God in man and not elsewhere. And this service of bodily nature is not any kind of task imposed from without, but is implied in the norm of our humanity and thus in the law of our understanding of ourselves and of the world we live in.Thus the norm of our bodily life implies no bondage to material nature although it implies service in and of the body. Such service is responsible precisely to the extent that it is in obedience to our understanding, free to the extent the understanding we obey is our own. A distinction is noted here between the precise bearing of freedom and of responsibility, although in the integrity of human nature they inseparably imply each other.‘Outside’ the integrity of human nature is the domain of sin, considered—precisely from the point of view we have adopted—as contra naturam. Thus, in the shattered and scattered consciousness which belongs to sin, freedom—obedience to the law of our own understanding so far as it is ours—may be held as a political or quasi-ethical ideal, even though the understanding be false and its law, absolutely speaking, no law.

The Psycho-Somatic Unity—A Few Practical Inferences

The fact that in the course of many neuroses there occur associated feelings of inferiority of a bodily nature, as well as the fact that there are neuroses originating in disturbances of bodily functioning—organ neuroses—compels us to scrutinize our hitherto accepted ideas of the nature and meaning, both of the somatic and of the psychic analysis of the latter. This need is based not merely on speculative grounds and on clinically or experimentally determined facts of recent medical research, but also in reference to the conceptions of modern physics and the views due to advances in zoology and biology. The accurate observations of these scientific disciplines and the inferences drawn from them no longer allow us to consider the somatic as merely secondarily informed by the psyche or as though inspired by a psychic act of projection. Just as the “wave “of the physicist is as much the carrier of the same primeval essence as is the “atom”, so also the world of organic forms has not been constructed secondarily by the conscious thinking spirit; on the contrary—apart from the aberrant (?) adaptations—we must recognize a prototypical pattern (?) also throughout the plant-animal kingdom. We have to recognize an aesthetic controlling principle that belongs to the somatic as such and is innate with it. The great creative artists have always sought for this essential pattern.

THE SENSIBILITY OF THE NIPPLE AREA WITH REFERENCE TO MENTAL DISEASE

In the observation of those nervous and mental affections of whose bodily nature we know little, we sometimes find motor and sensory symptoms, contradictory in character, and apparently obeying no known law. Of the disturbances, pain is the most frequent. Small isolated zones, painful to the slightest touch, exist fairly constantly, at times associated with areas of lessened or increased sense of touch. Oppenheim finds cutaneous and mucous anesthesias often associated with hyperesthesias, and areas on which painful stimuli are not normally perceived as painful. These areas may be hypersensitive to the slightest touch, which in itself may elicit acute pain. These areas have been called hysterogenic zones, but they are probably not entirely found in hysterical conditions. Of these so-called hysterogenic zones-supposedly indicators of higher functional derangements-perhaps the most significant are those in connection with the sexual sphere. Graves,1 in his investigation of sensory disturbances involved in cases of hysteria of both sexes, found a peculiar abnormality of sensation, namely, an anesthesia associated with hyperalgesia sharply confined to the areola-nipple area. The dividing line between the anesthetic and hyperalgesic area and the area of normal sensibility was very sharp, the change from the normal sensation being found wholly within the pigmented area. As this peculiarity was more or less constant in 30 cases of typical hysteria, the conclusion was drawn that “areola-nipple anesthesia associated with hyperalgesia is a pathognomonic and fairly constant stigma in hysteria.” He also notes experiments on the normal individual, in which, as a