Phenomenological Account Research Articles

Self-defense: Deflecting Deflationary and Eliminativist Critiques of the Sense of Ownership.

I defend a phenomenological account of the sense of ownership as part of a minimal sense of self from those critics who propose either a deflationary or eliminativist critique. Specifically, I block the deflationary critique by showing that in fact the phenomenological account is itself a deflationary account insofar as it takes the sense of ownership to be implicit or intrinsic to experience and bodily action. I address the eliminativist view by considering empirical evidence that supports the concept of pre-reflective self-awareness, which underpins the sense of ownership. Finally, I respond to claims that phenomenology does not offer a positive account of the sense of ownership by showing the role it plays in an enactivist (action-oriented) view of embodied cognition.

Empathy, Simulation, and Neuroscience: A Phenomenological Case against Simulation-Theory

In recent years, some simulation theorists have claimed that the discovery of mirror neurons provides empirical support for the position that mind reading is, at some basic level, simulation. The purpose of this essay is to question that claim. I begin by providing brief context for the current mind reading debate and then developing an influential simulationist account of mind reading. I then draw on the works of Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein to develop an alternative, phenomenological account. In conclusion, I offer multiple objections against simulation theory and argue that the empirical evidence mirror neurons offer us does not necessarily support the view that empathy is simulation.

Trading in Imaginaries: Locating Authenticity in Argentine Tango

Argentine tango tends to be associated with highly gendered images of women and men locked in contorted embraces. These images constitute a tango imaginary that is removed from the lived experience of the dance. Remaining close to the experiential core of tango, this paper provides a Heideggerian-inspired phenomenological account that re-imagines tango as a mode of being-in-the-world. By situating us in direct and constant relationship with an attentive partner and furnishing a complex grammar of constraints, tango generates a frame for creating and sustaining worldhood. By examining the how of dance, the kind of experience it offers up, we approach the dynamic emergence of Being. In what follows, I draw on my years of dancing tango to elaborate an understanding of the experiential dimensions of the dance, and how these relate to the development of shared focal practices that disclose insights associated with embodied being-in-the-world.

A contemporary phenomenology of menstruation: Understanding the body in situation and as situation in public health interventions to address menstruation-related challenges

Social science and public health research has pointed to, firstly, the challenges women face in terms of the management of menstruation and, secondly, to the negative symbolic associations made with the menstruating body. This research, however, seldom engages with philosophical issues relating to embodied subjectivity in order to explain and understand the trends noted. In this paper, we attempt to bridge the divide between feminist theory and current research on the menstruation-related challenges facing women today. We provide a feminist phenomenological account of menstruation in which women's shared bodily lived experiences of menstruation—the body as situation—are set within contexts that enable and/or restrain freedom—the body in situation. This account allows us to understand the universal and differentiated aspects of menstruation and menstrual management, thereby providing a nuanced picture of the interplay between the physical occurrence of menstruation, the symbolic associations made with menstruation, and the socio-material, historical and political conditions within which women live. Such an account, we suggest, should inform advocacy around public policy and institutional civic society that promotes the freedom of women to engage in important life projects, and ground public health interventions around menstruation related challenges.

How Personal Transformation Occurs Following a Single Peak Experience in Nature: A Phenomenological Account

This study focuses on a particular form of positive transformation taking place in the wilderness, defined here as peak transformative experience. A large number of studies have been conducted on the negative transformative effect of a single traumatic event, while very little research has focused on positive transformational events. We addressed this lacuna by studying a unique case of quick positive transformation, taking place in nature. This study goes beyond the common description and outcome of the peak experience by focusing specifically on the process of personal transformation. Applying a phenomenological approach, 15 participants aged 28 to 70 years, who identified as having had such an experience, were interviewed. Analysis of these interviews revealed the “essence” of the peak experience in nature which led to the rapid transformation. This essence involved the recognition of formerly unknown aspects of self, projected onto nature and experienced in an embodied way, evoking an insight into a meaningful personal issue. Choosing to own these newly discovered aspects and integrate them resulted in rapid personal transformation. The findings are discussed, underscoring the centrality of nature in this process, the importance of free choice, and the potential for harnessing positive transformative peak experiences in nature for human development.

Autism and The Ethics of Care: A Phenomenological Investigation Into the Contagion of Nothing

AbstractThis article investigates the social contagion of autism from a phenomenological perspective. It asks: Can a phenomenological approach, rather than merely illustrating the typologies revealed by constructionist and political economic approaches,generate new categoriesbecause it insists on a different unit of analysis rooted in a first‐person perspective? To answer this, the article contrasts a third‐person account of autism as an epidemic of representation and a phenomenological account. Drawing upon philosophical phenomenology (Gadamer in particular), it broadly outlines what is at stake in the phenomenological insistence on the primacy of the first‐person perspective. Turning to an ethnographic case, it examines how the category of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), as it is lived by one family, poses a threat far more pernicious than a third‐person exploration of ASD might suggest. As a lived experience, it becomes linked to other epidemics and life conditions, emerging as the ominous category “becoming nothing.”

Phenomenology and Teleology: Hans Jonas's Philosophy of Life

Although Hans Jonas's theory of responsibility has been influential on continental European environmental ethics, his philosophy of life, which seeks to rehabilitate a teleological account of living beings and describe their differing degrees of ‘existential freedom’, is less well-known. In this article, I reconstruct the stages of Jonas's phenomenological account and address the key criticisms levelled at it. I argue that although Jonas's theory is flawed by internal contradictions, these may be rectifiable, and, if so, his philosophy of life could also provide an ontological rationale for a biocentric ethic. I conclude that for these reasons his work deserves greater scholarly attention.

Hero Versus Saint: Considerations From the Phenomenology of Embodiment

This article contributes to the conceptual clarification of “heroism” as the central idea of “heroism science,” by outlining an approach to heroic action, in its distinction from “moral saintliness,” based in a phenomenological account of embodied existence. I first address the paradoxical tension obtaining between the “exceptionalization” of heroism and what has been termed its “banality.” Through a discussion of moral supererogation, this points toward a conception of heroic action that excludes self-sacrifice. With reference to examples of “Holocaust rescuers,” I develop a view of heroic action as reflecting a prepersonal practical necessity, an anonymous incapacity to do otherwise. I then substantiate this view with considerations drawn from the phenomenology of embodied existence, relying in particular on the distinction drawn by Merleau-Ponty between the “actual” and “habitual” dimensions of embodiment. On this basis, I sketch out how heroic and saintly action can be understood as contrary ways in which the tension between these dimensions of embodiment is resolved. This approach affords conceptually clear notions of heroism, moral saintliness, and the distinction between them, and on this basis, it portends the sort of coherent and viable understanding of heroism’s “banality” that heroism science requires. By way of conclusion, I briefly address some of the theoretical advantages of this approach, along with some of the larger stakes involved.

Facing a Disruptive Face: Embodiment in the Everyday Experiences of \u201cDisfigured\u201d Individuals

In recent years, facial difference is increasingly on the public and academic agenda. This is evidenced by the growing public presence of individuals with an atypical face, and the simultaneous emergence of research investigating the issues associated with facial variance. The scholarship on facial difference approaches this topic either through a medical and rehabilitation perspective, or a psycho-social one. However, having a different face also encompasses an embodied dimension. In this paper, we explore this embodied dimension by interpreting the stories of individuals with facial limb absence against the background of phenomenological theories of the body, illness and disability. Our findings suggest that the atypical face disrupts these individuals’ engagement with everyday projects when it gives rise to disruptive perceptions, sensations, and observations. The face then ceases to be the absent background to perception, and becomes foregrounded in awareness. The disruptions evoked by facial difference call for adjustments: as they come to terms with their altered face, the participants in our study gradually develop various new bodily habits that re-establish their face’s absence, or relate to its disruptive presence. It is through these emergent habits that facial difference comes to be embodied. By analyzing the everyday experiences of individuals with facial limb absence, this article provides a much-needed exploration of the embodied aspects of facial difference. It also exemplifies how a phenomenological account of illness and disability can do justice both to the impairments and appearance issues associated with atypical embodiment.

What Is Given in Experience: The Phenomenological Account.

What is given in observation? A basic tenet of empirical science is that reliable knowledge results from observation, with natural perception and with refined instruments, which is repeatable and verifiable by impartial observers in standard conditions. An observer's observation, in the first-person singular, is then equivalent and interchangeable with those of others. But what is really observed and given in such observation? There is a task here for phenomenology: to discern just what is given and how. What does a particular scientific discipline determine to count as an observation? In what language is the observation to be recorded? What counts as evidence? What counts as a description or an argument? What theories are implicated in the observational statements? Next, the phenomenologist asks, "What is given in experience? What is the phenomenological account?"

Employer Attractiveness Through Social Media: A Phenomenological Study

The purpose of this paper is to gain insights into the subjective experience and perception of job seekers about the extensive use of social media as a source of recruitment and selection by the employers and its influence on the overall employer attractiveness. Four focus group interviews were conducted, audio-taped, transcribed, and analyzed by following the procedure of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) laid down by Smith and Osborn (2007). By employing IPA, the themes which emerged under the study are: ease of information; navigational usability and user friendliness; person-job fit and person-organization fit; reliability and timeliness; positive and cost effective marketing; value creation for the employers; and privacy concern. The present study posits to assist the human resource managers in formulating strategies pertaining to social media recruitment and selection so as to create an image of attractive employer. Although IPA has been predominantly used within health psychology, it has been uncommon in the recruitment literature so far. Since IPA is a phenomenological account of an individual’s personal experience and perception about an object or event, it allowed determining the richness of job seekers’ perception and the extent to which it is similar or different across each participant groups. Also, the current study is one of the pioneers in uncovering the perception of job seekers about social media recruitment and selection process in the Indian context.

SU107. Disrupted Continuity of Subjective Time in the Milliseconds Range in the Self-disturbances of Schizophrenia: Convergence of Experimental, Phenomenological, and Predictive Coding Accounts

SU107. Disrupted Continuity of Subjective Time in the Milliseconds Range in the Self-disturbances of Schizophrenia: Convergence of Experimental, Phenomenological, and Predictive Coding Accounts

Anticipatory Imagination in Aging: Revolt and Resignation in Modern Day France

“Rien n’arrive ni comme on l’espère, ni comme on le craint. Nothing really happens as we hope it will, nor as we fear it will.”1 Améry appropriates this quote of Proust to highlight how our imaginative powers can never approach its reality during an extreme event. This failure of what he coins our anticipatory imagination is depicted in his phenomenological account of torture, an event whose extremity is later compared to another embodied experience: that of aging. Equating torture with aging may seem shocking to some, and Améry was critiqued for suggesting such a parallel, particularly since he narrates a lived experience with the latter at the mere age of fifty-five. He revisits this critique in the preface to the fourth edition of On Aging: Revolt and Resignation where he states: "Today as much as yesterday I think that society has to undertake everything to relieve old and aging persons of their unpleasant destiny. And at the same time I stick to my position that all high- minded and reverential efforts in this direction, though indeed capable of being somewhat soothing- are still not capable of changing anything fundamental about the tragic hardship of aging." - Jean Améry, On Aging [Améry’s emphasis]The “today” of society that Améry referenced was 1977. But what about today? Is Améry correct in projecting that despite our best efforts nothing fundamental can change the quite unbearable experience of aging? Are attempts to aid the aging complicit in a “vile dupery” that ends in “metaphorically empty” phrases such as “rest in peace”?3 I would like to pose these questions in the wake of a heated debate in France regarding the legality of assisted suicide for aging persons (Améry took his own life and sees suicide as an acceptable form of revolt and resignation, the only authentic choices left to the aging). Thus, this paper seeks to not only dissect his account of aging (and the failure of anticipatory imagination in futural projections of it) but to ask whether his philosophy could be read alongside current French thinkers to better assess comment mourir dans la dignité.

Mis derechos y los derechos del otro. Reflexiones fenomenológicas en torno al problema del fundamento de los derechos humanos

<p><span><span>Recibido: 28/06/15 • Aceptado: 5/10/16</span></span></p><p><span id="docs-internal-guid-8fcc822a-9d66-2aee-cb2b-cc690f92191e"><span>En la primera parte del artículo se analizarán algunas de las posiciones filosóficas (en especial iusfilosóficas) contemporáneas más importantes, </span><span>sólo</span><span> en relación a su posición con respecto a los DDHH. </span></span>En la segunda presentaremos nuestra propuesta. Ofreceremos una caracterización jurídico-conceptual del concepto de ‘derecho’, siguiendo la dogmática de Carlos Nino: a fin de mostrar que los DDHH no se pueden justificar desde la ciencia jurídica. Presentaremos un intento de aproximación fenomenológica al problema de los DDHH que se realizará en diferentes dimensiones que van de la esfera de constitución genética-intersubjetiva de la propia subjetividad, a la dimensión histórica, trans-generacional.</p><p> </p>

An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Schema Modes in a Single Case of Anorexia Nervosa: Part 1- Background, Method, and Child and Parent Modes

Within the schema therapy model, schema modes are the shifting experiential states that individuals experience, and identification of these is central to case conceptualization and the planning of interventions. Differences in the naming and descriptions of modes in the literature suggest the need for systematic phenomenological investigation. This paper presents the first part of an interpretative phenomenological analysis of schema modes within the single case of Linda (20), a young woman with anorexia nervosa. The analysis, which is based largely on transcripts of seven therapy sessions, yielded phenomenological accounts of her experience of a number of modes. In this, the first of two papers, a phenomenological account of her Child and Parent modes are presented and discussed.

On the Historiography of Africana Philosophy: Overcoming Disciplinary Decadence through the Teleological Suspension of Philosophy

Abstract This article is a critical philosophical discussion of Lewis Gordon's An Introduction to Africana Philosophy. Gordon in his text does not portray Africana philosophy as an abstract universalism, philosophy as the “view from nowhere” or philosophy as the “god's eye view” on reality. He also refrains from depicting Africana philosophy as a documentary description of Africana identity, thereby indicating a refusal on his part to reduce Africana philosophy to identity politics, to mere psycho-existential babble. Gordon critically engages with race in his text, but his involvement with this concept does not excessively dominate the text. This article critically explores Africana philosophy's involvement with postmodernism, as well as work through Gordon's notions of disciplinary decadence and the teleological suspension of philosophy. The basic analytical thrust endorses Gordon's efforts to represent Africana philosophy as, among other things, an existential phenomenological account of the being-in-the-world of Africana people. This approach represents Africana philosophy as an anti-Cartesian philosophy, precisely because it does not emanate from a theoretically disembodied consciousness nor from an epistemic knowing subject in search of the transcendental foundations of knowledge.

The phenomenology of the social world

In this paper I discuss Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological account of the constitution of the social world, in relation to some phenomenological contributions to the constitution of sociality found in Husserl’s students and followers, including Heidegger, Gurwitsch, Walther, Otaka, and Schutz. Heidegger is often seen as being the first to highlight explicitly human existence as Mitsein and In-der-Welt-Sein, but it is now clear from the Husserliana publications that, in his private research manuscripts especially during his Freiburg years, Husserl employs many of the terms associated with Heidegger, e.g. Mitwelt, Weltlichkeit, Alltäglichkeit, Zeitlichkeit, and Geschichtlichkeit, and had detailed discussions of various forms of social constitution. It is clear that Husserl and Heidegger were exploring these themes in dialogue with one another, and that Husserl, in fact, has a rich phenomenology of sociality that is worth exploring in its own right. In this paper, I will outline some of the key aspects of Husserl’s contribution.

The onset of war as a novel experience: dislocation and familiarisation in Côte d'Ivoire, late 2002

This article offers a phenomenological account of the onset of war in the town of Man, western Cote d'Ivoire, in 2002. Based on recollections of ‘average’ people, the article depicts how the familiar social world was shattered with the violent occupation of the town by insurgent groups. Due to the novelty of the situation, people were unable to draw on past experiences and had difficulties imagining life under insurgent control. As a consequence, people's agency was reduced to ad-hoc judgements. Sooner than one might expect, a process of familiarisation occurred that gradually allowed people to make more informed decisions.

On Seizing the Source: Toward a Phenomenology of Religious Violence

In this paper I argue that we need to analyze ‘religious violence’ in the ‘post-secular context’ in a twofold way: rather than simply viewing it in terms of mere irrationality, senselessness, atavism, or monstrosity – terms which, as we witness today on an immense scale, are strongly endorsed by the contemporary theater of cruelty committed in the name of religion – we also need to understand it in terms of an ‘originary supplement’ of ‘disengaged reason’. In order to confront its specificity beyond traditional explanations of violence, I propose an integrated phenomenological account of religion that traces the phenomenality of religion in terms of a correlation between the originary givenness of transcendence and capable man’s creative capacities to respond to it. Following Ricœur, I discuss ‘religious violence’ in terms of a monopolizing appropriation of the originary source of givenness that conflates man’s freedom to poetically respond to the appeal of the foundational with the surreptitiously claimed sovereignty to make it happen in a practical transfiguration of the everyday.

Toward an embodied account of double-voiced discourse: The critical role of imagery and affect in Bakhtin’s dialogic imagination

Abstract Drawing from Paivio’s (1986, Mental representations: A dual coding approach. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, Images in mind: The evolution of a theory. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 2007, Mind and its evolution: A dual coding theoretical approach. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum) dual-coding theory, I argue that an understanding of the structure and function of mental imagery and affect can lead to an embodied and more comprehensive account of the addressivity that characterizes Bakhtin’s double-voiced discourse. A dialogic exchange between characters in Orhan Pamuk’s (2004, Snow. New York: Vintage) Snow provides a literary example of an intersubjective encounter to demonstrate that crafting consciousness in the novel and sustaining Bakhtin’s double-voiced discourse relies on the cognitive capacity to access both verbal and non-verbal imagery. I position Bakhtinian dialogism within a historical overview of the nature of mind and mental imagery in western philosophy to elucidate the tenuous relation between Bakhtin’s dialogic existence and the principles of empiricism as expressed in Dewey (1987 [1934], Art as experience. In Jo Ann Boydston (ed.), The later works of John Dewey, 1925–1953, vol. 10. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980 [1916], Democracy and education. In Jo Ann Boydston (ed.), The middle works of John Dewey, 1899–1924, vol. 9. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press) and Mead (1934, Mind, self, and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964, The objective reality of perspectives. In A. Reck (ed.) Selected writings, 312–314. Chicago: University of Chicago Press). With reference to Damasio’s (1999, The feeling of what happens: Body and emotion in the making of consciousness. New York: Harcourt) neurobiological account of consciousness, Langer’s (1957, Philosophy in a new key: A study in the symbolism of reason, rite, and art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) evolutionary account of language, and Thompson’s (2007, Mind in life: Biology, phenomenology and the sciences of mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) phenomenological account of empathy, I outline how Bakhtin’s dialogism differs from embodied theories of mind and consciousness in several fundamental ways to preclude a full appreciation of the other’s empathetic experience of oneself in authoring a socially shared existence.