Phenomenological Concept Research Articles

Navigating in the multiverse: Possibilities and limitations of creative practices in online environments

Currently, and especially since the breakout of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an increase of online concerts, talks and even artist residencies. There has also been a development of webstreaming sound studios and online interactive platforms that accommodate art works. Moreover, museums and galleries offer virtual tours to their exhibitions. All this is part of a promise of widening access to cultural, educational and creative opportunities and a suggestion to escape from the limitations and boundaries of time and physical distance. Nonetheless, creative practitioners, curators and art aficionados are urgently compelled to critically analyse, doubt and challenge this promise of limitless possibilities that the online world is offering. In this era of digital information, what expectations does a virtual artwork raise? What is its utilitarian purpose and social value? How do the disembodiment and technological displacement of human beings shape and affect their cultural and communal bonding? To find some answers or, rather, to extend these questions, I will reflect on my artistic practice and experience of creating works that are available on online platforms and controlled with the use of digital interactive tools. A primary analytical tool will be the phenomenological concept of the lived body as well as socio-anthropological arguments about time and materiality. My aim is not to create a fixed and dogmatic theory but to negotiate what role, if any, artistic practice can have in the virtual world.

Is There a Phenomenological Concept of Matter?

Editorial

Is There a Phenomenological Concept of Matter

Is There a Phenomenological Concept of Matter

Endo Time: Endometriosis and the Flow of Recognition

AbstractThe relation between time and gender has been extensively discussed in feminist theory, from Simone de Beauvoir to recent studies of queer temporality and crip time. In this article, I explore gender as “lived time” in relation to a pressing feminist issue: social recognition of the chronic illness endometriosis (endo). Based on my interviews with individuals diagnosed with endo, I argue that lived time can be studied by approaching becoming as a dynamic process or flow of recognition, creating certain temporal patterns in the lifeworld. I propose the concept of “endo time” as a phenomenological conception of the lived time of endo. I identify three temporal patterns that characterize endo time: waiting time (I), cyclical or chronic time (II), and sedimented time (III). The analysis contributes to feminist philosophy by detailing how gender appears as a specific orchestration of time. Because of its connection to feminized pain and menstrual flow on the one hand and social recognition on the other, endo presents an illuminating case for exploring the relation between gender, recognition, and lived time.

세계 내에서 관계하는 몸으로 바라본 위약효과

Placebo effects are intriguing phenomena in which beneficial healing effects happen despite the administration of a placebo, which has no active substances or involves inert procedures. Multi-dimensional characteristics have been involved in placebo effects, exhibiting various and non-specific modalities. The two most representative well-known explanatory models on placebo effects, expectancy and conditioning theories, which have perspectives rooted in Cartesian dualism that separate mind and body, show inherent limitations and problems in sufficiently explaining placebo effects. In order to elucidate placebo effects which shows non-separative, connective and relating aspects, new models capable of embracing and explaining such aspects are required. This study attempted to examine how placebo effects could happen in our bodies by means of studies based upon phenomenology and enactivism as models to account for the connective, combining, and interactive relations between various dimensions. This study elucidates the mechanisms of placebo effects using the phenomenological and various enactive concepts. At the heart of connections and relations between several heterogenous dimensions, relating bodies as embodied beings are closely involved in the dynamic interactions with our mind and environments. Our bodies where health, illness, and healing processes through medical practices including placebo effects take place could be considered as the very relation itself in which our internal and external worlds encounter and interact. This study suggests that continual establishment and verification of new theories concerning these relations, which are manifested in placebo effect, are required to deal persuasively with the topic, and the need for appropriate utilization of the relational aspects of placebo effects.

CONCEPTUAL BACKGROUND FOR THE FORMATION OF PHENOMENOLOGY IN THE GERMAN PHILOSOPHY OF THE 19th CENTURY

An early stage in the development of phenomenology, as a matter of fact, is considered, which completes a long, foldable and richly planned process, within the framework of which a new philosophical methodology was formed. Among the concepts of phenomenology, the concept of intentionality is especially distinguished, as it is not only the basic characteristic of all mental acts of a person, but also a rethinking prompting ontology of wisdom. The basic provisions of the phenomenological theory of information are not in themselves an intentional principle, which changes the traditional for that hour the understanding of information as a mental interpretation of speeches. F. Brentano's position forces us to talk about certain ontological levels that are associated with a greater or lesser obviousness of real or mental objects. The general thesis proposed here is that phenomenology is not the creation of a single, even brilliant, thinker, but is a doctrine that completes a rather long, complex and multifaceted process within which a new philosophical position was formed. In this sense, it can be argued that the emergence of the phenomenological method was prepared by the entire development of European philosophy, in each stage of which one can find points of formation of the phenomenological method or points of thematic intersection with phenomenology. In this respect, phenomenology is not just a philosophical «invention», another» «system», but a doctrine that emerged at the intersection of rational and empirical theories of New European philosophy, starting in the nineteenth century. At an early stage of phenomenology's development, an important conceptual basis for building a scientific psychology that wants to consider mental phenomena in any meaningful way is revealed. This basis is contained in the concept of intentionality, which is fundamental to the construction and development of phenomenological discourse. However, it would be a mistake to treat intentional objects as products of the imagination or simple empirical data that psychology usually deals with. In a certain sense, an intentional object is not a psychological phenomenon, but one of the constituent elements of the original ontology, a material, a brick, which consistently makes up any ontological structure. Thus, already at the stage of the formation of the phenomenological doctrine, the contours and priorities of a new philosophy were determined, which positioned itself as a philosophy of consciousness and should be read as a prerequisite for the construction of a fundamental ontology.

Upbringing according to Values: An Analysis of Grimm’s Tale “Hansel and Gretel” in accordance with the Theories of Max Scheler and Milton Rokeach

The article aims to show how the message of one of the most popular fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, Hansel and Grethel, can be read from the point of view of upbringing according to values. To this end, the analysis of fairy tales was made based on the phenomenological concept of an unchanging hierarchy of the values of Max Scheler, and on the theory of Milton Rokeach, assuming that the individual value system develops through learning. Apart from Bettelheim’s well-known interpretation, the analysis of the fairy tales revealed an idealistic message: that the experience of anomy, a reverse hierarchy of values and negative values, can be overcame by the effort to find an existing apriori universal system of values. In this context the most important developmental task is the ability to choose proper values.

Alongside: Exploring the Meaningfulness of Significant Moments in Others' Lives Through Observation and Interview.

How do we explore the meaningfulness of others' experiences? What means do we have to access their experiencing of the world? How do we express our understandings of others' experiences of body and place without reducing them to objectification? In this methodological paper, we reflect on how we can gain valuable insights into the lived experiences of others through research activities that are conducted 'alongside' participants. Phenomenological concepts of intentionality and embodiment are considered as we draw on an empirical example of exploring the experiences of hospitalized patients with neurological diseases through observations and interviews. The aim is to unfold alongside as an epistemological stance to explore the meaning of another's lifeworld. We strive to show that personal presence and engagement within this approach contains relational, existential, and aesthetic dimensions worth considering.

Phenomenology as an approach to seeing the aesthetics of ugliness in contemporary art designs

With a descriptive and analytical approach, it discusses the concept of phenomenology as an approach to seeing the aesthetics of ugliness as one of the concepts associated with the aesthetic experience in contemporary art designs, as it is the result of communication between artistic production and the recipient, which leads to creating a state of aesthetic pleasure. A phenomenological method is used to uncover the aesthetics of ugly and to connect ugliness and beauty since ugliness in aesthetics incorporates beauty as a modern aesthetic vision from the phenomenological perspective. The study investigated aesthetics as a phenomenon of perception, sensory knowledge, and the aesthetic response to the production of designs in contemporary art, represented by achieving a status of aesthetic pleasure, and the phenomenological approach can be applied to see the aesthetics of ugliness in contemporary design, and there is a relationship between the aesthetics of ugliness and the aesthetic experience in producing contemporary design, and it reached the possibility of applying the phenomenological approach to appreciation and criticism with an aesthetic vision of ugliness, by transforming the influence of phenomenological thought as a method into an aesthetic concept. To build the design for a more in-depth vision in a new analytical reading, and to have a merit in the study and production of designs that began with the art of the event and ended as digital art with technical effects, with its components (intentionality).

Minimal self-consciousness and the flying man argument.

The concept of minimal self-consciousness or "minimal self" is equivalent to a very basic form of first-person, pre-reflective self-awareness, which includes bodily self-awareness, and is related to phenomenal experience (qualia) and sentience. This phenomenological concept plays a role in characterizations of the senses of ownership and agency; in recent debates about Buddhist conceptions of the no-self; in explanations of illusions such as the Rubber Hand Illusion; as well as in characterizations of schizophrenia as a self-disorder. Despite its relevance to these complex investigations, a number of theorists have recently pointed out that the concept is not well defined. In order to provide some clarification about the notion of minimal self and how it relates to bodily and sensory processes this paper reaches back to the ideas expressed in a famous medieval thought experiment proposed in the 11th century: Avicenna's Flying Man argument. The paper then provides a review of some of the contemporary debates about the minimal self, pointing especially to questions about the role of bodily and social processes.

The genesis of the minimal mind: elements of a phenomenological and functional account

AbstractIn this article, we endeavour to lay the theoretical fundaments of a phenomenologically based project regarding the origins of conscious experience in the natural world. We assume that a phenomenological analysis (based upon Edmund Husserl’s philosophy) of first-person experience could substantially contribute to related empirical research. In this regard, two phenomenological conceptions provided by Husserl are of fundamental importance. The first relates to the essential and necessary embodiment of every subjective experience; the second concerns the intrinsically holistic and concrete character of consciousness. These considerations have two crucial implications. First, every mental content and capability ultimately refers to a bodily basis as its carrier and realizer (‘embodied manifestation thesis’). Second, there is a minimal set of bodily structures that carries and realizes the minimal mind (‘minimal context thesis’). Based upon these assumptions, we can use phenomenology to select from the empirical theories of consciousness. We argue that currently, Bjorn Merker’s subcortical theory of consciousness appears to be the best candidate for a phenomenological approach. In phenomenological regard, however, it is highly challenging to test a subcortical theory; therefore, we suggest that certain experiments based upon emergence from general anaesthesia might help test such a theory in a phenomenologically legitimate way.

Not of This World – Death and Loss in Himalayan Mountaineering

This paper examines the narratives of three deceased high-altitude mountaineers who lost their lives while climbing in the Greater Himalaya. These individuals were participants in part of a larger ethnographic study on ‘Tourism in the Death Zone’ conducted over the space of 150 days fieldwork in Pakistan and Nepal in 2019. The paper seeks to explore how these participants depth of immersion in the ‘social world’ of high-altitude mountaineering eventually lead to their deaths. To do so, the phenomenological concept of the lifeworld [lebenswelt] is utilized to show how the participants lived realities and aspirations became entwined with high-altitude mountaineering – a serious leisure community. Previously, the connection between the lifeworld and serious leisure viewed within the context of extreme risk taking and possible death, has not been explored.

Life as Metaphor in Derrida and Fink

This article explains how Derrida’s notion of an originary or generalised metaphoricity can be understood in terms of the analyses presented in Voice and Phenomenon (1967) in response to Eugen Fink’s question of a ‘transcendental logos’ and of the paradoxical ontological status of phenomenological language. Tracing Fink’s impact on Derrida, as well as the key differences between them, the article shows that underlying Derrida’s reappropriation of the phenomenological concept of ‘life’ is an expansion of indicative relations—which in Husserl typify the function of signs within intersubjective communication and modes of judgement characterised by the non-presence of the intended object—to a general feature of the ‘living present’. While for Fink the indicative or metaphorical nature of the transcendental concept of ‘life’ does not threaten the founding unity it serves to name, for Derrida it is this very unity which is undermined by the proliferation of indication at the core of temporal experience.

Feynman’s method in chiral nanorod-based metamaterial nanoplasmonics

We propose a theoretical approach to some of the nanorod-based metamaterial implementations that does not depend on macroscopic electrodynamics. The approach is motivated by the fact that in actual experiments the incident electromagnetic wave encounters a metamaterial structure which is planar in its shape, contains a layer or two of artificially created building blocks, and therefore cannot be regarded as a three-dimensional continuous medium. This leads to a theoretical framework in which the phenomenological concept of refractive index loses its principled meaning, and the deeper concept of scattering is taking center stage. Our proposal and its mathematical realization rely heavily on Feynman’s explanation of the physical origin of the index of refraction and on his formula for the field of a plane of oscillating charges. We provide a complete proof of Feynman’s formula, filling in some steps that were missing in the original derivation, and then generalize it to the case of a finite disk, which may be relevant to the actual experiments involving laser beams. We then show how the formula can be applied to metamaterial nanoplasmonics by considering some subtle interference effects in uniform laser beams striking metamaterial plates. The first two effects use a single layer of aligned plasmonic nanorods, while the third uses a single layer of gyrotropic elements that may conveniently be described by the celebrated Born-Kuhn oscillator model. The considered effects can potentially be used in the development of quality standards for various metamaterial devices.

Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Sedimentations

Abstract The paper explores the meaning of the phenomenological concept of sedimentation in the framework of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. The analysis I offer suggests that Merleau-Ponty initiates a transition from the constitutional problematic of sedimentations that we come across in Husserl’s phenomenology to the analysis of existential sedimentations. Merleau-Ponty accomplishes this transformation by binding the Husserlian conception of sedimentations with the Heideggerian conception of facticity. The distinction Merleau-Ponty draws between originary sedimentations and secondary sedimentations is especially important, for it allows one to claim that Merleau-Ponty recognizes all experiences as sedimented. Against the background of this realization, I offer a reevaluation of Merleau-Ponty’s cryptic remarks in the Phenomenology of Perception regarding the “original past,” also described as “a past that has never been a present.” I argue that these are metaphors for originary sedimentations. In place of a conclusion, I suggest that especially when the concept of sedimentation is universalized, we come to recognize its inherently paradoxical nature. In the final analysis, besides being a genetic concept, sedimentation is also a limit problem and a limit phenomenon.

Review of Stephen K. Levine’s Philosophy of Expressive Arts Therapy: Poiesis and the Therapeutic Imagination. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2019

This article reviews Stephen K. Levine’s 2019 book, Philosophy of Expressive Arts Therapy: Poiesis and the Therapeutic Imagination. The book, complete with poetry and anecdotes is connected to larger concepts in psychology, phenomenology and philosophy. The article summarizes the books contents and offers a review from the perspective of phenomenology and the expressive art practice.

Implementation of Phenomenological Studies in Education: A Literature Study

Phenomenology is a science that discusses and reveals visible events or phenomena. The diversity of phenomenological research makes questions about phenomenological methods even more urgent. Several recent studies still overlap between phenomenological and case study research, where theoretically and practically, the two methods have different goals. This research aims to explore the current implementation of phenomenological methods through a literature review and examining crucial matters in phenomenological research. The Current study uses a systematic literature review method consisting of 3 stages: selection of the articles, analysis of studies, and categorization of the articles. The study results show that there were 20 previous studies reviewed. The implementation of the phenomenological method carried out in previous studies needs to follow the concept of phenomenology. In English language studies, 9 out of 10 studies provided study results according to the chosen method. Only one article was less suitable because it did not show the results of interviews that had been conducted. Then, in the Indonesian language study, 9 out of 10 did not show the results of the interviews that had been conducted. 7 out of 10 Indonesian language studies did not explain the sampling technique, and 2 out of 10 did not explain the participants in the study.

Chemo sickness as existential feeling: A conceptual contribution to person-centered phenomenological oncology care

In response to cancer, patients may be thrown into precarious processes of remaking their purpose, identity, and connections to the world around them. Thoughtful and thorough responses to these issues can be supported by person-centered phenomenological approaches to caring for patients. The importance of perspectives on illness offered by theoretical phenomenology will become apparent through the example of the experience of nausea, or perhaps more accurately put—chemo sickness. The focus here is on how chemo sickness alters one's way of relating to the world. I will examine the phenomenon of nausea through the lens of the phenomenological concept of mood—an existential feeling that engenders a diffused tone permeating through one's world and shapes the envisioned possibilities on one's horizon.

Turning toward suffering: Rethinking the patient- clinician relationship in physical therapy practice

ABSTRACT In this professional theoretical article, the authors argue that patient care should be centered on connection and that authentically turning toward suffering necessitates an approach to care that transcends medicine’s traditional focus on cure and physical restoration and differentiates between pathology and disability. The meaning of illness and suffering for those who have experienced life-changing injuries or illness is explored. Strategies for approaching the lifeworld of these individuals are discussed using the concepts of phenomenology and embodiment, rooted in the work of philosophers from the phenomenological tradition. The authors also propose an approach to patient care offering a case-based example based on postmodernist concepts that elevate connection, relationship, and interdependency above the traditional focus of restoring normality and physical independence for individuals with disabilities. Traditional assumptions about quality of life, illness, and disability are called into question by focusing on the fluidity of being and disability identity, which serves to destabilize static, binary conceptions of individuals as either healthy or ill, disabled, or able-bodied. A postmodern lens invites healthcare practitioners to envision themselves as part of an assemblage that may promote a more expansive view of the relationship between patient and healthcare practitioner.

The Medication Use Issues and Challenges of Mental Illness Exacerbation in Patients with Schizophrenia: A Qualitative Study in Thailand.

Patients with schizophrenia often experience mental illness exacerbations, which lead to frequent re-hospitalization. Non-adherence to medication is the main cause of relapses, despite many patients requiring lifelong treatment. Non-adherence consequences include higher re-admission and suicide rates, worse progression of mental illness, higher rates of violence by patients with mental illness, and increased use of emergency psychiatric services. This directly impacts the cost and workload of the mental healthcare system. This study aims to understand medication non-adherence among schizophrenia patients in Thailand based on the country's specific context. This qualitative research study explored the causes of non-adherence to medication and health perceptions among patients with schizophrenia in Thailand. Five patients with schizophrenia were included in this study. Data was collected through in-depth interviews, recordings of treatments, and field notes based on the interpretive perspective of key informants with the concept of phenomenology. Thematic analysis revealed two main themes associated with mental illness exacerbation: triggers of exacerbation and medication non-adherence. The triggers that emerged from the data were substance abuse and psychological stress. Medication non-adherence issues were misunderstandings about mental illness and its treatment, lack of participation in treatment, and difficulty accessing mental health services. This study explored the importance of medication adherence in patients with schizophrenia. Non-adherence to medication can worsen mental illness and create a vicious cycle that makes treatment more challenging. Substance abuse and psychological stress can also exacerbate this cycle. Mental health services should strive to improve medication adherence strategies and offer social support to prevent harmful behaviors and break the vicious cycle.