Phenomenological Domain Research Articles

The Enactive Nature of the Relationship between Criticism and Aesthetics: From Practice to Theory to Pedagogy

This article delves into the intricate relationship between criticism and aesthetics, emphasizing its enactive nature. It explores how this relationship informs pedagogy and has culminated in the creation of an innovative undergraduate aesthetics course centered around the practice of writing critiques. Moreover, it illustrates the dynamic process through which practice gives rise to theory, subsequently influencing pedagogical approaches, and, intriguingly, circling back to practice. To elucidate this flow of ideas across the realms of practice, theory, and pedagogy, we introduce several key concepts. These include the paradigm of creation research, also known as practice as research, which forms the foundation for much of our exploration. Additionally, we delve into the paradigm of enaction, inspired by the work of Francisco Varela in the cognitive sciences, to shed light on the cognitive processes underpinning our study. This article is the culmination of nearly a decade of interdisciplinary research that traverses the domains of creation research, enaction, phenomenology, criticism, aesthetics, and pedagogy. Throughout this journey, we have sought to unravel the intricate connections between criticism and aesthetics, ultimately paving the way for an innovative approach to teaching aesthetics at the undergraduate level.

Exploring the Lived Experiences of Clinical Educators: Challenges, Motivations, and Future Perspectives

Introduction: This study examines the factors contributing to the shortage of medical doctors teaching medical students despite their crucial role in training the future medical workforce. Methods: To analyze the factors behind the lack of medical doctors in the training of medical students, we used ‘phenomenology’ to understand clinical educators' lived experiences and their constructed meanings. Within the domain of phenomenology, we applied hermeneutic (interpretive) phenomenology. The experiences of eight clinical educators at the Gulf Medical University were explored through interviews and analyzed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) and Socio-Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT). Results: The findings revealed that entry into medical education often occurred serendipitously due to inadequate career counseling and the undervaluation of the field. Acquiring a postgraduate medical education qualification in medical education enhanced one’s professional life and fostered a sense of identity as a clinical educator. Key motivators included a passion for the field, student interaction, support from colleagues, and an encouraging working environment. Clinical educators faced challenges, such as the field's low value, vague professional identity, delays in promotion, specifically in UAE, low income, and insufficient dedicated teaching time. Coping strategies involved cultivating a positive work environment and maintaining optimism. Growing awareness and a positive outlook for medical education were noted. Conclusion: This study uncovered the underlying issues faced by clinical educators through their lived experiences. To change the status quo, we propose facilitating medical students and young doctors in joining this field early in their careers through strong career counseling and advocating clear entry and progression pathways. Young medical educators should be facilitated by providing an encouraging environment, acknowledging their medical education-related qualifications, and improving remuneration.

Exceptionality in entrepreneurship: Systematically investigating outlier outcomes

Entrepreneurship is the study of ordinary people doing extraordinary things: outliers in society, seeing and enacting new venture opportunities, while most others do not. Historically, the field of entrepreneurship has been dominated by competing homogeneity and heterogeneity perspectives. Extending current heterogeneity trends in the domain, this article builds the case for the benefits of examining the exceptional of the exceptional: entrepreneurs that produce extraordinary results. We argue that outlier entrepreneurs are not aberrations or empirical nuisances to be explained away or “fixed” through statistical wizardry. Rather, in most entrepreneurship phenomenon, those extremely high performing and disproportionately influential cases are “the goal” of entrepreneurship, and exactly where valuable theory-building potential lies. Building on several growing conversations in entrepreneurship research, we introduce why some phenomenological domains share characteristic potential for generating important insights using an outlier approach and present a set of methodological tools to tackle them.

Unveiling the Tapestry of Human Experience and Diversity: A Journey Through the Eight Domains of Phenomenology and Research Methods

In this comprehensive book review, the author explores Eight Domains of Phenomenology and Research Methods by Henrik Gert Larsen, delving into the intricate world of phenomenology and its applications in research. The review critically examines Larsen's insightful exploration of the eight domains, providing an analysis of each domain's significance and the research methodologies associated with them. The review also highlights Larsen's expertise in phenomenology, as he skillfully guides readers through the complexities of understanding lived experiences and the intricate interplay between researcher and participant. By exploring the strengths and limitations of Larsen's work, the review offers valuable insights into the book's contributions to the field of phenomenological research. Researchers and scholars interested in phenomenology and its application in qualitative research will find this review informative.

An Unnatural Attitude: Phenomenology in Weimar Musical Thought. By Benjamin Steege

Many American monographs in the history of theory have chronicled the grand projects of individuals now central to the discipline’s canon, such as Jean-Philippe Rameau, François-Joseph Fétis, Hugo Riemann, and Hermann von Helmholtz. In Benjamin Steege’s An Unnatural Attitude: Phenomenology in Weimar Musical Thought, by contrast, no hero emerges. Instead, Steege’s characters comprise a diffuse ensemble cast, united by their proximity to the Weimar Republic and their shared task of bringing music theory to bear on the philosophical domain of phenomenology. To use the language of one of Steege’s characters, Hans Mersmann, An Unnatural Attitude contributes less to a “history of heroes” than to a “history of problems” (194). Steege’s history of problems sits squarely within the aims of its parent book series, New Material Histories of Music, which “sets out to embrace the many accounts of materiality that are invigorating music studies today.” In music theory, specifically, many new accounts of materiality have gone hand in hand with phenomenology, especially in areas like transformational theory, performance studies, and embodied cognition. As a participant in music theory’s phenomenological turn, An Unnatural Attitude embarks on a tantalizing historical project, querying music theory’s first encounters with phenomenology in the early- to mid-twentieth century. Piecing together a wide variety of primary texts, the book presents an intellectual history peopled not only by musicologists but also by philosophers like Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, whose ideas exert direct influences on the fascinating musical thought of their disciples.

Bridging the phenomenological gap between predictive basic-symptoms and attenuated positive symptoms: a cross-sectional network analysis

Attenuated positive symptoms (APS), transient psychotic-like symptoms (brief, limited intermittent psychotic symptoms, BLIPS), and predictive cognitive-perceptive basic-symptoms (BS) criteria can help identify a help-seeking population of young people at clinical high-risk of a first episode psychosis (CHRp). Phenomenological, there are substantial differences between BS and APS or BLIPS. BS do not feature psychotic content as delusion or hallucinations, and reality testing is preserved. One fundamental problem in the psychopathology of CHRp is to understand how the non-psychotic BS are related to APS. To explore the interrelationship of APS and predictive BS, we fitted a network analysis to a dataset of 231 patients at CHRp, aged 24.4 years (SD = 5.3) with 65% male. Particular emphasis was placed on points of interaction (bridge symptoms) between the two criteria sets. The BS ‘unstable ideas of reference’ and “inability to discriminate between imagination and reality” interacted with attenuated delusional ideation. Perceptual BS were linked to perceptual APS. Albeit central for the network, predictive cognitive basic BS were relatively isolated from APS. Our analysis provides empirical support for existing theoretical accounts that interaction between the distinct phenomenological domains of BS and APS is characterized by impairments in source monitoring and perspective-taking. Identifying bridge symptoms between the symptom domains holds the potential to empirically advance the etiological understanding of psychosis and pave the way for tailored clinical interventions.

Achieving Effective Renormalization Scale and Scheme Independence via the Principle of Observable Effective Matching

In this work, we explicate a new approach for eliminating renormalization scale and scheme (RSS) dependence in observables. We develop this approach by matching RSS-dependent observables (such as cross-sections and decay rates) to a theory which is independent of both these forms of dependencies. We term the fundamental basis behind this approach as the principle of observable effective matching (POEM), which entails matching of a scale- and scheme-dependent observable with the fully physical scale (PS) and dynamical scale-dependent theory at loop orders at which RSS independence is guaranteed. This is aimed toward achieving so-called “effective” RSS-independent expressions as the resulting dynamical dependence is derived from a particular order in RSS-dependent perturbation theory. With this matching at a PS at which the coupling (and masses) is experimentally determined at this scale, we obtain an “effective theoretical observable (ETO)”, a finite-order RSS-independent version of the RSS-dependent observable. We illustrate our approach with a study of the cross-section ratio Re+e− for e+e− → hadrons, which is demonstrated to achieve scale and scheme independence utilizing the three- and four-loop order MS̄ scheme expression in QCD perturbation theory via matching at both one-loop and two-loop orders for obtaining the ETO. With two-loop matching, we obtain an ETO prediction of 311Re+e−eff=1.052431−0.0006+0.0006 at Q = 31.6GeV, which is in excellent agreement with the experimental value of 311Re+e−exp=1.0527−0.005+0.005. Given its new conceptual basis, ease of use, and performance, we contend that POEM be explored in its application for obtaining ETOs for predicting RSS-independent observables across domains of high-energy theory and phenomenology as well as other areas of fundamental and applied physics, such as cosmology and statistical and condensed matter physics.

Meta-criteria to formulate criteria of consciousness.

Any neurobiological model claiming explanation of a complex human phenomenon should start with an explicit definition of the explanandum. If a classical intensional definition is impossible, we can use a descriptive definition by listing necessary criteria (e.g., of consciousness). This commentary suggests four meta-criteria that different proposed criteria of consciousness should fulfill: phenomenological consensus, empirical evidence, domain specificity, and non-circularity.

Расширения феноменологии в работах Т. Бейна как проект в философии сознания

There is an ongoing debate in the philosophy of mind about which mental states possess phenomenal character, and whether there are non-sensory and non-emotional phenomenal properties. One of the most famous experts on the questions of phenomenological rich­ness in analytic philosophy is British-Australian philosopher Timothy Bayne. In his works, T. Bayne considers several debatable domains of phenomenal states. These do­mains include cognitive phenomenology, the phenomenology of categorical perception, and the phenomenology of agency. However, the three domains are discussed in his works separately, so the relations between these domains within Bayne’s views on phe­nomenology are uncertain. In this study T. Bayne’s works on the debatable domains of phenomenology were analyzed, and the connections between the three domains were identified. This article shows that the matching content challenge put forward against the phenomenology of thought is equivalent to the impossibility of formulating a contrast argument for thought, and that in its turn formulating a contrast argument negates the matching content challenge. The study also found that in Bayne’s works the phe­nomenology of categorical perception and the phenomenology of agency are supported by varieties of contrast argument. The feature that makes these two domains of phe­nomenology different from sensory phenomenology and also makes them debatable is in­trospective elusiveness. Consequently, the article concludes that the states associated with categorical perception and manifestations of agency are extensions of the set of phenome­nal states, and not a basic part of it.

Trauma, posttraumatic stress disorder severity, and positive memories

ABSTRACT Positive memories play an important role in the aetiology and maintenance of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, most trauma research/clinical work has focused solely on the role of traumatic memories. Thus, we examined the relationship between count of retrieved positive memories and PTSD severity, factors associated with count of retrieved positive memories (i.e., rumination, negative/positive emotion dysregulation, fear of positive emotions), and the relationship between positive memory phenomenological domains and PTSD severity. The sample included 185 trauma-exposed participants recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (M age = 35.69 years; 63.80% female). Results of linear/hierarchical regressions showed that (1) PTSD severity did not predict count of (specific) positive memories; (2) greater positive emotion dysregulation predicted fewer retrieved positive memories controlling for PTSD severity; and (3) greater PTSD severity predicted more negative valence, less vividness, less coherence, less accessibility, less clear time perspective, fewer sensory details, and greater distancing ratings of the retrieved positive memory, controlling for sleep quantity/quality. Findings add to the literature by informing PTSD theoretical perspectives; enhancing an understanding of positive memories in PTSD/trauma treatments; and highlighting potential clinical targets (e.g., positive emotion regulation), when integrating a focus on positive memories into PTSD intervention.

How Grammar Introduces Asymmetry Into Cognitive Structures: Compositional Semantics, Metaphors, and Schematological Hybrids.

This paper presents a preliminary and tentative formulation of a novel empirical generalization governing the relationship between grammar and cognition across a variety of independent domains. Its point of departure is an abstract distinction between two kinds of cognitive structures: symmetric and asymmetric. While in principle any feature whatsoever has the potential for introducing asymmetry, this paper focuses on one specific feature, namely thematic-role assignment. Our main empirical finding concerns the role of language, or, more specifically, grammar, in effecting and maintaining the distinction between symmetric and asymmetric cognitive structures. Specifically, whereas symmetric structures devoid of thematic-role assignment more commonly occur in a non-grammatical and usually also non-verbal medium, asymmetric structures involving thematic-role assignment are more likely to be associated with a grammatical medium. Our work draws together three independent strands of empirical research associated with three diverse phenomenological domains: compositional semantics, metaphors and schematological hybrids. These three domains instantiate conceptual combinations, bringing together two or more subordinate entities into a single superordinate entity. For compositional semantics this consists of a juxtaposition of constituent signs to form a single more complex sign; for metaphors this entails the bringing together of two different concepts in order to produce a comparison; while for schematological hybrids this involves the combination of different entities to form a single new hybrid entity. Our empirical results reveal a remarkable parallelism between the above three domains. Within each domain, symmetric structures tend to be associated with a non-verbal or otherwise non-grammatical medium, while asymmetric structures are more frequently associated with a grammatical medium. Thus, within each domain, grammar introduces asymmetry. More specifically, we find that in all three domains, the asymmetry in question is one that involves the assignment of thematic roles. To capture this effect, we posit two distinct levels, or tiers, of cognition: non-grammatical cognition, more commonly associated with symmetric structures, and grammatical cognition more conducive to asymmetric structures. Within each of the three phenomenological domains, we find the distinction between non-grammatical and grammatical cognition to be manifest in three independent realms, phylogeny, ontogeny, and the architecture of human cognition. Thus, grammar constitutes the driving force behind the transition from symmetric to asymmetric cognitive structures.

Introduction

Introduction

Neurophenomenology and Neoplatonism

Abstract The worldview emerging from neurophenomenology is consistent with the phenomenological insights obtained by Neoplatonic theurgical operations. For example, gods and daimons are phenomenologically equivalent to the archetypes and complexes investigated in Jungian psychology and explicated by evolutionary psychology. Jung understood the unconscious mind and physical reality to have a common root in an unus mundus (with physical and psychical aspects). Parallel reductions in the phenomenological and neurological domain imply elementary constituents of consciousness associated with simple physical systems, that is, natural processes experienced both externally (objectively) and internally (subjectively). Analysis reveals they have both an eternal formal structure and a material substrate that allows the formal structure to evolve in time with both phenomenal and physical aspects. Since all physical processes fit this description, a form of panpsychism is implied. These developments can inform our understanding of the Forms, the World Soul, and individual souls in Neoplatonism.

Heroic Intelligence: The Hero’s Journey as an Evolutionary and Existential Blueprint

This article revisits the hero’s journey—and heroic behaviour as understood in its emerging contemporary conceptualisations—as a seat of intelligence across the biological, psychological, social, cultural, historical, phenomenological, and existential domains. In so doing, we acknowledge Joseph Campbell’s assertions about several changes that occur in heroes, one being differences or amplifications in certain types of cognitive activity. First, the hero’s journey is examined as a deeply ingrained event in our evolution, providing a foundation for the interconnection between heroism, intelligence, and the transformative process. We also examine the possibility that heroism can have biological implications, perhaps extending to epigenetic expression. Next, heroic behaviour is considered as intelligent behaviour that is embodied and embedded in our evolution and the everyday. The concept of the heroic as a discrete form of physical intelligence is examined through a phenomenological and existential lens; this supports a reading of human organisms as ‘hero organisms’, capable of heightened cognitive, physical, and transcendent action. The article concludes with a discussion on a physically grounded heroic intelligence as fundamentally a question of consciousness that is intimately bound to existential pursuits, and the legacy of Joseph Campbell’s work potentially re-defining the concept of evolutionary design.

Framing a phenomenological interview: what, why and how

Research in phenomenology has benefitted from using exceptional cases from pathology and expertise. But exactly how are we to generate and apply knowledge from such cases to the phenomenological domain? As researchers of cerebral palsy and musical absorption, we together answer the how question by pointing to the resource of the qualitative interview. Using the qualitative interview is a direct response to Varela’s call for better pragmatics in the methodology of phenomenology and cognitive science and Gallagher’s suggestion for phenomenology to develop its methodology and outsource its tasks. We agree with their proposals, but want to develop them further by discussing and proposing a general framework that can integrate research paradigms of the well-established disciplines of phenomenological philosophy and qualitative science. We give this the working title, a “phenomenological interview”. First we describe the what of the interview, that is the nature of the interview in which one encounters another subject and generates knowledge of a given experience together with this other subject. In the second part, we qualify why it is worthwhile making the time-consuming effort to engage in a phenomenological interview. In the third and fourth parts, we in general terms discuss how to conduct the interview and the subsequent phenomenological analysis, by discussing the pragmatics of Vermersch’s and Petitmengin’s “Explicitation Interview”.

Steps to a science of biosemiotics

In this essay, I argue that we ultimately need to re-ground biosemiotic theory on natural science principles and abandon the analogy with human level semiotics, except as this provides clues for guiding analysis. But, to overcome the implicit dualism still firmly entrenched in the biological sciences requires a third approach that is neither phenomenologically motivated nor based on a code analogy. This approach must preserve the centrality of the concept of interpretation (that is ubiquitous in the phenomenological domain) and yet base it in biophysics and mathematical information theory. To accomplish this, we must undertake a thorough re-examination of information theory to determine how it can be extended to deal with issues of real reference and functional significance. I argue below that this requires showing how the concept of entropy (as it is differently defined in thermodynamics and in the information sciences) can be used to explain the relationship between information, meaning and work. Additionally, I argue that this also requires a radical expansion of dynamical systems theories to explain the physics of intrinsically end-directed processes. Together, these developments are necessary to account for the capacity to interpret immediate physical conditions as representing other displaced or as yet unrealised possible conditions. This is a necessary first step to making biosemiotics compatible with the information theoretic perspective that is currently dominant in physics, chemistry and molecular biology.

Editorial: Dynamic systems theory and embodiment in psychotherapy research. A new look at process and outcome.

Editorial: Dynamic systems theory and embodiment in psychotherapy research. A new look at process and outcome.

Clinique et processus de symbolisation de l’atmosphère dans les problématiques psychotiques

ObjectiveThe clinical encounter with psychotic forms of human suffering in psychiatric institutions exposes the clinician to various types of temporary mental disorganizations. Strange feelings, bizarre deviations and psychotic anxieties generate a mixture of feelings and emotions sometimes difficult to represent and hardly bearable for the caregivers. Our aim in this paper is to study this kind of feeling in the perspective of the atmosphere and its association with symbolization processes. MethodWe first propose to study the “atmosphere of the atmosphere”, i.e. what surrounds it, the defining envelope, with several examples from the arts and sciences. We also study how this concept has been used in the domains of health, care and phenomenology. It is then mainly from the viewpoint of psychoanalytical theory, using a few clinical cases, that we go on to analyze the relationship between symbolization and atmospheric processes in more detail. ResultsThe atmosphere appears as a rich and fruitful notion from both theoretical and clinical points of view. It meets and extends several notions that are relatively close, such as climate and ambience. DiscussionThere is a specific atmosphere essential for symbolization, enabling the emergence of processes of symbolization of the atmosphere, which in psychotic patients are expressed in an amplified manner during the emergence of psychotic reminiscences. ConclusionThe “shapelessness” of the atmosphere can be considered as one of the most archaic forms of expression of psychic reality, close to the first envelopes of the psyche and breath. The sensitivity of the clinician to this concept and its implications in the dynamics of transference and counter-transference, especially with psychotic patients, enables the emergence and the expression of early, traumatic experiences through what we propose to call “atmospheric signifiers”.

Salva Phaenomenis. Phenomenological Dimension of Subjectivity in the Frame of the Reductionist Paradigm of the Cognitive Sciences

Abstract The paper addresses the family of questions that arose from the field of interactions between phenomenology and the cognitive sciences. On the one hand, apparently partial coextensivity of research domain of phenomenology and the cognitive sciences sets the goal of their cooperation and mutual inspiration. On the other hand, there are some obstacles on the path to achieve this goal: phenomenology and the cognitive sciences have different traditions, they speak different languages, they have adopted different methodological approaches, and last but not least, their prominent exponents exhibits different styles of thinking. In order to clarify this complicated area of tensions, the paper presents the results of philosophical reflections of such topics as: 1) philosophical presuppositions and postulates of the cognitive sciences 2) abstraction of some phenomena during idealisation and the dialectical model of science's development 3) argumentation based on prediction of future development of the cognitive sciences. This finally leads to the formulation of a phenomenology-based postulate for adequate model of mind and the discussion of humanistic dimension of cognitive sciences.

LA COMPRENSIONE DELL’ALTRO: QUALE RELAZIONE TRA FENOMENOLOGIA E NEUROSCIENZE?

The aim of this contribution is to explore the relationship and possible interactions between phenomenology and neuroscience regarding the intersubjectivity and the experience of the other. Through the analysis of the theory of “mirror neurons”, embodied simulation (neuroscientific domain), and the analysis of Husserl's theory of empathy (phenomenological domain), one can see how much the attempt to reduce the phenomenological experience of intersubjectivity to the neural mechanisms is unfounded and unproductive.