The Cartesianism of phenomenology

Continental Philosophy Review -     

The phenomenology of virtue

What is it like to be a good person? I examine and reject suggestions that this will involve having thoughts which have virtue or being a good person as part of their content, as well as suggestions that it might be the presence of feelings distinct from the virtuous person’s thoughts. Is there, then, anything after all to the phenomenology of virtue? I suggest that an answer is to be found in looking to Aristotle’s suggestion that virtuous activity is pleasant to the virtuous person. I try to do this, using the work of the contemporary social psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi and his work on the ‘flow experience’. Crucial here is the point that I consider accounts of virtue which take it to have the structure of a practical expertise or skill. It is when we are most engaged in skilful complex activity that the activity is experienced as ‘unimpeded’, in Aristotle’s terms, or as ‘flow’. This experience does not, as might at first appear, preclude thoughtful involvement and reflection. Although we can say what in general the phenomenology of virtue is like, each of us only has some more or less dim idea of it from the extent to which we are virtuous—that is, for most of us, not very much.     

The phenomenology of negation

Negation is a fundamental component of communication (no-answers), cognition (logical negation), perception (different color), attitude (dislike), emotion (hatred), and volition (disagreement). Its many uses make it difficult to provide an integrated definition of the concept. The aim of this paper is to show that an integrated definition of the concept can be arrived at by means of a phenomenological method structuring it into three general essences labelled lack, otherness and obstruction.

Rogerian theory: A critique of the effectiveness of pure client-centred therapy

Rogers' Client-Centered Therapy (RCCT) included the phenomena 'phenomenology' (i.e., multiple reality theory) and the 'innate desire to self-actualize', maintained by the organismic valuing process. RCCT also assumed that the therapist, to produce positive outcome, was required to feel and demonstrate unconditional positive regard and genuineness toward the client. The present review evalued the fundamental accuracy of these phenomena and their effectiveness in a counselling setting. Additionally, RCCT effectiveness was weighed against the developmental-interactional concept for therapeutic outcome. It is suggested an eclectic approach is more effective in couselling than either argument.     

The phenomenology of endogenous orienting

Can we build endogenous expectations about the locus of occurrence of a target without being able to describe them? Participants performed cue-target detection tasks with different proportions of valid and invalid trials, without being informed of these proportions, and demonstrated typical endogenous effects. About half were subsequently able to correctly describe the cue-target relationships ('verbalizers'). However, even non-verbalizer participants showed endogenous orienting with peripheral cues (Experiments 1 and 3), not depending solely on practice (Experiment 2). Explicit instructions did not bring about dramatic advantages in performance (Experiment 4). With central symbolic cues, only verbalizers showed reliable endogenous effects (Experiment 5). We concluded that endogenous orienting with peripheral cues can occur independently of participants developing explicit hypotheses about the cue-target relationships.     

The phenomenology of Alfred Schutz

Alfred Schutz was the outstanding representative of the phenomenological approach to the philosophy and methodology of the social sciences. An attempt is made here to explore one fundamental feature of Schutz's work: his theory of typification. That theory is found to be a development of Husserl's doctrine of the intentionality of consciousness and is shown to be concerned with the structure of pre‐predicative experience as well as the process of abstraction and ideation as constitutive of the ‘natural standpoint’ of daily life.     

The phenomenology of propositional attitudes

Propositional attitudes are often classified as non-phenomenal mental states. I argue that there is no good reason for doing so. The unwillingness to view propositional attitudes as being essentially phenomenal stems from a biased notion of phenomenality, from not paying sufficient attention to the idioms in which propositional attitudes are usually reported, from overlooking the considerable degree to which different intentional modes can be said to be phenomenologically continuous, and from not considering the possibility that propositional attitudes may be transparent, just like sensations and emotions are commonly held to be: there may be no appropriate way of describing their phenomenal character apart from describing the properties and objects they represent.     

The phenomenology of embodied attention

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences - This paper aims to conceptualize the phenomenology of attentional experience as ‘embodied attention.’ Current psychological research, in...     

The phenomenology of representational awareness

The Eleventh Annual Aron Gurwitsch Memorial Lecture, presented under the sponsorship of the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology in conjunction with the meetings of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy and the Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences at Villanova University on 12 October 1990.