Locke on Primary and Secondary Qualities

Abstract: In this paper, I argue that Book II, Chapter viii of Locke' Essay is a unified, self-consistent whole, and that the appearance of inconsistency is due largely to anachronistic misreadings and misunderstandings. The key to the distinction between primary and secondary qualities is that the former are, while the latter are not, real properties, i.e., properties that exist in bodies independently of being perceived. Once the distinction is properly understood, it becomes clear that Locke's arguments for it are simple, valid and (in one case) persuasive as well.     

Idealization,Splitting, and the Challenge of Homophobia

How can we account for the persistence of homophobia? What makes homophobia so resistant to change? In this paper we discuss the psychic and discursive persistence of homophobia by problematizing the political unconscious. Focusing on Freud's psychic defense mechanisms, idealization and splitting, we show how these forces can be thought of as the psychic work of discourse. To this end we interviewed fathers of homosexual sons who had initially reacted with panic, but eventually came to “accept” their sons' homosexuality. We discuss the paradox that the fathers' narratives raise: their love and adoration of their (masculine) homosexual sons, and on the other hand their hatred and denunciation of homosexuality. We argue that idealization and splitting in this case operate as regulatory psychic mechanisms in the service of social discourse. This psychic power of discourse reappropriates masculinity (as a fetish) and reinstates the naturalization of heterosexuality and the masculine/feminine binary. The notion of the political unconscious is brought up by concluding that in order to change sexual prejudices we need to understand why we fail to change and how psychic mechanisms work in the service of social and cultural discourse.     

Idealization and mourning in love relationships: normal and pathological spectra

Prior to the last two decades, psychoanalytic literature focused on the psychopathology of sexual life, rather than on an integrated overview of love relationships. Only in the last twenty-five years has its scope been expanded to include the psychodynamics and phenomenology of love relationships per se. Nevertheless, a selective, critical review of the literature indicates that little attention has been paid to a) the interrelation of narcissism, self-esteem, and love relationships; b) the role of the ego-ideal and idealizations in the capacity for falling in love and sustaining love relationships; and c) the faculty for, and/or impediments to, transcending intrapsychic self-boundaries in mature love relationships. In this paper, a brief exposition of the ego-ideal developmental sequences and their integration into the superego as a differentiated structure serves as an introduction to the proposal of a developmental continuum of mechanisms of idealization and their respective nodal transmutations throughout the life cycle. This developmental continuum may contribute to the ongoing elucidation of the aforementioned problems. This referential frame is ultimately applied to the exploration of categorical and dimensional pathological variations of idealization and mourning in love relationships and in different levels of personality organization: neurotic, borderline, and narcissistic structures. A clinical vignette illustrates some of the correspondence criteria between this frame of reference and its clinical applications.     

Idealization and external symbolic storage: the epistemic and technical dimensions of theoretic cognition

This paper explores some of the constructive dimensions and specifics of human theoretic cognition, combining perspectives from (Husserlian) genetic phenomenology and distributed cognition approaches. I further consult recent psychological research concerning spatial and numerical cognition. The focus is on the nexus between the theoretic development of abstract, idealized geometrical and mathematical notions of space and the development and effective use of environmental cognitive support systems. In my discussion, I show that the evolution of the theoretic cognition of space apparently follows two opposing, but in truth, intrinsically aligned trajectories. On the epistemic plane, which is the main focus of Husserl??s genetic phenomenological investigations, theoretic conceptions of space are progressively constituted by way of an idealizing emancipation of spatial cognition from the concrete, embodied intentionality underlying the human organism??s perception of space. As a result of this emancipation, it ultimately becomes possible for the human mind to theoretically conceive of and posit space as an ideal entity that is universally geometrical and mathematical. At the same time, by synthesizing a range of literature on spatial and mathematical cognition, I illustrate that for the theoretic mind to undertake precisely this emancipating process successfully, and further, for an ideal and objective notion of geometrical and mathematical space to first of all become fully scientifically operative, the cognitive support provided by a range of specific symbolic technologies is central. These include lettered diagrams, notation systems, and more generally, the technique of formalization and require for their functioning various cognitively efficacious types of embodiment. Ultimately, this paper endeavors to understand the specific symbolic-technological dimensions that have been instrumental to major shifts in the development of idealized, scientific conceptions of space. The epistemic characteristics of these shifts have been previously discussed in genetic phenomenology, but without devoting sufficient attention to the constructive role of symbolic technologies. At the same time, this paper identifies some of the irreducible phenomenological and epistemic dimensions that characterize the functioning of the historically situated, embodied and distributed theoretic mind.     

Berkeley and the Argument from Microscopes

In the course of his discussion of the sensible quality of color in the Dialogues Berkeley advances an argument that I shall refer to as the argument from microscopes (AFM). I offer an account of the AFM that treats it as part of Berkeley's extended Reductio of Hylas' philosophical theory of metaphysical realism. I then criticize two representative interpretations of the AFM which fail to appreciate its Reductio structure and, as a consequence, mistakenly attribute to Berkeley such problematic claims as that sensible objects are not colored and that the microscopic view of objects reveals the real nature of objects. If I am correct, properly construed, Berkeley's AFM escapes these and other objections commonly raised against it.     

Presence and Abstraction. Interpreting the practice of Eucharistic Adoration online

Abstract: This paper takes as its point of departure the rise of online Adoration of the Reserved Sacrament during the widespread suspension of worship in response to COVID-19. Taking the phenomenon seriously as an instance of the sensus fidelium exposes limitations in the Tridentine formulation of the mode of sacramental presence. Alternative approaches may be developed with reference to the thinking of two post-Heideggerian philosophers, Marion and Nancy, who in different ways explore the subject's encounter with the divine in the phenomenal world as a double kenosis, without reference to an abstract concept of Being. These accounts together suggest an account of adoration as a kenotic response to divine kenosis and so suggest understandings of Eucharistic Adoration that are not bounded by the constraints of physical materiality. The paper concludes by considering the wider applicability of this approach in a world that is, increasingly, a hybrid of physical and ‘virtual’ phenomena and at a time when US Catholics are believed to be losing their faith in the real presence of Christ in the eucharistic elements.     

Abstraction and Finitude: Education, Chance and Democracy

Education in the west has become a very knowing business in which students are encouraged to cultivate self-awareness and meta-cognitive skills in pursuit of a kind of perfection. The result is the evasion of contingency and of the consciousness of human finitude. The neo-liberalism that makes education a market good exacerbates this. These tendencies can be interpreted as a dimension of scepticism. This is to be dissolved partly by acknowledging that we are obscure to ourselves. Such an acknowledgement is fostered by the mythic dimension of experience, which also recommends a degree of humility to the citizens of democratic states.