Material Phenomenology and Language (or,Pathos and Language)

Continental Philosophy Review -     

The (In)visible Body: Feminism,Phenomenology, and the Case of Cosmetic Surgery

This paper will examine the experience of and drive for bodily invisibility in women through the theoretical approaches of phenomenology and social constructionism. An examination of the social disruptions of bodily invisibility and the compulsive avoidance of such instances, particularly with respect to the fastidious maintenance of body comportment and appearance within the narrow parameters afforded by social norms, will lead to an exploration of the conflation of biomedicine with the beauty industry.     

Mind,consciousness, and cognition: Phenomenology vs. cognitive science

I would like to thank Steven Crowell from Rice University (Philosophy Department) for helpful comments and suggestions about my discussion of Husserl and other phenomenologists, and Edouard Philippe, also from Rice University (Electrical Engineering Department), for offering me the opportunity to formulate my views on cognitive science and artificial intelligence.     

Siby K. George: Heidegger and Development in the Global South (Contributions to Phenomenology)

Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research -     

Pragmatism, Naturalism, and Phenomenology

Pragmatism’s naturalism is inconsistent with the phenomenological tradition’s anti-naturalism. This poses a problem for the methodological consistency of phenomenological work in the pragmatist tradition. Solutions such as phenomenologizing naturalism or naturalizing phenomenology have been proposed, but they fail. As a consequence, pragmatists and other naturalists must answer the phenomenological tradition’s criticisms of naturalism.     

I. R. Owen. Psychotherapy and Phenomenology. New York: iUniverse,Inc.

Abstract

This study¹ explores the experience of the body for contemporary female mystics. It is an exploration in how women mystics of today—those who have devoted most of their lifetime to prayer, meditation, and spiritual service—make sense of the body. What is the relationship between spirit and body, God and flesh, for such women? Is it a relationship of tension or even opposition, and how does it evolve over time? These are some of the questions that guided my investigation. The impulse to understand how the body is experienced and understood by such women was felt by me as both a longing to challenge, deepen, and refine my awareness and understanding of spirit and the body, specifically for women mystics. I also felt this as a burning in the heart, an urgent desire to connect and bridge the larger world of matter and that of spirit, to inquire into that dimension where flesh and spirit are not two, but one. I believe that this impulse to understand the relationship between body and spirit is both personal and quite possibly collective. My hope is that this research will serve as one step to further our collective understanding of human embodiment.     

Husserl,Phenomenology, and Foundationalism

Husserl is often taken, and not without reason, to endorse the view that phenomenology's task is to provide the “absolute foundation” of human knowledge. In this paper, I will argue that the most natural interpretation of this view, namely that all human knowledge depends for its justification, at least in part, on phenomenological knowledge, is philosophically untenable. I will also present evidence that Husserl himself held no such view, and will argue that Dan Zahavi and John Drummond, though reaching the same conclusion, reach it for the wrong reasons. In the process, I will also defend a brand of epistemological externalism according to which knowledge does not depend upon knowing the epistemic principles under which one's knowledge falls, and argue that Husserl himself held such a view. I conclude with a discussion of a few of the ways in which phenomenology positively contributes to human knowledge.     

Phenomenology,Realism and Logic

One never gets beyond time. Husserl, says only that there are many ways of living time. On the one hand, there is the passive way, in which one is inside time and submits to it—being in time [Innerzeitigkeit], On the other hand, one can take over this time and live it through for oneself. But in either case one is temporal and never gets beyond time.¹     

Phenomenology,behaviorism and psychotherapy

Abstract

t “Everything begins with subjective states,” is the basic position of Phenomenology, and only through subjectivity imate reality be reached. Behaviorism, on the contrary, sees “mind” as part of the material world—the and behavior as determining man's essence (man is what he does). “Change,” which is the goal of every therapy, is attend by altering behavior which leads to changes in attitudes. The best way to alter beliefs is by controlling the behavioral cognition itself.     

Meaning, Truth, and Phenomenology

This essay approaches Derrida through a consideration of his writings on Saussure and Husserl. Derrida is right to insist, following Saussure, on a relational theory of meaning: words do not have a one-to-one correspondence with their referents. But he is wrong to insist on a purely differential theory of meaning: words can refer to reality within the context of a body of knowledge. Similarly, Derrida is right to reject Husserl's idea of presence: no truths are simply given to consciousness. But he is wrong to reject the very idea of objective knowledge: we can defend a notion of objective knowledge couched in terms of a comparison of rival bodies of theories. The essay concludes by considering the implications of the preceding arguments for the enterprise of phenomenology.