An exploratory study of syncretic experience: eidetics, synaesthesia and absorption.

Synaesthesia and eidetic imagery are both syncretic experiences entailing a dedifferentiation of perceptual qualities. In this paper the correlation between synaesthesia and eidetic imagery is explored. Ten subjects selected for possible eidetic and/or synaesthetic ability were tested in a battery of tasks that tap structural and typographic eidetic imagery, and colour-hearing and colour-mood synaesthesia. It was found that both structural and typographic eidetic imagery were correlated with measures of synaesthesia, indicating a relationship between the two phenomena.     

From geometry to phenomenology

Richard Tieszen [Tieszen, R. (2005). Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LXX(1), 153–173.] has argued that the group-theoretical approach to modern geometry can be seen as a realization of Edmund Husserl’s view of eidetic intuition. In support of Tieszen’s claim, the present article discusses Husserl’s approach to geometry in 1886–1902. Husserl’s first detailed discussion of the concept of group and invariants under transformations takes place in his notes on Hilbert’s Memoir Ueber die Grundlagen der Geometrie that Hilbert wrote during the winter 1901–1902. Husserl’s interest in the Memoir is a continuation of his long-standing concern about analytic geometry and in particular Riemann and Helmholtz’s approach to geometry. Husserl favored a non-metrical approach to geometry; thus the topological nature of Hilbert’s Memoir must have been intriguing to him. The task of phenomenology is to describe the givenness of this logos, hence Husserl needed to develop the notion of eidetic intuition. The author wishes to thank Academy of Finland for financial assistance that enabled her to work on this article.     

Cognitive dedifferentiation in eidetics and synaesthesia: hunting for the ghost once more

Both synaesthesia and eidetics have a common characteristic of cognitive dedifferentiation. Synaesthesia (e.g. colour-hearing) entails the dedifferentiation of the sensory modalities, while eidetic imagery entails the dedifferentiation of imagery and perception. One can profitably gain by investigating both within the same study. Moreover, some of the same issues have arisen in these, hitherto, separate research literatures. This behoves a common framework for analysis and investigation. We applied a technique previously used for identifying child eidetikers, for screening the adult population, looking at both phenomena in the same sample. After screening, we selected a total of twenty-nine individuals for controlled testing of both phenomena and their variants (structural eidetic imagery, typographic eidetic imagery, colour-hearing synaesthesia, colour-mood synaesthesia). Our participants also completed a number of questionnaires of relevance (absorption, dissociation, and hallucination). We found that the personality trait of absorption underlies the commonality of experience tapped by both typographic and structural eidetic imagery. Furthermore, the latter phenomena were found to have a common pseudohallucinatory experiential base. For subjects scoring relatively high on the absorption scale, there is a negative correlation between structural eidetic imagery and colour-mood synaesthetic differentiation, replicating to a degree results reported earlier.     

Die Fakta leiten alle Eidetik. Zu Husserls Begriff des materialen Apriori

The paper provides a reconstruction of the notion of material Apriori while exhibiting the anti-Kantian inspiration and factual grounding thereof. The attempt is made to show that a non-formal Apriori obtains because the sensuous has a normative character; further, that the difference between material and formal eidetic laws is rooted in the difference between sensuous contents, given in experience, and intellectual contents, originating in activities of judgement. The material Apriori is not independent of all experience, since it is grounded on sensuous eidetic contents and thus depends on the latter’s givenness and characteristics. It is thanks precisely to this ,contingency‘ that it has an ontological significance.     

Husserlian Phenomenology and Derridean Deconstruction: Their Fundamental Methodological Commitments

This paper reinterprets the relation between Derridian deconstruction and Husserlian phenomenology on the basis of their respective methodological commitments. According to the proposed view, epoché, reduction, and eidetic variation are the fundamental methodological principles of Husserlian phenomenology. This paper interprets Derrida’s reading of Husserl as presenting a type of semiological reductionism, which is marked by the absorption of the fundamental phenomenological principles within a semiological framework. Conceiving of meaning as a sign that refers to other signs, Derrida contends that neither epoché, nor reduction, nor eidetic variation can be carried through successfully; their validity is thereby indefinitely deferred. This paper also addresses the relationship between indication and expression, the Principle of all Principles, the living present, and their alleged deconstruction in Derrida’s writings. I conclude with some suggestions concerning how, apart from deconstructing phenomenology, one could also phenomenologize deconstruction. According to my suggestion, this would require problematizing evidence that underlies the central claims and commitments of deconstruction.     

Wittgenstein’s reconsideration of the transcendental problem

The transcendental problem that obsessed the great Western philosophers such as Kant and Husserl should be, according to Wittgenstein, conceived as a matter of understanding a process of reasoning in which a conclusion follows necessarily from stated rules. Once these rules, regarded as a priori categories by Kant and as eidos and eidetic relations by Husserl, are demonstrated to be no more than the language usages or rules of language-games related to our forms of life, Kant’s transcendental idealism and Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology no longer have a leg to stand on. Translated by Chen Xin and Zhang Qingxiong from Zhexue Yanjiu 哲学研究 (Philosophical Research), 2006, (10): 68–76     

Philosophy and reflection: A critique of Frank Welz’s sociological and “processual” criticism of Husserl and Schutz

Frank Welz’s Kritik der Lebenswelt undertakes a sociology of knowledge criticism of the work of Edmund Husserl and Alfred Schutz that construes them as developing absolutist, egological systems opposed to the “processual” worldview prominent since the modern rise of natural science. Welz, though, misunderstands the work of Schutz and Husserl and neglects how their focus on consciousness and eidetic features pertains to the kind of reflection that one must undertake if one would avoid succumbing to absolutism, that uncovers the presuppositions of the processual worldview itself, and that secures a domain distinctive of philosophy over against sociology. Finally, Welz’s charge that Schutz favors a Neo-Kantian social scientific methodology contradictory to his phenomenology neglects the levels of Schutz’s discourse and ignores how the Weberian ideal-typical approach can be subsumed within phenomenology.     

Age Trends in Eidetikers

The entire available population (N = 408) of a primary school in Perth, Western Australia, was tested for eideticism using a slightly modified presentation of the Haber and Haber (1964) procedure. Sixteen eidetikers were found in the age range covered (5–13 years). When classified into four age categories (5–6, 7–8, 9–10, 11–13), the number of eidetikers in relation to noneidetikers showed a statistically significant and systematic decline with increasing age. These results are discussed in relation to their possible significance for a theory of eidetic development.     

Non-Language Thinking in Mathematics

After a brief outline of the topic of non-language thinking in mathematics the central phenomenological tool in this concern is established, i.e. the eidetic method. The special form of eidetic method in mathematical proving is implicit variation and this procedure entails three rules that are established in a simple geometrical example. Then the difficulties and the merits of analogical thinking in mathematics are discussed in different aspects. On the background of a new phenomenological understanding of the performance of non-language thinking in mathematics the well-known theses of B. L. van der Waerden that mathematical thinking to a great extent proceeds without the use of language is discussed in a new light.     

Differences Between Korean and Japanese Processing Overload

We report the results of a pilot questionnaire study which indicates a difference between Japanese and Korean in the processing of twice center-embedded transitive sentences. Babyonyshev and Gibson (1995) claimed that, in Japanese, these structures are significantly more difficult to parse than twice center-embedded intransitives. Our study showed that, in Korean, this difference in processing difficulty does not obtain. We suggest that the difference between Japanese and Korean processing should be attributed to short-term memory effects on repetition of case markers and to differences in the syntax of the two languages with respect to verb movement.     

Analytic and Continental Philosophy: Explaining the Differences

A number of writers have tackled the task of characterizing the differences between analytic and Continental philosophy. I suggest that these attempts have indeed captured the most important divergences between the two styles but have left the explanation of the differences mysterious. I argue that analytic philosophy is usefully seen as philosophy conducted within a paradigm, in Kuhn's sense of the word, whereas Continental philosophy assumes much less in the way of shared presuppositions, problems, methods and approaches. This important opposition accounts for all those features that have rightly been held to constitute the difference between the two traditions. I finish with some reflections on the relative superiority of each tradition and by highlighting the characteristic deficiencies of each.     

Personality Differences between One-Time and Recidivist Unwed Mothers

Summary

Social science literature reveals the consistent recurrence of illegitimacy and attendant social problems. Various explanations have been posited, but this study chose to focus on personality traits of one-time and recidivist unwed mothers. The MMPI was given to 37 unwed mothers, 21 one-time, and 16 recidivists. These two groups were compared with a normal group of girls. The recidivist group differed significantly from the norm group on eight scales: F, D, Hy, Pd, Pa, Pt, Sc, and Ma; the one-time unwed mother group differed from the norm group significantly on four scales: F, Pd, Sc, and Ma. The recidivist group differed from the one-time group in the direction of less adjustment of five scales: Pd, Pa, Pt, Sc, and Es.     

Eidetic results in transcendental phenomenology: Against naturalization

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences - In this paper I contrast Husserlian transcendental eidetic phenomenology with some other views of what phenomenology is supposed to be and argue that, as...     

Do young chimpanzees have extraordinary working memory?

Do chimpanzees have better spatial working memory than humans? In a previous report, a juvenile chimpanzee outperformed 3 university students on memory for briefly displayed digits in a spatial array (Inoue & Matsuzawa, 2007). The authors described these abilities as extraordinary and likened the chimpanzee's performance to eidetic memory. However, the chimpanzee received extensive practice on a non-time-pressured version of the task; the human subjects received none. Here we report that, after adequate practice, 2 university students substantially outperformed the chimpanzee. There is no evidence for a superior or qualitatively different spatial memory system in chimpanzees.     

“The giving birth of a world”: Fanon,Husserl, and the imagination

This article examines the role of the imagination in Fanon's and Husserl's work in order to rethink Fanon's relationship with Husserlian phenomenology. I begin with an investigation of the oft-overlooked ways in which the imagination appears in Wretched of the Earth. Here, I argue that Fanon puts a great deal of stock in the imagination, ultimately calling upon this faculty in order to presage the novel ways of being, thinking, and acting, which are a recurrent signature of his vision of decolonization. In the latter half of the article, I then offer an account of the decisive methodological significance of the imagination within Husserl's work. Revisiting the methodological infrastructure of phenomenology with Fanonian concerns in mind casts Husserl's project in a surprising new light, bringing to the fore the revolutionary potential of both the epoché and the method of eidetic variation. For at the core of Husserlian methodology lies a resolve to exceed the limits of our present empirical reality—a leitmotiv of Fanon's own thinking. I ultimately show that Fanon's work can thus be imagined as a reactivation, indeed a revolution, inaugurated at the heart of phenomenology and its most basic methodological commitments.     

Age and Gender Differences in Children's Halloween Costumes

Based on data reported by Serbin and Sprafkin (1986), we predicted that the Halloween costumes of first and second graders would be less gender stereotyped than those of preschoolers and children in kindergarten. Children from one public elementary school and two preschools (N = 178) were individually interviewed on Halloween. Children were asked which character they were, who they wanted to be next year, and their age. The resulting 113 different costumes were then rated by college students for degree of masculinity, femininity, and scariness. In addition to main effects of gender and grade, two of four predicted interactions were significant. Older boys tended to prefer less masculine and more feminine costumes than younger boys, and older girls tended to prefer more masculine and less feminine costumes than younger girls.     

Self-Presentational Motivations and Personality Differences in Self-Esteem

ABSTRACT  This article discusses the interpersonal motivations associated with different levels of self-esteem. Although self-esteem literally refers to an intrapsychic attitude, we propose that self-esteem scales often measure a self-presentational orientation. High self-esteem scores are associated with a tendency to present oneself in a self-enhancing fashion that is characterized by willingness to accept risks, focus on outstandingly good qualities, strategic ploys, and calling attention to self. Low self-esteem scores are associated with a tendency to present oneself in a self-protective fashion that is characterized by unwillingness to accept risks, focus on avoiding outstandingly bad qualities, avoidance of many strategic ploys, and reluctance to draw attention to self. Considerable evidence shows that most people rate themselves as above average on self-esteem scales; relatively few people score below any self-esteem scale's conceptual midpoint. Review of past literature yields the following conclusions: (a) Low scores on self-esteem scales are typically the result of neutral and intermediate rather than self-derogatory responses to scale items; (b) behavioral correlates of measured self-esteem sometimes depend on self-presentational variables such as audience presence; and (c) many past findings with self-esteem scales may be interpretable in self-presentational terms.     

Eidetic Imagery and Paleolithic Art

This discourse treats experimentation only in the remote past, from early Aurignacian in the late Holocene to early Nuclear. Observations by Galton, Fechner, and Wundt lead to reexamining the connection between eidetic images and prehistoric art in the light of their independent perceptions of the problem. The differing positions of European and American investigators are reviewed in relation to the proposed connection.     

Cultural Psychotherapy: A Consideration of Psychosocial Class and Cultural Differences in Group Treatment

Most psychotherapists are aware of the many social issues and cultural factors that influence development throughout each individual life. Human nature, being a social nature, exists within relationships to others, the community, and a culture, sometimes a mixture of cultures. One social parameter, social class, redefined here as psychosocial class, has not received the same attention from psychotherapists as gender issues or ethnicity, two other important sociocultural spheres of influence on everyday life. It is suggested that group therapists are in a unique position to develop a cultural psychotherapy that addresses psychosocial class and cultural aspects of mental health. This paper includes a preliminary model of cultural psychotherapy that highlights the psychology of social class and culture for psychodynamic group psychotherapy.