Somatic Apprehension and Imaginative Abstraction: Cairns’s Criticisms of Schutz’s Criticisms of Husserl’s Fifth Meditation

Dorion Cairns correctly interprets the preconstituted stratum of Edmund Husserl’s Fifth Cartesian Meditation to be the primordial ego and not the social world, as was thought by Alfred Schutz, who considered Husserl to be insufficiently attentive to the social world’s hold upon us. Following Cairns’s interpretation, which involves recovering and reconstructing strata that may never exist independently, one better understands how the transfer of sense “animate organism” involves automatic association, or somatic apprehension. This sense-transfer extends to any animate organism, not just humans, and draws on extensive unreflected-upon similarities despite the distinctive fact that the other’s body is never given to oneself as is one’s own. Following Cairns’s interpretation, one can also understand the second epoché as an imaginative, reconstructive abstraction rather than as an example of failed ascesis. Consequently, Husserl appears as less intellectualized in his approach to empathy than often thought to be and more confident in the phenomenologist’s capacity to imagine and attend selectively to experience.     

Never the Twain Shall Meet: A Critical Appraisal of the Combination of Discourse and Psychoanalytic Theory in Studies of Men and Masculinity

In recent years there have been a number of attempts by different researchers to study men and masculinity using a combination of discourse theory and psychoanalysis. The main reason for this development is the sense that, on its own, discourse theory provides an incomplete account of masculine subjectivity. Psychoanalysis is thought to be able to fill those gaps. In this paper I reviewed these arguments, provided an outline of the alleged deficiencies in discursive approaches to men and masculinity, and examined some of the work that has attempted the above synthesis. I argued that, for a number of reasons, such attempts are bound to fail. Instead, I argued that better progress can be made in studies of masculinity by remaining within the theoretical boundaries of Discursive Psychology.     

Consumer ethnocentrism,cultural sensitivity,and intention to purchase local products—evidence from Vietnam

• This study empirically investigates the impacts of consumer ethnocentrism and cultural sensitivity on both imported product judgment and intention to purchase local products in the context of a developing country—Vietnam. Structural equation modeling was used to test these impacts, utilizing a sample of 549 consumers. The results show that consumer ethnocentrism is negatively related to imported product judgment and positively related to intention to purchase local products. In addition, cultural sensitivity has a positive relationship with imported product judgment but not with consumer ethnocentrism. The results also indicate that the impacts of consumer ethnocentrism on imported product judgment and on intention to purchase local products are not different in terms of product categories, gender, income, and education levels. However, differences exist between younger and older consumers.

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Distance underestimation in virtual space is sensitive to gender but not activity-passivity or mode of interaction.

Four groups of undergraduates (half of each gender) experienced a movement along a corridor containing three distinctive objects, in a virtual environment (VE) with wide-screen projection. One group simulated walking along the virtual corridor using a proprietary step-exercise device. A second group moved along the corridor in conventional flying mode, depressing a keyboard key to initiate continuous forward motion. Two further groups observed the walking and flying participants, by viewing their progress on the screen. Participants then had to walk along a real equivalent but empty corridor, and indicate the positions of the three objects. All groups underestimated distances in the real corridor, the greatest underestimates occurring for the middle distance object. Males' underestimations were significantly lower than females' at all distances. However, there was no difference between the active participants and passive observers, nor between walking and flying conditions.     

Forgiveness and mental health variables: Interpreting the relationship using an adaptational-continuum model of personality and coping

The present paper uses an adaptational-continuum model of personality, based on Ferguson’s (2001) health psychology model integrating Eysenck personality factors and coping style, to provide a context for examining the relationship between forgiveness and mental health. Three hundred and twenty respondents completed measures of personality, coping style, forgiveness (forgiveness of self, others, likelihood, presence of positive forgiveness, absence of negative forgiveness), general health, stress, positive and negative affect and life satisfaction. Among respondents, all measures of forgiveness, bar one, load negatively on a neuroticism-coping factor. The remaining measure of forgiveness (presence of positive forgiveness) loaded on an extraversion-coping factor. The relationship of the neuroticism-coping-forgiveness factor was associated with poorer mental health, suggesting forgiveness is associated with better mental health within the context of this personality-coping factor. Significant positive relationships were found between the extraversion-coping-forgiveness factor and two measures of positive mental health outcomes (positive affect and life satisfaction) suggesting forgiveness is associated with some aspects of mental health within the context of this personality-coping factor. The present findings suggest that forgiveness, or failure to forgive, can be conceptualised within an adaptational-continuum model of personality.     

Karol Wojtyla and Emmanuel Levinas on the Embodied Self: the Forming of the Other as Moral Self-disclosure

The 'other' has taken on an increased theological significance for the Church in the advent of post-modern reflection, resulting in a myriad of possibilities for those who would reflect on the significance of the other in relation to the 'self', largely in connection with various theories of embodiment. Following Karol Wojtyla's (John Paul II) emphasis on the given-ness of the body I wish to illustrate a way in which the other might be understood theologically, informed by the insights of the continental philosophical tradition, specifically Emmanuel Levinas' phenomenological outline of the other as a key locus of ethical reflection. Bringing Levinas' continental philosophy into dialogue with Wojtyla's philosophical theology, it will be argued that the other must be re-approached in terms of their subjective self-disclosure, centring upon the en-fleshed and bodily form of the human person, who confronts us as a reflection of both that which is most other to ourselves (the divine) and paradoxically that which most resembles ourselves (the human). The other is always an en-fleshed subject and in their action, their subjective identity is disclosed on the relational level.     

Wittgenstein and Basic Moral Certainty

In On Certainty, Wittgenstein’s reflections bring into view the phenomenon of basic certainty. He explores this phenomenon mostly in relation to our certainty with regard to empirical states of affairs. Drawing on these seminal observations and reflections, I extend the inquiry into what I call “basic moral certainty”, arguing that the latter plays the same kind of foundational role in our moral practices and judgements as basic empirical certainty does in our epistemic practices and judgements. I illustrate the nature and significance of basic moral certainty via critical examination of contemporary philosophical “explanations” of the wrongness of killing. These pseudo explanations, as I show them to be, will be seen to founder in a similar manner to Moore’s “Proof” of an external world, that is, in a manner that discloses the phenomenon of basic (moral) certainty.