The temporality of intimacy: Promise,world, and death

This paper explores the temporal character of intimacy. I begin by examining the significance of “promise” and “habit” in intimate relationships. These themes are developed through the work of M. Merleau-Ponty and J.H. van den Berg to reveal the embedded or en-worlded character of intimacy. These analyses help to articulate and to problematize the sense we often have of “established” relationships as possessing a fixed, already determined character. The final section discusses the issues of intimacy that surround the situation of dying. Specifically, it analyses (1) ways in which the issue in death is the stripping away of one's world, but also ways in which the meaning of one's death is still something futural, and thus “to be shaped”; and, (2) ways in which the shaping of this meaning with intimate others is significant both for the one manifestly dying and for those whose death seems distant.     

Phenomenology and naturalism: a hybrid and heretical proposal

Abstract

In this paper I aim to develop a largely non-empirical case for the compatibility of phenomenology and naturalism. To do so, I will criticise what I take to be the standard construal of the relationship between transcendental phenomenology and naturalism, and defend a ‘minimal’ version of phenomenology that is compatible with liberal naturalism in the ontological register (but incompatible with scientific naturalism) and with weak forms of methodological naturalism, the latter of which is understood as advocating ‘results continuity’, over the long haul, with the relevant empirical sciences. Far from such a trajectory amounting to a Faustian pact in which phenomenology sacrifices its soul, I contend that insofar as phenomenologists care about reigning in the excesses of reductive versions of naturalism, the only viable way for this to be done is via the impure and hybrid account of phenomenology I outline here.     

Continuity of phenomenology and (in)consistency of content of meaningful autobiographical memories

Phenomenology is a critical component of autobiographical memory retrieval; it reflects both (a) memory-specific features and (b) stable individual differences. Few studies have tested phenomenology longitudinally. The present work examined the continuity of memory phenomenology in a sample of Italians adults (N = 105) over a 4-week period. Participants retrieved two ‘key’ personal memories, a Turning Point and an Early Childhood Memory, rated the phenomenology of each memory, and completed measures of personality, psychological distress and subjective well-being. Phenomenological ratings were moderately stable over time (median correlation >.40), regardless of memory content. Personality traits, psychological distress and well-being were associated with phenomenology cross-sectionally and with changes in phenomenology over time. These results suggest that how individuals re-experience their most important personal memories is relatively consistent over time and shaped by both trait and state aspects of psychological functioning.     

Simulated thought insertion: Influencing the sense of agency using deception and magic

In order to study the feeling of control over decisions, we told 60 participants that a neuroimaging machine could read and influence their thoughts. While inside a mock brain scanner, participants chose arbitrary numbers in two similar tasks. In the Mind-Reading Task, the scanner appeared to guess the participants’ numbers; in the Mind-Influencing Task, it appeared to influence their choice of numbers. We predicted that participants would feel less voluntary control over their decisions when they believed that the scanner was influencing their choices. As predicted, participants felt less control and made slower decisions in the Mind-Influencing Task compared to the Mind-Reading Task. A second study replicated these findings. Participants’ experience of the ostensible influence varied, with some reporting an unknown source directing them towards specific numbers. This simulated thought insertion paradigm can therefore influence feelings of voluntary control and may help model symptoms of mental disorders.     

Reasoning about conscious experience with axiomatic and graphical mathematics

We cast aspects of consciousness in axiomatic mathematical terms, using the graphical calculus of general process theories (a.k.a symmetric monoidal categories and Frobenius algebras therein). This calculus exploits the ontological neutrality of process theories. A toy example using the axiomatic calculus is given to show the power of this approach, recovering other aspects of conscious experience, such as external and internal subjective distinction, privacy or unreadability of personal subjective experience, and phenomenal unity, one of the main issues for scientific studies of consciousness. In fact, these features naturally arise from the compositional nature of axiomatic calculus.     

Moods in transition: Theorizing the affective-dynamic constitution of situatedness

In this paper we draw from Gilbert Simondon's work in order to develop a conceptual perspective on moods as transitory, dynamic, and holistic affective processes, manifesting the persistence of pre-individual tensions throughout processes of individuation. In defending our proposal we focus on two features of mood experiences that have traditionally proven conceptually challenging: (1) the intentionality of moods and (2) their phenomenal status. By revisiting Colombetti's theory of moods as affectively scaffolded and Slaby's theory of moods as disclosive postures we show how a Simondonian approach might enrich current enactive as well as phenomenological theorizing about moods.     

The butterfly dream as ‘creative dream:’ dreaming and subjectivity in Zhuangzi and María Zambrano

The ‘dream of the butterfly,’ which seals the second chapter of the Zhuangzi, is often interpreted as undergirded by the bipolarity of dreaming and awakening or by the elusive interchange of identities between Zhuangzi and the butterfly, dreamer and dreamed. In this paper I argue that the underlying structure of the story may be better interpreted as exhibiting not two, but three stages of development, consistently echoing other tripartite parables in the Zhuangzi. In my reinterpretation I rely on the phenomenology of dreams proposed by the Spanish philosopher María Zambrano, which distinguishes among three states: the primal dream, characterized by atemporality and wholeness; wakefulness, characterized by temporality and analytic thinking; and the creative dream, in which reality discloses itself as a meaningful, holistic unity. I suggest that Zhuangzi’s parable describes a similar self-transformative threefold process culminating in the joyous freedom of a shifting multifaceted subjectivity centered in the timeless pivot of the Dao.     

The phenomenology and temporal distributions of autobiographical memories elicited with emotional and neutral cue words

In this study we examined whether the temporal distribution of autobiographical memory changes when different types of cue words are used to elicit the memories, and how the type of cue word affects the phenomenal characteristics of the memories. A total of 76 participants, ranging in age from 21 to 69 years, were presented with 22 cue words (emotional, emotion-provoking, and neutral). They were asked to recall a personal event and to complete the Autobiographical Memory Questionnaire (Rubin, Schrauf, & Greenberg, 2003, 2004) for each cue word. Results showed that the phenomenological properties of autobiographical memories which were cued with emotional and emotion-provoking words were rated higher than those of memories which were cued with neutral words, and that the peak in the temporal distributions of the autobiographical memories that were cued with emotional or emotion-provoking words were located later than the peak of the distribution of the memories that were cued with neutral words.     

Heidegger's Early Critique of Husserl

This paper examines Heidegger's critique of Husserl in its earliest extant formulation, viz. the lecture courses Ontologie from 1923 and Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung from 1923/4. Commentators frequently ignore these lectures, but I try to show that a study of them can reveal both the extent to which Heidegger remains committed to phenomenological research in something like its Husserlian form, and when and why Heidegger must part with Husserl. More specifically, I claim that Heidegger rightly criticizes Husserl's account of 'equipmental objects', and that he is especially unsatisfied with the terminology in which Husserl presents his phenomenological analyses, not only of 'equipment', but of other types of entities as well. However, it will also emerge that Heidegger's own phenomenological work presupposes the performance of what Husserl calls the 'epoch 7 ', the method of 'bracketing' natural knowledge. In this way, Heidegger's sometimes very severe critique must be understood as an internal critique.     

Second Nature,Critical Theory and Hegel’s Phenomenology

ABSTRACT

While Hegel’s concept of second nature has now received substantial attention from commentators, relatively little has been said about the place of this concept in the Phenomenology of Spirit. This neglect is understandable, since Hegel does not explicitly use the phrase ‘second nature’ in this text. Nonetheless, several closely related phrases reveal the centrality of this concept to the Phenomenology’s structure. In this paper, I develop new interpretations of the figures ‘natural consciousness’, ‘natural notion’, and ‘inorganic nature’, in order to elucidate the distinctive concept of second nature at work in the Phenomenology. I will argue that this concept of second nature supplements the ‘official’ version, developed in the Encyclopedia, with an ‘unofficial’ version that prefigures its use in critical theory. At the same time, this reconstruction will allow us to see how the Phenomenology essentially documents spirit’s acquisition of a ‘second nature’.