Low-Level Properties in Perceptual Experience

Whether perceptual experience represents high-level properties like causation and natural-kind in virtue of its phenomenology is an open question in philosophy of mind. While the question of high-level properties has sparked disagreement, there is widespread agreement that the sensory phenomenology of perceptual experience presents us with low-level properties like shape and color. This paper argues that the relationship between the sensory character of experience and the low-level properties represented therein is more complex than most assume. Careful consideration of mundane examples, like looking at a coin from an oblique angle, show that the low-level properties represented in experience do not necessarily figure in the sensory character of the experience. Furthermore, the sensible properties invoked when characterizing the sensory character of a perceptual experience are not necessarily included in the sensible properties represented in a perceptual experience. On this basis it is argued that perceptual experience has a disunified metaphysics, consisting in distinct sensory and cognitive components. The account is developed in relation to existing unified and disunified accounts, and discussed in terms of its implications for cognitive penetration, the reliability of introspection, the transparency of experience, and cognitive phenomenology.     

Body,environment and adventure: experience and spatiality

The purpose of this article is to investigate human spatiality and perception in general, with the experience of adventure sports as its background. These activities highlight especially our strong relationship with the world when we consider the specific way in which the environment participates in the development of human potential. We first analyse the notions of risk and instability as important elements in adventure sports. Then we explore the notion of experience and spatiality, considering the way in which we establish our relationship with the world. The theoretical background is found in the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and Bachelard’s phenomenology of imagination to investigate perspectives of space among adventurers. We hold that more than a different range of corporeal techniques, adventure sports can teach us a way of interrogating and looking at the world. They require a peculiar sensibility that allows our body to experience the environment in favour of a corporeal wisdom. Alternative sports indicate the possibility that we have to build up different ways of inhabiting the world and comprehending it.     

On the Meaning of Screens: Towards a Phenomenological Account of Screenness

This paper presents a Heideggerian phenomenological analysis of screens. In a world and an epoch where screens pervade a great many aspects of human experience, we submit that phenomenology, much in a traditional methodological form, can provide an interesting and novel basis for our understanding of screens. We ground our analysis in the ontology of Martin Heidegger's Being and Time [1927/1962], claiming that screens will only show themselves as they are if taken as screens-in-the-world. Thus, the phenomenon of screen is not investigated in its empirical form or conceptually. It is rather taken as a grounding intentional orientation that conditions our engagement with certain surfaces as we comport ourselves towards them “as screens.” In doing this we claim to have opened up the phenomenon of screen in a new and meaningful way.     

The cresting wave: a new moving spotlight theory

One argument for the moving spotlight theory is that it better explains our temporal phenomenology than does any static theory. In this paper it is argued that insofar as moving spotlight theorists take this to be a sound argument they ought embrace a new version of the moving spotlight theory according to which the moving spotlight is a cresting wave of causal efficacy. Hence a range of fundamental properties are temporary because presentness synchronically changesthe fundamental properties that are instantiated in the present moment, and our experiences of presentness co-varies with presentness, allowing us to phenomenologically detect presentness.     

Cognitive Complexity: Differentiation and Integration in Counseling Practice and Training

This article presents an in‐depth exploration of cognitive complexity. The authors propose that the domains of differentiation and integration signify unique cognitive processes that develop along distinct trajectories. Although differentiated complexity arises from clinical experience and certain training methods, the development of integrative complexity requires enhanced abductive reasoning skills and the use of phenomenological methods. Implications for growing integrative complexity through training, supervision, and clinical practice are provided.     

Art-Making and its Interface With Dissociative Identity Disorder: No Words That Didn’t fit

Studies point to promising developments in expressive arts therapy work with clients who experience dissociation as one of a constellation of symptoms of trauma. Individuals diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder, however, may be hesitant to engage with long-term therapy and its relationship. This article presents the case of one such individual, a participant in a narrative phenomenological study who was able to develop her own visual art-making practice. Reflections on this practice revealed that it offered a safe place for her to explore the voice of her “parts” hitherto silenced. Her narrative has implications for professionals working in the expressive and talking therapies.     

Philosophy and Science Dialogue: Consciousness

This is a dialogue between a philosopher and a scientist about the scientific explanation of consciousness. What is consciousness? Does it admit of scientific explanation? If so, what must a scientific theory of consciousness be like in order to provide us with a satisfying explanation of its explanandum? And what types of entities might such a theory acknowledge as being conscious? Philosopher Owen Flanagan and scientist Giulio Tononi weigh in on these issues during an exchange about the nature and scientific explanation of consciousness.     

‘Confronting the almighty God’? A study of how psychodynamic counsellors respond to clients' expressions of religious faith

While there is a considerable psychodynamic literature on the topic of religious faith, little is known about how counsellors work with faith in the consulting room. Prompted by the author's own clinical experience, this paper presents findings from a small‐scale research study that explored this phenomenon further, and provides an account of how the research was conducted from a Heideggerian phenomenological standpoint. Two research participants' experiences are examined and a fusion of horizons offered in conclusion.