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78The Place of Phronesis in Postmodern HermeneuticsPhilosophy Today 37 (3): 298-305. 1993.The conception of paralogy, which Jean-Francois Lyotard develops in The Postmodern Condition, motivates a number of questions concerning justice and the moral life. In this paper I suggest that Lyotard's account fails to provide an adequate answer to these questions, and that a more satisfactory account of justice in paralogy can be developed by exploring the concept of phronesis. John Caputo's "ethics of dissemination," in some respects, leads us in this direction. Although both theorists attem…Read more
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937Metzinger's matrix: Living the virtual life with a real bodyPSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 11. 2005.Is it possible to say that there is no real self if we take a non-Cartesian view of the body? Is it possible to say that an organism can engage in pragmatic action and intersubjective interaction and that the self generated in such activity is not real? This depends on how we define the concept "real". By taking a close look at embodied action, and at Metzinger's concept of embodiment, I want to argue that, on a non-Cartesian concept of reality, the self should be considered something real, and …Read more
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108Getting interaction theory (IT) together: Integrating developmental, phenomenological, enactive, and dynamical approaches to social interactionInteraction Studies 13 (3): 436-468. 2012.We argue that progress in our scientific understanding of the `social mind' is hampered by a number of unfounded assumptions. We single out the widely shared assumption that social behavior depends solely on the capacities of an individual agent. In contrast, both developmental and phenomenological studies suggest that the personal-level capacity for detached `social cognition' (conceived as a process of theorizing about and/or simulating another mind) is a secondary achievement that is dependen…Read more
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643In a New York Times article last month, entitled Cells that read minds, the neuroscience reporter, Sandra Blakeslee (January 10, 2006) provided a list of all the things that mirror neurons can explain. As we know, mirror neurons, discovered by Rizzolattis group in Parma, are neurons that are activated when we engage in action, and when we perceive intentional movement in another person. According to Blakeslee and the scientists she interviewed, mirror neurons explain not only how we are capable …Read more
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67Embodiment and Phenomenal Qualities: An Enactive InterpretationPhilosophical Topics 39 (1): 1-14. 2011.I argue that an older debate in phenomenology concerning Husserl’s notion of hyletic data can throw some light on contemporary debates about qualia and phenomenal consciousness. Both debates tend to ignore important considerations about bodily experience and how specific kinds of bodily experience can shape one’s consciousness of the world. A revised and fully embodied conception of hyletic experience enriches the concept of enactive perception.
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802Les conditions de corporéité et d'intersubjectivité chez la personne moraleTheologiques 12 (1-2): 135-64. 2004.Que signifie le fait d’avoir le statut de personne morale, c’est-à-dire d’avoir la capacité de responsabilité morale? Dans un important essai sur la question, Dennett a proposé six conditions qui définissent ce concept. Premièrement, l’entité à laquelle nous attribuerions le statut de personne morale doit être douée de rationalité. Deuxièmement, elle doit être capable d’adopter la position intentionnelle — c’est-à-dire qu’elle doit être capable d’attribuer des intentions aux autres. Troisièmemen…Read more
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86Hegel and the extended mindAI and Society 25 (1): 123-129. 2010.We examine the theory of the extended mind, and especially the concept of the “parity principle” (Clark and Chalmers in Analysis 58.1:7–19, 1998), in light of Hegel’s notion of objective spirit. This unusual combination of theories raises the question of how far one can extend the notion of extended mind and whether cognitive processing can supervene on the operations of social practices and institutions. We raise some questions about putting this research to critical use
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78Defining consciousness: The importance of non-reflective self-awarenessPragmatics and Cognition 18 (3): 561-569. 2010.I review the problem of how to define consciousness. I suggest that rather than continuing that debate, we should turn to phenomenological description of experience to discover the common aspects of consciousness. In this way we can say that consciousness is characterized by intentionality, phenomenality, and non-reflective self-awareness. I explore this last characteristic in detail and I argue against higher-order representational theories of consciousness, with reference to blindsight and mot…Read more
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62Time, Emotion, and DepressionEmotion Review 4 (2): 127-132. 2012.I examine several aspects of the experience of time in depression and in the experience of different emotions. Both phenomenological and experimental studies show that depressed subjects have a slowed experience of time flow and tend to overestimate time spans. In comparison to patients in control conditions, depressed patients tend to be preoccupied with past events, and less focused on present and future events. Recent empirical findings in studies of emotion perception show different degrees …Read more
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188Inference or interaction: Social cognition without precursorsPhilosophical Explorations 11 (3). 2008.In this paper I defend interaction theory (IT) as an alternative to both theory theory (TT) and simulation theory (ST). IT opposes the basic suppositions that both TT and ST depend upon. I argue that the various capacities for primary and secondary intersubjectivity found in infancy and early childhood should not be thought of as precursors to later developing capacities for using folk psychology or simulation routines. They are not replaced or displaced by such capacities in adulthood, but rath…Read more
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80Phenomenological approaches to consciousnessIn Max Velmans & Susan Schneider (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 686--696. 2007.On the phenomenological view, a minimal form of self-consciousness is a constant structural feature of conscious experience. Experience happens for the experiencing subject in an immediate way and as part of this immediacy, it is implicitly marked as my experience. For the phenomenologists, this immediate and first-personal givenness of experiential phenomena must be accounted for in terms of a pre-reflective self-consciousness. In the most basic sense of the term, selfconsciousness is not somet…Read more
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411Bodily self-awareness and object perceptionTheoria Et Historia Scientarum 7 (1): 53--68. 2003.Gallagher, S. 2003. Bodily self-awareness and object perception. _Theoria et Historia Scientiarum: International Journal for Interdisciplinary_ _Studies_, 7 (1) - in press.
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174Sync-ing in the stream of experience: Time-consciousness in Broad, Husserl, and DaintonPSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 9. 2003.By examining Dainton's account of the temporality of consciousness in the context of long-running debates about the specious present and time consciousness in both the Jamesian and the phenomenological traditions, I raise critical objections to his overlap model. Dainton's interpretations of Broad and Husserl are both insightful and problematic. In addition, there are unresolved problems in Dainton's own analysis of conscious experience. These problems involve ongoing content, lingering content,…Read more
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97Ipseity and Alterity: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Intersubjectivity (edited book)Publications de l'Université de Rouen.. 2004.Introduction In Autrement qu'etre on au-delh de I'essence, Levinas claims that ipseity depends upon alterity. One of the reasons given is that I, according to Levinas, become a subject exactly by being addressed and accused by the Other .
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1Why We Are Not All NovelistsIn Peer F. Bundgaard & Frederik Stjernfelt (eds.), Investigations Into the Phenomenology and the Ontology of the Work of Art: What are Artworks and How Do We Experience Them?, Springer Verlag. 2015.
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116Self-narrative, embodied action, and social contextIn A. Wiercinski (ed.), Between Suspicion and Sympathy: Paul Ricoeur's Unstable Equilibrium (Festschrift for Paul Ricoeur), The Hermeneutic Press. 2003.In recent philosophy of mind, informed by ongoing research in the cognitive neurosciences, there has been a tendency to offer deflationary or reductive explanations of self and selfidentity. The background to such accounts includes a complex history of the problem of personal identity from Hume to Parfit. Paul Ricoeur has provided an insightful perspective on this history based on his distinction between ipse identity and idem identity.1 My intention is not to rehearse that history, or even to u…Read more
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37IntroductionInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 16 (3). 2008.This Article does not have an abstract
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47Somatic ApathyJournal of Phenomenological Psychology 46 (1): 105-122. 2015.Muselmannwas a term used in German concentration camps to describe prisoners near death due to exhaustion, starvation, and helplessness. This paper suggests that the inhuman conditions in the concentration camps resulted in the development of a defensive sense of disownership toward the entire body. The body, in such cases, is reduced to a pure object. However, in the case of theMuselmannthis body-as-object is felt to belong to the captors, and as such is therefore identified as a tool to inflic…Read more
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100Hermeneutics and EducationState University of New York Press. 1992.A study of the interface between philosophical hermeneutics and the philosophical theory of education, yielding a hermeneutical approach to education--an approach that calls into question the current models of educational experience and ...
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625The self in contextualized actionJournal of Consciousness Studies 6 (4): 273. 2002.This paper suggests that certain traditional ways of analysing the self start off in situations that are abstract or detached from normal experience, and that the conclusions reached in such approaches are, as a result, inexact or mistaken. The paper raises the question of whether there are more contextualized forms of self- consciousness than those usually appealed to in philosophical or psychological analyses, and whether they can be the basis for a more adequate theoretical approach to the se…Read more
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77Neo-pragmatism and enactive intentionalityIn Jay Schulkin (ed.), Action, perception and the brain: adaptation and cephalic expression, Palgrave-macmillan. 2012.
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124Active inference, enactivism and the hermeneutics of social cognitionSynthese 195 (6): 2627-2648. 2018.We distinguish between three philosophical views on the neuroscience of predictive models: predictive coding, predictive processing and predictive engagement. We examine the concept of active inference under each model and then ask how this concept informs discussions of social cognition. In this context we consider Frith and Friston’s proposal for a neural hermeneutics, and we explore the alternative model of enactivist hermeneutics.
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16Review of David Woodruff Smith (ed.), Amie L. Thomasson (ed.), Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (12). 2006.
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254The Oxford handbook of the self (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2011.The Oxford Handbook of the Self is an interdisciplinary collection of essays that address questions in all of these areas.
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600Moral agency, self-consciousness, and practical wisdomJournal of Consciousness Studies 14 (5-6): 199-223. 2007.This paper argues that self-consciousness and moral agency depend crucially on both embodied and social aspects of human existence, and that the capacity for practical wisdom, phronesis, is central to moral personhood. The nature of practical wisdom is elucidated by drawing on rival analyses of expertise. Although ethical expertise and practical wisdom differ importantly, they are alike in that we can acquire them only in interaction with other persons and through habituation. The analysis of mo…Read more
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2850Implications of Action-Oriented Paradigm Shifts in Cognitive ScienceIn Andreas K. Engel, Karl J. Friston & Danica Kragic (eds.), The Pragmatic Turn: Toward Action-Oriented Views in Cognitive Science, Mit Press. pp. 333-356. 2016.An action-oriented perspective changes the role of an individual from a passive observer to an actively engaged agent interacting in a closed loop with the world as well as with others. Cognition exists to serve action within a landscape that contains both. This chapter surveys this landscape and addresses the status of the pragmatic turn. Its potential influence on science and the study of cognition are considered (including perception, social cognition, social interaction, sensorimotor entrain…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
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Phenomenology |
Maurice Merleau-Ponty |
Hermeneutics |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Philosophy of Psychiatry |