•  15
    Spontaneity and Intermodal Perception
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 25 (3-4): 137-161. 2018.
    This paper addresses the problem of intermodal perception, that of how warranted perception arises of objects having characteristics in multiple sense modalities. It first shows the inadequacy of the currently popular explanations of such perception in terms of special, innate mechanisms. It proposes instead a phenomenological account in terms of an infant's general capacities for observation and thought. To this end it prepares the terrain with brief investigations into four topics: spontaneity…Read more
  •  69
    The Deep Bodily Roots of Emotion
    Husserl Studies 28 (3): 179-200. 2012.
    This article explores emotions and their relationship to ‘somatic responses’, i.e., one’s automatic responses to sensations of pain, cold, warmth, sudden intensity. To this end, it undertakes a Husserlian phenomenological analysis of the first-hand experience of eight basic emotions, briefly exploring their essential aspects: their holistic nature, their identifying dynamic transformation of the lived body, their two-layered intentionality, their involuntary initiation and voluntary espousal. Th…Read more
  •  32
    The Basic Self and Its Doubles
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 18 (7-8): 169-195. 2011.
    As Descartes noted, a proper account of the nature of the being one is begins with a basic self present in first-person experience, a self that one cannot cogently doubt being. This paper seeks to uncover such a self, first within consciousness and thinking, then within the lived or first-person felt body. After noting the lack of grounding of Merleau-Ponty’s commonly referenced reflections, it undertakes a phenomenological investigation of the body that finds the basic self to reside in one’s e…Read more
  •  46
    Edmund Husserl: A review of the lectures on transcendental logic (review)
    with M. Sheets-Johnstone
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 12 (2): 43-51. 2005.
    The centerpiece of the Analyses is a translation from the German of notes for a series of lectures given by phenomenologist Edmund Husserl in the early twenties, which is to say some eighty years ago. Husserl designated the topic of the lectures 'transcendental logic'. In this context, the term, 'transcendental', is not to be understood in some mystical sense, but rather in a Kantian sense: pertaining to the conditions of possibility of experience. Likewise, the term, 'logic', is not to be taken…Read more
  •  39
    Rationalized Epistemology: Taking Solipsism Seriously
    State University of New York Press. 1991.
    Roughly characterized, solipsism is the skeptical thesis that there is no reason to think that anything exists other than oneself and one’s present experience. Since its inception in the reflections of Descartes, the thesis has taken three broad and sometimes overlapping forms: Internal World Solipsism that arises from an account of perception in terms of representations of an external world; Observed World Solipsism that arises from doubts as to the existence of what is not actually present sen…Read more
  •  36
    The need for warrant
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51 (3): 541-556. 1991.
  •  445
    The Liar Syndrome
    SATS 3 (1): 37-55. 2002.
    This article examines the various Liar paradoxes and their near kin, Grelling’s paradox and Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem with its self-referential Gödel sentence. It finds the family of paradoxes to be generated by circular definition–whether of statements, predicates, or sentences–a manoeuvre that generates the fatal disorders of the Liar syndrome: semantic vacuity, semantic incoherence, and predicative catalepsy. Afflicted statements, such as the self-referential Liar statement, fail to be g…Read more
  •  538
    Doctor's Diagnosis Sustained
    SATS 3 (2): 142-153. 2002.
    This article is a sequel to ‘The Liar Syndrome’. It answers in detail the various criticisms of the latter expressed by Roy T. Cook in his article, ‘Curing the Liar Syndrome’, appearing in SATS/Nordic Journal of Philosophy, 3 (2): 126-141 (2002)
  •  53
    Oneself as oneself and not as another
    Husserl Studies 13 (1): 1-17. 1996.
    In recent years it has become popular to model putative refutations of skepticism on Kant's answer to Hume, that is, on transcendental arguments purporting to show that the skeptical theses presupposes essential features of the very conceptual scheme they call into question. In his book, Oneself as Another, Paul Ricoeur makes the claim that transcendental considerations of the sort invalidate Edmund Husserl's foundationalist epistemological enterprise, that of uncovering the genesis of primitive…Read more
  •  1
    The Need for Warrant
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51 (3): 541-556. 1991.
  •  23
    Why Emotion?
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 20 (9-10): 15-38. 2013.
    The various roles proposed for emotion, whether psychological such as preparing for action or serving prior concerns, or biological such as protecting and promoting well-being, are easily shown to have an awkward number of exceptions. This paper attempts to explain why. To this end it undertakes a Husserlian phenomenological examination of first-person experience of two types of responses, the various somatic responses elicited by sensations (pain, cold, pleasure, sudden intensity) and the vario…Read more
  •  312
    This essay explores the nature of the most rudimentary form of empathy, interpersonal affective echoing, and attempts to give a cogent assessment of the roles it may play in human interactions. As an investigative background, it briefly sketches phenomenological findings with respect to feelings, to non-linguistic cognition, and to the analogical apperception of others. It then offers a phenomenological account of the basic structures of the experience of echoing another person’s feelings in a f…Read more
  •  261
    Self-reference and gödel's theorem: A Husserlian analysis (review)
    Husserl Studies 19 (2): 131-151. 2003.
    A Husserlian phenomenological approach to logic treats concepts in terms of their experiential meaning rather than in terms of reference, sets of individuals, and sentences. The present article applies such an approach in turn to the reasoning operative in various paradoxes: the simple Liar, the complex Liar paradoxes, the Grelling-type paradoxes, and Gödel’s Theorem. It finds that in each case a meaningless statement, one generated by circular definition, is treated as if were meaningful, and c…Read more
  • Cartesian Solipsism: An Analytic/Phenomenological Refutation
    Dissertation, University of Waterloo (Canada). 1984.
    The skeptical doubts entertained by Descartes give rise to seven distinct theses characterizable as solipsistic, each focused on one of three general epistemological problems, that of the reality of the perceived, that of the existence of the unperceived, and the so-called problem of the existence of an external world. The skeptical challenge in each case is concerned not with absolute certainty, but with the question of whether there is any warrant whatever for bridging the evidential gap betwe…Read more