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2491Basic Empathy: Developing the Concept of Empathy from the Ground UpInternational Journal of Nursing Studies 110. 2020.Empathy is a topic of continuous debate in the nursing literature. Many argue that empathy is indispensable to effective nursing practice. Yet others argue that nurses should rather rely on sympathy, compassion, or consolation. However, a more troubling disagreement underlies these debates: There’s no consensus on how to define empathy. This lack of consensus is the primary obstacle to a constructive debate over the role and import of empathy in nursing practice. The solution to this problem se…Read more
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2175For-me-ness: What it is and what it is notIn D. Dahlstrom, A. Elpidorou & W. Hopp (eds.), Philosophy of mind and phenomenology, Routledge. pp. 36-53. 2016.The alleged for-me-ness or mineness of conscious experience has been the topic of considerable debate in recent phenomenology and philosophy of mind. By considering a series of objections to the notion of for-me-ness, or to a properly robust construal of it, this paper attempts to clarify to what the notion is committed and to what it is not committed. This exercise results in the emergence of a relatively determinate and textured portrayal of for-me-ness as the authors conceive of it.
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1045Two takes on a one-level account of consciousnessPSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 12. 2006.My presentation will discuss two one-level accounts of consciousness, a Brentanian and a Husserlian. I will address some of the relevant differences
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836Empathy in Nursing: A Phenomenological InterventionTetsugaku 5 23-39. 2021.Today, many philosophers write on topics of contemporary interest, such as emerging technologies, scientific advancements, or major political events. However, many of these reflections, while philosophically valuable, fail to contribute to those who may benefit the most from them. In this article, we discuss our own experience of engaging with nursing researchers and practicing nurses. By drawing on the field of philosophical phenomenology, we intervene in a longstanding debate over the meaning …Read more
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567The end of what? Phenomenology vs. speculative realismInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 24 (3): 289-309. 2016.Phenomenology has recently come under attack from proponents of speculative realism. In this paper, I present and assess the criticism, and argue that it is either superficial and simplistic or lacks novelty.
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560Inner time-consciousness and pre-reflective self-awarenessIn Donn Welton (ed.), The New Husserl: A Critical Reader, Indiana University Press. pp. 157-180. 2003.If one looks at the current discussion of self-awareness there seems to be a general agreement that whatever valuable philosophical contributions Husserl might have made, his account of self-awareness is not among them. This prevalent appraisal is often based on the claim that Husserl was too occupied with the problem of intentionality to ever really pay attention to the issue of self-awareness. Due to his interest in intentionality Husserl took object-consciousness as the paradigm of every kind…Read more
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534Internalism, externalism, and transcendental idealismSynthese 160 (3): 355-374. 2008.The analyses of the mind–world relation offered by transcendental idealists such as Husserl have often been dismissed with the argument that they remain committed to an outdated form of internalism. The first move in this paper will be to argue that there is a tight link between Husserl’s transcendental idealism and what has been called phenomenological externalism, and that Husserl’s endorsement of the former commits him to a version of the latter. Secondly, it will be shown that key elements i…Read more
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512Phenomenology and the project of naturalizationPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 3 (4): 331-47. 2004.In recent years, more and more people have started talking about the necessity of reconciling phenomenology with the project of naturalization. Is it possible to bridge the gap between phenomenological analyses and naturalistic models of consciousness? Is it possible to naturalize phenomenology? Given the transcendental philosophically motivated anti-naturalism found in many phenomenologists such a naturalization proposal might seem doomed from the very start, but in this paper I will examine an…Read more
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504Shame and the exposed selfIn Jonathan Webber (ed.), Reading Sartre: On Phenomenology and Existentialism, Routledge. 2010.On many standard readings, shame is an emotion that in an accentuated manner targets and involves the self in its totality. In shame, the self is affected by a global devaluation: it feels defective, objectionable, condemned. The basic question I wish to raise and discuss is the following: What does the fact that we feel shame tell us about the nature of self? What kind of self is it that is affected in shame?
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481Sartre’s analysis of intersubjectivity in the third part of Being and Nothingness is guided by two main motives1. First of all, Sartre is simply expanding his ontological investigation of the essential structure of and relation between the for-itself (pour-soi) and the in-itself (en-soi). For as he points out, I need the Other in order fully to understand the structure of my own being, since the for-itself refers to the for-others (EN 267/303, 260/298); moreover, as he later adds, a treatment of…Read more
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453Beyond empathy: Phenomenological approaches to intersubjectivityJournal of Consciousness Studies 8 (5-7): 151-167. 2001.Drawing on the work of Scheler, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Husserl and Sartre, this article presents an overview of some of the diverse approaches to intersubjectivity that can be found in the phenomenological tradition. Starting with a brief description of Scheler's criticism of the argument from analogy, the article continues by showing that the phenomenological analyses of intersubjectivity involve much more than a 'solution' to the 'traditional' problem of other minds. Intersubjectivity doesn…Read more
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408Simulation, projection and empathyConsciousness and Cognition 17 (2): 514-522. 2008.Simulationists have recently started to employ the term "empathy" when characterizing our most basic understanding of other minds. I agree that empathy is crucial, but I think it is being misconstrued by the simulationists. Using some ideas to be found in Scheler's classical discussion of empathy, I will argue for a different understanding of the notion. More specifically, I will argue that there are basic levels of interpersonal understanding - in particular the understanding of emotional expre…Read more
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391Killing the straw man: Dennett and phenomenologyPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 6 (1-2): 21-43. 2007.Can phenomenology contribute to the burgeoning science of consciousness? Dennett’s reply would probably be that it very much depends upon the type of phenomenology in question. In my paper I discuss the relation between Dennett’s heterophenomenology and the type of classical philosophical phenomenology that one can find in Husserl, Scheler and Merleau-Ponty. I will in particular be looking at Dennett’s criticism of classical phenomenology. How vulnerable is it to Dennett’s criticism, and how muc…Read more
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381In Jacobsen, M.H. (ed.): Sociologies of the Unnoticed. Palgrave/Macmillan, 2008.
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375What is the relation between phenomenology and metaphysics? Is phenomeno- logy metaphysical neutral, is it without metaphysical bearings, is it a kind of propaedeutics to metaphysics, or is phenomenology on the contrary a form of metaphysics, perhaps even the culmination of a particular kind of metaphysics (of presence)? What should be made clear from the outset is that there is no easy and straightforward answer to the question concerning the relation between phenome- nology and metaphysics. Th…Read more
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365Schizophrenia and Self-AwarenessPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 8 (4): 339-341. 2001.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 8.4 (2001) 339-341 [Access article in PDF] Schizophrenia and Self-Awareness Dan Zahavi In his paper, "Cogito and I: A Bio-Logical Approach," Kimura Bin raises a number of intriguing issues. Let me in the following address a few of them. Kimura Bin's point of departure is the idea that schizophrenia is basically to be understood as a disorder of self and self-experience. Thus, fundamental alteratio…Read more
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364Empathy and Direct Social Perception: A Phenomenological Proposal (review)Review of Philosophy and Psychology 2 (3): 541-558. 2011.Quite a number of the philosophical arguments and objections currently being launched against simulation (ST) based and theory-theory (TT) based approaches to mindreading have a phenomenological heritage in that they draw on ideas found in the work of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Stein, Gurwitsch, Scheler and Schutz. Within the last couple of years, a number of ST and TT proponents have started to react and respond to what one for the sake of simplicity might call the phenomenologi…Read more
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358Empathy and Other-Directed IntentionalityTopoi 33 (1): 129-142. 2014.The article explores and compares the accounts of empathy found in Lipps, Scheler, Stein and Husserl and argues that the three latter phenomenological thinkers offer a model of empathy, which is not only distinctly different from Lipps’, but which also diverge from the currently dominant models
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334Intentionality and phenomenality: A phenomenological take on the hard problemCanadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 29 63-92. 2003.In his book The Conscious Mind David Chalmers introduced a by now familiar distinction between the hard problem and the easy problems of consciousness. The easy problems are those concerned with the question of how the mind can process information, react to environmental stimuli, and exhibit such capacities as discrimination, categorization, and introspection (Chalmers, 1996, 4, 1995, 200). All of these abilities are impressive, but they are, according to Chalmers, not metaphysically baffling, s…Read more
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332Husserl's intersubjective transformation of transcendental philosophyJournal of the British Society for Phenomenology 27 (3): 228-245. 1996.If one interprets transcendental subjectivity as an isolated ego and in the spirit of the Kantian tradition ignores the whole task of establishing a transcendental community of subjects, then every chance of reaching a transcendental self- and world-knowledge is lost. Krisis (Ergänzung), 120.
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324Self and consciousnessIn Exploring the Self: Philosophical and Psychopathological Perspectives on Self-experience, John Benjamins. pp. 55-74. 2000.In his recent book ‘Kant and the Mind’ Andrew Brook makes a distinction between two types of selfawareness. The first type, which he calls empirical self-awareness, is an awareness of particular psychological states such as perceptions, memories, desires, bodily sensations etc. One attains this type of self-awareness simply by having particular experiences and being aware of them. To be in possession of empirical self-awareness is, in short, simply to be conscious of one’s occurrent experience. …Read more
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322Husserl's noema and the internalism‐externalism debateInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 47 (1): 42-66. 2004.In a number of papers, Hubert Dreyfus and Ronald McIntyre have claimed that Husserl is an internalist. In this paper, it is argued that their interpretation is based on two questionable assumptions: (1) that Husserl's noema should be interpreted along Fregean lines, and (2) that Husserl's transcendental methodology commits him to some form of methodological solipsism. Both of these assumptions are criticized on the basis of the most recent Husserl-research. It is shown that Husserl's concept of …Read more
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315Brain, Mind, World: Predictive Coding, Neo-Kantianism, and Transcendental IdealismHusserl Studies 34 (1): 47-61. 2018.Recently, a number of neuroscientists and philosophers have taken the so-called predictive coding approach to support a form of radical neuro-representationalism, according to which the content of our conscious experiences is a neural construct, a brain-generated simulation. There is remarkable similarity between this account and ideas found in and developed by German neo-Kantians in the mid-nineteenth century. Some of the neo-Kantians eventually came to have doubts about the cogency and interna…Read more
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314Merleau-Ponty on Husserl: A ReappraisalIn Ted Toadvine & Lester E. Embree (eds.), Merleau-Ponty on Husserl: A Reappraisal, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2002.If one comes to Phénoménologie de la perception after having read Sein und Zeit (or Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs) one will be in for a surprise. Both works contain a number of both implicit and explicit references to Husserl, but the presentation they give is so utterly different, that one might occasionally wonder whether they are referring to the same author. Thus nobody can overlook that Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of Husserl differs significantly from Heidegger’s. It is far…Read more
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313Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person PerspectiveBradford Book/MIT Press. 2005.The relationship of self, and self-awareness, and experience: exploring classical phenomenological analyses and their relevance to contemporary discussions in ...
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310Phenomenological Psychopathology and Schizophrenia: Contemporary Approaches and MisunderstandingsPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 18 (1). 2011.The phenomenological approach to schizophrenia has undergone something of a renaissance in Anglophone psychiatry in recent years. There has been a proliferation of works that focus on the nature of subjectivity in schizophrenia and related disorders, and that take inspiration from the work of such German and French philosophers as Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, and such classical psychiatrists as Minkowski, Blankenburg, and Binswanger (Rulf 2003; Sass 2001a, 2001b). This trend includes p…Read more
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273Back to Brentano?Journal of Consciousness Studies 11 (10-11): 66-87. 2004.For a cou ple of decades, higher-order the o ries of con scious ness have enjoyed great pop u lar ity, but they have recently been met with grow ing dis sat is - fac tion. Many have started to look else where for via ble alter na tives, and within the last few years, quite a few have redis cov ered Brentano. In this paper such a Brentanian one-level account of con scious ness will be out lined and dis - cussed. It will be argued that it can con trib ute impor tant insights to our under - stand i…Read more
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265Husserl's phenomenologyStanford University Press. 2003.It is commonly believed that Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), well known as the founder of phenomenology and as the teacher of Heidegger, was unable to free himself from the framework of a classical metaphysics of subjectivity. Supposedly, he never abandoned the view that the world and the Other are constituted by a pure transcendental subject, and his thinking in consequence remains Cartesian, idealistic, and solipsistic. The continuing publication of Husserl’s manuscripts has made it necessary to r…Read more
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264Is the Self a Social Construct?Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 52 (6): 551-573. 2009.There is a long tradition in philosophy for claiming that selfhood is socially constructed and self-experience intersubjectively mediated. On many accounts, we consequently have to distinguish between being conscious or sentient and being a self. The requirements that must be met in order to qualify for the latter are higher. My aim in the following is to challenge this form of social constructivism by arguing that an account of self which disregards the fundamental structures and features of ou…Read more
Copenhagen, Hovedstaden, Denmark
Areas of Specialization
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Philosophy of Consciousness |
Intentionality |
Persons |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Phenomenology |
Existentialism |
Hermeneutics |