Devin Fitzpatrick

The “pre-intentional” is a proposed category of mental states that conditions a subject’s experience of what is possible for them by, for example, modifying the motivational efficacy or experienced quality of intentional states, like beliefs or desires, without necessarily modifying their propositional content. Matthew Ratcliffe, who has coined the term, identifies the pre-intentional with existential feelings, senses of possibility like “feeling alive” or “feeling deadened,” and argues that these feelings are conditions of the possibility of the scope and valence of intentional states. Jussi Saarinen questions if existential feelings should be understood as consciously occurring episodes or background affective styles, which has implications for the problem of “bi-directionality”: how or if intentional states might affect the pre-intentional. I first argue that answering Saarinen requires, contra Ratcliffe, the introduction of a feeling-disposition distinction: existential feelings are not pre-intentional structures but ways of becoming aware of the “existential dispositions” that are pre-intentional structures. I then propose a new definition of the pre-intentional: existential dispositions are a category of states that are introspectively opaque and so ambiguous between being an intentional state, like a “quasi-belief,” or non-intentional state, like a reflex. This allows for a novel account of what I, following Saarinen’s terminology, call indirect bi-directionality, and thus of indirectly induced existential change, which Ratcliffe only understands as spontaneous. To clarify how intentional states may influence the pre-intentional also clarifies how change in, say, beliefs about what one’s experiences of depression signify may induce existential change that alleviates the suffering of these experiences.

We are happy to feature four invited submissions by Lisa Guenther, Kym Maclaren, Bonnie Mann, and Gayle Salamon, all of whom respond to the questions motivating our inaugural issue. Both Salamon and Maclaren offer a response to the question “What is critical phenomenology?” by exploring the productive relationship between critical theory and phenomenology. Salamon does this by tracing the history of the term critical phenomenology. Maclaren further explores the productive relationship between critical theory and phenomenology en route to her analysis of intimacy. Focusing on the phenomena of shame and long-term solitary confinement, Mann and Guenther take up that question by performing the work of critical phenomenology. Mann also offers suggestions regarding critical or, as she calls it, feminist phenomenology’s relation to the tradition—both of classical phenomenology and feminist philosophy. Guenther shows how the work of critical phenomenology is already at play in the practices of resistance among prisoners in the Security Housing Unit of Pelican Bay State Prison in California.

Philip Kitcher's arguments for realism and secular humanism reveal a question as to the role of transcendence in pragmatism. There is a tension between Deweyan anti-foundationalism and naturalism—between the continuity of experience and nature, and the external reality of the universe— which re-emerges in Kitcher's “real realism.” The transcendence of the natural and the transcendence of the supernatural are distinct as regards their accessibility to inquiry. But the pragmatic fallibilist resistance to sources of justification external to the process of inquiry, or “sky-hooks,” also clashes with the transcendence of nature insofar as it is viewed as a foundation. I argue that transcendence can be conceived not as a substance or ground, but as a possibility of radical receptivity or renewal, and that this is compatible with the continuity of inquiry. If this shift is made, religious transcendence can appear less as a flight to another world and more a method of producing a break with the (sinful)..

The “pre-intentional” is a proposed category of mental states that conditions a subject’s experience of what is possible for them by, for example, modifying the motivational efficacy or experienced quality of intentional states, like beliefs or desires, without necessarily modifying their propositional content. Matthew Ratcliffe, who has coined the term, identifies the pre-intentional with existential feelings, senses of possibility like “feeling alive” or “feeling deadened,” and argues that these feelings are conditions of the possibility of the scope and valence of intentional states. Jussi Saarinen questions if existential feelings should be understood as consciously occurring episodes or background affective styles, which has implications for the problem of “bi-directionality”: how or if intentional states might affect the pre-intentional. I first argue that answering Saarinen requires, contra Ratcliffe, the introduction of a feeling-disposition distinction: existential feelings are not pre-intentional structures but ways of becoming aware of the “existential dispositions” that are pre-intentional structures. I then propose a new definition of the pre-intentional: existential dispositions are a category of states that are introspectively opaque and so ambiguous between being an intentional state, like a “quasi-belief,” or non-intentional state, like a reflex. This allows for a novel account of what I, following Saarinen’s terminology, call indirect bi-directionality, and thus of indirectly induced existential change, which Ratcliffe only understands as spontaneous. To clarify how intentional states may influence the pre-intentional also clarifies how change in, say, beliefs about what one’s experiences of depression signify may induce existential change that alleviates the suffering of these experiences.

Pragmatism is suspicious of transcendence. Perhaps the term “transcendence” is itself suspect, in having a long history and being difficult to clarify. But for the sake of a fresh beginning, I would like to loosely and naïvely define transcendence as what is “beyond,” what in some way exceeds or is external to a significant limit. A fundamental form of transcendence is that of being beyond meaning, that is, existence which precedes or extends beyond the interpretation of questioning beings. Western thought has long privileged the eternal, and those who have rebelled against this, pragmatists among others, have brought to light the essential role of interpretation and what is obscured when that role is denied: the..

I reflect on an argument with a friend, “S,” who also struggles with depression. In examining my formalization of S’s argument, I claim, we may discern the structure of depressive thought. In observing what is missing from this structure, we may identify what depression tends to hide from depressed persons and what, more broadly, it tends to compel from them. I argue for a redescription of depressive thinking in terms of two compulsions: 1) to perceive an absolute and vague threat that causes disruption to action and 2) to take this disruption as also being a reason for inaction. To do ethics for the depressed, I conclude, is to ask what philosophical argument can do for those who seek justification for action but struggle with these specific limits on their responsiveness to reasons.