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821"Folk psychology" is not folk psychologyPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 5 (1): 31-52. 2006.This paper disputes the claim that our understanding of others is enabled by a commonsense or ‘folk’ psychology, whose ‘core’ involves the attribution of intentional states in order to predict and explain behaviour. I argue that interpersonal understanding is seldom, if ever, a matter of two people assigning intentional states to each other but emerges out of a context of interaction between them. Self and other form a coupled system rather than two wholly separate entities equipped with an inte…Read more
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695The covid-19 pandemic and the Bounds of griefThink 20 (57): 89-101. 2021.ABSTRACTThis article addresses the question of whether certain experiences that originate in causes other than bereavement are properly termed ‘grief’. To do so, we focus on widespread experiences of grief that have been reported during the Covid-19 pandemic. We consider two potential objections to a more permissive use of the term: grief is, by definition, a response to a death; grief is subject to certain norms that apply only to the case of bereavement. Having shown that these objections are …Read more
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534The World of Chronic PainIn Kevin Aho (ed.), Existential Medicine: Essays on Health and Illness, Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 61-80. 2018.
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447What is it to lose hope?Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 12 (4): 597-614. 2013.This paper addresses the phenomenology of hopelessness. I distinguish two broad kinds of predicament that are easily confused: ‘loss of hopes’ and ‘loss of hope’. I argue that not all hope can be characterised as an intentional state of the form ‘I hope that p’. It is possible to lose all hopes of that kind and yet retain another kind of hope. The hope that remains is not an intentional state or a non-intentional bodily feeling. Rather, it is a ‘pre-intentional’ orientation or ‘existential feeli…Read more
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350The feeling of beingJournal of Consciousness Studies 12 (8-10): 43-60. 2005.There has been much recent philosophical discussion concerning the relationship between emotion and feeling. However, everyday talk of 'feeling' is not restricted to emotional feeling and the current emphasis on emotions has led to a neglect of other kinds of feeling. These include feelings of homeliness, belonging, separation, unfamiliarity, power, control, being part of something, being at one with nature and 'being there'. Such feelings are perhaps not 'emotional'. However, I suggest here tha…Read more
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296In August 2021, Froese et al. published survey data collected from 2,543 respondents on their subjective experiences living under imposed social distancing measures during COVID-19 (1). The questionnaire was issued to respondents in the UK, Japan, and Mexico. By combining the authors’ expertise in phenomenological philosophy, phenomenological psychopathology, and enactive cognitive science, the questions were carefully phrased to prompt reports that would be useful to phenomenological investigat…Read more
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286William James on emotion and intentionalityInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 13 (2): 179-202. 2005.William James's theory of emotion is often criticized for placing too much emphasis on bodily feelings and neglecting the cognitive aspects of emotion. This paper suggests that such criticisms are misplaced. Interpreting James's account of emotion in the light of his later philosophical writings, I argue that James does not emphasize bodily feelings at the expense of cognition. Rather, his view is that bodily feelings are part of the structure of intentionality. In reconceptualizing the relation…Read more
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275Husserl and Nagel on subjectivity and the limits of physical objectivityContinental Philosophy Review 35 (4): 353-377. 2002.Thomas Nagel argues that the subjective character of mind inevitably eludes philosophical efforts to incorporate the mental into a single, complete, physically objective view of the world. Nagel sees contemporary philosophy as caught on the horns of a dilemma
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265The phenomenology of depression and the nature of empathyMedicine, Health Care and Philosophy 17 (2): 269-280. 2014.This paper seeks to illuminate the nature of empathy by reflecting upon the phenomenology of depression. I propose that depression involves alteration of an aspect of experience that is seldom reflected upon or discussed, thus making it hard to understand. This alteration involves impairment or loss of a capacity for interpersonal relatedness that mutual empathy depends upon. The sufferer thus feels cut off from other people, and may remark on their indifference, hostility or inability to unders…Read more
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248Depression, Guilt and Emotional DepthInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 53 (6): 602-626. 2010.It is generally maintained that emotions consist of intentional states and /or bodily feelings. This paper offers a phenomenological analysis of guilt in severe depression, in order to illustrate how such conceptions fail to adequately accommodate a way in which some emotional experiences are said to be deeper than others. Many emotions are intentional states. However, I propose that the deepest emotions are not intentional but pre-intentional, meaning that they determine which kinds of intentio…Read more
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242What is Touch?Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90 (3). 2012.This paper addresses the nature of touch or ?tactual perception?. I argue that touch encompasses a wide range of perceptual achievements, that treating it as a number of separate senses will not work, and that the permissive conception we are left with is so permissive that it is unclear how touch might be distinguished from the other senses. I conclude that no criteria will succeed in individuating touch. Although I do not rule out the possibility that this also applies to other senses, I sugge…Read more
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234Phenomenology as a Form of EmpathyInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 55 (5): 473-495. 2012.Abstract This paper proposes that adopting a ?phenomenological stance? enables a distinctive kind of empathy, which is required in order to understand forms of experience that occur in psychiatric illness and elsewhere. For the most part, we interpret other people's experiences against the backdrop of a shared world. Hence our attempts to appreciate interpersonal differences do not call into question a deeper level of commonality. A phenomenological stance involves suspending our habitual accept…Read more
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215Phenomenology, Naturalism and the Sense of RealityRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 72 67-88. 2013.Phenomenologists such as Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty reject the kind of scientific naturalism or that takes empirical science to be epistemologically and metaphysically privileged over all other forms of enquiry. In this paper, I will consider one of their principal complaints against naturalism, that scientific accounts of things are oblivious to a that is presupposed by the intelligibility of science. Focusing mostly upon Husserl's work, I attempt to clarify the nature of this complai…Read more
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200Heidegger's attunement and the neuropsychology of emotionPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1 (3): 287-312. 2002.I outline the early Heidegger's views on mood and emotion, and then relate his central claims to some recent finding in neuropsychology. These findings complement Heidegger in a number of important ways. More specifically, I suggest that, in order to make sense of certain neurological conditions that traditional assumptions concerning the mind are constitutionally incapable of accommodating, something very like Heidegger's account of mood and emotion needs to be adopted as an interpretive framew…Read more
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183Bodily Feeling in Depersonalization: A Phenomenological AccountEmotion Review 4 (2): 145-150. 2012.This paper addresses the phenomenology of bodily feeling in depersonalization disorder. We argue that not all bodily feelings are intentional states that have the body or part of it as their object. We distinguish three broad categories of bodily feeling: noematic feeling, noetic feeling, and existential feeling. Then we show how an appreciation of the differences between them can contribute to an understanding of the depersonalization experience.
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158Varieties of Temporal Experience in DepressionJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 37 (2): 114-138. 2012.People with depression often report alterations in their experience of time, a common complaint being that time has slowed down or stopped. In this paper, I argue that depression can involve a range of qualitatively different changes in the structure of temporal experience, some of which I proceed to describe. In addition, I suggest that current diagnostic categories such as "major depression" are insensitive to the differences between these changes. I conclude by briefly considering whether the…Read more
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156Introduction to the Special Section on “Emotions and Feelings in Psychiatric Illness”Emotion Review 4 (2): 119-121. 2012.
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154Stance, feeling and phenomenologySynthese 178 (1): 121-130. 2011.This paper addresses Bas van Fraassen’s claim that empiricism is a ‘stance’. I begin by distinguishing two different kinds of stance: an explicit epistemic policy and an implicit way of ‘finding oneself in a world’. At least some of van Fraassen’s claims, I suggest, refer to the latter. In explicating his ordinarily implicit ‘empirical stance’, he assumes the stance of the phenomenologist, describing the structure of his commitment to empiricism without committing to it in the process. This latt…Read more
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152Touch and situatednessInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 16 (3). 2008.This paper explores the phenomenology of touch and proposes that the structure of touch serves to cast light on the more general way in which we 'find ourselves in a world'. Recent philosophical work on perception tends to emphasize vision. This, I suggest, motivates the imposition of a distinction between externally directed perception of objects and internally directed perception of one's own body. In contrast, the phenomenology of touch involves neither firm boundaries between body and world …Read more
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142On the Appropriateness of Grief to Its ObjectJournal of the American Philosophical Association 1-17. forthcoming.How we understand the nature and role of grief depends on what we take its object to be and vice versa. This paper focuses on recent claims by philosophers that grief is frequently or even inherently irrational or inappropriate in one or another respect, all of which hinge on assumptions concerning the proper object of grief. By emphasizing the temporally extended structure of grief, we offer an alternative account of its object that undermines these assumptions and dissolves the apparent proble…Read more
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134Experiences of Depression: A Study in PhenomenologyOxford University Press. 2014.Experiences of Depression is a philosophical exploration of what it is like to be depressed. In this important new book, Matthew Ratcliffe develops a detailed account of depression experiences by drawing on work in phenomenology, philosophy of mind and psychology, and several other disciplines.
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132Interpreting delusionsPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 3 (1): 25-48. 2004.This paper explores the phenomenology of the Capgras and Cotard delusions. The former is generally characterised as the belief that relatives or friends have been replaced by impostors, and the latter as the conviction that one is dead or has ceased to exist. A commonly reported feature of these delusions is an experienced ''defamiliarisation'' or even ''derealisation'' of things, which is associated with an absence or distortion of affect. I suggest that the importance attributed to affect by c…Read more
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128The phenomenological role of affect in the capgras delusionContinental Philosophy Review 41 (2): 195-216. 2008.This paper draws on studies of the Capgras delusion in order to illuminate the phenomenological role of affect in interpersonal recognition. People with this delusion maintain that familiars, such as spouses, have been replaced by impostors. It is generally agreed that the delusion involves an anomalous experience, arising due to loss of affect. However, quite what this experience consists of remains unclear. I argue that recent accounts of the Capgras delusion incorporate an impoverished concep…Read more
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125A Kantian stance on the intentional stanceBiology and Philosophy 16 (1): 29-52. 2001.I examine the way in which Daniel Dennett (1987, 1995) uses his 'intentional' and 'design' stances to make the claim that intentionality is derived from design. I suggest that Dennett is best understood as attempting to supply an objective, nonintentional, naturalistic rationale for our use of intentional concepts. However, I demonstrate that his overall picture presupposes prior application of the intentional stance in a preconditional, ineliminable,'sense-giving' role. Construed as such, Denne…Read more
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118Heidegger, analytic metaphysics, and the being of beingsInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 45 (1). 2002.This essay begins with an outline of the early Heidegger's distinction between beings and the Being1 of those beings, followed by a discussion of Heideggerian teleology. It then turns to contemporary analytic metaphysics to suggest that analytic metaphysics concerns itself wholly with beings and does not recognize distinct forms of questioning concerning what Heidegger calls Being . This difference having been clarified, studies of identity and individuation in the analytic tradition are examine…Read more
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110The function of functionStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 31 (1): 113-133. 2000.Contemporary analyses of biological function almost invariably advocate a naturalistic analysis, grounding biological functions in some feature of the mind-independent world. Many recent accounts suggest that no single analysis will be appropriate for all cases of use and that biological teleology should be split into several distinct categories. This paper argues that such accounts have paid too little attention to the way in which functional language is used, concentrating instead on the types…Read more
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106Dennett's philosophy: A comprehensive assessmentBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 53 (4): 597-602. 2002.
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100Folk Psychology Re-Assessed (edited book)Springer Press. 2007.This is a truly groundbreaking work that examines today’s notions of folk psychology. Bringing together disciplines as various as cognitive science and anthropology, the authors analyze and question key assumptions about the nature, scope and function of folk psychology.
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