Søren Overgaard

Modern philosophy begins with Descartes' discovery of an apparently indubitable realm of _subjectivity_. The Cartesian approach confronts philosophy with the problem of _transcendence_ : At the same time as we appear to have secured an immanent realm of subjectivity, it becomes a problem how we can establish the existence of something outside this realm. What could possibly force - or even motivate - a subject, in possession of itself, to recognize a God, a world, or a peer outside itself? Thus, Descartes' philosophical legacy is a problem rather than a solution: the problem of subjectivity and transcendence. How is it possible to combine a post-Cartesian emphasis on subjectivity with a strong conception of transcendence? What notions of _subjectivity and transcendence_ will we have to commit ourselves to? Despite the fact that the problem is central to modern philosophy and theology, no single volume has so far been dedicated to the problem of subjectivity _and_ transcendence. This volume thus fills an important gap. The 12 chapters address the problem of subjectivity and transcendence from a variety of different perspectives: historical, philosophical, theological, and psychopathological._ Contents:_ _Arne Gron_ and _Soren Overgaard_ : Introduction - _Arne Gron_ : Subjectivity and Transcendence: Problems and Perspectives - _Ingolf U. Dalferth_ : Beyond Understanding? Transcending Our Limits and the Limits of Our Transcending - _Josef Parnas_ : Subjectivity in Schizophrenia: The Minimal Self is too Small - _Merold Westphal_ : Intentionality and Transcendence - _Soren Overgaard_ : In Defense of Subjectivity: Husserl, Levinas, and the Problem of Solipsism - _Henrik Vase Frandsen_ : Transcendence of the Appeal - Sovereignty of the Subject - _Dan Zahavi_ : Subjectivity and Immanence in Michel Henry - _Claudia Welz_ : The Presence of the Transcendent - Transcending the Present? Kierkegaard and Levinas on Subjectivity and the Ambiguity of God's Transcendence - _Iben Damgaard_ : Passion for the Possible: A Kierkegaardian Approach to Subjectivity and Transcendence - _George Pattison_ : Desire, Decreation and Unknowing in the God-Relationship: Mystical Theology and its Transformation in Kierkegaard, Simone Weil and Dostoevsky - _Caspar Wenzel Tornoe_ : God and the Demiurge: Subjectivity and Transcendence from a Theological Perspective - _Saskia Wendel_ : The Emergence of Transcendence in Self-Consciousness: Towards a Rehabilitation of a Transcendental Position of Philosophy of Religion.

Social Perception Theory (SPT) claims that it is possible, on occasion, to perceive that others are in pain, angry, intend to kick, or desire another helping of ice cream. According to a thesis that I call ‘Embodiment’, at least some mental states extend all the way to the available surface behaviour. The question I pursue in this chapter is whether Embodiment lends support to SPT. According to a view that I label the ‘Support Thesis’, Embodiment does support SPT in specific ways. I argue that—in the context of the mindreading debate, at any rate—the Support Thesis is false. If Embodiment turned out to be false, this would in no obvious way cast doubt on SPT. And if the former turned out to be true, this would not obviously lend any support to the latter.

In recent years, a number of approaches to social cognition research have emerged that highlight the importance of embodied interaction for social cognition (Reddy, How infants know minds, 2008; Gallagher, J Conscious Stud 8:83–108, 2001; Fuchs and Jaegher, Phenom Cogn Sci 8:465–486, 2009; Hutto, in Seemans (ed.) Joint attention: new developments in psychology, philosophy of mind and social neuroscience, 2012). Proponents of such ‘interactionist’ approaches emphasize the importance of embodied responses that are engaged in online social interaction, and which, according to interactionists, present an alternative to mindreading as a source of social understanding. We agree that it is important to take embodied interaction seriously, but do not agree that this presents a fundamental challenge to mainstream mindreading approaches. Drawing upon an analogy between embodied interaction and the exercise of expert skills, we advocate a hierarchical view which claims that embodied social responses generally operate in close conjunction with higher-level cognitive processes that play a coordinative role, and which are often sensitive to mental states. Thus, investigation of embodied responses should inform rather than conflict with research on mindreading.

The unobservability thesis (UT) states that the mental states of other people are unobservable. Both defenders and critics of UT seem to assume that UT has important implications for the mindreading debate. Roughly, the former argue that because UT is true, mindreaders need to infer the mental states of others, while the latter maintain that the falsity of UT makes mindreading inferences redundant. I argue, however, that it is unclear what ‘unobservability’ means in this context. I outline two possible lines of interpretation of UT, and argue that on one of these, UT has no obvious implications for the mindreading debate. On the other line of interpretation, UT may matter to the mindreading debate, in particular if we think of it as a thesis about the possible contents of perceptual experience. The upshot is that those who believe UT has implications for the mindreading debate need to be more specific about how they understand the thesis.

Numerous philosophers accept the differentiation condition, according to which one does not see an object unless one visually differentiates it from its immediate surroundings. This paper, however, sounds a sceptical note. Based on suggestions by Dretske (2007) and Gibson (2002 [1972]), I articulate two ‘principles of occlusion’ and argue that each principle admits of a reading on which it is both plausible and incompatible with the differentiation condition. To resolve the inconsistency, I suggest we abandon the differentiation condition.

This chapter develops a perceptual solution to the epistemological problem of other minds, relying on central ideas from Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. The Merleau-Pontian account is contrasted with another attempted perceptual solution to the other minds problem, and it is argued that only the former meets the phenomenologists' desideratum of providing an alternative to inferential solutions. The chapter also provides responses to various objections to the perceptual solution, including a pair of objections recently put forward by Alec Hyslop.

I distinguish three kinds of other minds problems—conceptual, epistemological and empirical. I argue that while Merleau-Ponty believes embodiment helps with tackling the conceptual and epistemological problems, he suggests that it is of no clear use in solving the empirical problem. I sketch some considerations that could lend support to Merleau-Ponty’s claims about the conceptual and epistemological problems, without claiming that these are conclusive. I then proceed to argue that Merleau-Ponty’s take on the empirical problem is essentially correct.

In recent publications, Michael Tye and Alva Noë have claimed that there is a sense in which a tilted plate looks round and another sense in which it looks elliptical. This paper argues that their proposal faces decisive objections. On Tye and Noë's account of ordinary, veridical perception, appearances are in constant conflict. As a characterization of ordinary visual experience, this cannot be correct. I examine various responses to this criticism, and conclude that they all fail. I then argue that Noë's account has the further, unintended and undesirable consequence of promoting a version of the sense-datum theory

The Cambridge Companion to Philosophical Methodology offers clear and comprehensive coverage of the main methodological debates and approaches within philosophy. The chapters in this volume approach the question of how to do philosophy from a wide range of perspectives, including conceptual analysis, critical theory, deconstruction, experimental philosophy, hermeneutics, Kantianism, methodological naturalism, phenomenology, and pragmatism. They explore general conceptions of philosophy, centred on the question of what the point of philosophising might be; the method of conceptual analysis and its recent naturalistic critics and competitors; perspectives from continental philosophy; and also a variety of methodological views that belong neither to the mainstream of analytic philosophy, nor to continental philosophy as commonly conceived. Together they will enable readers to grasp an unusually wide range of approaches to methodological debates in philosophy.