Zixuan Liu

The minimal self hypothesis holds that the inherent sense of “for-me-ness” or “mineness” in every plain conscious experience provides a basic solution to the problem of self-individuation: namely, how to establish intrasubjective unity and intersubjective boundary. I advance two objections to this account. First, the minimal self hypothesis fails to present the most parsimonious conception of the experience-experiencer relation. Instead, it smuggles the private/public contrast into the characterization of a plain experience through the linguistic terms “self” and “me.” Second, this hypothesis is theoretically infertile. It accounts for neither the origin of the first/third-person distinction nor the heterogeneity of disownership phenomena. As an alternative, I propose a functional fragmentation of the minimal self into more fundamental concepts of “subject,” which I call “proto-subjects” or “subjective guises.” These functional fragments of the minimal self are conceptually exhausted by their specific theoretical roles. Their convergence and divergence under certain principles can explain the diversity of disownership disorders and provide a substantive analysis of the first- and third-person perspectives. For phenomenologists open to drawing inferences from observable facts, the explanatory benefits of this fragmentation proposal balance its associated costs.

Sowohl bei Husserl als auch bei der Handlungstheorie wurden mentale Handlungen später als leibliche in Betracht gezogen. Dafür sind einige Vorurteilen über Leib und Seele sowie die verschiedenen Eigenschaften der beiden Handlungsarten verantwortlich. Gewisse mentale Handlungen zielen nicht auf Einmischung ab. Mentale Handlungen sind auch weiter verbreitet angesichts ihres Beitrags zur Wachheit. Damit versteht sich ihre relative Unauffälligkeit. Den Unterschied zwischen leiblichen und mentalen Handlungen darf man nicht mit jenem zwischen Leib und Seele erklären, sondern umgekehrt.

Husserls Erweiterung des Willensbegriffs ist eine durchaus beobachtete, aber nicht hinreichend ernst genommene Transformation. Zixuan Liu untersucht in diesem Buch, wie und warum Husserl seinen Willensbegriff erweiterte und was für eine Bedeutung dieser erweiterte Willensbegriff für Husserls eigenes System und die Handlungstheorie haben kann. Zunächst wird Husserls Erweiterung des Willensbegriffs in sechs Richtungen differenziert. Der Erste Weltkrieg stellt sich als der historische Hintergrund dieser Transformation dar. Die Erweiterung liegt unter anderem an Husserls eigener Gedankenentwicklung und dem Einfluss durch andere Autoren. Der Autor untersucht die Herausforderungen des erweiterten Willensbegriffs für Husserls eigenes System. Es ergibt sich die Intentionalität als eine einzigartige Beziehung, die sich nur für Sinngewinnung verantworten muss. Als eine Alternative zu Husserls klassischem intellektualistischem Stufenbau von Erkennen, Fühlen und Wollen argumentiert der Autor für eine aspektuale Ansicht zu dieser Trichotomie. Schließlich versucht Zixuan Liu, mit Husserls Ressourcen kritisch in die handlungstheoretischen Debatten einzugreifen und umgekehrt Husserls Phänomenologie mit der Handlungstheorie zu bereichern.

Husserl’s thesis of absolute individuation consists of two ideas: (1) unlike experiences and mundane entities, which are individuated via spatiotemporal position, the subject has its own principle of individuation and (2) even for non-subjects, the ultimate principle of individuation is their relationship with the subject. Absolute individuation is sometimes qualitatively interpreted (even by Husserl): owing to habituation, a subject’s personal character cannot be reinstantiated elsewhere. I argue against the qualitative interpretation for two reasons. The first is its inconsistency with Husserl’s account of the individuation of non-subjects. Maximally specific universals cannot individuate a non-subject because they can be multiply instantiated, at least in different phantasies. If multiple instantiation is also possible for personal characters, then this poses a problem for the qualitative interpretation. The second reason is that the qualitative interpretation cannot explain the subjective contribution to the individuation of non-subjects. I consequently propose an extra-qualitative interpretation: The relevant subject should be defined as one-off sic et simpliciter. It has no other determinations than one-offness and is, thus, pre-spatiotemporal. This can explain what individuates instances of maximally specific spatiotemporal universals, thereby addressing (2) above. It also highlights the need to recognize the respective contributions made by multiple notions of the subject. Husserl’s context-dependent distinction between constitutive determinations and principia individuationis may shed light on the qualitative/non-qualitative difference in contemporary metaphysics. The hierarchical model of individuation can also illuminate the debate around possible worlds and haecceitism.

Husserl characterizes sleep with the idea of “the relaxation of the will.” One finds a similar approach in the work of Maine de Biran, who explains sleep as “the suspension of the will.” More recently, Brian O’Shaughnessy and Matthew Soteriou have argued that mental actions constitute wakeful consciousness. In clinical practice, patients with disorders of consciousness who show “purposeful” behavior are classified as “minimally conscious,” while those in an “unresponsive wakeful state” merely behave reflexively. To what extent and how are these proposals justified? This question pushes both the first- and the third-personal approaches to their limits: in an unconscious state, like a coma, one cannot reflect upon oneself; likewise, one cannot infer from physiological data whether someone is phenomenally conscious. This work offers a critical review of these proposals regarding the constitutive role for agency in phenomenal consciousness. It then presents revised versions of O’Shaughnessy’s and Soteriou’s Arguments from Synthesis and from Self-Consciousness. The argument is that everything of which one is phenomenally conscious is either a potential reason for a possible agentive power exertion, or just that power exertion itself. The “self” referred to in “self”-consciousness is either the agent or a “non-agent,” carrying out functions for the agent. Agency is therefore constitutive of phenomenal consciousness. The resulting view helps to solve the Combination Problem for panpsychism, by suggesting that agency is what raises sub-personal micro-consciousness to the personal level. The view may also justify the notion of a “Minimally Conscious State” in clinical practice.

Current dialogues in neuroscience are limited to phenomenological psychology plus neuroscience, or neurophenomenology. Within these dialogues, transcendental phenomenology is largely expelled. This article proposes a transcendental phenomenology of and through neuroscience. The “phenomenology‑of ” neuroscience is a philosophy that refuses to view the Experience‑Body Relation and Life‑Non‑Life Ambiguity as if they were predetermined, unintelligible, metaphysical gaps. Instead, it attempts to understand them through a correlative intentional experience involving activities of neuro‑scientific investigation and their pre‑theoretical prerequisites. This establishes the indispensability of self‑report and highlights the failings of two naturalistic interpretations of intentionality (representationalism and enactivism). A “phenomenology‑through” neuroscience is thus justifiable and necessary, as illustrated by the example of memory consolidation during sleep. The article finds that as phenomenology‑plus, neurophenomenology can solve its problems only through a mutually constraining “phenomenology‑of ” and “‑through”.

Attempts to close the mind-body gap traditionally resort to a priori speculations. Motivated by dissatisfaction with such accounts, neurophenomenology constitutes one of the first attempts to close the mind-body gap non-metaphysically. Nonetheless, it faces significant challenges. Many of these challenges arise from its abandoning of transcendentality and its dim view of bioinformation. In this paper, I propose a superior non-metaphysical alternative: a combination of a reformed biosemiotics and transcendental phenomenology. My approach addresses the difficulties of neurophenomenology, while retaining the merit of mutual constraints. Biosemiotics pays respect to bioinformation while imposing the sign-meaning duality on primitive forms of life, which is a relic of anthropomorphism. To avoid this unjustified commitment, I argue for a sign-free biosemantics which replaces Peirce’s semiotics with Husserl’s theory of meaning and exchanges naturalism for transcendentalism. Meaning, according to the resulting account, is the “intended as such”. The irreality of meaning results from what I term the ‘higher visibility’ of intentionality. I argue that the mind-body gap can be locally closed in a non-metaphysical manner as the result of reflection upon empirical biological investigations. Sign-free biosemantics uncovers the meanings for the organism that are implicit in biological research, while transcendental phenomenology analyses the experiences that biologists undergo when associating the physical with the biological level, while at the same time also analysing the very framework within which they work. Meanwhile, biosemiotics frees phenomenology from its methodological limitations, and the two domains establish mutual constraints in a more radical form than neurophenomenology.