The transcendental turn

Author(s):  
Dan Zahavi

Husserl’s turn from a descriptive phenomenology to a transcendental phenomenology is linked to his methodological employment of the reduction and the epoché. But how should one interpret these notions? Are they crucial to phenomenology, do they enable phenomenology to become metaphysically committed, or are they tools that reveal Husserl’s commitment to a form of methodological solipsism? Chapter 3 offers an interpretation of the reduction and the epoché that makes it clear why Husserl’s transcendental turn does not involve a turning-away from the world, but a suspension of a specific dogmatic attitude towards the world, that for the first time permits a proper understanding of the (constituted) being of the world. Contrary to various existing interpretations, it is consequently argued that whereas Husserl’s descriptive phenomenology was indeed metaphysically neutral, he started to engage with metaphysical questions concerning the mind-dependent character of the world the moment he effectuated his transcendental turn.

Author(s):  
Michael Ellis

From the moment you discover that you are going to be a parent, the hopes, dreams, and expectations you have for your­self and your child flood your mind. No matter how your child is to arrive, your heart is full of hope and promise. You begin to let yourself plan your future. Will your child become president, a doctor, a lawyer, work in the family business, or win the Nobel Peace Prize? Will he or she possess a special talent or skill? Your mind wanders and daydreams of all that is to come. The moment they place your beautiful child in your arms, you realize that there is no greater feeling. You are in love. There is no feeling deeper or grander. The unimaginable joy and gratitude for the blessing of your child is overwhelming. We all know those moments where your heart surged out of your body in awe of the blessing you were given. You may have even asked yourself, “How did I get so lucky?” I can relate. The moment they placed my daughter in my arms for the first time, I knew I had a greater purpose. I would not find out how much for another two years. I devoted myself to her; her care, her introduction to the world, and to the very amazing person I knew she would become. I gave everything of myself tirelessly to her. Her every whimper, cry, or gesture was met with a response. I could anticipate her needs and wants before she fully expressed them. I thought I had an undeniable bond with my daughter. I did. I had a bond that needed no words. That was the problem: we did not need words. If you are like me, you noticed at first subtle differences in your child, and then later there were glaring and alarming indications something was not developing correctly. But, no matter your education or your intelligence level, denial can be a powerful thing.


1915 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Bassett Moore

Webster, as a prelude to his reply to Hayne, asked for the reading of the resolution before the Senate, in order that the mind of his hearers might be led back to the original and perhaps forgotten subject of the debate. Today we may well imitate his example, by recurring to fundamental principles. For five months we have stood in the presence of one of the most appalling wars in history, appalling not only because of its magnitude and destructiveness but also because of its frustration of hopes widely cherished that the progress of civilization had rendered an armed conflict between the leading powers of the world morally impossible. As a result we have since the outbreak of the great conflict been tossing about on the stormy sea of controversy, distrustful of our charts and guides, and assailed on every hand with cries of doubt and despair. We have been told that there is no such thing as international law; that, even if its existence be admitted, it is at most nothing but what superior force for the time being ordains; that international understandings, even when embodied in treaties, are practically worthless, being obligatory only so long as they may be conceived to subserve the interests or necessities of the moment; that the only security for the observance of international rules, general or conventional, is force, and that in force we must in the last analysis find our sole reliance.


2004 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 609-630 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. John Ikenberry

The United States dominates the world as no state has. It emerged from the Cold War the world's only superpower, and no geopolitical or ideological contenders are in sight. Europe is drawn inward and Japan is stagnant. A half-century after their occupation, the United States still provides security and garrisons troops in Japan and Germany – the world's second and third largest economies. US military bases and carrier battle groups ring the world. Russia is in a quasi-formal security partnership with the United States, and China has accommodated itself to US dominance, at least for the moment. For the first time in the modern era, the world's most powerful state can operate on the global stage without the counterbalancing constraints of other great powers. We have entered the American unipolar age.


2021 ◽  

Augustine of Hippo (Thagaste, b. 354–Hippo, d. 430 ce) brings the very person of the thinker onto the philosophical scene for the first time in the history of philosophy, with his existential vicissitudes, his spiritual travails, and his incessant search for truth. Augustine is the ancient figure we know better than anyone else, thanks to the fact that he himself has narrated in the Confessions the external and internal events of his life, from his childhood spent in Roman Africa to his conversion to a radical and demanding form of Christian existence in 386. His conversion also marks the moment in which faith is consciously and programmatically assumed as the starting point of a rational itinerary that aims at understanding the most important truths about God and the human being. Augustine’s contribution to philosophical and theological thought is broad and manifold, from the theory of knowledge and language to the conception of evil and freedom, from the doctrine of creation and time to the analysis of the mind and its acts, from the most difficult questions concerning divine grace and the Trinity to the reading of human history as the interweaving of two mystical ‘cities’. Fundamental terms of the intellectual language of the West—such as ‘sign’, ‘free will’, ‘original sin’, ‘predestination’, ‘relation’—bear the indelible imprint of Augustine’s reflection. Especially sensitive to the influence of Plotinian and Porphyrian Neoplatonism, the gigantic work of this Father of the Church—an essential link between Antiquity and the Middle Ages—has in turn influenced Western Christianity like few others, and through it European culture, right up to modern and contemporary times. Although in Augustine’s thought one cannot clearly distinguish between philosophy and theology, in this article only his works and themes that have greater philosophical prominence today are considered. Therefore, purely theological topics such as the doctrine of divine grace are excluded. Only books published or republished after 1970 are cited, with a few rare exceptions. The remaining bibliography (earlier books, essays contained in collective volumes, and journal articles) can be found by consulting the section Bibliographies.


Author(s):  
M. A. Nieves-Chávez ◽  
C. C., Hernández-Loredo

Background. Today's society is dissociated from its relationship with the world and nature. Individuals feel oblivious to their care, leading to the fragmentation of themselves and the reproduction of carelessness practices. Educationally it is necessary to contribute to the formation of conscious and committed individuals, able to engage with the other and the world around them, in a loving and empathetic way. Objective. For students to raise awareness of their involvement with the world, in order to promote recognition of their interconnection, and the need to become aware of themselves and their daily practices. Method. This work shows the results of a socio-educational intervention project. The didactic strategies were based on a critical model that divided the thoughtful and recreational process into four aspects: life-coexistence, empathy in everyday life, care marks and spiritual governance. Results. It was recognized the need to free up time to look at oneself, to be able to feel the world and to enjoy the moment, an aspect that required efforts to allay the mind. Participants referred that recognizing one's existence and inhabiting the moment required silence, to feel, and to be sensitive for the care. Conclusion. To achieve spiritual governance it’s seen the need to arouse involvement with the other, the sensitivity to see and hear the world and thus make decisions in interdependence.


Author(s):  
Gr.G. Khubulava

Relevance. Movement surrounds and accompanies us everywhere: planets move, time, river waters, the life of cities is accompanied by traffic along highways. Our own life is also inseparable from the phenomenon of movement, both at the micro and macro levels: whether it be the movement and division of atoms of matter and cells of the body, the movement and interaction of our bodies in space, or the movement of a person towards a specific goal, conditioned by intention and expressed in actions, which in themselves are also a movement of the will. Purpose: to describe and evaluate the nature of the phenomenon of movement both in the history of philosophy (from Zeno to Descartes and Bergson) and in the history of medicine (from Aristotle and Celsus to modern mechanisms that give a person a chance to return the possibility of movement as an aspect of full life). Methods: the research method is not only the analysis of the development of the phenomenon of movement in the history of philosophy and science, but also the analysis of the influence of modern technologies on the very understanding of the nature of movement not as a physiological, but as an ontological phenomenon. Results. The ancient idea of movement as a deception of the senses, describing the closed on itself the existence of an objectively motionless space or being the source and cause of eternally arising and disintegrating existence, was an attempt by thinkers to “catch the mind on being”, not just creating a picture of a single cosmos, but also comprehending him as part of the human world. The bodily movement and structure of a person was understood as part of the visible and speculative structure of being. The thought of the Middle Ages, which understood movement as the path of the world and man to God, perceived the phenomenon of movement as an expression of free will and, at the same time, the desire of the world to its completion, which is at the same time the moment of its transformation. The Renaissance epoch, which proclaimed man as an end in itself for existence, closely links the physical movement of man with the movement of the cosmos, and considers the visible nature to be the source of knowledge of the Divine Will. The New Time, which theoretically separated the mechanics of the bodily and the impulses of the soul and mind and declared man a “biological machine”, in fact does not break the relationship between the movement of the soul and the body, but, demonstrating the difference in the nature of these movements, anticipated the discovery of psychosomatics. Finally, modern times not only created a classification of “body techniques” inherent in various stages of human life and groups of people, describing the socio-cultural aspect of corporeality, but also perceived movement as an act of our existence and involvement in the existence of the world. Conclusion. Movement cannot be understood as a purely physiological act. In the process of growth, becoming, having barely learned to walk, we are faced with the need to perform actions, to “behave”, to be like a personal I and as a part of the moving world that collided with us. A world in which every step is an event and deed capable of defining “the landscape of our personal and universal being”.


The sensory, motor, limbic and modular systems contain billions of individual neural elements with a large number of interconnections. The development of these connections is an orderly process, which follows certain rules. The establishment of the brain circuit is not a magical process. Although impressive and orderly prenatal development may be, we are by no means full creatures at the moment of our birth. From the moment we breathe in, for the first time, air sensory stimuli modify our brain and influence our behavior. In fact, one of the primary goals of the first 20 years of life is to learn the skills we need to survive in the world. We learn a huge number of things, some directly, some more abstract.


Author(s):  
Miguel Amen

In this work I articulate and defend a problem about the place of the mind in the causation of behaviour. Ask why someone did a certain action and you can see the problem arise, if only you assume certain plausible suppositions about the world. The suppositions are taken to be those of nonreductive materialism.I think that the argument from exclusion, originally developed by Jaegwon Kim, shows that unless there is overdetermination, the mental cannot be causally relevant in the causation of behaviour. It is my view, however, that a proper understanding of overdetermination shows that the overdetermination move is not available to the nonreductive physicalist. That is, he cannot escape exclusion by claiming that the mental overdetermines the physical in the causation of our actions.It is argued that neither appeals to economy nor to Bennett's counterfactual test are good ways to decide matters of overdetermination. That should be decided in terms of the ability of a theory to consistently permit such overdetermination, which however is shown not to be the case for nonreductive materialism.Moreover, in general all realized properties will face this problem - assuming them to be causally relevant will ignite exclusionary claims and in the competition for relevance, physical properties will have a better and more fundamental claim for relevance, threatening once again to relegate realized properties to the category of epiphenomena.


The future will most likely bring machines with artificial conscious minds, that at some point will be more intelligent than we are. But their minds will be also different than ours. Will we be able to understand them? Will they understand us? A sense of consciousness is a simple, direct feeling, so it is a quale! This is a subjective, first-person experience. We will never be able to describe it in a strictly symbolic language and even less so in formal one such as mathematics, geometry, or logic. Reflecting on how we can understand our own consciousness, we must consider the foundation for understanding. A sense of understanding requires the compatibility of a stimulant signal with activated cognitive memory fields. The feeling of consciousness is related to every act of recognition and the attribute of reflective consciousness is to realize that we are conscious. The essence of consciousness is to build a model of reality, to define/understand its place in this reality, and to feel emotion and satisfaction arising from that fact. The mind understands what can be “good” for it in the shorter and longer term. The formulation of the long-term goal of existence constitutes a sense of self-existence and, consequently, the meaning of the world as a tool for fulfilling one's mission in this world. It is astonishing that if we ask about the purpose and meaning of the matter, we must admit that no such purpose exists, if there is no consciousness for which we could formulate such a purpose. Thus, the meaning and purpose of the existence of matter is the emergence of consciousness. This sense arises at the moment when consciousness arises. The presented model of a motivated emotional mind explains the main features of the human psyche. It explains how reflective and phenomenal consciousness are created, how the mind formulates the meaning and purpose of a person's existence and the meaning of the world around him, how he obtains his free will, and how he can effectively act for his own good. It explains how the need for understanding, harmony, and beauty can create art, ethics, and goodness, how emotions directing the mind can unleash feelings of empathy and love. It also explains that to fulfill these functions, to learn everything that is good and noble but also what is evil and immoral, it is necessary to have a body able to influence the environment and the mind to reflect on it.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
Anju PS ◽  
Andrea Figaredo

Apart from other art forms, cinema has an unquestionable potential to install new concepts and believes among the society. It has spread around the world, crossed the barriers of languages and communities and has traversed into the depths of social arena. The tool which caused an impact in the ethos, throughout the history is nothing but the new notions portrayed by the filmmakers. Cinema has overpowered the restrictions of the cultural borders and showed its power towards internationalism, which caught the mind of the viewers worldwide. The plot of a cinema often reminds us of things we perhaps already know, but may often forget, that is the beauty of storytelling. The world we see through a lens, is lot clearer than the real one, it takes people to other dimensions of perspective. This approach may be unfathomable to our sceptical minds, which always has an inclination towards disbelieves, but it is still worth the time to question our preconceived dogmas. Magical realism managed to touch the everyday life of the ordinary people through cinema, even though it appears in many fields of art and literature; there is not a single thing that is missing in Magical Realism. When a viewer look at an art work, if they could see beyond the picture of an inanimate object and grasp the depth of the concept which is hidden, through a unique vantage point, then that is the moment you appreciate Magical Realism.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document