Consciousness, Being and Life: Phenomenological Approaches to Mindfulness

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel Bitbol
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Phenomenological Reduction ◽  
First Person ◽  
Neural Processes ◽  
The World ◽  
Third Person ◽  
And Behaviors ◽  
Phenomenological View ◽  
Cross Fertilization

Abstract A phenomenological view of contemplative disciplines is presented. However, studying mindfulness by phenomenology is at odds with both neurobiological and anthropological approaches. It involves the first-person standpoint, the openness of being-in-the-world, the umwelt of the meditator, instead of assessing her neural processes and behaviors from a neutral, distanced, third-person standpoint. It then turns out that phenomenology cannot produce a discourse about mindfulness. Phenomenology rather induces a cross-fertilization between the state of mindfulness and its own methods of mental cultivation. A comparison between the epochè, the phenomenological reduction, and the practice of mindfulness, is then undertaken.

scholarly journals When the World Breaks Down: A 3-Stage Existential Model of Nihilism in Schizophrenia

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Philipp Klar ◽  
Georg Northoff
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
First Person ◽  
Second Stage ◽  
Existential Crisis ◽  
Third Stage ◽  
The World ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Pathological Development ◽  
Sense Of Reality ◽  
Intentional Structure

The existential crisis of nihilism in schizophrenia has been reported since the early days of psychiatry. Taking first-person accounts concerning nihilistic experiences of both the self and the world as vantage point, we aim to develop a dynamic existential model of the pathological development of existential nihilism. Since the phenomenology of such a crisis is intrinsically subjective, we especially take the immediate and pre-reflective first-person perspective’s (FPP) experience (instead of objectified symptoms and diagnoses) of schizophrenia into consideration. The hereby developed existential model consists of 3 conceptualized stages that are nested into each other, which defines what we mean by existential. At the same time, the model intrinsically converges with the phenomenological concept of the self-world structure notable inside our existential framework. Regarding the 3 individual stages, we suggest that the onset or first stage of nihilistic pathogenesis is reflected by phenomenological solipsism, that is, a general disruption of the FPP experience. Paradigmatically, this initial disruption contains the well-known crisis of common sense in schizophrenia. The following second stage of epistemological solipsism negatively affects all possible perspectives of experience, that is, the first-, second-, and third-person perspectives of subjectivity. Therefore, within the second stage, solipsism expands from a disruption of immediate and pre-reflective experience (first stage) to a disruption of reflective experience and principal knowledge (second stage), as mirrored in abnormal epistemological limitations of principal knowledge. Finally, the experience of the annihilation of healthy self-consciousness into the ultimate collapse of the individual’s existence defines the third stage. The schizophrenic individual consequently loses her/his vital experience since the intentional structure of consciousness including any sense of reality breaks down. Such a descriptive-interpretative existential model of nihilism in schizophrenia may ultimately serve as input for future psychopathological investigations of nihilism in general, including, for instance, its manifestation in depression.

Being There

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
John H. Lienhard
Keyword(s):  
Soy Sauce ◽  
Government Official ◽  
First Person ◽  
Human Intervention ◽  
Science And Engineering ◽  
The World ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Being There ◽  
Taking Responsibility ◽  
Human Hands

We come at last to the forbidden first person, the I am. No story is right until the teller is part of it. Yet a peculiar mischief is abroad in the land of science and engineering. It is a mischief born out of the noblest of intentions. For decades it has spread like the flu, far beyond the technical journals that gave it birth. The intention is to let us stand like blindfolded Justice—pure, objective, and aloof. To do this, we write about our work without ever speaking in the first person. We try to let fact speak for itself. Instead of saying, “I solved the equation and got y = log x”, we write, “The solution of the equation is y = log x”. We turn our actions into facts that are untouched by human hands. To some extent we must do that. Our facts should be sufficiently solid that we do not need to prop them up with our desires. Third-person detachment has its place, but my own person is not so easy to erase. Suppose I think another engineer, whom I shall call Hoople, is wrong. I am not objective about Hoople, but I must appear to be. So I write, “It is believed that Hoople is incorrect.” That’s a cheap shot. I express my thoughts without taking responsibility for them. I seem to be reporting general disapproval of Hoople. In the unholy name of objectivity, I make it sound as though the whole profession thinks that Hoople is a fool. Now radio and TV journalists are doing it. I cringe every time I hear, “It is expected that Congress will pass the bill. “Who expects that? The announcer? The Democrats? A government official? Maybe the soy sauce lobby is the expectant source. So instead of objectivity we get obfuscation. If our work really occurred in objective isolation, we could write about it that way. But people are present. They think and they act. If we fail to represent human intervention accurately, we are dishonest, and objectivity becomes meaningless. The things we make tell the world what we are.

scholarly journals Disembodied perspective

2015 ◽  
pp. 74-88
Author(s):  
Philippe Bédard
Keyword(s):  
First Person ◽  
Extreme Sports ◽  
Moving Image ◽  
Home Videos ◽  
The World ◽  
Wearable Cameras ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Sports Videos

Used as much in extreme-sports videos and professional productions as in amateur and home videos, GoPro wearable cameras have become ubiquitous in contemporary moving image culture. During its swift and ongoing rise in popularity, GoPro has also enabled the creation of new and unusual points of view, among which are “third-person images”. This article introduces and defines this particular phenomenon through an approach that deals with both the aesthetic and technical characteristics of the images in question. An analysis is presented of the peculiar and unfamiliar appearance of third-person images, in which the head of the user remains fixed in space while the world around it moves independently. Technical descriptions are provided to explain why the perception of the world presented in third-person images differs so radically from our own “first-person” mode of perception. Throughout the article, descriptions and analyses of GoPro videos are supported by parallels to theories of movement and perception in the cinema, specifically Vivian Sobchack’s film phenomenology.

scholarly journals The first-person perspective description error in naturalism

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-415
Author(s):  
Diana E. Gasparyan ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
First Person ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Work Strategies ◽  
The World ◽  
Third Person ◽  
First Person Perspective ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Radical Naturalism ◽  
Third Person Perspective

In this article, it is shown that in some theories defending the non-reductive nature of the firstperson perspective it is possible to find a very inconsistent attitude. Such theories are associated by the author to a so-called moderate naturalism. The article demonstrates the difference between moderate and radical naturalism. Radical naturalism completely abandons the idea of subjectivity as unobservable from a third-person perspective. On the contrary, moderate naturalism defends the irreducibility of subjectivity, but believes subjectivity to be a part of the nature. As a case of moderate naturalism, the article considers the approaches of Lynne Baker and Thomas Metzinger. Exemplifying these approaches to the first-person perspective, it is shown that in the case of certain work strategies focused on the first-person perspective, it is possible that a so-called description error may appear, by which a description error of subjectivity — when it is placed in the world as a part of nature, existing according to its laws — is understood. The logic of this error points to one of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s statements about the incorrect placement of the eye in the perspective of the eye view itself. If the first-person perspective is introduced as a point of view (or a point of observation), then its subsequent shift to the observation result area leads to description error. If there is no observation, as well as no viewpoint, we lose the very idea of first-person perspective and actually take the position of radical naturalism.

Meta-Encyclopaedic Reflections on the Beginning of Philosophy

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Umur Başdaş
Keyword(s):  
First Person ◽  
Science Of Logic ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
The World ◽  
Third Person ◽  
First Person Perspective ◽  
Third Person Perspective ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
The Third Person ◽  
Better Than

Abstract Since in Hegel's view the end of philosophy coincides with its beginning, it is reasonable to expect that the end of the Encyclopaedia sheds some light on the Science of Logic. The Encyclopaedia concludes with three syllogisms in which logic, nature and spirit are related to each other in three different ways. This article analyses these three final syllogisms with an eye to how they can contribute to our understanding of the logical movement that starts from pure being. Trendelenburg and Schelling, like many others after them, think that Hegel's project in the Science of Logic is doomed from the start, because there can be no such thing as a non-temporal, purely logical movement. I argue that the three final syllogisms contain Hegel's response to this challenge. I call them ‘meta-encyclopaedic reflections’ in the sense that they take the whole encyclopaedic presentation of the Hegelian system as an object of critical inquiry and identify its limitations. The core of my approach is to examine how each one of these syllogisms situate us, namely the philosophizing subjects, vis-à-vis the world as disclosed by them. They demand that we shift from a third-person to a first-person perspective towards the world. The logical categories initially appear to move of their own accord only due to the limitations of the third-person perspective of the encyclopaedic presentation, which is to be sublated in a higher, first-person perspective. Hence, Hegel would happily admit that a purely logical movement is a mere appearance, but he would also claim that his philosophy can immanently explain the necessity of this appearance in the beginning of philosophy, and explain it better than his critics.

scholarly journals Methodological Approach for the Analysis of Artistic Creativity through First-Person Analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. p180
Author(s):  
Pierre D’Argyll
Keyword(s):  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Scientific Understanding ◽  
Single Subject ◽  
First Person ◽  
Artistic Creativity ◽  
Neural Processes ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Creative Abilities ◽  
Creative Artwork

Can the study of a single subject by means of a first-person analysis be considered from a scientific methodological approach? The response from neurophenomenology is yes. The recent science of consciousness led by Francisco Varela claims the need to use first-person data, subjective-experiential reports to link them with neurobiological correlates of classically scientific third-person data. I address here a systematic disciplined methodology to translate first-person analysis to the field of art creativity to be performed by the own artist/subject. The goal is to formulate a methodology to be further validated and standardized by other artists willing to perform an introspective analysis, in what can be considered open to “intersubjective validation” in terms of Varela. First-person analysis by the artist herself might reciprocally offer the basis for scientific understanding of the neural processes involved in the synthesis of a creative artwork. Finally, better understanding in the mechanisms involved in inspiration, synthesis and execution of art-work may also help an artist to enhance his/her creative abilities.

Rigaut de Berbezilh, the Physiologus Theobaldi, and the opening of animal inspiration

Reinardus ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 81-99
Author(s):  
Sarah Kay
Keyword(s):  
Latin Poetry ◽  
First Person ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Human History ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Animal Images ◽  
The Third Person

In two of his songs (421.1 and 421.2) the troubadour Rigaut de Berbezilh aspires to sing in response to a voice that is bestial yet somehow metaphysical. Scholars have attributed these animal images to the influence of the Physiologus, but Rigaut’s likeliest source in that tradition has not yet been identified. This article proposes to fill that lacuna by contending that the bestiary redaction closest to Rigaut’s imagery is the Physiologus Theobaldi, a verse text that unlike other bestiaries was used to teach Latin poetry and even song. In both the Physiologus Theobaldi and (though in a different way) Rigaut’s songs, animals’ breath and voice are identified with life and spirit, an identification that places these works within the wider medieval context of natural philosophical interest in pneuma. Whereas Theobaldus allegorizes his beasts in the third person, Rigaut’s first-person lyrics assume their voice, breath, life or spirit as potentially his own. He thereby opens his songs to a being that is not human. No longer anthropocentric, they enact a hybridity that we find elsewhere associated with revelation and apocalypse. The horizon of human history that opens (in Heidegger’s sense) the world of human language is thereby in turn opened up to that which it closes off, and the demarcations by which humanity defines itself are suspended.

First-Person Experiments in Thinking

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 189-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renatus Ziegler ◽  
Ulrich Weger
Keyword(s):  
Physiological Parameters ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Person ◽  
Psychological Phenomena ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Thinking Process ◽  
Mental Contents

Abstract. In psychology, thinking is typically studied in terms of a range of behavioral or physiological parameters, focusing, for instance, on the mental contents or the neuronal correlates of the thinking process proper. In the current article, by contrast, we seek to complement this approach with an exploration into the experiential or inner dimensions of thinking. These are subtle and elusive and hence easily escape a mode of inquiry that focuses on externally measurable outcomes. We illustrate how a sufficiently trained introspective approach can become a radar for facets of thinking that have found hardly any recognition in the literature so far. We consider this an important complement to third-person research because these introspective observations not only allow for new insights into the nature of thinking proper but also cast other psychological phenomena in a new light, for instance, attention and the self. We outline and discuss our findings and also present a roadmap for the reader interested in studying these phenomena in detail.

Effects of Light-Hearted and Serious Entertainment on Enjoyment of the First and Third Person

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Hofer
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Media Consumption ◽  
First Person ◽  
Online Experiment ◽  
Entertainment Media ◽  
Third Person Effect ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Perceived Enjoyment ◽  
The Third Person

Abstract. This was a study on the perceived enjoyment of different movie genres. In an online experiment, 176 students were randomly divided into two groups (n = 88) and asked to estimate how much they, their closest friends, and young people in general enjoyed either serious or light-hearted movies. These self–other differences in perceived enjoyment of serious or light-hearted movies were also assessed as a function of differing individual motivations underlying entertainment media consumption. The results showed a clear third-person effect for light-hearted movies and a first-person effect for serious movies. The third-person effect for light-hearted movies was moderated by level of hedonic motivation, as participants with high hedonic motivations did not perceive their own and others’ enjoyment of light-hearted films differently. However, eudaimonic motivations did not moderate first-person perceptions in the case of serious films.

The problem of sex in the religions of the Abrahamic tradition

2001 ◽  
pp. 29-36
Author(s):  
N. Nedzelska
Keyword(s):  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Gender Issues ◽  
First Person ◽  
Important Place ◽  
The World ◽  
Religious Systems

The paradox of the existence of the species Homo sapiens is that we do not even know: Who are we? Why are we? Where did you go from? Why? At all times - from antiquity to our time - the philosophers touched on this topic. It takes an important place in all religions of the world. These eternal questions include gender issues. In the religious systems of the religions of the Abrahamic tradition there is no single answer to the question of which sex was the first person. Recently, British scientists have even tried to prove that Eve is 84 thousand years older Adam

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