On the Veiling and Unveiling of Experience: A Comparison Between the Micro-Phenomenological Method and the Practice of Meditation

2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-77
Author(s):  
Claire Petitmengin
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Phenomenological Method ◽  
External Reality ◽  
Buddhist Meditation ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind

Abstract Both Buddhist meditation and micro-phenomenology start from the observation that our experience escapes us, we don’t see it as it is. Both offer devices that allow us to become aware of it. But, surprisingly, the two approaches offer few precise descriptions of the processes which veil experience, and of those which make it possible to dissipate these veils. This article is an attempt to put in parentheses declarative writings on the veiling and unveiling processes and their epistemological background and to collect procedural descriptions of this veiling and unveiling processes. From written and oral meditation teachings on the one hand, micro-phenomenological interviews applied to meditative experience and to themselves on the other hand, we identified four types of veiling processes which contribute to screen what is there, and ultimately to generate the naïve belief in the existence of an external reality independent of the mind: attentional, emotional, intentional and cognitive veils. The first part of the article describes these veiling processes and the processes through which they dissipate. It leads to the identification of several “gestures” conducive to this unveiling. The second part describes the devices used by meditation and by micro-phenomenology to elicit these gestures.

The Aristotelian Categories

1925 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. M. Gillespie
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
The Other ◽  
Precise Position ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind

The precise position to be assigned to the Categories in the Aristotelian system has always been somewhat of a puzzle. On the one hand, they seem to be worked into the warp of its texture, as in the classification of change, and Aristotle can argue from the premiss that they constitute an exhaustive division of the kinds of Being (An. Post. I. 22, p. 83 b 15). On the other hand, both in the completed scheme of his logic and in his constructive metaphysic they retire into the background, giving place to other notions, such as causation, change, actuality and potentiality. Investigation has, moreover, been hampered, especially in Germany, by attempts to correlate them with the Kantian Categories, with which they have obvious points of contact. But Kant's formal a priori concepts by which the mind makes for itself a world, to use Mr. Bosanquet's phrase, imply an attitude to knowledge and reality so utterly opposed to the Aristotelian that the comparison has tended to confusion rather than elucidation. Scholars now realize better that the Aristotelian Categories can only be understood in connexion with the problems of Aristotle's own age.

scholarly journals Perception and Passivity Can the Passive Pre-Givenness Be Phenomenalized?

Phainomenon ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-35
Author(s):  
Pedro M. S. Alves
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Phenomenological Method ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Passive Synthesis ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Primitive Forms ◽  
The One ◽  
As If

Abstract In what follows, I intend to address an issue which is at the boundaries of the phenomenological method of reflective explication, and that, in this sense, points to some limitations of the phenomenological approach to consciousness and mind. I am referring to an aporetic situation that is at the heart of the phenomenological analysis of passivity. On the one hand, phenomenology shows, at least indirectly, a passive life that is beyond the first steps of the activity of the ego in the receptive, affective life. This is something that is beyond the rising of an ego, and from which a phenomenology of the ego-form of subjective life could be addressed. On the other hand, the analytic and conceptual tools of the phenomenological method have no grips on this basic realm of subjective life. As a result, Husserl’s analysis of passivity starts with the evidence of a pre-affective, pre-egoic realm, from which a phenomenology of the ego could be developed. However, Husserl’s analyses end up with the denegation of this dimension, as if it was invisible for the phenomenological method. As a consequence, the starting point of the analysis is not passivity proper, but rather the primitive forms of receptivity, which is already a first layer of the activity of the ego. Instead of an analysis of the ego-polarization (the “birth” of the ego), the egoic layer of conscious life is simply presupposed. A phenomenology of the ego-form is, thus, at the same time promised and denied. This aporetic situation is visible in the alteration of the concept of a passive pre-givenness in Husserl’s Analysis Concerning Passive Synthesis.

Habits of the Mind

2011 ◽  
pp. 524-539
Author(s):  
Myra H. Strober
Keyword(s):  
Faculty Members ◽  
The Other ◽  
Innovative Research ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Habits Of The Mind

The extraordinary complexity of knowledge in today’s world creates a paradox. On the one hand, its sheer volume and intricacy demand disciplinary specialization, even sub-specialization; innovative research or scholarship increasingly requires immersion in the details of one’s disciplinary dialogue. On the other hand, that very immersion can limit innovation. Disciplinary specialization inhibits faculty from broadening their intellectual horizons - considering questions of importance outside their discipline, learning other methods for answering these questions and pondering the possible significance of other disciplines’ findings for their own work. This article seeks to understand more fully the factors that enhance and impede cross-disciplinary conversations and the possible longer-term effects of those conversations. Based on 46 interviews with a sample of seminar participants, it examines the experiences of faculty members who ventured (voluntarily) into multidisciplinary waters and its implications for the organization of disciplines and universities.

scholarly journals KUNAERNE KÆMPER - MED MYTE OG METAFOR

1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vibeke Tuxen
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Personal Names ◽  
Outer World ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind

Vibeke Tuxen: The Kunas Struggle - with Myth and Metaphor The author is working with the kuna people on a demarcation project and observes how the kuna use their myths and metaphors in practice to analyse the presence of foreigners, whom experience has taught them not to trust, but on whom they also depend for their territory. The myth of Duiren who taught the Kunas to resist and fight for their culture but who also depended on the help of other people, is put forward by a chief in his chanting, analysing the present situation. Kuna myths form a total of interrelated stories, which on the one hand form the mind of the Kuna chief in his analysis, and on the other hand certain parts, or myths, are being picked out to show the angle that the chief wishes to put forward to his people. Personal names can be changed and molas can be sold. Myths, names, and molas are three ways in which the Kuna relate themselves to the outer world and still maintain their own way of living. Through all three, foreign aspects can be expressed, let in, and let out again.

Liu Jishan and Heidegger in Encounter

2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 442-453
Author(s):  
Wing–Cheuk Chan
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Comprehensive Understanding ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Moral Metaphysics ◽  
Moral Feeling ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind

This paper aims to bring Heidegger’s thinking of Being and Liu Jishan’s moral metaphysics into a dialogue, in order to particularly achieve a more comprehensive understanding of feeling and force. On the one hand, Liu Jishan’s doctrine of pure feeling can radicalize Heidegger’s idea of moral feeling. Moreover, Liu Jishan’s emphasis on the creative character of the metaphysical force might supplement Heidegger’s identification of Being as an ontological movement. On the other hand, Heidegger’s thinking of Being can contribute to uncover the ontological significance of Liu Jishan’s notion of xing. It also helps to see that in Liu Jishan, the mind consists of inauthenticity and authenticity. As a whole, both Liu Jishan and Heidegger share the scheme of “manifesting xing/Being through mind /Dasein.”

Extradition: A Common Approach to the Control of International Terrorism and Traffic in Narcotic Drugs

1978 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-202
Author(s):  
Yehuda Z. Blum
Keyword(s):  
General Public ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
The Other ◽  
International Terrorism ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Scope Of Application ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Narcotic Drugs

International terrorism and traffic in narcotic drugs would seem at first sight to represent two categories of offences that ought to be kept apart in a discussion concerning the problems of extradition in respect of them. The prima facie approach of differentiating, for extradition purposes, between international terrorism, on the one hand, and traffic in narcotic drugs, on the other hand, would appear to be warranted by the different perception of these two groups of offences prevailing in the mind of the general public. While crimes of international terrorism are perceived as being normally inspired by political motives, traffic in narcotic drugs is generally believed to be motivated solely by the prospects of quick enrichment. Since extradition treaties almost invariably exclude political crimes from their scope of application, the distinction, for extradition purposes, between terrorism and drug crimes is not far to seek.However, these different perceptions of the two categories of crimes are somewhat deceptive, and more apparent than real, and the differences between them are, at most, differences of degree rather than of substance.

scholarly journals Locke on the Probability of the Mind's Immateriality

Locke Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Samuel C. Rickless
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Material Thing ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind

For many years, there has been a vibrant debate about whether Locke is friendly or hostile to the proposition that the mind is a material thing. On the one hand, there are passages in which Locke tells us that it is probable that the mind is immaterial. On the other hand, there are passages in which Locke expressly allows for the possibility that matter, suitably arranged, could be given the power to think. It is no surprise, then, that some scholars assume that Locke is a dualist, while other scholars think that Locke is a materialist. Yet others think that Locke studiously tries to remain completely agnostic about the nature of mind. Taking the relevant primary sources and secondary literature into account, I argue that Locke takes it to be more probable than not that the mind is immaterial.

The Seriousness of Doubt and Our Natural Trust in the Senses in the First Meditation

2003 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Macarthur
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Evil Demon ◽  
Proper Understanding ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Senses ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind

In the Synopsis to the Meditations Descartes assures us that ‘extensive doubt… [provides] the easiest route by which the mind may be led away from the senses’ (12). And in the Fifth Replies Descartes adds that it is essential to a proper understanding of the Meditations that ‘the entire testimony of the senses should be regarded as uncertain and even as false’ (350). But to deny our ordinary trust in the senses on the grounds of such ‘hyperbolic’ or ‘metaphysical’ doubts as that one might be dreaming or the victim of an evil demon is, as Descartes himself puts it, quite mad: ‘no sane person has ever seriously doubted that there really is a world and that human beings have bodies’ (16). We seem, then, to be confronted with a dilemma: on the one hand, the skepticism about the senses that we find in the First Meditation must be taken seriously. On the other hand, it is, in some sense, a sham. How, then, are we to understand these doubts?

Stories and the Self

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Krause ◽  
Markus Appel
Keyword(s):  
Meta Analysis ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Lower Degree ◽  
Contrast Effects ◽  
Self Perception ◽  
Self Perceptions ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
Implicit And Explicit

Abstract. Two experiments examined the influence of stories on recipients’ self-perceptions. Extending prior theory and research, our focus was on assimilation effects (i.e., changes in self-perception in line with a protagonist’s traits) as well as on contrast effects (i.e., changes in self-perception in contrast to a protagonist’s traits). In Experiment 1 ( N = 113), implicit and explicit conscientiousness were assessed after participants read a story about either a diligent or a negligent student. Moderation analyses showed that highly transported participants and participants with lower counterarguing scores assimilate the depicted traits of a story protagonist, as indicated by explicit, self-reported conscientiousness ratings. Participants, who were more critical toward a story (i.e., higher counterarguing) and with a lower degree of transportation, showed contrast effects. In Experiment 2 ( N = 103), we manipulated transportation and counterarguing, but we could not identify an effect on participants’ self-ascribed level of conscientiousness. A mini meta-analysis across both experiments revealed significant positive overall associations between transportation and counterarguing on the one hand and story-consistent self-reported conscientiousness on the other hand.

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