Phenomenology and Mind
November 1, 2019
Joerg Fingerhut
10 citations
Enactive approaches to art argue that aesthetic experience is non-contentful, artifact-including, and embodied, and they often dismiss empirical (neuro)aesthetics as unable to capture this engagement. This paper reviews radical enactivism, Gallagher's embodied-enactive account of art affordances, and Noë's view of art as reorganizational practice. While agreeing with the relational and enactive nature of mind, the author contends that dismissing empirical aesthetics is misguided: the criticism is either too general about methods or based on philosophical claims open to empirical testing. Relevant empirical research exists that enactive theorists should consider.
Phenomenology and Mind
September 17, 2018
Lynne Baker
2 citations
The gap between first-person and third-person accounts of consciousness cannot be eliminated by reducing subjective experience to objective data, especially when the science aims to study the first-person perspective itself. Drawing on Carnap and Schrödinger, the author argues that such reduction leaves out essential aspects of conscious experience. Various approaches attempting to bridge this gap are reviewed, along with conceptual, epistemological, and methodological issues surrounding the distinction.
Phenomenology and Mind
September 17, 2018
Roberta de Monticelli
2 citations
The Thatcher Illusion, where an upside-down face with inverted features appears normal until the image is rotated, challenges Gestalt theory's explanatory power by forcing a distinction between physiognomic identity (recognizing a face as such) and emotional expression (reading its affect). Helmuth Plessner's Aesthesiology, which integrates Gestalt insights, goes further by critiquing reductions of phenomenal consciousness to qualia and offering an embodied-enactive theory of perception. Plessner treats geometry and music as symbolic forms grounded, respectively, in goal-directed action and object manipulation versus emotional expression. The illusion is resolved using this distinction between identity and expression.
Phenomenology and Mind
November 26, 2016
Elisabetta Sacchi
2 citations
The paper challenges strong, reductive representationalism, which tries to explain the felt quality of conscious experience solely in terms of what experiences represent, without appealing to intrinsic experiential properties. While this approach is attractive for avoiding irreducible mental qualities, the authors argue it risks failing: it may either misdescribe the phenomenology (what an experience feels like) or mischaracterize the representational content itself. The critique suggests that representationalism cannot fully capture both aspects simultaneously.
Phenomenology and Mind
November 1, 2019
Andrea Giannotta
1 citation
The enactive theory of color holds that color is neither purely subjective nor purely objective, but arises from the co-constitution of perceiver and perceived in the process of experience. This view parallels Husserl's phenomenology, which also rejects a strict subject-object duality. The paper argues that enactive color relationism offers a better alternative to both color subjectivism and objectivism. It extends this account to sensory qualities (qualia) more broadly, outlining an enactive phenomenology and ontology that situate qualities within the dynamic interaction between organism and world.
Phenomenology and Mind
September 17, 2018
Elisa Magrì
1 citation
Empathy, as described by Edith Stein, depends on a bodily self-displacement that is a precondition for a more complex orientation toward others. This view shares similarities with Varela and Depraz's neurophenomenology but cannot be reduced to a naturalized phenomenological account. Instead, bodily self-displacement aligns with Ratcliffe's theory of radical empathy, grounding empathy in a dynamic model of embodied self-experience within the broader dimension of affectivity.
Phenomenology and Mind
September 17, 2018
Philip Tonner
1 citation
A disharmonious sense of self can impair agency, and people value a unified self-concept that initiates action while avoiding conflict or dissonance. Pathologies of self show that confabulations—distortions of perception, memory, and narration—are often tolerated to counteract a diffuse sense of self. The resulting self-narrative reflects what the individual considers good. However, a strong drive to maintain an idealized, unified self-picture risks misrepresenting both self and others.