The Integrity of Intentionality: Sketch for a Phenomenological Study (original) (raw)
Related papers
Real Hallucinations: Psychiatric Illness, Intentionality, and the Interpersonal World. Chapter 6. Intentionality and Interpersonal Experience, 2017
Here is Chapter 6 of my book *Real Hallucinations*, which was published by MIT Press in September 2017. This is the longest and most important chapter, where all of the various strands of argument are brought together. Chapter Introduction: This chapter further explores how interpersonal relations shape and regulate the structure of experience. In so doing, it develops the position introduced in Chapter 5, according to which perceptual experience incorporates a distinctive kind of anticipation-fulfilment dynamic, upon which the modal structure of intentionality depends. My central claims are as follows: (a) disturbances of global anticipatory style are inextricable from changes in how one experiences and relates to other people; (b) these disturbances can lessen differences between the characteristic temporal profiles of intentional states (where a temporal profile is the anticipation-fulfilment pattern that is typical of one or another type of intentional state); and (c) temporal profiles are central to, but not exhaustive of, the sense of being in a given type of intentional state. The chapter begins by addressing how perceptual experience is interpersonally regulated, after which it considers the implications of this for our understanding of belief. The discussion of belief draws on themes in the work of Jaspers and the later Wittgenstein, which complement and enrich the position attributed to Husserl in Chapter 5. This is followed by a brief consideration of the anticipatory structure of memory. I then bring together the various strands of argument from this and earlier chapters in order to offer a full statement of my central thesis, according to which the sense of being in a given intentional state is largely attributable to its distinctive temporal profile. Next, I turn to the links between trauma (in particular, childhood trauma) and psychosis, in order to further support my position. In so doing, I ask whether and how certain forms of experience associated with trauma are distinguishable from those associated with schizophrenia diagnoses. I also offer an interpretation of the text Autobiography of a Schizophrenic Girl (Sechehaye, 1970), in order to illustrate how a greater emphasis on the relational structure of experience can prompt us to re-interpret first-person accounts. The chapter concludes with some tentative remarks on how a phenomenological account of the modal structure of experience and its vulnerability to disruption can be brought into mutually illuminating dialogue with neurobiological research on predictive coding.
This is the final draft of Chapter 2 of my book Real Hallucinations, published by MIT Press in September 2017. Summary of Chapter 2: This chapter introduces the concept of 'minimal self' and critically discusses its application to the phenomenology of schizophrenia. I take the concept of minimal self to be an illuminating one, in emphasizing how seemingly localized experiences such as AVHs (auditory verbal hallucinations) can arise in the context of profound changes in the overall structure of experience. However, I also maintain that a clearer and more specific account of the nature of minimal self is needed. To supply this, I ask whether minimal self incorporates only the sense that one is having 'some kind of experience' or whether it further includes a sense of the kind of intentional state one is in. I argue for the latter. Minimal self, I maintain, centrally involves a grasp of the modal structure of intentionality, a pre-reflective appreciation of being in one or another kind of intentional state, such as perceiving or remembering. Furthermore, certain kinds of anomalous experience are plausibly interpreted as disturbances of this modal structure. I go on to raise the concern that an emphasis on minimal self risks understating the interpersonal and social aspects of psychiatric illness. To do so, I examine an alternative approach, associated with the Hearing Voices Movement, according to which AVHs are meaningful symptoms of distress that usually have interpersonal causes. Drawing inspiration from both perspectives, I sketch the position to be developed in the remainder of the book, according to which the modal structure of intentionality, and thus the minimal self, is developmentally and constitutively dependent on interpersonal relations. The chapter concludes by distinguishing this position from other versions of the view that delusions and hallucinations originate in some form of confusion between kinds of intentional state.
The Phenomenological Concept of Intentionality
Chapter in: Robin L. Cautin and Scott O. Lilienfeld (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Clinical Psychology, 2015
According to the phenomenological concept of intentionality, every mental process is aware of something other than itself. Mental life is aware of objects in many ways. Intentional objects can be real or unreal, emotionally colored, and acted upon. Understanding the structure of conscious mental processes reveals the nature of our pre-objective worlds, including how we experience space, time, and ourselves. A great deal of phenomenological work in clinical psychology has involved methods for understanding the experiences of others, especially clients.
On Using Intentionality in Empirical Phenomenology: the Problem of?Mental Images
dialectica, 1984
The theory of so-called 'mental images', which is put forward again in contemporary cognitive psychology, is criticized by way of elaborating the distinctly different intentional structures of the mental activities of 'remembering something' and 'representing something pictorially' (by means of a painting, photo, sculpture, etc.). It is suggested that psychology in its concept and theory formation could use profitably phenomenological-descriptive analyses of the different forms of intentionality as exemplified in the paper. Resume La thkorie des ((images mentales D reprise par la psychologie cognitive contemporaine est critiquee et opposee aux structures intentionnelles ctse souvenir de quelque chosea ou ((se representer quelque chose A l'aide d'une image)) (peinture, photographie, sculpture, etc.). L'auteur montre que la formation des concepts et des theories en psychologie peut aussi tirer parti des analyses ph6nomCnologiques descriptives des differents modes d'intentionnalit6, telles que celles qu'il presente ici. Zusammenfassung In Gegeniiberstellung der intentionalen Strukturen von 'sich an etwas erinnern' bzw. 'sich etwas mittels eines Bildes vorstellen' (Gemlilde, Photo, Skulptur, etc.) wird die Theorie der sog. 'geistigen Bilder', wie sie in der zeitgenossischen kognitiven Psychologie wieder auflebt, kritisiert. Es wird nahegelegt, dass phlnomenologisch-deskriptive Analysen verschiedener Weisen der Intentionalitat, wie sie hier vorgefilhrt werden, auch der psychologischen Begriffs-und Theoriebildung zugute kommen konnten.
Intentionality, Qualia, and the Stream of Unconsciousness
Phenomenology and Mind, 2022
This paper argues for a kind of intrinsically unconscious mental-qualitative intentional content as constituting the 'mark of the mental', in an attempt to integrate insights from the phenomenal intentionality programme, Brentano, and Freud about the mind's essential nature. It discusses and rebuts historical objections to the notion of unconscious qualitative character, and ends up by proposing a unified 'qualitative' conception of conscious and unconscious mentality. Forthcoming in Phenomenology and Mind, special issue on the mark of the mental.
Phenomenology, Psychopathology, and Pre Reflective Experience
Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Implicit Cognition, 2022
In this chapter, I introduce phenomenology and phenomenological psychopathology by clarifying the kind of implicit experiences that phenomenologists are concerned with. In section one, I introduce the phenomenological concept of pre-reflective experience, focusing especially on its relation to the concept of implicit experience. In section two, I introduce the structure of pre-reflective self-consciousness, which has been studied extensively by both classical phenomenologists and contemporary phenomenological psychopathologists. In section three, I show how phenomenological psychopathologists rely on an account of pre-reflective self-consciousness to better understand the experience of schizophrenia and I outline some of the methodological challenges that arise in this field of research. This introduction should facilitate critical engagement and collaboration between phenomenologists and researchers working across a variety of disciplines, including psychology, psychiatry, the cognitive sciences, and analytic philosophy of mind.
In everyday life, we assume that most of what we experience is real and that we share this reality with others. We also have experiences which we call private, and the reality status of what is given to us in such experiences may sometimes seem unclear, for instance, in dreams, phantasies, and personal beliefs. However, our experiences are seldom clearly categorized as either real or unreal. We seem to experience different degrees of reality, sometimes even simultaneously. One can think about the fi ctional or virtual realities we discover when reading a book, watching a play, or playing a videogame. These different realities sometimes contradict each other (Gal-lagher 2009, 254; Schütz 1945). In psychopathology, one can fi nd a variety of experiences whose reality status is uncertain. Eugène Minkowski (1995, 388) for example, noted that some schizophrenic patients describe their verbal auditory hallucinations as having a different quality and less realness than " real " voices. People experiencing these verbal auditory hallucinations may explain that while they heard a voice, they simultaneously knew it was unreal. Yet, although they seem to be less real, hallucinations do infl uence the patient's emotions, ideas, and behavior and can be experienced as exceptionally frightening. As these short remarks already indicate, our ordinary sense of reality is extremely complex. The aim of this chapter is to fl esh out some of the factors that infl uence our sense of the reality of what we are experiencing. Considering the overarching themes of this book, it will particularly investigate the role of intersubjectivity in shaping our sense of reality. To this aim, regular and pathological reality experiences will be compared. I begin by introducing two complex delusional phenomena, in which the reference to reality becomes particularly ambiguous: double book-keeping and the primary delusional experience. Thereafter, I will discuss the factors that I consider to characterize our sense for reality and particularly emphasize the role of intersubjectivity. Finally, I will return to the above-mentioned delusional phenomena and clarify them in the light of intersubjectivity.
Presence to Self: An Essay on the Phenomenal Origins of Intentionality
My dissertation is an examination of an oft-invoked but insufficiently understood feature of perceptual experience, namely, its presentational character. We open our eyes and a world is before us. Someone strikes a tuning fork, and a sound is simply present. To experience is always, in part, to appreciate phenomenally something as other or as before one; it is always, in part, to appreciate phenomenally a manifest opposition between the self--that before which the other is present--and the other--that which is present before the self. I call this aspect of experiential phenomenality, this universally appreciable but non-sensuous sense of otherness in experience, phenomenal presence. Phenomenal presence is uniquely suited to illuminate the substantive interrelations that exist between two fundamental features of perceptual experience: intentionality and phenomenality. I argue that (i) the intentional features of experience, understood in isolation from experiential phenomenality, neither constitute nor explain phenomenal presence, (ii) phenomenal presence is itself the minimal realization of experiential intentionality, and (iii) the intentionality embodied in phenomenal presence is constitutively and explanatorily prior to all other forms of experiential intentionality. I then show how these conclusions can be brought to bear on the intentional status of our non-phenomenal, mental states. These discussions guide us toward an account of perceptual experience in which experiential phenomenality is competent to direct us intentionally beyond ourselves, independently of the contributions made by the understanding or intellect. Modeling the intentionality and self-awareness involved in perceptual experience upon the intentionality and self-awareness involved in belief and judgment, or insisting that the former depend on the latter obscures both the role of and the contribution made by the exercises of our perceptual capacities. This tendency to assimilate the perceptual and the intellectual realms and to privilege the intellectual leads inevitably to accounts of perceptual experience that either render epiphenomenal the distinctive contributions of experiential phenomenality or neglect those contributions altogether.