Altered states of consciousness, including hallucinations, psychedelic experiences, and ego dissolution, differ qualitatively, yet no unified computational framework describes what varies and along which dimensions. Computational phenomenology (CP) has emerged as a promising bridge between first-person experience and computational models, yet current formalisations rely predominantly on the...
A psychological sentence is commonly understood as representing a mental fact. This paper offers an alternative and argues that saying “Someone S is in a mental state M” is saying “There are some circumstances C such that S is in C, and it is rational for anyone in C to behave in a certain way.” To argue for this alternative, the paper appeals to the Sellarsian philosophy of mind but transforms...
David Katz was an empirical psychologist with a deep and abiding interest in phenomenology. This paper reconstructs his theory of colour and colour perception, central to which is a distinctive account of the perception of illumination and empty space. Katz's views were an important influence on both the Gestalt psychologists and phenomenologists such as Merleau‐Ponty, and have contemporary...
Abstract Philosophical approaches to psychopharmacology have paved the way for an important but still largely unexplored area in the philosophy of psychiatry. Some of these approaches have addressed conceptual, explanatory, and moral questions posed by psychopharmaceuticals, while shedding light on epistemological and methodological issues inherent to psychopharmacological practice. Yet, most...
This article locates an irreducible point of crisis in phenomenology’s attempt to think historically and critically. Using the notion of crisis as my guiding thread, I show how Husserlian phenomenology cannot think history, or historically, without renouncing its fundamental principles. I focus on Merleau-Ponty’s diagnosis of a double crisis of western rationality – the collapse of its...
Abstract Being born is an undeniable fact of every human life, yet it seems that one’s birth evades any direct phenomenological access. Motivated by this problem, this article proceeds in three main steps. It first examines the problem of birth from the first-person perspective, where birth appears as both presupposed and inaccessible. The second step reverses the perspective by approaching...
Abstract This paper argues for the continued relevance of general, transcendental structures – especially Hannah Arendt’s concepts of natality and plurality – within critical phenomenology. Contrary to recent thinkers like Guenther, Oksala, Herrmann, and Marder, who critique the general as inherently oppressive and/or irrelevant, I propose that general conditions can provide a foundation for...
Abstract The term “cognitive phenomenology” may be understood as referring to the idea that there is something it is like to entertain thoughts. One of the main problems in the debates on cognitive phenomenology is the question of how it should be construed, for instance in terms of being in a particular phenomenal state. In order to give a concise idea of what cognitive phenomenology is, I...
One recurrent source of religious and mystical appearance lies in the way finite motifs resist finite closure and come to be inhabited under maximal, unconditioned, or unsurpassable forms. We call these forms limit-forms and argue that they are Husserlian horizonality under existential pressure: ordinary experience always exceeds what is presently given, but some horizons become...
Advaita Vedanta, the non-dualistic school of classical Indian philosophy systematized by Śaṅkara in the eighth century, offers one of the most sophisticated philosophical frameworks for understanding the nature of consciousness, self, and reality. Modern consciousness studies, an interdisciplinary field bringing together philosophy of mind, cognitive science, neuroscience, and contemplative...