The phenomenologist Renaud Barbaras defends an alternative conception of life against the well-known proposals that view life as self-preserving or seeking to replicate its own means of replication in the form of repetition instead of creation or accomplishment as Barbaras proposes. Indeed, he criticizes the reductive nature of scientific inquiry which tries to define life solely on the basis...
This paper discusses the phenomenological nature of the sense of boundaries (SB), based on the case of S, who has practiced mindfulness in the Satipathana and Theravada Vipassana traditions for about 40years and accumulated around 20,000h of meditative practice. S's unique abilities enable him to describe his inner lived experience with great precision and clarity. S was asked to shift between...
The concept of contextual emergence has been proposed as a non-reductive, yet well-defined relation between different levels of description of physical and other systems. It yields a formally sound and empirically applicable procedure to translate between descriptive levels in an overall consistent fashion. This will be discussed for the contextual emergence of mental states from a neural level...
The reciprocal coupling of perception and action in cognitive agents has been firmly established: perceptions guide action but so too do actions influence what is perceived. While much has been said on the implications of this for the agent's external behavior, less attention has been paid to what it means for the internal bodily mechanisms which underpin cognitive behavior. In this article, we...
Anomalous experiences such as Basic Symptoms (BS) are considered the first subjective manifestation of the neurobiological substrate of schizophrenia. The purpose of this study was to explore whether a low or high emotional motor resonance occurring in Schizophrenia Spectrum (SzSp) patients was related to patients׳ clinical features and to their anomalous subjective experiences as indexed by...
The aim of this qualitative study was to investigate the subjective experiences of 29 university students who participated in an 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program for academic evaluation anxiety. Participants who self-referred to the Student Counseling Service underwent individual semi-structured interviews about how they experienced the personal relevance and practical...
This study investigates if anodal and cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) of areas above the motor cortex (C3) influences spontaneous motor imagery experienced in the waking resting state. A randomized triple-blinded design was used, combining neurophysiological techniques with tools of quantitative mentation report analysis from cognitive linguistics. The results indicate...
Contemporary philosophy of religion is often focused, at a theoretical level, on the epistemic value of religious doctrines, and at a practical level, on the possible impact of organized religion on secular society and politics. However, the cultic dimension of religion, such as prayer, religious service, ascetic practices, and other rituals, is considered as completely “irrational” and...
Aron Gurwitsch's theory of the structure and dynamics of consciousness has much to offer contemporary theorizing about consciousness and its basis in the embodied brain. On Gurwitsch's account, as we develop it, the field of consciousness has a variable sized focus or "theme" of attention surrounded by a structured periphery of inattentional contents. As the field evolves, its contents change...
This paper explores the implications of developments in phenomenological biology for a reconsideration of synchronicity and the self. The enactive approach of Maturana and Varela aims to reformulate the relation between biological organisms and the world in a non-Cartesian way, breaking down the conceptual division between mind and world so that meaning can be seen as a function of the...