Michela Summa

Body memory and kinesthetic body feedback: The impact of light versus strong movement qualities on affect and cognition:

What influence does body memory from light vs strong movement qualities have on affect and cognition? This article relates the phenomenological theory of body memory, movement observation theory from dance, and psychological conceptual and empirical work on body feedback. Kinesthetic body feedback means efferent feedback from the body’s peripheral movements to the higher cortical functions, such as the systematic effects of the adoption of certain gestures or postures on the memory for life events. Meaning of movements is stored in the body in relation to our learning history –ontogenetic as well as phylogenetic. Based on the phenomenological theory of body memory, we hypothesize that specific movement qualities will have a differential impact on affect and cognition. In accordance with our hypotheses, our results suggest that strong movements are related to more fighting affect and more negative memory recall, whereas light movements – just as a non-movement control condition – are related to more indulgent affect and more positive memory recall. Results are discussed with reference to the phenomenological framework.

Der Gegenstand ohne Begriff und die Schichtung der Erfahrung bei Husserl und Kant

Die Unterscheidung von Asthetik ist ein zentraler Punkt in Husserls Auseinandersetzung mit Kant. Wie andere Aspekte dieser Auseinandersetzung beweist er sowohl die Nahe als auch die Distanz zwischen beiden Denkern. Dies lasst sich deutlich aus Husserls eigenen Texten entnehmen. Einerseits schatzt Husserl namlich diese Unterscheidung als eine der „gewaltigen Entdeckungen“ Kants (Hua VII, S. 404; vgl. auch Hua V, S. 30). Andererseits aber kritisiert er sie aufgrund ihrer Voraussetzungen und Implikationen. Als Voraussetzung der kantischen Unterscheidung von Asthetik und Analytik zahlt laut Husserl insbesondere die Lehre der Vermogen des Gemuts; als Implikationen zahlen der schroffe Gegensatz zwischen Sinnlichkeit und Verstand und der Mangel an angemessenen Betrachtungen der konstitutiven Leistungen, die schon auf der sinnlichen Ebene stattfinden (Hua VII, S. 420 ff.).1 Husserls Einwand ist folglich eng mit seiner allgemeinen Anthropologismus-Kritik verbunden und richtet sich in erster Linie gegen die Annahme der Vermogen des menschlichen Gemuts als Grundlage fur die Unterscheidung der Quellen aller Erkenntnis. Dieser Annahme gemas entsprechen der Anschauung und dem Begriff jeweils die Vermogen der Sinnlichkeit und des Verstandes (vgl. KrV, B 74–88/A 50–64). Somit erweisen sich die vermeintlichen apriorischen Gesetze der Erkenntnis in der Kritik der reinen Vernunft als nur fur das menschliche Subjekt gultig (und nicht z. B. fur Gott) (Hua VII, S. 397; 357 ff.).2 Und das kollidiert deutlich mit Husserls Begriff des Apriori. Denn letzterer definiert die Wesensgesetze, die prinzipiell fur jedes mogliche und auch nur denkbare Subjekt gultig sein mussen.3 Damit verbunden ist der Einwand gegen die scharfe Trennung von Sinnlichkeit und Verstand, so wie derjenige gegen die darin implizierte Mangelhaftigkeit in Kants Theorie der Sinnlichkeit: Da Sinnlichkeit aufgrund jener Trennung jeder Synthesis entbehrt, konne Kants Transzendentale Asthetik nicht als eine selbststandige Theorie der Wahrnehmung betrachtet werden.

Enacting perception: the relevance of phenomenology

In questo saggio intendo comparare le descrizioni della percezione date da E. Husserl e Alva Noe. Focalizzando l’attenzione sulla descrizione dell’apparizione prospettica, intendo argomentare che per entrambi gli autori la percezione viene compresa in termini di attivita dinamica esperta e di processo di scoperta. Intendo sostenere che l’indagine fenomenologica delle strutture intenzionali della coscienza percettiva possa completare la visione dinamica della percezione offerta dall’enattivismo. In particolare, questa indagine fenomenologica consente di fare luce sulla temporalita del processo percettivo e sulle sue relazioni con la spazialita, e di caratterizzare la natura specifica dell’attivita percettiva.

Empathy and Anti-Empathy: Which Are the Problems?

This chapter has two related aims. The first one is to bring to the fore the potential of a ‘multi-layered’ account of empathy. The second one is to clarify the role of imagination in empathy, with particular attention to the process of ‘centrally imagining’ what the other is experiencing. The argument is based on the comparison between Peter Goldie’s and Edith Stein’s accounts of empathy. As to the first point, I will show that Goldie’s rather sophisticated concept of empathy already presupposes basic layers of understanding, which are more thoroughly clarified in Stein’s analyses. As to the second point, I will argue that empathy, in its different layers, significantly relies on imagination, and more precisely on ‘central imagining’. In order to clarify the meaning of ‘central imagining’, without incurring into either conceptual and phenomenological paradoxes or ethically dubious statements, a closer consideration of how the imagining subject is and can be involved in interpersonal perspectival shift is required.

Phenomenology of Imaginal Space

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relation between perceptual and imaginal space. I argue that, notwithstanding the differences between acts of imagining and acts of perceiving, common structures in the spatial appearance of perceived things, physical images, and imagined or phantasized objects should be recognized. In the first section, some controversial issues concerning the spatiality of images in the so-called mental imagery debate are introduced. One of the most problematic aspects in this debate is the ambiguity in the use of the concept of ‘space’ which does not allow us to distinguish between spatial form and existence in space. The distinction between spatial form and existence in space will be further discussed in the second section by means of a reassessment of the spatiality of perceptual things, considered independently of their material features. The third and final section is devoted to the inquiry into imaginal space. It focuses on both the spatiality of physical images and the spatiality of phantasized objects, and considers both in relation to perceptual space. It is argued that, with relevant variations, the essential features characterizing the spatiality of purely perceptual objects (considered independently from their materiality) also characterize the spatiality of images and phantasized objects. This will eventually provide a phenomenologically grounded argument supporting the ideality of space, understood as ‘intuitive space of possibilities’.

Imaginative Dimensions of Reality: Pretense, Knowledge, and Sociality

Pretense, and notably non-deceptive pretense like pretend play, is an important topic of research in developmental psychology. Notably, in the last decades, studies in this field have concentrated on how children become engaged in pretend play from very early on, generally around 18 months of age; on how they apparently understand others and their intentions in pretense contexts even before passing the false-belief task (Leslie 1987; Lillard 1993, 2004; Perner 1991; Perner et al. 2004); and on how social competences, including the awareness of normativity in social contexts (Rakoczy 2006, 2008; Rakoczy et al. 2006), develop in pretend play. In recent years, the analysis of pretense has also been addressed by philosophers coming from different traditions. Besides being interested in the cognitive underpinnings of pretense (Carruthers 2006; Currie 1990, 1998; Jarrold et al. 1994; Nichols and Stich 2000), in its creative nature (Carruthers 2007, 2011; Picciuto and Carruthers 2014), and in the role that different mental capacities play in pretense,1 philosophers, like psychologists, have been focusing on how understanding pretense and consistently engaging in pretense activities relate to social cognition. Thus, it comes as no surprise that pretense has also progressively become one of the central topics in the interdisciplinary theory of mind-debate on mutual understanding and social cognition. Apart from some exceptions (e.g., Fuchs 2013), however, the inquiry into pretense seems to have been rather neglected by contemporary researchers in phenomenology, who are active in the debate on social cognition. This is probably due to the argumentative strategy in the controversy between current phenomenologists and simulationists: whereas the latter suggest that imagination is constitutive for our knowledge of others, and therefore, also pay attention to imaginative contexts like pretense,2 the former tend to deny that imagination has such a constitutive role for mutual understanding,3 and therefore, also pay less attention to those activities, like pretense, in which imagination is so prominently involved. Yet, I believe that phenomenology has a strong methodological and conceptual potential for the investigation of pretense and may also shed new light on the relation between pretense and social cognition.

Are Emotions “Recollected in Tranquility”? Phenomenological Reflections on Emotions, Memory, and the Temporal Dynamics of Experience

This chapter discusses the relationship between memory and emotions from a phenomenological perspective. Starting with some remarks on Wordsworth’s conception of poetry as “emotion recollected in tranquility”, the investigation focuses on the three following issues: (1) the overwhelming character of emotional memories; (2) the relationship between the past and the present emotion, and (3) the meaning of “tranquility” in emotional recollection. In order to discuss these issues, an analysis of the intentional structure of affective and emotional experiences is first developed. Thereby, it is shown how the self- and world-relatedness of emotional experience fundamentally structures our implicit and explicit awareness of past emotions. Subsequently, the analysis of the relation between emotions and the temporal structure of experience shall allow us to recognize in the irreversible nature of the temporal stream of consciousness the ultimate ground to understand the relationship between emotions and memory. Finally, discussing how irreversibility eminently comes to the fore in the experience of nostalgia, it is argued that the “tranquility” of emotional memories has a nostalgic note. Such nostalgic note conveys the awareness of one’s own being in a constant process of irreversible temporal becoming.