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• The blood is processed in the right ventricle of the heart; • Heart septum does not allow the blood flow; • The heart has only two ventricles, not three, "as Avicenna says"; • V. arteriosa (pulmonary artery) lead the blood from the right ventricle to the lungs where the blood mixes with air; • The lung has a passages between the v. arteriosa and artery venosa (pulmonary vein); • Mixing processed of blood with air starts (not in the heart, in the left ventricle, according to the traditional view, but) |
• Sharh Masa'il Hunain (Comments of Questions by Hunain Ibn Ishaq); • Sharh al-Hidaya fi-it-Tibb (Comment of Avicenna's Guide to Medicine); • Mufradat Sharh al-Qanun (Comment on simple medications from Canon); Usaybia mentioned several papers in medicine, much of which none of the other biographers, including Umaruia and Safadia are not mentioned. This is somewhat surprising, especially in Umaruia, who must have owned most of the information to Usaybiya. Also is possible that Umar used another |
On the other hand, to Ibn-Nafis the Galen theory was far from perfect and acceptable for his independent mind that always relied on "careful research and common sense." For him the Galen's theory about the invisible pores in chamber was a paradox. As longer he studied the works of Galen and Avicenna, he was more convinced about their mistakes, and his attitude towards Galen's teachings even more sharpened. Exploring the anatomy in general and using inductive reasoning, he came to the conclusion that the ventricle is impermeable, and that blood from the right ventricle passes only through |
The difference between Ibn al-Nafis and Galen is not simply a difference of opinion of two doctors, but the difference between the two sets of anatomical-physiological data and their interpretation. Ibn al-Nafis is not afraid to stand up against the established beliefs of his time, nor Galen, nor afraid At the beginning Ibn al-Nafis notes that his knowledge is based on observation, careful research and common sense, and that he is presenting his learning whether it is in accordance with the teachings of predecessors or not. Since Ibn al-Nafis considered aorta as large blood vessel through which the "vital |
Its importance was the fact that Ibn al-Nafis, unlike the author of the Canon-Ibn Sina, by processing the extracts from the first and third book of Canon, for the first time in the history of Arab-Islamic medicine gave a presentation of anatomy, as a separate and independent entity. By his description of the anatomy in Mu'giz he significantly clarified and contested and suppressed sufficiently explained by the anatomical theory of Galen, which dominated some fifteen centuries. Qanun al-Mu'giz as its name says, is an abbreviature from Ibn-Sina's (Avicenna) medical encyclopedia |
Ibn al-Nafis, also, in his description of the anatomy of the heart in Theshrih gives, at that time, the closest description of cardiac blood flow, which will be described in detail later by the Englishman William Harvey in 1628 (3, 9). As for the interest in al-Nafis Mu'giz at the East, it was from the beginning very great. With comments or without it was printed and copied by lithography countless times in the vast number of copies. In particular, it was much used until the thirties of this century in India and the other |
In section 1 Slote understands empathy as Ba direct way of knowing about other minds^. By doing so he says nothing about the affective element involved in empathy. This may mean that empathy is understood as cognitive rather than affective. Moreover, the kind of objects of knowledge grasped through empathy or the kind of acts resulting from empathy is not specified either. This makes room for a counterintuitive way of understanding empathy. For instance, an exceptionally sophisticated torturer or some other psychopath who efficiently control others because they perfectly read in their victims' minds acquire a direct knowledge about other minds. Yet, neither the torturer not the |
When Slote says that empathy Bhelps us learn facts about the world^, he expands its meaning even more. Does it mean that these facts are not of special character, say, being directed at other persons' feelings? (Slote says that Bempathy helps to put us cognitively in touch with what others are feeling^but he does not develop this Bfeeling^element). This looks as if empathy is a way of knowing about other's minds and other facts of the world independently of what results, if anything at all, from empathizing with them. Because empathy is a general way of learning about |
Example Slote gives refers to osmosis and/or introjection or contagion rather than to empathy. He speaks about a child who learns fearing snakes because he empathically pick up on parents' fear of snake. If empathy is indeed such an uncritical Bway of learning about the world^(children have no Bindependent reason to doubt^as adults do, see below), its epistemic character is limited. Take a child who fears travelling in a plane because his parent does so. His learning can be misleading him in his life and if we call empathy the way he acquired his knowledge in this respect, its harming role is to |
In section 2 Slote speaks about Bbeing warmed by warmth or chilled by cold-hearted (or heartless)^as Ban empathic process^. This is another face of empathy: Bempathically registered warmth and chill as, respectively, states of moral approval and disapproval^. Empathy looks now as an autonomous and (always?) right awareness of what is going on in the world. Whereas in section 1 empathy was about fully accepting or adopting one's attitude, uncritically and at risk of acquiring a false conviction, here, in section 2, empathy is about decoding the meaning of Bsomeone's actions or attitude by |
In section 3 a third face of empathy amounts to Brecogniz[ing] the feelings of others^. Slote applies the concept of empathy so understood to Bwhat people say^, which, in turn, is manifest of Bwhat they are thinking, wanting, or feeling^. I can agree with Slote that Bempathy enters into the functioning of assertion and asking a question as speech acts^, however, it is useful to know if speech act as object of empathy is isolable from other, non-propositional or even non-verbal signs that accompany asserting or asking a question. For instance, if you are |
In his last section Slote comes back to empathizing with someone else's fear. Yet, whereas in section 1 it was child's empathizing with parent's fear of snake, now it concerns an adult's empathizing with child's fear of worms. He says: Bif one empathically picks up on a child's fear of worms but has independent reason to doubt the dangerousness of worms, that may undercut the acquisition of any knowledge of or reasonable belief about what the world is like^. Again, this is not what I am used to consider as empathy which is not about, in the case mentioned, the dangerousness of |
But now we are given what was absent is section 1, this is an epistemic criticism going together with empathy. Why this difference? Criticism regarding the object of feeling whom I empathize with is irrelevant because child's fear as such is a different object of empathizing than the object of this child's fear, while in the case of the dangerousness of the world the child has no resources to be critical of parent's fear. Are they two distinct concepts of empathy of which one is epistemically critical while the other uncritical or do we deal with a single concept of empathy which is or is not accompanied by an |
In spite of its effort to be transculturally relevant, the psychology of religion is quite ethno-or rather Western-centric. This becomes very clear when one tries to "translate" Indian folk religiosity into concepts taken from mainline theories; i.e. social, cognitive or psychoanalytical psychology of religion. Not only do the norms and values differ, but the very ontological assumptions underlying the categories in which the researcher understand differs fundamentally from the internal Hindu anthropological and epistemiological apriori. For example, their words of the psyche include contextuality, from time to space, to ethics to groups. The subtle inter |
The psychological makeup of persons in societies so civilizationally different as India is embedded in fundamentally distinct principles of these cultures and the social patterns and child rearing that these principles shape (Marsella et al 1985). Therefore it is clear that a western scholar and an Indian devotee are quite different, not only simply that they see things differently, coming from varied cultures, but that the very inner emotionalcognitive makeup is culturally constructed in different ways (Roland 1989). Of course this will "disturb" the interaction between interviewer and interviewee, the scholar and the pious man. In order to understand |
There are profound intrinsic interrelationships between the cultural conceptualizations of human nature, the psychological makeup of the individual and the nature of interpersonal relationships in a given culture (Hallowell 1955; Spiro 1965). The western impregnated concepts "self', identity", "belief' or "faith" as scholarly terms for the religious man must in an Indian context be replaced or at least supplemented by other terms, words that can do justice to the social, ritual and perceptual processes behind the experienced reality character of Lord Shiva. In order to understand the reciprocal and dynamic relation between the believer and the god, a |
Outside the Pradeep Hotel, in central Banaras, I met ten riksha-drivers who allowed me to follow them to their daily puja, to observe and interview them about their religion. Out of them I chose to follow more closely those seven drivers who regularly visited the Ganges in the evenings. All of the drivers were living in or just outside Banaras, all had families and were married. They had from two to six children. Five of them spoke good English. A translator, a student from the Department of Psychology at Benares Hindu University (BHU), joined the project. The interviews were undertaken during the |
The Kashikedara temple in the southern sector of the city of Banaras is called Kedara Khanda. It is is a river temple sitting on the top of an impressing ghat high above the water's edge on a long hill. From the river the temple is distinguished by its vertical red and white stripes, which indicate the South Indian hand by the temple's management, and by the many morning bathers. After bathing in the Ganges, people climb the broad steps into the riverside door of the temple, carrying the brass pots of Ganges water which they will offer in the worship of Kedareshvara. |
According to my informants, the main reason to visit the temple was "to take" Darsån. The same concept was used for the small glance they made at a site or a Nandi or a Lingam waiting for a customer or after the midday rest. A common theme for my informants was the importance of seeing the images of the deity regularly and very concretely-either Krishna, Durga, Visnu or Sarasvati as paintings or statues -present close to the sanctum of the temple. The central part of their ritual therefore was to stand in the presence of the god and to behold the image |
But seeing the Lord is not initiated by the worshipper. Rather, the deity presents itself to be seen in his image as a sacred perception. The prominence of the interaction of man and god through the eyes instead of through the ears, as in western traditions like Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Hindu deities, also reminds us of the reciprocal character of this experience. It is not only the worshipper who sees the deity; the deity sees the worshipper as well. For example, the gaze which falls from the newly opened eyes of the statue of a deity is said to be so powerful that it must first fall upon some pleasing offering |
Both interviews and observations confirmed to a very high degree that the behavioural/ritual, the olfactory, dramatic, the tactile and the perceptive dimensions of the ritual are of immense importance. When one searches for valid models for a psychological understanding, these non-cognitive dimensions of religiosity must be taken seriously. The Sanskrit term Darsån -to see and to be seen -as an emic religious concept, must be linked to the more social scientific language of visual hermeneutic and psychological semiotics. In the terms of D W Winnicott and E H Erikson, the symbol of the god and the |
In western verbal religious traditions these visual and behavioural elements always have to compete, so to speak, with the cognitive content of the dogma, a preaching of a priest or the systematic thoughts of the theologians. In the puja or in the arati, and above all in the informants' stories of why they undertook the puja, there is a clear experiential interplay between both the iconic an un-iconic symbols of Shiva (especially the Shiva lingam) and the individual coming to the temple to take Darsån (Wulff 1982). The visitor comes to see, to |
In my interviews I found a radically polytheistic religiosity. At virtually all levels of life and thought, there seemed to be a cultural and religious multiplicity (Hertel et al 1993). It is not monotheism and it is not polytheism, at least if we label polytheism as the worship of many gods, each with partial authority and a limited sphere of influence. Instead the way the drivers prayed and described their beliefs indicates a kathenotheism -the worship of one god at a time. Each god is exalted in turn. Each is praised as a creator, source, |
In addition to the central sanctum, dedicated to Lord Shiva, there were a dozen shrines to other deities. Asked about how many gods there are, all answer something like: of course there are many gods. There is Shiva there and Ganesha, Hanuman, Ganga, Durga, Kali and the others, but at the same time there is really only one. The differences of name and form (nama rupa) was a common phrase, used often to describe the visible, changing world of samsara and the multiple worlds of the gods. Thus, there is only one reality, but |
The drivers inner representation of Lord Shiva as a psychological reality is not glued together so much in terms of early experiences in relation to a particular mother or father figure (McDargh 1982; Kakar 1982 ) -a reductionistic simplification -but it must instead be underst000d more as a continuous social construction through a daily puja or arati. The faith in or the reality of Shiva is thus not a relation to a clear cut "inner object" but more a result of a daily ongoing dynamic process. A visual and behavioural hermeneutic is therefore an important means for the psychological |
If we translate these observations to the object-relation theory, we must say that the concept "the" god representation -in the singular -that has been in the centre of the past decades' debate in psychology of religion (Jones 1991) must be broadly elaborated in order to do justice to the Indian folk religiosity, where a multiplicity of gods dwells in the same family and in the same individual. Where the god in a specific cultural space is both one and many, male and female, both evil and good, both destroyer and sustainer, there must be a different kind of inner psychological representation of the belief |
This brings me to a general discussion of how the regular Darsän of Lord Shiva relates to the informants' three selves: the individual, the family and the spiritual self. This spiritual self is often ignored in psychological studies or reduced, but as I found it, it is the central system in my informants' identity formation and identity maintenance. The visual and ritual "use" of the Shiva lingam or statue and the regularity of ritual offering kept their spiritual self in the centre of their personality. All of these three selves were linked to significant religious objects which in their turn were incorporated and nourished their self esteem |
From a cross-cultural perspective, the distinctions between these three broad categories of self are of value in various ways. By familiar self I mean a basic inner psychological organization that enables women and men to function well within the hierachical intimacy relationship of the extended family, community of groups. The familial self encompasses several important sub-organizations that involve intensely emotional intimacy relationships, with their emotional connectedness and interdependence. In relationship-centred cultures like India there is a constant affective exchange through permeable outer ego boundaries, a highly private self is not maintained, high levels of empathy and reciprocity to others are cultivated, and the experiential |
The individualized self, on the other hand, is the predominant inner psychological organization enabling a person to function in a highly mobile society were considerable autonomy is granted if not even imposed upon the individual. The individual must choose from a variety of options in a contractual, egalitarian relationship governed by a predominant cultural principle of individualism. The individualized self is characterized by inner representational organizations that emphasize; an individualistic "I-ness", with relatively self-contained outer boundaries, sharp differentiation between inner images of self and other. It is built of modes of cognition and ego-functioning that are strongly oriented towards rationalism, selfreflection, mobility |
In hierarchical social relationships governed by the quality of the person, there is a marked veneration of the superior, with strong efforts to subordinate oneself, to be as close as possible to a religious symbol or a sannyasin in order to incorporate, identify with and share the superior qualities of the other for the self-transformation. These focal attitudes of attention by quality, originating in childhood, are later extended to more and more venerated beings -from highly respected family and community members to gurus and to the worship of various gods, goddesses and avatars or incarnations. i.e. there exists a continuity between the familial self and |
In bhakti devotional worship, various facets of symbiosis-reciprocity involved in hierarchical intimacy relationships become clearly accentuated. Intense emotional connectedness and reciprocal affective exchanges, a sense of we-ness, and permeable ego boundaries are all intensely involved in bhakti. The devotee seeks through emotionality to be merged with the god, goddess, or incarnation -whether Shiva, Durga, Krishna or whoever -and in turn through the merger expects the reciprocity of the divine blessing. In the worship of Krishna, the most frequent of Bhakti cults, men draw upon their early identification with the |
manifestation in German cosmology of space in which the public 'courtyard' (Midgard) is rooted. This is likely one reason why, in A Secular Age, Taylor reduced the secular to a certain presupposition of neutral space. The Greek aion, which refers to being of this world in its spatial and temporal settings, can be thought similarly to the Latin saecularis, which associates such an order of things with an age or period of time. To 'be' secular is to be committed to living in a way not focused upon 'the eternal' but rather upon one's own age or place in time |
A reflection on the world and neutrality directly leads to Phenomenology, which, since its inception, has operated as a matter of course in studying what appears in the world, how the conscious 'grasping' of those appearances can be experienced, and what is to be done with their supposedly clear and 'obvious' manifestations. Phenomenologists have persistently held that it is precisely what we take or believe to be 'obvious' (in the world) that is most in need of being questioned. Husserl and Heidegger attribute the initiation of a such a proto-phenomenological turn within epistemology |
3 Is it possible to describe the subject apart from the world it constitutes? Kant's Critique of Pure Reason established for the first time a phenomenology of the world via the a priori 'intuitions' (those 'ways of showing') of space and time, which when combined with the categories of understanding, provide for the constitution of one's world. The intuitions and forms are vor-stellen or 'placed in front of'oneself as'representations'. One can indeed transcendentally access the concrete content of the world itself via sensation, which is indeed more to be associated with affective lived sociality |
Around eight years before Husserl's Vienna Lecture, Heidegger (1962, Being and Time, henceforward BaT) recast phenomenology's sole task as the questioning of 'the world-hood of the world as such' (93) especially since any phenomenology that supposedly concerns itself with 'things' has already 'tacitly anticipated their ontological structure' (96). Yet for him it was not only appearances in this world that are to be studied, but how this world itself gets 'worlded' by us. Phenomenology does not take as its objective the intent to discern what really is |
It is in the context of these phenomenal descriptions of'mood' that Michel Henry takes up where Husserl and Heidegger left off, especially in regards to the affects of 'world', which effectively 'covers over' things in their obviousness. Henry follows Heidegger and Husserl in claiming that modern western thinking (and here we might add its concurrent'secularisms') define man according to only one type of seeing, which concerns the ordinary appearing of things in their clarity. This form of seeing is reducible to the problem of manifestation, to what Henry (2007, 252) interpre |
5 In order to rectify these problems, Henry turns even more radically to 'life', which is perhaps the most inconspicuous of phenomena for its being overlooked precisely due to its obviousness. Life is experienced foremost though the pathos or affective dimension that provides the very key 'internal' to accessing the appearing of the 'outside' transcendental world. 6 Thus, life is operative yet inconspicuous and challenges the form of appearing most cherished by our own secular condition: coming into the light, presenting in manifestation, and becoming obvious. For Henry (2007, 253 ) the privileging of ' |
Thus, is there a horizon of manifestation to which it is possible to be attuned that does not first necessitate an experience of this neutral world, and if so, might it allow insight into a better understanding of the appearing of 'the world' itself? 8 The aims of this paper are threefold: to further delineate the finer details of Henry and Heidegger's interpretations of 'world', to demonstrate how the supposedly open, public, and neutral world that is so easily taken for granted can be 'overcome' and presented as a phenomenon, and to provide one more angle of understanding the world that seems neglected |
Transcendental constitution is a central possibility for Dasein as ek-sisting, as it is never a 'worldly real fact ', (1927, 22) as present-at-hand. Heidegger ultimately comes to treat world in a way that it becomes to a degree intertwined with Dasein itself, as it is in the world that Dasein's cares are crafted and conditioned. Caring (Heidegger 2001, 68) When meaningfulness is ascribed to the world in a determinate manner, those forms of meaningfulness are endured and lived-out through worldly (weltlich |
This provides a wider view on Heidegger's most formative phenomenological analysis of world in part 1, section 3 of Sein und Zeit in which an implicit question is posed: is it dubious to attempt to grasp 'the world-hood of the world as such', which would by necessity'show itself in "entities" within the world'? (SuZ, 65; BaT, 93). To arrive at a satisfactory answer, he demonstrates the two ways 'world' thus far has been conceived falsely according to a dichotomy in need of being overcome. On one hand the'materialist' |
Each and every entity, the whole world that we talk about straightforwardly and that is the constant field (pre-given as self-evidently real) of all our theoretical and practical activities -all of that suddenly becomes unintelligible. Every sense it has for us, whether unconditionally universal or applicable case by case to individuals, is, as we then see, a meaning that occurs in the immanence of our own perceiving, representing, thinking, evaluating (and so on) lives and that takes shape in subjective genesis […] This applies to the world in each of the determinations [we make about it], including the |
Here, Heidegger questions the way of straightforwardly taking the world as this 'constant' and pre-given actuality, concluding that we in fact make faulty determinations about the world that do not include the careful consideration of ourselves, its constitutors. Yet at the same time, Heidegger (seemingly unlike Henry) does not want Dasein to get away from the world or stand outside it: '[A]ll "pure" mental phenomena have the ontological sense of worldly real facts, even when they are treated eidetically as possible facts of a world…' and, Heidegger continues, '[ |
There is a stunning and fecund quality the world maintains, namely, in 'things' which also must be understood beyond their seemingly 'natural', clear, and objectively ontic conceptions. The sachheit or'material content' of things is the glue that holds the description of an encounter with phenomena together (BaT, 31). And this leads to another problematic, one Husserl once engageded via the interrelation between oneself and world. The world is both'subjectively' constituted by us, yet simultaneously constituting us and our concepts of it in a, shared and public way (a subjective grounding of |
Yet this again raises the concern of the subjective problem of constitution, thus prohibiting an understanding of world as a phenomenon outside Dasein. An entirely subjective world precludes any possibly'secular' or public world in which we can relate or come to agreement or 'consensus' (Habermas) concerning what appears to us in it. Thus, phenomena are those things that reveal Being, and therefore say something meaningfully intelligible to Dasein about Dasein in a given moment. Since the stop sign not only communicates information to me, but also a mood about me, it tells me something about which I care |
This finally leads back to the question of how the world itself can be a phenomenon. One particularly valuable aspect of the traditional conception of the world concerns its ontical meaning and the ways in which we relate with things present at hand in everyday life without inquiring into the 'worldly character' (Weltmäsigkeit), the 'worldhood' (weltlichkeit) or 'worlding' of the world. To turn to the subjective constitution of the world in its most ontological of senses, with Dasein as the ultimate screen on which all things project themselves, is not to have data that is beyond myself, |
Although Heidegger's 'phenomenology of the inconspicuous' does not get formulated until his last Seminar in Zähringen in 1973, he occasionally referenced 'inconspicousness' throughout his work. His seminars on Heraclitus, for example, allow for an analysis of inconspicousness, as it relates to 'world', as does his 1966 'Seminar in Le Thor', in which Heraclitus' κόσμος is interpreted as referential to not only the 'order' of things, but also to how they show themselves in their'shining |
Precisely the opposite of the world championed by our secular imaginaries today, a Heraclitean sense of world was the space that, contrary to an 'impure' or profane banality, inconspicuously held a shining and radiating potential. The senses and meanings of appearances in/of the world, although radiant, did not'shine' in ways we typically understand today. They shone inconspicuously in ways not readily seen or noticed, without drawing attention. The world's mystery was that it did not shine in a 'clearly visible' (conspicuus) manner, and |
Roughly 30 years prior to the Le Thor seminars, Heidegger (1984, 122) refers to Heraclitus' quip that'Asses choose hay rather than gold' for it is in the 'quiet gleam' of simplicity that the mysterious and uncanny appear from within the world. It is a matter of being-in-the-open or open-here that speaks conceived world as not only the space of'revealing' or visibility, but also, according to the definition of truth, as 'concealing'. An attunement to the world's inconspicuousness is a |
9 Essence, in other words, as the basis of how the world is worlded, is made up of, and enacted by, this melding of revealing and concealing. He goes to lengths to show how phusis is not the 'invisible', but rather the 'inconspicuous' in its mode of appearance, as he puts it in his other seminars on Heraclitus in GA 55 (Heidegger 1943). 10 Thus 'World is enduring fire, enduring rising in the full sense of phusis'. The way to be attuned properly to the world is to |
Despite his repeated criticism of the history of western metaphysics and his own efforts to put an end to it, Heidegger's phenomenology recognized […] only the phenomenological presuppositions that had guided, or rather misguided, this thought from the start. By inexorably and ingeniously unveiling the implications of the Greek concept of phenomenon, these presuppositions led to the truth of the world being laid bare. This phenomenology was not about things but rather about nothingness, not about what is shown, but rather the 'unapparent' [i.e. inconspicuous]. Far from turning us away from the world and its |
11 Some have understood (mistakenly, in my estimate) that Henry wishes to open-up phenomenology to new intimacies with the invisible, the 'not here' that is therefore reducible to speculation. However, Henry expresses precisely the opposite intentions: to turn phenomenology to its most originary and immanent of experiences via a genealogy of auto-revelation. What has perhaps led some to think Henry's approach is a turn to the putatively not-given is the paradox that, for Henry (1973, 58), the most originary immanence is not experienced objectively: 'nothing of ourselves |
12 This is consistent with the Greek liaprein (to persist), and for Heidegger, this perseverance is not a 'permanence', but a presencing beyond the moment (jetz vuv nunc) that points to the basic form of human life -dwelling. To dwell is to be a life lived in particularity and in accord with the contingency of experience that effectively entails belonging somewhere and, for Dasein, being in the world. It is in fact on the grounds of this most originary of experiences through the affective dimension (Heideggerian mood, Husserlian expression, |
The first trait is that the appearing of the world is a matter of being 'outside of self', exterior, other, and different. This exteriority is predicated upon 'difference', which is a division of distance. It is the setting at a distance of things that allows things to appear to me 'in the horizon of the world'. (Henry 2007, 244). The second trait of 'the how' of the world' s appearance follows from the first in that its appearing (seeming, in this case, or scheinbar) is not only on the basis of 'difference', |
Henry arrives at these conclusions in part because he thinks the outside world is capable of being bracketed because of the self-affection of life, which is interior to the exterior activities of the world. The everyday events in the world are only sometimes giving rise to feelings, for not all feelings are attached to activities in the world, and therefore 'affects' are the binding material between ourselves and the world. 13 One problem that arises in this context is that the state of being-affected is the being-affected-by-some-thing. Just as there are no empty significations, there are also no empty emotions or affections |
There are of course some obvious concerns that Heidegger especially would have leveled at this approach for its seemingly all too subjectivist account of the relation with world. How can the world's reality be associable with the outside without some level of objectivity, and to what degree might the interiority of 'life' be devoid of the influence of the seemingly totalizing influence of one's world, especially if the'reality that constitutes the world's content is life'? (Heidegger 2003, 107). Does this not get reduced to the dialectic between 'inside' and 'outside' in a way that |
14 Waldenfels (1998, 38) expresses (author's translation) a similar concern: 'does not the negative characterization of self-affection as non intentional, non representational, and non sighted or non ecstatic bear persistent reference to the world relation it purports to suspend?' The Weltbezug or world relation is indeed held together by life, yet might not the self-affectivity of life provide for a lived intelligibility of living, that is of something to live for that one finds and founds in the world? Also, what of the seemingly stark contrast between the invisible and visible that at points seems |
15 Henry (2007, 256) begins to address these questions with some degree of sufficiency by turning to the body for further elucidation, namely, how there are two senses of how 'the body is the appearing of the world'. Bodies are revealed in the world, in exteriority, yet they also harbor interior elements and'sensual qualities'. Second, the body is the opening through which we access 'this world itself'through an '"outside of self " as such' (257). The body is the suturing of phenomenon and manifestation as we are properly living in our worlds. Henry's (2007 |
The world itself appears, and does so in inconspicuous ways. When one truly experiences 'objects in their how' (Gegenstände im Wie, as Husserl put it) they appear via the appearing of the world itself, and one operates with implicit (and therefore in-need-of-unfolding) conceptions of phenomenality that the objects in the world therefore dictate. This is problematic for Henry (2007, 243) as 'the conception of phenomenality that is derived from the perception of objects in the world […is] in the final reckoning, the appearing of the world itself '. |
To sum up, Henry's understanding of the world is the transcendentally'second order' of experience after one finds oneself 'affected' by the world, which is a result of the auto-revelation of life. To be affected by the world is to first experience oneself as 'living'. That is, the world is the content in which one is affected, and therefore 'affection' or moods (Stimmungen) are the 'first experience' one has with oneself, and with the world. Life is the most overtly obvious and inconspicuous of phenomena. As inconspicuous, life |
One question then becomes: what are the unique ways according to which the world presents itself? For Henry, the disclosive dispositions and affects are the binding material between us and the world's presentation (not merely the phenomenal data it presents); this is the case irrespective of whether or not it is possible to get 'beyond' the world in any originary, non-temporal way. Despite Henry's attempt to house transcendental life 'here' immanently, and to get a layer below the visible/invisible dichotomy, his approach to life and world may still rely upon a distinction between inside/outside. Is this |
Although Henry and Heidegger offer differing accounts concerning how it is possible to 'overcome' the world, they both: hold that the world can appear as a phenomenon, recognize the need to get beyond the presumption that the world is the fundament upon which all things invisibly, ordinarily, and neutrally come to take shape and appear, and have a rich understanding of disclosive moods, sensations, impressions, affections, that are essential in the presentation of the world. Henry and Heidegger propose that by locating a time and space in which one can experience the very 'worlding of the world' itself as it |
In synthesizing the insights of both thinkers, it is not only the world itself that is to be bracketed, but also the world's forms of presentation, which tend to be overlooked by merit of their seemingly straightforward or ordinary givenness. The world is a phenomenon that phenomenalizes in a way seemingly distinct from other phenomena, as it presents itself inconspicuously and hides its phenomenalization in a mirage of neutrality. That which appears 'neutrally' is precisely what is perhaps the most non-neutral: what is most formative and essential tends to obscure its presence inconspicuously, and 'worlds' (along |
fully. Yet at the same time, if affects have the revelatory power to manifest worlds then there must be some means by which we can experience their disclosure. A Phenomenology of the inconspicuous can give further clarification into the particular forms according to which phenomena hide, which sheds further light on things as they are simultaneously present and absent. What is inconspicuous is paradoxically obvious (the ob viam or 'being in the way') yet hidden, is unobtrusive (unauffällig), not shiny, (glänzend), bright (leuchtend) or apparent (offenbar). |
One point Heidegger and Henry seem to not take interest in is the stunning fact that the world operates with an uncanny ability to hide itself and remain hidden amidst these moods and affects. The world appears and presents itself as neutral. It may be that this is one key to understanding the new secular condition, which conceives the world not as a phenomenon, but as a metaphysical, invisible, inexhaustible space. The world shrouds itself as seemingly invisible, and remains uniquely hidden by not discharging its phenomenal content. It is this attempt at a form of hiding, this attempt to shroud itself and become incon |
It is not by 'getting over' the world, or attempting to conjure 'invisible' phenomena whose metaphysics entrap our very thought of the world that give us access to it, but rather, it is by turning within the world to our very affective relations with it that allow a grasping of a 'world view' via a recognition of how this relation works. Instead of a neutral stage upon which phenomena play to entertain us, the world might be understood as a kind of 'backboard' against which thoughts, moods, and experiences are cast, and from which they 'bounce' back to us. It is |
17 As Heidegger (2001, 34) recognized in his Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle, even if one presumes a multi-laminated world view, it is never the world itself that is called into question, but its mirage: the systemic and'synoptic order' of characterizing the various 'values' in/of life. It thus is not enough to stand back from the world and 'view' its presented content, but rather, to experience its own coming into appearance. Until the post-secular can begin to articulate a different understanding of the world's appearance (which may begin with varied |
1. Calhoun (2010, 36) for example, recently conceived of the secular as perhaps more accurately describable as counter-eternal ('the root notion of the secular is not in contrast to religion, but to eternity'), yet this definition can only be applicable in the case of a rather limited definition of'secular'. 2. A recent collection of essays (edited by Barbieri, 2014) on the post-secular question has sought to bring further clarity to the thus far ambiguous manifold of meanings of the term. There, Barbieri describes how the post-secular has been engaged according |
4. This interpretation of Heidegger offering a means to think beyond the secular hypothesis may be controversial in the context of contemporary interpretations of his work in French phenomenology. As Schrijvers (2005, 314) claims, Lacoste holds that Heidegger's understanding of 'world' is a'secular one': 'Lacoste asks whether Dasein, and the hermeneutic of its facticity is not merely a hermeneutics of secularization. Can and must we assume that this "being-in-the-world" and its corresponding anxiety is the most original and fundamental characteristic of human |
Modem genetics has thus far worked principally with the theory of the gene. It now needs the aid of additional tools to work out the genetic understanding of the great majority of complex hereditary qualities of plants, animals and man. Practically all of the structural and functional qualities of the many species with which students of evolution work belong to this same category of qualities too complex to be resolved by the theory of the gene. Also, in the same class we must list most of the inborn human qualities with which anatomy, physiology, medicine, psychology, education, the fine arts, athletics and religion are concerned. As anatomical or physiological entities |
When we find a quality which is thus definitely measured, and which tends strongly to "run in the family," and which, after continuous effort cannot, without warping the observed facts, be made to fit into previously found rules of heredity, no matter how general such rules may seem, we must not throw away the observed facts; we must throw away our notion that the facts must of necessity fit the previously found rules, and start anew the search for the Formula of Heredity by which Nature has transmitted the particular quality from one generation to the next. It is well to find out how-it-is before we speculate on why |
This was the case with racing capacity of the Thoroughbred horse. The yard-stick had first to be invented for measuring quality of performance before a reliable formula for the inheritance of racing capacity could reasonably be sought. This was done by correctly intercompensating sex, age, weight-carried, distance-run and speed. The constituent units of this yard-stick are years for age, pounds for weight-carried, furlongs for distance-run and seconds per furlong for speed. The practical arts, aided by the science of physics, long ago standardized these constituent yard-sticks of racing capacity. This fact made possible the |
The next task is to settle on a prediction-basis-that is, to decide what shall constitute M. We may let the value of the measured subject-quality in the sire alone constitute the prediction-basis; or we may let it be such measure in the dam alone; or we may take the value of the sire, plus the value of the dam, and divide the sum by two; or, as Galton did in the case of human stature, we may make into a prediction-basis the stature of the father, plus the stature of the mother times 1.08, and divide the sum by two. This gives the |
At this point it should be mentioned that both the particular group of antecedent near-kin selected for the prediction-basis-index, and the relative stresses given to individual antecedent kin, are always subject to revision in the direction of a better prediction-basis or M. If, for example one feels that the sire should be given ten per cent more stress than he actually was given in the working formula, M should be revised accordingly. If such revised formula gives a better prediction-basis, that is, a steeper and more diagonal Manerkon, then the "feeling," whatever its cause or reason may have been |
The question arises "How can we have two different prediction-bases, that is, two different M's, for the same parents, each giving a different probability-distribution of offspring values, and both of them be true?" This question belongs to the philosophy of probability rather than to the use of probability in such researches as the present one. Philosophers recognize the "difference between truth and probability." The rule "100 per cent true or 100 per cent false" is not the classification of probability studies. Prediction made by probability mathematics may be good or bad; we may have a good prediction-basis or a poor one, both |
Next it is necessary to decide upon R, the offspring-class-range or "the thing predicted." With a great many data to be used in finding the specific formula for the inheritance of the selected trait, a relatively narrow offspring-class-range can be selected. This is, of course, desirable. In Galton's stature studies he settled upon one inch as the class-range both for mid-parents and for offspring. To illustrate this point, in one traitstudy the offspring-class-range might consist in 1.5 centimeters, in another in 0.2 of a gram, and in still another in 1.166 seconds. |
We now come to K. In all cases the Formula of Heredity makes prediction in terms of K, that is, of the probability that the particular preindicated offspring will fall into any offspring-class-range selected from the whole series of such ranges. The mathematical summation of all such probabilities for a given prediction-basis, or M value, must always equal 1.000. This is one check on the mathematical correctness, but not, of course, on the biological principles underlying the Formula of Heredity. The next step-the real task-is to find a formula which will manipulate the M and R values decided upon, |
The principal aim of the Formula of Heredity is to provide an accurate mathematical picture of how Nature transmits, from one generation to another, qualities which are designated as inborn, constitutional or hereditary. Such a formula should use the minimum of "straight-jacketing" of the actual observed data. This means that in handling each group of data, for which a constituent curve of the final formula is sought, we must "bend the curve and not the data." It means also that in all preliminary computations the original data-distribution must be preserved as long as possible. That is, whenever possible "use observed data instead |
Each formula permits, but does not require, symmetry in the particular functional curve for + M and for -M values. In the Second Structural Unit, Kf, = (jM + kM2)( C -M) + (IM + mM2)(C + M) + n, there are five basic constant, j, k, 1, m and n. Of these, j, k and n are in the + M region, and 1, m and n are in the -M region. In the Third Structural Unit, oi = (pM + qM2)(C-M) + ( |
The w-group constant thus readjusts the y-coordinate to any position from its first readjustment which gave only the desired x-co6rdinate. Since the section of each FC curve used must originate at M = 0, and FC = 0 the final w-group constant in the FC formula is always zero. In the Kf, and a, formulas, the final w-group constant is generally +, but it may be zero or-. NOTES: I. The Basic Formula K = f(M,R) presents an accurate mathematical picture of Nature's behavior in governing the inheritance of all measurable qualities which in any degree depend upon |
III. In operation the Formula of Heredity must behave like a machine well designed for its purpose. When we put into it accurate data on antecedent near-kin measurements for a selected trait, the formula must turn out a reliable statement about the possession of a selected trait by the pre-indicated offspring. USE: I. Immediate The Formula of Heredity. This Formula, K = f(M,R), fits very closely the data for any set of observations on the inheritance of any somatically measurable trait or quality, and it provides the quantitative description of the behavior of heredity as essential to the more accurate genetic analysis |
In the geometric analysis of the Formula of Heredity it is noted that there are only three "structural units." Let us make an analogy to ship building. Although the thing we are building is not a ship, it is a manerkon, "a sort of ship turned wrong side out," still its structural units are closely analogous. The first structural unit of the manerkon is the curve of Offspring-fluctuation-centers plotted as FC = f (M). This ground-curve is comparable to the keel of a ship. The next structural unit is the Kfc, plotted as Kf, = f ( |
While both manerkonic and Mendelian analyses can be -used successfully as tools on the same problem, still each type, of analysis is essentially suited to the study of some special type of trait which definitely "runs in the family." Mendelian genetics is particularly suited to the analysis of qualities which can be attributed to definite genes which are traced in their development from the chromosomes to the somatic adult, and which genes can be traced genetically in their segregation and recombination. Manerkonic analysis is essentially suited to those very complex somatic traits, whether functional or structural units, with which we are primarily concerned in the evolution of species, |
In scientific study accuracy of prediction is one of the best proofs of soundness of interpretation. In most Mendelian studies the best prediction does not state with certainty what a particular pre-indicated offspring will be like, but, from a mating of a given genetic type, it computes the probability that the offspring will possess a certain trait, or a certain complex of segregable qualities. The actual trait-distribution among a large number of offspring, produced by the same genetic type of parents, tests the soundness of the particular prediction. So, in manerkonic analysis of the genetics of qualities which are variable but not definitely segregable as entities |
A still different type of use has been made of the General Formula of Heredity. One of its constituent formulas, namely, FC = f(M). has supplied the set-up for determining the direction and measuring the rate of evolution. This analysis brings out clearly that in evolution the thing to measure is not the difference between the somatic mean of the parents and the somatic mean of the offspring, but rather the difference between the somatic mean of the parents and the "point of no biological regression," which might properly be called the "genetic mean." By the use of FC = f(M) these "two means" can |
The interpretation is also confirmed by Aristotle's claim that the relation of soul to body is parallel to that of sight to the eye.7 I shall follow Aristotle below, by thinking of the soul as a set of capacities. The conception does, incidentally, have one great advantage, namely that we undeniably have a soul of the kind Aristotle describes. At least, we have a soul, if this means that we have the capacity to grow, perceive and think. But it must be admitted that Aristotle sometimes adds the difficult idea that we have a capacity to perceive and grow which explains our perceiving and growing.8 (iii) |
Aristotle's conception of the soul is much broader than this. He takes the view which Descartes castigates, that the nutritive processes are a function of the soul. Plato and others had attributed a soul to plants.10 Plato had 7 DA 412b17-4I3a3. Willie Charlton and Professor Wiggins have pointed out that Aristotle sometimes thinks of the soul as that which has capacities, i.e. the person (Charlton, Aristotle's Physics Books I and II (Oxford, I970), pp. 70-73; Wiggins, Identity and Spatio-T |
10 Plato Timaeus 77A-B. Empedocles believed he had in a previous incarnation been a bush (fragment II7 in Diels, Die Fragmente Der Vorsokratiker). It may have been because of his belief that souls could be reincarnated in plants that Empedocles forbade the eating of beans (fr. I41). But members of the Orphic sect allowed that some or all vegetable food lacked a soul (Euripides, Hippolytus 952). coupled this view with another current view, that plants had sensations and desires.11 Aristotle retains the first idea |
An excellent account of Aristotle's biological extension of the concept of soul is given by Solmsen in the American Journal of Philology, loc. cit., note 69 below. 13 A major function of the soul, among early Greek philosophers, was to cause motion (DA 403b26; 405bII; 4o9bI9). Did the soul always cause motion by means of some mental activity? Aristotle implies not in the case of Democritus (DA 4o6b24-25), though in this particular instance Aristotle's testimony is suspect. According to another conception, the function |
For Plato, one function of the soul was to cause motion, but it caused motion by means of some mental activity (Laws 896E-897A). I do not believe that Timaeus 36E says otherwise. and water to a soul within them,14 presumably because the four elements are lifeless things. But although the four elements do not have souls to move them, there are analogies between the movement of elements, the growth of plants, and the movement of animals. All three are processes directed towards an end, and all three are due to nature, which in Physics II.I is defined as an internal |
According to later writings, desire in animals differs from the nature of a stone, in that it involves a physiological process in virtue of which desire is a cause of motion (DA I. i; Mot. 6-Io). It also differs in being intimately linked with other soul capacities, with nutrition, which maintains the organs in the right state, and with perceiving, imagining, conceiving and judging. For (Mot 6-8; II; DA III.9-II) an animal must perceive, imagine, or conceive the end desired, and, in some cases, the means to its realization. A human being may |
some of them conflicting (NE VII.3, Bekker's numbering), some changeable by training (NE II.I), some being only apparent goods, not real goods (NE III.4). attribute to Aristotle a Cartesian strand. Solmsen and Barnes attach importance to the fact that Aristotle makes perception an act of the soul. But given Aristotle's biological conception of the soul (which Solmsen has done so much to bring out), this tells us that perception manifests life, not that it manifests consciousness. G. R. T. Ross finds significance in Aristotle's calling perception an energeia and entelecheia. |
Turning to the case on the other side, we should notice that Aristotle has no word corresponding to'mental act', or to Descartes' cogitatio (consciousness). Charles Kahn has suggested that the nearest word is aisthanesthai (perceiving), for this covers a very wide range of mental acts.16 Nonetheless, as Kahn carefully points out, the word does not correspond to Descartes' cogitatio, for Aristotle draws a sharp distinction between thinking and perceiving. He never suggests that thinking is a kind of aisthanesthai. Nor, as we shall see, does he say of a |
In a very un-Cartesian way, Aristotle insists that, in some sense of 'is', every mental act is a physiological process. Thus anger is a boiling of the blood or warm stuff around the heart, in a sense of 'is' analogous to that in 16 In Aristotle, pleasure and pain (PA 666aI2), awareness of memory-images (DM 45obI4; i6; I8; 28); awareness of one's own acts of sense-perception (Sonm. 455aI7; DA 425bI2; NE II7oa29-bI); awareness |
There is another way in which Aristotle is fundamentally unlike Descartes. He does not divide up the world at the same points. We have already noticed that he does not treat mental acts as a single group, but makes a sharp distinction between perception and thought. Nor does he follow Descartes in trying to separate off from the group nutrition (note 9), 30 For the view that the organ takes on colour when we see, v. DA 424a7-I0; For further references to the idea that, when seeing, one not only receives, but also perceives, processes in one's eye-jelly, |
Of the three Aristotelian ideas that Brentano cites, the first two are used also by Barnes (note 4 above), but neither idea seems to prove the point. I have already commented on the second (p. 68 above). The first concerns receiving form without matter. It is nearly 34 always the sense-organ, or the perceiver, not the sense, which is said to receive form without matter. Brentano takes it in his first publication that this reception of form involves the object of perception being present in a non-physical way (pp. 80-8I; 86), and Barnes, |
The third Aristotelian idea that Brentano cites suits his case best. For Aristotle does say that the actualized object of sense inheres in the sense (if we read tei, the sense, not toi, the organ, at 426a4), and he adds that the actualized object of sense lasts only as long as the act of sensing (426ai 5-26). This fits with Brentano's first, and less explicit, claim that the object of 34 The exceptions seem to be cases where Aristotle has misleadingly borrowed the terminology of form without matter, to express the quite different doctrine that the act |
35 Having declined to regard the reception of form without matter as a physiological process, Barnes finds it difficult to attach any very precise meaning to the idea. In fact, the idea is connected with the organ's becoming like the object perceived (DA 429aI5-I6), and with the taking on of colours or temperatures (see DA 424a7-IO; 425b22-24; 427a8-9; 435a22-24). So it seems easier, and it is also appropriate in the historical context, to interpret the reception of form without matter in our way. This physiological interpretation has |
37 Subsequent authors have offered new criteria of intentional inexistence, in order to defend Brentano's idea that mental phenomena are distinguished by having intentionally inexistent objects. 'Most of us knew in I944 that Eisenhower was the one in command...; but although he was (identical with) the man who was to succeed Truman..., it is not true that we knew in I944 that the man who was to succeed Truman was the one in command...', i.e. We can't substitute 'the man who was to succeed Truman' for 'Eisenhower', and Chisholm uses this non-substitut |
But even if this particular passage does not support Slakey's materialist interpretation, we ought to take his suggestion seriously. For we could well expect Aristotle to be a materialist, seeing that so many of his predecessors were preoccupied with the physiology of mental acts. Many of their statements, at least if taken in isolation, could suggest that mental occurrences are simply physiological entities. And Aristotle, along with his successor Theophrastus, and later commentators who drew on Theophrastus, often interpreted early writers in this sense.39 Moreover, many of Aristotle's own remarks, if taken in isolation, seem to suggest |
But these statements should not be taken in isolation. They must be read against the background of Aristotle's full theoretical statements in the De Anima. The two main theoretical statements are very prominently placed. One comes in the opening chapter of the first book (403a3-bg9), the other in the closing chapter of the second book, where it rounds off the discussion of the five senses (424b3-I8). We should remember these fuller explanations when we encounter the more hasty expressions which we have been looking at. Of the two theoretical statements the first is that which says that the physiological process is only the material cause of anger |
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