Draft Papers by J.W. Hoctor
When undertaking philosophical research one often wonders about current society, and cannot help ... more When undertaking philosophical research one often wonders about current society, and cannot help but notice the irrationalities of contemporary consumer capitalism. A philosophical method which predicted much of the teleology of capitalism is Critical Theory. For this reason, this paper explores the methodology of the early Frankfurt School and demonstrates why it is their radical interpretation of instrumental reason which sets it apart from other types of philosophy. However, it should be noted, the purpose of the essay is not to justify Critical Theory. Any justification warranted by the essay will be as a function of its applicability to a contemporary case. With this in mind, the paper uses the work Dialectic of Enlightenment to render aspects of Facebook as a contemporary capitalist phenomenon intelligible
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Manspreading is a practice whereby men spread their legs on public transport taking up two or mor... more Manspreading is a practice whereby men spread their legs on public transport taking up two or more spaces. The practice has now become considered a type of anti-social behaviour and has received massive attention in the media in recent times. However, there is to my knowledge no academic literature on this topic and as a result many unsubstantiated claims have been made about this phenomenon. For this reason, this paper aims to introduce manspreading as a topic for serious debate. To do this, I take two implicit and explicit presuppositions made in popular literature about this particular type of male bodily comportment. That is one the notion that manspreading is a fixed corporeal feature and two; that it is the product of a few insecure men. To disprove these, I utilise a number of influential philosophers who have written on the body and gender. I conclude, by suggesting that manspreading should be banned on confined public spaces but I also urge caution in how we deal with male bodily comportment in future.
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The Bystander effect is a social phenomenon which holds that people’s ability to help reduces whe... more The Bystander effect is a social phenomenon which holds that people’s ability to help reduces when amongst a crowd. Utilising the phenomenology of Martin Heidegger, I explore why the presence of others can cause inaction in bystander situations. I argue that people have an over-reliance on each other to make sense of the world. As a result, there is a lapse in one’s generic understanding of the world which is caused by a difficulty in determining which social norm one ought to follow. I argue, as a consequence of this collapse in mutual understanding, inaction becomes the norm. Following this, I examine the anomalies of the Bystander Effect with a particular focus on helping strangers who had no prior relation to the victim or medical training. I determine using the Heideggerian notions of ‘resoluteness’ and ‘forerunning’ that these people help because they can interpret a situation independently of others. I conclude, by suggesting these strangers may be an interesting topic for future research.
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Conference Papers by J.W. Hoctor
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The overall aim of this project is to describe intersubjectivity in twins, however, before this i... more The overall aim of this project is to describe intersubjectivity in twins, however, before this it is necessary to carry out a pre-phenomenological investigation, the aim of which is to make our prejudices about twinship explicit, which in turn, will open the phenomenon to a phenomenological analysis. Prejudices should not be understood in their everyday sense. Rather, in phenomenology " prejudice " is a technical term. Prejudices condition how something appears as meaningful for us—they colour and shape our perceptions. Therefore, we should not understand this technical term in either a negative or positive sense. To make the prejudices that colour our experience of twins apparent, I turn to the social imaginary, which, according to Charles Taylor, is the background understanding that gives shared meaning to our common social world. The paper explores visual and literary representations of twins, which demonstrate three values we unequivocally associate with them – sameness, togetherness and closeness. Alone, these values do not represent the prejudices of twinship, rather, these become apparent once we locate twins in relation to these values, namely, at their extremes. In fact, twins are characterised as the extremes of these values, so much so, that very often, we depict them as physically and cognitively conjoined, and twinship as monstrously singular. Consequently, one underpinning prejudice becomes apparent. Precisely, a twin is merely half an individual that only functions correctly as part of a supra-individual unit. I then turn my attention to theoretical accounts of twinship to ascertain if this prejudice correlates. I argue, while researchers mainly focus on issues with personality and identity formation, the underpinning prejudice is approximately the same. That is, twinship is the consequence of two failed selves which end up forming a single entity or we-self. In other words, the self – other distinction allegedly is lost in twinship.
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Recent sociological and cultural analysis points to one overarching conception of twinship that p... more Recent sociological and cultural analysis points to one overarching conception of twinship that pervades our social imaginary. In the West, we seem to imagine twins as occupying a single subject position. Put differently, many conceive twinship as constituting a supraindividual or we-self. Hence, I explore how this so-called we-self arises by utilising the narrative account of self. I turn to twins' accounts of autobiographical memory, which demonstrates that they construct a we-narrative to give consistency to their wealth of shared experiences. However, I argue that twins do not construct their we-narrative for themselves. Rather, they develop the narrative so that others can comprehend them. To understand this, it is necessary to clarify the phenomenology of doubles. That is, what occurs when a singleton has experience of identical looking twins. I argue that a phenomenological experience of twins creates ontological uncertainty in one's practical experience, because they cannot easily assimilate twins into a normative model of selfhood. This, in turn, removes the difference between each twin, and thus, they are reduced to a singular entity. This then becomes the basis of the narratives that singletons tell about twins. The process then becomes circular, as twins— in order to make themselves comprehensible to others—construct a we-narrative, which only serves to reinforce the notion of the we-self. Thus, it becomes evident that twins cannot be characterised as a supra-individual or we-self, rather, for a twin, twinship is a joint enterprise which includes a sense of self and other. Consequently, I argue that the phenomenology of doubles points to a limitation of narrative understanding. More precisely, placing others within unifying narratives runs the risk of what Levinas calls totalisation. Put crudely, narratives fail to respect the otherness or alterity of the other as it removes their differences to make them coherent and comprehensible.
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A common view that pervades psychoanalytic literature is that, twinship is a result of each twin ... more A common view that pervades psychoanalytic literature is that, twinship is a result of each twin being a failed self which results in a singular entity or a we-self. Hence, I explore how this so-called we-self arises by utilising the narrative account of self. I turn to twins' accounts of autobiographical memory, which demonstrates that they construct a we-narrative to give consistency to their wealth of shared experiences. However, I argue that twins do not construct their we-narrative for themselves. Rather, they develop the narrative so that others can comprehend them. To understand this, it is necessary to clarify the phenomenology of doubles. That is, what occurs when a singleton has experience of identical looking twins. I argue that a phenomenological experience of twins creates ontological uncertainty in one's practical experience, because they cannot easily assimilate twins into a normative model of selfhood. This, in turn, removes the difference between each twin, and thus, they are reduced to a singular entity. This then becomes the basis of the narratives that singletons tell about twins. The process then becomes circular, as twins— to make themselves comprehensible to others—construct a we-narrative, which only serves to reinforce the notion of the we-self. Thus, it becomes clear that twinship is not the consequence of two failed selves rather it arises because of the embodied engagement of two subjects of experience or minimal selves.
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This paper engages a common view that pervades theoretical interpretations of twins—the notion th... more This paper engages a common view that pervades theoretical interpretations of twins—the notion that twinship is a result of each twin being a failed self which results in a singular entity or a we-self. Put differently, there is a widespread view that the self-other distinction is absent or lost in twinship. I demonstrate this by examining twin studies mainly from the psychoanalytic tradition. From this, we see that this assumption is so widespread that twins are considered to lack individuality due to the alleged pathologically interdependent nature of their twinship. Hence many hold that twins form a unit identity which enables them to operate as one person. Yet, twin's first-person accounts do not corroborate this view. Rather, they see their twinship as a joint enterprise which includes a sense of self and other. Yet, rather than acknowledging this, the literature reduces twinship to a form of psychopathology. I argue that this is a consequence of the assumption that twinship can be fundamentally understood as a result of each twin being a failed self which results in a we-self. In order to dismiss this claim, I turn to the notion of the minimal self, which situates the self in the mineness of one's first person experience. As a result, it will become evident that there is a self-other distinction in twin relations and their highly entwined but separate identities could not arise without this being so. I end by recommending, that these researchers broaden their understanding of selfhood by recognising the fundamental and basic experiential structures of the self. In turn, this will allow them to work from the position that twinship, rather than been the consequence of two failed selves, manifests due to the reciprocal engagement of two minimal selves or subjects of experience.
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Conferences Co-organised by J.W. Hoctor
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Dissertation by J.W. Hoctor
The relationship that monozygotic twins share has long been the wonder and envy of their single b... more The relationship that monozygotic twins share has long been the wonder and envy of their single born counterparts. However, there seems to be a lack in the academic literature which tries to decipher this relationship. For this reason, this study sets out to understand what is fundamental to the intersubjective relationship shared by monozygotic twins. The paper begins by removing false presuppositions from the study, namely, the notion that a ‘we-self’ is a fundamental aspect of intersubjectivity in twins. Following this, I take the varying accounts of intersubjectivity in phenomenology and perform a synthesis. To be precise, I argue intersubjectivity is contingent on a concrete encounter with a factual other and this is made possible by an apriori intersubjectivity, or to be precise, an innate socio-biological system. Moreover, there are empirical studies on infant imitation which suggest this to be the case. More importantly, they also argue that an infant is capable of this from birth. This forces us to ask a question, can twins engage in social behaviour in the womb? Using a study carried out on the kinematic profiles of twins in pre-natal development I argue this to be the case. This leads one to the conclusion that twins have a highly developed perceptual intersubjectivity which sometimes can be misinterpreted as mystical, and this is what the fundamental aspect of their relation consists of.
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I am not the author of this paper. I just want to share it with anyone who may be interested in t... more I am not the author of this paper. I just want to share it with anyone who may be interested in twins.
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Draft Papers by J.W. Hoctor
Conference Papers by J.W. Hoctor
Conferences Co-organised by J.W. Hoctor
Podcasts by J.W. Hoctor
Dissertation by J.W. Hoctor
Talks by J.W. Hoctor
Teaching Documents by J.W. Hoctor