Subject of Experience

The starting point of the present work is the intuition that it is conceivable that I was a different
person than the one that I am, i.e. that it is conceivable that “I” would have existed even if the person that
I am had not, and vice-versa. The implication of this intuition as regards the nature of ourselves (of the
“I”), the possible relation between subjects of experience and persons, and the problem of personal
identity are explored.
The first chapter illustrates and explicates the basic intuition in more detail. The second chapter
offers an analysis of experience, a closer look at its content and the ways brain states can relate to
experience. The third chapter aims to elucidate that in virtue of which a person is (or could be) me, that is,
the “mineness” of experience. Utilizing the concepts from the previous chapters, chapters four and five
give further depth to the key question of this work ‒ i.e. why am I the person that I am? Whereas the
earlier chapters seek to explain how to understand this question so that it is not trivial, to cast light on the
concepts behind the words, the two penultimate chapters identify the assumptions we have about
ourselves, i.e. the common assumptions about which people one actually is (which experiences are mine),
and why, point out some of their problematic implications, and sketch a few alternative solutions. The
final chapter tackles the problem of personal identity, starting from the understanding that subjectivity,
i.e. the mineness of experience, is crucial to what we are.

keywords: subject of experience, mineness of experience, primary self-consciousness, pre-reflective selfawareness,
person, personal identity.

We know that we are, but what and why we are, that we do not know. What is the true nature of the Self? The term Self-Realization indicates the awareness of our true nature. This paper shows the direct way to Self-Realization. It also shows how to avoid the many sidetracks that are involved in the quest.

Analytic philosophy in the 20th century was largely hostile territory to the self as traditionally conceived, and this tradition has been continued in two recent works: Mark Johnston's Surviving Death, and Galen Strawson's Selves. I have argued previously that it is perfectly possible to combine a naturalistic world-view with a conception of the self as a subject of experience, a thing whose only essential attribute is a capacity for unified and continuous experience. I argue here that this conception of the self is unthreatened by the otherwise valuable considerations advanced by Johnston and Strawson. Both are inclined to identify selves-at-times with momentary episodes of experience (or centres or 'arenas' of consciousness). Both go on to argue, albeit in di erent ways, that individual selves cannot extend beyond the confines of these brief episodes. However, in so doing they give insufficient weight to an important phenomenological datum: the continuity of our ordinary experience. When the latter is recognized, and appropriately understood, it provides us with a secure basis upon which a more recognizable conception of the self can be constructed.

Le propos de cette recherche se place dans la perspective d’une archéologie historique en même temps que d’une théorie constructiviste et critique. La thèse a pour objectif de mettre en débat le recours au sujet et d’en pointer certaines limites. Il s’agit non seulement de contribuer théoriquement à une plus grande compréhension du débat, mais aussi d’analyser des conséquences pratiques du recours au sujet.  Tout d’abord, qu’est-ce qu’au juste "le sujet" ? C'est la question inaugurale de cette recherche, qu'on a volontairement voulu rendre la plus scolaire possible. Ensuite, nous nous demandons avec Deleuze et Guattari si cette notion est légitime : n'y a-t-il pas, en dernière instance, un usage politique pervers de cette notion, comme le montrent bien les signes d’appartenance tels les régionalismes, les nationalismes, les communautarismes... mais aussi tous les appels à la prétendue dignité du sujet (à laquelle devraient accéder par exemple les pauvres et les immigrés)? Pour aider à y voir plus clair, on a voulu comprendre la manière dont la philosophie du sujet est réappropriée et ce que cette philosophie produit de concret. L’enjeu est bien de mener une critique du subjectivisme humaniste dans la pensée occidentale, qui modèle cette pensée sur ce que Deleuze appelle « les normes de la représentation ». Mais interroger ce présupposé humaniste ne signifie nullement ici le remettre en cause. Cela signifie également questionner le pourquoi de sa domination.

"Table of Contents / Pagination is incorrect:
THE WAYS OF ARISTOTLE – ARISTOTELIAN PHRÓNÊSIS, ARISTOTELIAN PHILOSOPHY OF DIALOGUE, AND ACTION RESEARCH
Olav Eikeland
Preface 1
PART 1 – ARISTOTLE, SOCIAL RESEARCH, AND ACTION RESEARCH 3
1. Introduction – The Challenge of Phrónêsis 3
1.1 Three Kinds of General Theory 10
1.2 Aristotle and Critical Action Research 17
2. Action Research Approaching Phrónêsis 20
2.1 A Philosopher Defending Action Research 21
2.2 Making Social Science Matter 23
2.3 Abandoning Techniques 25
PART 2 – READING ARISTOTLE – LIMITS AND POSSIBILITIES FOR PHRÓNÊSIS 27
3. Virtues – Intellectual and Ethical 29
3.1 Particulars of Ethical Virtues 34
4. Phrónêsis and the Other Intellectual Virtues 38
4.1 Theoretical Knowledge, and Knowledge about Things We Influence 40
4.1.1 Overlaps and Intermeshes 45
4.2 Phrónêsis as an Intellectual Virtue 48
4.2.1 Excursus: Knowledge Forms and Ways of Knowing in Aristotle 49
4.2.1.1 Praxis, Poíêsis, Khrêsis, Páthos – And the Various Forms of the Epistêmai 50
4.2.1.2 Theoretical and Practical Truth 61
4.2 (Continued) Phrónêsis as an Intellectual Virtue 64
4.3 Phrónêsis and Rhetoric, Phrónêsis and Practical Syllogisms 70
4.3.1 The relationship to rhetoric 70
4.3.2 The relationship to practical syllogisms 75
5. Phrónêsis on Means and Ends, Phrónêsis and General Knowledge 76
5.1 Means and Ends, and Kinds of Causes 76
5.1.1 Poíêsis Makes Things, Praxis Makes Perfect 81
5.1.2 “Professional” Deliberations and Deductions 89
5.2 Knowledge, General and Particular 94
5.2.1 General Knowledge, Appropriate Knowledge, Knowledge in Action 94
5.2.2 Héxis (Habitus), and Empeiría (Experience) 103
5.2.3 Knowing Particulars 109
5.2.3.1 By What? 110
5.2.3.2 How? 111
5.2.3.3 Preconditions for a Universally Flexible Consideration 115
6. Developing and Defining Virtue 126
6.1 Developing Virtue 127
6.1.1 Epistêmê and Virtue through the Formation of Habit, Once More 130
6.1.2 What “Means” Means 136
6.1.3 Practical Development with a Hinge to It, the Question of Standards Again 138
6.2 Defining Virtue 145
6.2.1 Nóêsis as Dialogue, or, the Reason Why Aristotle Insists on Letting Phrónêsis Deliberate about Means Only 150
6.2.1.1 The Unfolded Know-How of Nous 152
6.2.1.2 The Topica and the Enfolded Habitus of Dialectics 154
6.2.1.3 The Philosopher, the Dialectician, and Experience 160
6.2.1.3.1 Dialogical Peculiarities 165
6.2.1.3.2 Dialogue and Experience 170
6.2.1.3.3 Basic Principle, Beginning, Medium, and End 182
6.2.1.4 Ways of Learning 185
6.2.1.5 Self-Evident First Principles? 191
6.2.1.6 Praxis1, and Praxis2 194
6.2.2 The Ethical Works do not Deliberate about Means, They Develop and Define Ends 198
6.2.3 Epistêmê, Virtue, and Phrónêsis Defined 205
6.3 Who Develops and Defines? The Art and Practice of Architectonics 214
7. Eudaimonía and Wisdom as “The Highest Practical Good”; Aristotelian Phron-Ethics, Theor-Ethics, and the Way of the Intellectual Commons 219
7.1 Kinds of Theory, Kinds of Practice 220
7.2 Ethics and Politics as Methodological Guidelines for Autonomous Practitioners 230
7.2.1 The Laws of Virtue 233
7.2.2 Tékhnê and Phrónêsis – At the Parting of the Ways 239
7.3 The Wisdom of the Commons – Common Wisdom 242
7.3.1 Tà Koiná – The Commons 247
7.3.2 The Common Skholê 252
7.4 Theor-Ethics and Primary Friendship 254
7.4.1 The Noetic “I” and the Psychological “Me” 259
7.4.2 Theorethical Interventions? 268
7.5 The Way of Theor-Ethics 269
7.5.1 Ethical Excellence – Settling with the Best “for Us”, i.e. for the Second Best “Absolutely” 277
7.6 The Ways of Politics – Continuous Learning in Common 288
7.6.1 Community: What Are the Things Common? 289
7.6.2 Oikos, Pólis, and Constitutions 294
7.6.3 Developing Concord – The Ethico-Political Role of Dialogical Gatherings 299
7.6.4 Different Concepts of Politics 310
7.6.5 Unity and Diversity in the Pólis 318
7.6.6 The Koinópolis as Panarchy – Aristocracy Suspended and Transcended 328
7.6.7 Religious Politics? 338
PART 3 – ARISTOTELIAN ACTION RESEARCH – WISDOM AND EUDAIMONÍA TRANSPOSED, SOCIAL RESEARCH TRANSFORMED 344
8. Neo-Epistemic, Dialogical Action Research 344
9. From Oikos to Pólis, and Beyond 349
10. Aristotle, Marx, and Modern Work Life 359
11. Aristotle Suspended 370
12. Epilogue 376
REFERENCES 381
Appendix 394"

Winner of Iran’s 31st World Book of the Year Prize

From the publisher:

“Sculpting the Self is a masterpiece. It is among the finest explorations of selfhood and subjectivity in contemporary philosophical literature. Muhammad Faruque’s approach is breathtakingly erudite, analytically precise, and extraordinarily synoptic. He draws effectively on a wide range of Western philosophical literature-classical, modern, and contemporary; on classical and recent Indian philosophy; on contemporary cognitive science; and especially, and with great nuance, on a great swath of the Islamic tradition from the medieval period through the work of Muhammad Iqbal. Each of these many threads is spun with great care. But most impressive is the skill with which they are woven into a profoundly illuminating tapestry. Sculpting the Self is not only a superb exploration of selfhood, but a master class in the practice of cross-cultural philosophy.”
—Jay L. Garfield, Doris Silbert Professor in the Humanities, Smith College and Visiting Professor of Buddhist Philosophy, Harvard Divinity School

"Philosophically dense but yet eminently accessible, this book is a landmark publication in the fields of Islamic Studies and the study of religion more broadly."
—New Books Network in Religious Studies

“Sculpting the Self is a rare but essential treat that presents a creative analysis of major thinkers in Islam, and demonstrates how one might fruitfully read their work to move towards a truly global study of selfhood and philosophy.”
—Sajjad Rizvi, University of Exeter

“Sculpting the Self is an impressive book. Situated at the crossroads between Western and Islamic philosophies of the self, both modern and non-modern, it offers a new way forward: a ‘multidimensional’ model that is richer, more expansive, and more inclusive than most theories available today. Smart, deeply informed, and engaging, Faruque’s book will be a cornerstone for future thinking about the elusive entity we call the self.”
—James I. Porter, Irving Stone Professor of Literature, Departments of Rhetoric and Classics, UC Berkeley

“In Sculpting the Self we are guided along the maze of the concept of the self in Islamic philosophy by one of the most promising, young global philosophers writing today. Muhammad Faruque’s breadth in this work is extraordinary, bringing many key pre-modern and modern Muslim philosophers from Iran and India into conversation with various currents in philosophy, consciousness studies, evolutionary theory, and neuroscience. The result is nothing less than a sophisticated, first of its kind account of Islamic philosophical conceptions of selfhood, personhood, and identity.”
—Mohammed Rustom, author of Inrushes of the Heart: The Sufi Philosophy of 'Ayn al-Qudat

“Faruque has delivered a tour de force study of selfhood across time and tradition. His expertise in Islamic thought, together with his facility with a wide range of sources and approaches, succeeds in bringing the self’s full spectrum into view. The ambition of his project is as rare as it is refreshing.”
—Charles M. Stang, Professor of Early Christian Thought and Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School

“Faruque’s book is a welcome attempt to engage the various strands of Islamic philosophical psychology with contemporary work on subjectivity and selfhood in the philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences. The approach is novel and should initiate a vigorous discussion concerning the contemporary relevance of the history of Islamic thought.”
—Jari Kaukua, University of Jyväskylä

“The variety of voices and sources, both Western and non-Western, bring to life the model of a multidimensional self especially in contrast to the reductionist models that Faruque critiques.”
—Sayeh Meisami, University of Dayton

“. . . a great survey on the study of self. Faruque develops a unique perspective in combining neuroscience and philosophy and offers a great conversation between Western, Islamic, and Eastern philosophers.”
—Ramazan Kilinc, University of Nebraska at Omaha

"This cross-cultural analysis of human identity or the self provides a brilliant and wide-spanning philosophical understanding of the current epistemological challenges in understanding selfhood. Faruque has amassed an extraordinary amount of source material in several European and Islamic languages by bringing the Islamic tradition into dialogue with the metaphysics of the East and West, including modern disciplines such as cognitive science, consciousness studies, evolutionary theory, and neuroscience—that offer a remarkable study of selfhood... This work will be important for mental health professionals seeking to better understand human identity as it is informed by the diverse cultures and their knowledge systems."
—The Humanistic Psychologist

"Explaining theories and conceptions of selfhood and subjectivity across Western, Islamic and Indian sources is no easy task; it is even more difficult to do so clearly, cogently and in a manner comprehensible to non-experts. ...Yet this is what Muhammad Faruque does in Sculpting the Self."
—Islam and Christian-Musim Relations

"In the perusal of contemporary philosophical literature, one rarely comes upon a work that engages in an analytic penetration of a philosophical topic with such erudition and cosmopolitanism. Faruque’s study draws on primary philosophical work from English, German, French, ancient Greek, Persian, Arabic, Urdu sources and then supplements them with the latest and most cutting-edge scientific and historical studies; this is all done in an elegant and inclusive manner. Indeed, this study is not only a comprehensive philosophical treatment of selfhood, but it is also a blueprint for an exemplary philosophical analysis which is not cramped by scholarly parochialism endemic to the run-of-the-mill academic essays."
—Comparative Philosophy

FROM THE BACK COVER: What is the essential nature of meaning? . . . . . This book answers by examining interpretive theories from the past and present. It finds that an historical struggle with meaning has been underway since the Reformation, a struggle that reaches crisis proportions in the 20th century. On the one hand, this crisis is mollified by Heidegger's hermeneutical phenomenology, which argues that we are always already in a meaningful relationship to the objects of the world. On the other hand, this crisis is exacerbated when phenomenology, structuralism, and aesthetic theory directly make meaning into an object of study. . . . . . . . . These historical developments culminate with the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, whose non-hermeneutical phenomenology delimits a cause of meaning said to be closely linked to the core of subjectivity. Intriguingly, Lacan's work reveals meaning to be sexual in nature. By integrating his notion of sexual difference with his work in discourse theory and topology, this book demonstrates how the subject's struggle with meaning can be suspended.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GENERAL DESCRIPTION: Broadly speaking, the majority of books on Jacques Lacan focus on the earlier periods of his career. They also tend to target the psychoanalytic clinical community, or else discuss his work in various political, social, and cultural contexts. But in almost all cases these books refrain from a detailed exegesis of his actual texts. They instead prefer to comment on his theoretical apparatus as a whole before turning to its practical implications. . . . . . This book positions itself against this grain. Firstly, it closely analyzes some half-dozen key Lacanian texts. This analysis is organized under a single thematic – the question of meaning – in order to advance the reader's understanding of the trajectory of Lacan's thought across his entire career, as well as to promote the book's thesis that the field of meaning can be suspended. Accordingly, an initial chapter takes up the hermeneutical tradition from Flacius onward. This is then supplemented by a chapter which surveys phenomenological, structuralist and aesthetic theories of meaning and their differing methods of textual analysis. Together these two chapters provide a unique context for the sustained analysis of Lacan's texts which begins in the third chapter, an analysis that forms the bulk of the book's content. This contextualization potentially widens the book's appeal to any scholar wishing to explore his relationship to those textual objects he interacts with on a daily basis. And because this book assumes the reader has little to no familiarity with Lacan, the reader will find patient explanations of the basics of his theories before slowly being led up to the more difficult theories of his late years. Again the argument is that Lacan has something to offer all scholars. His work is not just reserved for psychoanalysts. . . . . . It is with his late theories that the serious student of Lacan will find the book's most original contribution. For in the fourth chapter a detailed account is provided of how Lacan derived his infamous formulae of sexuation from Aristotelian logic. These formulae are then extensively discussed against the backdrop of interpretive theory and textual analysis, showing how these formulae capture much more than just the difference between the sexes. Strikingly, this difference is also found to run through meaning itself, something the final chapter aims to demonstrate. It does this by amalgamating three key components of late-Lacan: sexuation, discourse theory and his use of topological spaces. This amalgamation is a first in the literature. But this amalgamation is not just useful in demonstrating the book's thesis. It further suggests how seemingly divergent aspects of late-Lacanian theory can be made to work together.

The Jean-Paul Sartre conference ‘Existentialism is a Humanism’, which took place on Monday 29th October 1945 is a defense from the critics of the existentialism, especially from communists and Christians. Both groups agree that existentialism puts the emphasis ‘on the bad side of life’1. Marxist philosophy criticises the subjectivism of Sartre’s work. According to them, Sartrean existentialism values contemplation over action, which ultimately defines his theories as bourgeois. Sartre refuses mandatory values (such as Christian religious commandments or Kant’s Categorical Imperative) and he sees the invocation of transcendence as an exercise to escape from responsibility. Sartre is indeed defining himself as an “atheist existentialist”, and differentiating his existentialism from Marxism and from Christian existentialist theories such as those by Jaspers and Gabriel Marcelo.
His discourse is dominated by a wish to point out that existentialism presents itself as a philosophy with a message opposed to traditional metaphysics and that it implies a different way of understanding the human being. Affirming that “existence precedes essence”2 means deconstructing the static universe common to scholastic metaphysics and in mechanicism.
Drawing from the arguments developped in Sartre’s “Existentialism is a Humanism”, this essay will attempt to define humanism in Sartrean terms, as well as his notion of “existential commitment”, which discusses ideas of freedom in relation to commitment, assessing its validity. I will analyse the implications of such notions to argue that existential commitment is a starting point, which is valid for the development of the concept of commitment in the history of political thought, bearing in mind its various limitations.

When so much is being written on conscious experience, it is past time to face the question whether experience happens that is not conscious of itself. The recognition that we and most other living things experience non-consciously has recently been firmly supported by experimental science, clinical studies, and theoretic investigations; the related if not identical philosophic notion of experience without a subject has a rich pedigree. Leaving aside the question of how experience could become conscious of itself, I aim here to demonstrate that the terms experience and consciousness are not interchangeable. Experience is a notoriously difficult concept to pin down, but I see non-conscious experience as based mainly in momentary sensations, relational between bodies or systems, and probably common throughout the natural world. If this continuum of experience — from non-conscious, to conscious, to self-transcending awareness — can be understood and accepted, radical constructivism (the “outside” world as a construct of experience) will gain a firmer foundation, panexperientialism (a living universe) may gain credibility, and psi will find its medium.

"ABSTRACT:
    This study assumes the subject's pursuit of meaning is generally incapacitating and should be suspended. It aims to demonstrate how such a suspension is theoretically accomplished by utilizing Lacan's formulae of sexuation integrated with his work in discourse theory and topology.
    Part I places this study into context by examining scholarship from the established fields of hermeneutics, phenomenology, (post)structuralism, aesthetic theory and psychoanalysis in order to extract out their respective theory of meaning. These theories reveal that an historical struggle with meaning has been underway since the Reformation and reaches near crisis proportions in the 20th century. On the one hand this crisis is mollified by the rise of Heideggerian-Gadamerian hermeneutical phenomenology which questions traditional epistemological approaches to the text using a new ontological conceptualization of meaning and a conscious rejection of methodology. On the other hand this crisis is exacerbated when the ubiquitous nature of meaning is itself challenged by (post)structuralism's discovery of the signifier which inscribes a limit to meaning, and by the domains of sense and nonsense newly opened up by aesthetic theory. These historical developments culminate in the field of psychoanalysis which most consequentially delimits a cause of meaning said to be closely linked to the core of subjectivity.
    Part II extends these findings by rigorously constructing out of the Lacanian sexuated formulae a decidedly non-hermeneutical phenomenological approach useful in demonstrating the sexual nature of meaning. Explicated in their static state by way of an account of their original derivation from the Aristotelian logical square, it is argued that these four formulae are relevant to basic concerns of textual theory inclusive of the hermeneutical circle of meaning. These formulae are then set into motion by integrating them with Lacan's four discourses to demonstrate the breakdown of meaning. Finally, the cuts and sutures of two-dimensional space that is topology as set down in L'étourdit are performed to confirm how the very field of meaning is ultimately suspended from a nonsensical singular point known in Lacanian psychoanalysis as objet a. The contention is that by occupying this point the subject frees himself from the debilitating grip of meaning."

When so much is being written on conscious experience, it is past time to face the question whether experience happens that is not conscious of itself. The recognition that we and most other living things experience non-consciously has recently been firmly supported by experimental science, clinical studies, and theoretic investigations; the related if not identical philosophic notion of experience without a subject has a rich pedigree. Leaving aside the question of how experience could become conscious of itself, I aim here to demonstrate that the terms experience and consciousness are not interchangeable. Experience is a notoriously difficult concept to pin down, but I see non-conscious experience as based mainly in momentary sensations, relational between bodies or systems, and probably common throughout the natural world. If this continuum of experience — from non-conscious, to conscious, to self-transcending awareness — can be understood and accepted, radical constructivism (the “outside” world as a construct of experience) will gain a firmer foundation, panexperientialism (a living universe) may gain credibility, and psi will find its medium.

Different conceptions of the nature of subjects of experience have very different implications for the sort of relationship which exists between subjects and their experiences. On my preferred view, since subjects consist of nothing but capacities for experience, the ‘having’ of an experience amounts to a subject’s producing it. This relationship may look to be problematic, but I argue that here at least appearances are deceptive. I then move on to consider some of the ways in which experiences can seem to have subjects or owners, and argue that those who take a ‘sense of self’ to be an essential feature of all forms of consciousness may well be mistaken.

Aristotle has been continuously at the frontier of philosophical reflection for almost 2400 years. Throughout the 20th century the influence of his practical philosophy has been growing. His «non-modernist» concept of phrónêsis or practical wisdom is attracting increasing interest as an alternative to both «modernism» and «post-modernism». This book is a meticulous study of Aristotle's phrónêsis and its applications to the fields of personal development or character formation and of ethical virtues. It also relates phrónêsis to the wider context of Aristotle's theoretical philosophy and of his different ways of knowing, and to both theoretical and practical concerns within modern social and action research. The whole of Aristotle's thinking is radically practice-based and directed. However, it never loses its theoretical focus. His theoretical philosophy is fundamentally dialogical. Hence, the relevance of Aristotelian thinking is striking for the current reconfigurations in the social organisation of learning and knowledge production.

Most of the assumptions regarding the subject of enlightenment as such and supposed enlightened persons are just misconceptions based on beliefs and which therefore turn out to be completely erroneous. The purpose of this paper is to show why this is so.

Hume famously denied that he could experience the self. Most subsequent philosophers have concurred with this finding. I argue that if the subject is to function as a bearer of experience it must (1) lack sensory qualities in itself to be compatible with bearing sensory qualities and (2) be single so that it can unify experience. I use Douglas Harding's first-person experiments to investigate the visual gap where one cannot see one's own head. I argue that this open space conforms to the above criteria and hence is consistent with being the subject. I respond to the objection that this location is merely a lack of visual experience. I argue that this space also encompasses sound and touch properties and hence functions as a bearer for other sensory modalities. These first-person findings provide prima facie support for the view that the subject is a thin bearer of experience.

Si puo' sostenere che l'interiorità come spazio dell'esperienza trabocchi, nell'opera di Proust, di anteriorità; che il rapporto stratificato di memoria ed oblio, così come quello di desiderio e perdita, costituisca un palinsesto di reliquie che equivale per Proust a un'irrinunciabile riserva di senso; che la stessa questione del «moi profond» (del proprio) non possa fare a meno dello spaesamento e dello sradicamento che l'esperienza dell'altro impone all'orizzonte percettivo del soggetto  rimanendo così all'interno di una contraddizione profonda dai molteplici sembianti (sé-altro, proprio-estraneo, familiarità-lontananza). Ma sarebbe mai possibile, per una lettura della Recherche, evitare un confronto con quest'ordine di problemi?

Martin Jay, renowned intellectual historian from UC Berkeley, here examines these questions in a grand survey of the term’s use throughout the intellectual history of what was once called Western Civilization. Beginning with the ancient Greeks (of course), he reviews the surprising number of variations employed and assumed by philosophers, theologians critical theorists, and right up to the poststructuralists. Jay knows his territory and reading this survey of it — for anyone with any sort of background in the history of philosophy — is often as pleasant as hearing a familiar symphony well-played in a unique way.

Sublimation is an idea often used to give a psychoanalytic interpretation of artistic creativity. Focusing on the lyric speaker within the poem and considering the text as a mise-en-scène of poetic creation, the paper intends to investigate why sublimation could not be the right key to understanding the phenomenon. The subject’s dynamics, in modern poetry, show themselves as a continuous failure in the repeated attempt to possess the object. The speaker’s affective and cognitive desire is produced and constantly renewed by the impossibility of possessing the object (above all in its representation). But it is only in such a gap that the subject can exists. In order to feel desire, there should be an illusion of possession and representation. Subject and object create each other in lyric poem, and the former comes to coincide with the desire for the latter, it does not exist outside that desire.

Since lyric poetry shows itself as the unfolding of a subject that voices itself and is always involved in an object relation, it can be a privileged field of investigation for this kind of phenomena. Two poets will be taken into consideration: Thibaut de Champagne, a late trouvère who summons up the Provençal tradition, and Charles Baudelaire, one of the modern poets that have most deeply investigated the reality's lack of sense.

summary: I investigate the status of subjectivity in Integrated Information Theory. This leads me to examine if Integrated Information Theory can answer the hard problem of consciousness. On itself, Integrated Information Theory does not seem to constitute an answer to the hard problem, but could be combined with panpsychism to yield a more satisfying theory of consciousness. I will show, that even if Integrated Information Theory employs the metaphysical machinery of panpsychism, Integrated Information would still suffer from a different problem, not being able to account for the subjective character of consciousness.

Historically, Mīmāṃsakas probably started inquiring into a "subject” independently of the emergence of the controversy on the nature and existence of a Self which was deemed to extend throughout classical Indian philosophy. They were led to that theme because of the Vedic prescriptions related to the agent of sacrifice. As a matter of fact, Mīmāṃsakas also interpret Upaniṣadic statements about the ātman ("Self'') as referring to the agent of sacrifice. Such an agent is in turn identified by his/her desire for the result of the sacrifice. In summary, the sacrificial agent emerges as philosophical "subject” through his/her desire for something.

Since the subject is interpreted as, first of all, a desiring subject, it is necessarily active, because desire incites one to undertake actions. This stress on activity is typical of Mīmāṃsā (and, later, Kashmir Śaiva philosophy), against the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika and Advaita-Vedānta idea of a subject withdrawing from any kind of worldly concern, including knowledge. On the other hand, this desiring subject is not identified with the body, which is only said to be one of its instruments. Hence, the Mīmāṃsā position refutes any kind of physicalism (including the milder form of a subject unavoidably and originally inseparable from its body, as maintained by P.F. Strawson in Individuals, 1959) and stresses the willing dimension of the subject instead.

By maintaining this view, do Mīmāṃsakas aim at an ontology of the self, or at reconstructing our inner experience of the subjectivity-phenomenon? If the former is the case, can the Mīmāṃsā account face the challenges of modern and contemporary critiques of the self (reductionism, "Bundle theory", etc.)? Does it differ from R. Chisholm's approach of the self as "innocent until proven guilty"? These questions will be dealt with especially from the viewpoint of Rāmānujācārya, a late Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā author. As a tentative solution, the possibility is discussed, that Rāmānujācārya (and Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā) highlighted desire and action as key elements of subjectivity in order to address the problem of the subject's link with "its" body and of the subject self-recognition of itself as a subject.

This chapter charts the metaphysical consequences of taking Locke’s repeated claims that consciousness makes one’s self through discussing the several senses in which we are sensible beings for Locke. Examination of self as a thing that is the proper subject of divine reward and punishment and Locke’s concept of ‘state of sensibility’ reveals that ‘state of sensibility’ means our subjectively lived-through experiential reality, continuation of which means continuation of a single subject of experience. So, his claim about consciousness making one’s self concerns not a kind of access we have to an underlying real self, but entails that the reality of one’s being a subject of experience consists of its conscious presence to itself.

La propuesta de esta tesis es que la mejor manera de explicar la conciencia fenoménica es a través de dos ideas. La primera de ellas es la llamada teoría auto-representacional de la conciencia, que sostiene que un estado mental es consciente si y solo si se representa a sí mismo de manera correcta. Es decir, un estado mental es consciente si y solo si se auto-representa de manera correcta. La segunda de ellas son las descripciones de la conciencia de Sartre, las cuales dicen que toda conciencia es a la vez autoconciencia de sí, o de manera más precisa: toda conciencia posicional de un objeto es a la vez conciencia no posicional de sí misma. Además, parte de esta tesis consiste en clarificar y mostrar la cercanía de ambas ideas, explicando que la conciencia fenoménica es autoconciencia de sí y la autoconciencia de sí es auto-representación. Con esto tendríamos que la teoría auto-representacional de Sartre sería la mejor manera de explicar la conciencia fenoménica. También se argumenta a favor de una estructura no-egológica de la conciencia, y que no es necesaria la existencia de un Ego/Yo para la posibilidad de un sujeto de experiencia. La experiencia subjetiva sería autosuficiente.

This paper offers a Nietzschean theory of emotion as expressed by following thesis: paradigmatic emotional experiences exhibit a distinctive kind of affective intentionality, specified in terms of felt valenced attitudes towards the (apparent) evaluative properties of their objects. Emotional experiences, on this Nietzschean view, are therefore fundamentally feelings towards value. This interpretation explains how Nietzschean affects can have evaluative intentional content without being constituted by cognitive states, as these feelings towards value are neither reducible to, nor to be thought along the lines of, judgements, perceptions, or other mental states.

Resumen: Propondremos aquí un análisis de la narratividad de una forma discursiva recientemente aparecida, como son los blogs, en el marco de una teoría emergentista de la narratividad y de sus modalidades discursivas. Las características narrativo-discursivas de los blogs emergen de una base previa de prácticas comunicativas más básicas o menos específicas. Y la narratividad discursiva misma es un fenómeno emergente con respecto a fenómenos cognoscitivos y experienciales que le subyacen necesariamente y son la base sobre la cual definir su carácter emergente. Es decir, ha de haber procesos para que exista la posibilidad de que haya representaciones procesuales, y estas representaciones han de existir en formas simples antes de dar lugar a formas narrativas complejas, asociadas a contextos culturales y comunicativos específicos—como por ejemplo el desarrollo de la escritura interactiva en la Red.

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Blogs and the Narrativity of Experience
   
This paper undertakes an analysis of the narrativity of a form of discourse which has appeared recently (blogs) within the framework of an emergentist theory of narrativity and its discursive modes. The narrative/discursive characteristics of blogs emerge from a preexistent ground of more basic or less specific communicative practices; and narrative discursivity itself is an emergent phenomenon with respect to other cognitive and experiential phenomena. A number of formal and communicative characteristics of blog writing and of the blogosphere are discussed as emergent modes of experience within the pragmatic context of computer-mediated communication.

Ambivalence (as in practical conflicts, moral dilemmas, conflicting beliefs, and mixed feelings) is a central phenomenon of human life. Yet ambivalence is incompatible with entrenched philosophical conceptions of personhood, judgement, and action, and is denied or marginalised by thinkers of diverse concerns. This book takes a radical new stance, bringing the study of core philosophical issues together with that of ambivalence. The book proposes new accounts in several areas – including subjectivity, consciousness, rationality, and value – while elucidating a wide range of phenomena expressive of ambivalence, from emotional ambivalence to self-deception. The book rejects the view that ambivalence makes a person divided, showing that our tension-fraught attitudes are profoundly unitary. Ambivalence is not tantamount to confusion or to paralysis: it is always basically rational, and often creative, active, and perceptive as well. The book develops themes from Wittgenstein, Davidson, Sartre, and Freud. It engages with contemporary debates in Analytic Philosophy in addition to work ranging from Aristotle to Cultural Studies and Empirical Psychology, and considers a rich set of examples from daily life and literature.

Jill Schostak and I wrote this book as part of our evolving interest in doing research radically.  By radically we mean engaging with people's voices to learn how to create the conditions for social justice and for democratising all the organisations of everyday life.  We draw on our own research but also on the ways in which the media is used to shaw people's voices and behaviours.  We explore all the ways in which the desires and demands of elites are inscribed upon minds and bodies as well as how writing may create the conditions for counter inscriptions.  Writing research is to engage politically.  Whether it is the Arab Spring re-inscribing hopes for freedom, the Occupy Movement or young people challenging orthodoxies at home or in classrooms through use of the media, it is the power of writing in its broadest sense that makes the difference.

Dans cet article, je présente une conséquence théorique du « réductionnisme constitutif » d’après lequel nous, sujets d’expériences conscientes, sommes essentiellement des entités de nature conceptuelle dont l’existence est réductible à celle de notre vie mentale. La première section sera consacrée à une présentation du réductionnisme susmentionné ; puis dans une seconde section, je présenterai l’implication théorique évoquée en adoptant la stratégie suivante : en supposant que la prémisse réductionniste est vraie, nous verrons qu’il devrait s’ensuivre que tout cerveau peut être le support de notre vie mentale.

The second issue of the almanac «History and Theory of Culture» is dedicated to the anniversary of Professor of the Department of History and Theory of World Culture at the Faculty of Philosophy of Lomonosov Moscow State University Marina I. Sviderskaya. The almanac is a collection of articles, translations, and interviews devoted to various aspects of the philosophy of culture and history of culture. The almanac is unique in its thematic variety, wide coverage of the subject area of culture from its archaic layers (archeology of Neolithic, culture of Ancient India, Ancient Greece, Ptolemaic Egypt) through the European Middle Ages and Renaissance – to the culture of Modern times. The almanac is intended not only for specialists in the area of philosophy and history, but also for all those interested in the theory and history of culture.