What Phenomenological Pathology Can Teach Us About Anxiety Disorder: Anxiety Disorder as Self-Disorder with Disrupted Self-Specifying Processes

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Chu Ming Hon of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China   Abstract: The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to suggest that phenomenological studies of worldliness are crucial for dream research; second, to indicate that dream research can in return enrich our understanding of world-consciousness. Dreaming is a rare theme in the classics of phenomenology. It is not easy to determine the nature of dreaming in the light of other kinds of experience. As Jean Héring has neatly summarized, phenomenologists are divided by two opinions: dreaming is either perception or representation. However, as this paper aims to show, subsuming dreaming under either category is equally perplexing, for it will then become either a special case of perception, or a special case of representation. A solution is thereby proposed, according to which oneiric phenomenon should be studied in the light of its presumptive worldliness. Dreaming is special so long as it opens a field of experiences encompassing our being-there, to the extent that dream appears as if a reality. A phenomenology of dreaming therefore focuses on the borderline between dream and reality, in order to ascertain how far they can be confused. Such a study is preceded by controversies over the worldliness of dreams. For example, while Edmund Husserl and Theodor Conrad affirm that dreaming implies immersion in a dreamworld, for Jan Patočka and Jean-Paul Sartre dreams essentially involve the privation of worldly structure. Provided that worldliness is a minimal condition of the position of reality, determining whether dreams are worldly (welthaft) or worldless (weltlos) is decisive for determining how far dreams resemble reality. Phenomenological debates on the nature of dreaming will also prove crucial to dream research in general. Despite advanced methods of observation, pioneering dream researchers are still fundamentally divided regarding the experiential characters of dream. And a significant portion of their disagreement lies in the presumptive worldliness of dreams.   Biography: I am a doctor candidate in the Chinese University of Hong Kong. My research focuses on the motivations of phenomenological reduction, and extends to altered states of consciousness. In 2020, I have published a book on dreaming, titled Formen der Versunkenheit.     Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Wun Chung Yan of The University of Cologne, Germany   Abstract: In ordinary language, “common sense” is understood as certain “sense” that is taken for granted (selbstverständlich). However, is the “sense” of common sense an unquestioned feeling towards the world or is it rather certain common understanding of it? Through a phenomenological investigation of schizophrenia, I argue that the common sense does not only encompass both but also a third dimension, namely, the affective trust and familiarity (Vertrautheit) with the world constituted intersubjectively. In their study of schizophrenia, Blankenburg and Thomas Fuchs understand the common sense (Selbstverständlichkeit) lost in the schizophrenic patients principally as a kind of feeling or affectivity. Blankenburg terms it the Feingefühl and identifies it with the Heideggerian concept of Bewandtnis- and Verweisungszusammenhang, as distinguished from the objective apperception of things that remains unscathed. Fuchs, similarly, argues that it is the disorder and modification of the mood (Stimmung) into the Wahnstimmung that underlies the modification of lived-experiences of the patients characterized by their constant questioning (Infragestellung) of one’s existence and paranoiac delusions. Revisiting Heidegger’s account of Bewandtniszusammenhang as constituted by both understanding and attunement (Befindlichkeit), I contend with two concrete arguments that the basic sense of the world as Bewandtniszusammenhang is preserved by the patients. What is lacking in the patients is instead the “capacity” to devote oneself to (sich hingeben) the retained sense of world. Here I introduce Husserl’s distinction between the simple value-perception (schlichte Wertnehmung) of something as valuable/invaluable and the subject’s affective position-taking (Gemütsstellungnahme) towards those apperceived qualities. The dedication (Hingabe) requires the subject’s affective trust and familiarity with the world and others, which is established throughout one’s lived-experiences in the intersubjectively constituted life-world.  Once this essential sense of trust, or Urvertrauen, is destroyed (through e.g., traumatic experiences), the subject would no longer be able to truly embrace any kind of common sense as unquestioned.   Biography: Graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, I am now a PhD candidate of Prof. Thiemo Breyer and a DAAD-scholarship holder at the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School from the University of Cologne. My research project is dedicated to the problematic of the unconscious, understood as the sedimentations in the Husserlian sense, and its relation to the normal as well as so-called pathological life of consciousness such as schizophrenia and borderline-personality disorder. Last year, I held a presentation titled “Der Urboden des Bewusstseins – die Stimmung und die Frage nach dem Unbewussten” in the colloquium organized by Prof. Thomas Fuchs in Jena.     Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/  

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Alexandra Jewell of University of British Columbia, Canada   Abstract: Anxiety disorders are the most common psychiatric disorders and are associated with a high burden of illness. Given the increasing reports of anxiety symptoms in the face of climate change, pandemics, and socio-political relations, anxiety disorders are due additional analysis that might aid our descriptions and explanations. I propose that a phenomenological approach to anxiety disorders can do just that. Specifically, we ought to examine the ways in which the self plays a role in anxiety disorders. While previous accounts have highlighted the importance of the self in the occurrence and maintenance of anxiety disorders, their dealing of the notion lacks the phenomenological richness to capture the multidimensionality of selfhood. Borrowing the notion of self-disorder from phenomenological pathology, I argue that anxiety disorders similarly exhibit an alteration to our most fundamental experience of a self-immersed-in-the-world via disordered/disrupted organization of self-specifying processes. To substantiate my claims, I refer to empirical work on anxiety from clinical psychology and cognitive science regarding disruptions in experience of selfhood, on the one hand, and corresponding alterations of worldly experience, on the other. Next, I consider and respond to reasons theorists might have excluded anxiety disorders from the class of self-disorders. I then propose that interoception, which plays a fundamental role in forming our basic sense of self, is a good place to start when looking for the disruption of self-specifying processes in anxiety disorder. After considering empirical evidence to support this hypothesis, I will suggest a possible, causal explanations for this disruption in interoception by drawing from emotion theory and recent work in neuroscience.   Biography: Alexandra Jewell is a PhD Candidate in Philosophy at the University of British Columbia. Under the supervision of both Christopher Mole and Evan Thompson, Alexandra researches the intersection of philosophy of mind, phenomenology, cognitive science, and philosophy of psychiatry. She is interested in bringing the phenomenological approach into our understanding of psychiatric disorders in hopes to improve our descriptions and explanations within psychiatry. Having a background in Tibetan Buddhism, Alexandra also incorporates this worldview in her investigations of the subjective experience in cases of psychiatric disorder.     Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Niklas Noe-Steinmueller of University Hospital Heidelberg, Section for Phenomenology, Germany   Abstract: The concept of suffering is part of a new way of thinking about pain that tries to take patients’ individual perspective seriously instead of reducing their experiences to a biological mechanism (Ballantyne & Sullivan, 2015). I will briefly summarise the preliminary result of a systematic review of operationalisations of suffering (authors anonymised, in prep.), point out a fundamental disagreement within the literature, and then show what phenomenology can contribute to resolve it.   Suffering is usually defined as emotional distress related to a loss of identity and resulting from insufficient coping resources (Cassell, 1982; Chapman & Gavrin, 1999). However, some argue that suffering is a strictly individual experience only understandable from within a life narrative (Frank, 2001; Kleinman, 1988). Defining it is said to be futile and even harmful for the patients because it thrusts a foreign perspective on their illness upon them (Charmaz, 1983; Frank, 2001). To sum up, while most authors believe the concept of suffering to widen the scope of medicine, others warn against the danger of patronizing patients. I propose that phenomenology can solve this problem by analysing suffering in terms of (gradual) presence. In suffering, my lifeworld becomes less present to me, i.e. less forceful, less vivid – with one exception: That, which I suffer from, becomes more present to me. This is a particular form of presence that I call ‘pre-intentional’ (Bernet, 2014).  This analysis contributes to the reconceptualization of pain by offering a working hypothesis about the core of the suffering experience. By focussing on the structure of suffering rather than its content, it avoids patronising the sufferer and acknowledges that suffering is as heterogenous as the lifeworlds of the suffering subjects. I conclude by comparing my analysis to an insightful phenomenological account of suffering as an alienating mood by Frederick Svenaeus (2014).           Biography: PhD student at the Section for Phenomenology, University Hospital Heidelberg - starting in July 2022: Clinical psychologist at the Clinic for General Psychiatry, University of Heidelberg - 2020-2022 MSc Psychology at Heidelberg (thesis about the operationalisation of suffering in pain research, systematic review) - 2015-2020 BSc Psychology at Heidelberg - 2015-2019 MA Philosophy at Heidelberg (thesis about the phenomenology of pain and depression) - 2012-2015 BA Philosophy at Heidelberg and Oxford - born 10 December 1991 in Freiburg, Germany.   Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Maria Galkina of Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris, France   Abstract: This contribution aims to study the phenomenon of environmental shame and its role in awakening of ecological consciousness. It starts with the problem of asymmetry of human power that marks the current ecological transition. On the one hand, the growing ecological footprint testifies to excess of human power over the environment which leads to the sixth mass extinction and endangers planetary balance. On the other, facing ecological crisis, human, paradoxically, finds himself more powerless than ever. Powerless to slow down and to challenge his daily production and consumption practices by refusing to take their consequences into account. In a word, powerless to suspend his own power. One should ask then how to catalyze this suspension. My argument is to consider shame as such a feeling that turns an excess of human power over the environment into “potential-not-to”. Making use of this ontological concept developed by Agamben in order to think the negativity of human power that shame activates, the paper elaborates a phenomenology of “environmental shame”. Since suspending power requires to challenge its ethical justification by measuring the extent of its destructive consequences for other species, it is nothing but shame where freedom becomes aware of its murderous character that answers the need of self-limitation of human power over the environment. My concept of “environmental shame” develops Levinasian approach that defines shame as a discovery of injustified facticity of power and freedom, but rethinking it from the human relation to other endangered and vulnerable living beings. Shame, I argue, is a revolutionary feeling able to operate a conversion of environmental consciousness and transform our manner of being in the world by actualizing the “potential-not-to”, i.e. the negative potential that allows inoperativity of human power.   Biography: Maria Galkina is a PhD student in Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure de Paris working on phenomenology of environmental shame and negative dialectic of human power. Her research interests cover Phenomenology of emotions and affects, Ethics and Metaphysics. Maria holds a B.A. in Creative writing from the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute of Moscow and an M.A. in Contemporary Philosophy from the École Normale Supérieure de Paris, which has focused on the dialectic of negativity and creativity of shame through analysis of works of Levinas, Agamben and Dostoevsky.     Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/  

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Kenneth Bruce of Fordham University, United States   Abstract: In philosophical considerations of disgust, one consistent problem has been how to define physical disgust and moral disgust in a way that does justice to their differences while also allowing them to occupy the same category of emotional reaction. Aurel Kolnai (2004) and Sara Heinämaa (2020) each give a phenomenological account of what this connection might be, and in doing so suggest that there is a way that we can pick out some formal object of disgust that we intentionally aim/are aimed at when feeling disgusted, either physically or morally. In this paper, I evaluate these decidedly non-derivative models of physical and moral disgust, specifically with respect to instances of disgust that are based in racial and/or ethnic prejudices. I first raise what I take to be problems with Heinämaa’s adverbial model of moral disgust. I’ll then take up Sara Ahmed’s (2015) writing on disgust as something that “spreads” via acts of reiteration to develop a derivative account of moral disgust that retains Kolnai and Heinämaa’s phenomenological insights even as it demonstrates that objects of disgust need not always share some formal object. I argue that there are good reasons for thinking that some objects of disgust are derived from previous ones, but that we need to be careful in mapping out this derivative relationship. Finally, I use this derivative model of disgust to analyze examples of both physical and moral disgust from the writings of Audre Lord (2007) and Alia Al-Saji (2008), respectively. This will allow us to understand such instances of disgust as 1) real instances of disgust that, nonetheless, do not not entail that the objects of disgust are inherently or essentially disgusting and 2) morally reprehensible and dangerous precisely because they do not involve a “mistake,” but accurately reflect the disgusted subjects' prejudices.   Biography: Ken Bruce is a PhD student at Fordham University in his second year. His main areas of interest are in Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and critical phenomenology, especially as it overlaps with critical philosophy of race and feminist philosophy. His current research involves looking at phenomenological accounts of racialization as they occur at the aural register, both in addition to and in distinction from the visual register, and investigating what insights might be gained from centering such a perspective.   Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Denise Kelly of University College Dublin, Ireland   Abstract: According to Mariana Ortega (2016) humans occupy multiple worlds; following Martin Heidegger’s conception of Dasein as beings-in-the-world, she suggests that all of us are beings-in-worlds or beings-between-worlds. However, she suggests that this is especially the case for marginalized groups, who must travel between worlds in which they struggle to perform social norms pre-reflectively, engendering feelings of alienation.   This is analogous to the experience of the agoraphobe when they venture into public space. Despite being embedded in the surrounding culture, they too find themselves in a space where they cannot act pre-reflectively; instead, they are anxious, vigilant, and consumed by the fear of transgressing a social norm. This fear can result in the person abandoning their worlds and becoming housebound, as they seek out the comfort and safety of home against the panic-ensuing world   However, the relationship between the agoraphobe and the home is more complex when further considered. We must leave home to find home (Jacobson, 2011). Thus, it appears that while the agoraphobe is housebound (Davidson, 2000), she is also homeless, her home is always less than home. I suggest that this is because the house for the agoraphobe is more of a foxhole than a home; a place to recede to for temporary cover situated deep in the midst of a danger-zone. This is further suggested by the agoraphobe’s use of “shields” outside the home; objects which serve as a protection from the glare of the Other’s gaze (Davidson, 2000; Davidson, 2003). Surrounded by a battleground, the agoraphobe becomes a being-on-the-outskirts, with the uncanniness of the external world penetrating the walls of her fortress. Paralyzed by fear, she becomes snagged in the “imaginary” of a home (Ortega, 2016).   Biography: Denise Kelly is a doctoral student under the supervision of Dr. Danielle Petherbridge in Philosophy at University College Dublin, where she is researching the phenomenology of mental illness. Her Ph.D. research looks specifically at agoraphobia and social phobia, examining these disorders in relation to the themes of intersubjectivity, embodiment, and affectivity. Her interdisciplinary research draws not only from traditional and contemporary phenomenological work and methods, but also from sociological understandings of illness and clinical data.       Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Kathryn Body of University of Bristol, UK   Abstract: Co-authors: Havi Carel; Jamila Rodrigues   The Covid-19 pandemic has had far-reaching and life-changing consequences for many people, including the loss of loved ones, livelihoods, and life milestones. The risks associated with a potentially life-threatening virus such as Covid-19 have been widely discussed from an epidemiological or otherwise scientific perspective. Whilst this is vitally important for understanding how the virus transmits and behaves once inside the body, it cannot tell us how the pandemic has changed people’s lived experience of the world and of their bodies. In this paper, we use theoretical frameworks from social anthropology (Douglas 1966, 1970, 1992) and phenomenological philosophy (Carel, 2016, 2018) to analyse qualitative data drawn out of a large-scale anonymous survey focusing on adult populations in the UK, Japan, and Mexico. This study asks: How has the Covid-19 pandemic changed people’s experience of their bodies and the world? We unpack this further by asking the following sub-questions: What effect has the lockdown and other countermeasures against the virus had on the way people perceive their bodies and other people’s bodies? What cultural and symbolic meanings are attached to the body and if so, how did they change? To what extent do the risks associated with the Covid-19 virus threaten people’s sense of bodily security and safety? To address these issues, we present a conceptualisation of a pandemic body captured into five main themes, these are: Fear and Danger, Bodily Doubt and Hypervigilance, Risk and Trust, Adapting and Enduring, Changes in Perspective. These themes emerged from qualitative survey data and show how different aspects of the pandemic experience have been embodied through people’s narratives. Through a detailed analysis of these issues, we conclude that the pandemic has forced people to rethink their relationship with their bodies, other bodies, and the world around them.   Biography: Kathryn Body is a PhD student in the Department of Philosophy, at the University of Bristol. She received her MA in Medical Ethics and Law from King’s College London, where she researched epistemic injustices toward people with disabilities through the lens of the Mental Capacity Act 2005. Her current research project combines theoretical frameworks from phenomenological philosophy and embodiment theory in anthropology to analyse qualitative survey data on people’s lived experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic. This research will help inform perspectives on how protective strategies, including national lockdowns and physical distancing, have affected people from different cultures and social groups.     Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/  

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Rachel Elliott of Brandon University, Canada   Abstract: This paper offers reflections about the possibilities and limits of online intercorporeality and empathy. During the Covid-19 pandemic I participated in two online community choirs: the Toronto Sacred Harp Singing Group and the Transnational Vocal Exploration Choir lead by Chris Tonelli of the University of Groningen. To my surprise, both choirs functioned successfully using standard-issue video conferencing software despite their need for substantive embodied reciprocity among vocalists, and between vocalists and the conductor(s). Using the phenomenological interview to supplement my own phenomenological descriptions, I collected data on the lived experiences of participants regarding intercorporeality and empathy during online choral gatherings. This paper will present my findings that suggest intercorporeality and empathy are, with caveats, genuinely enabled in musical interactions using simple online video interfaces.  With this finding I aim to enrich and re-direct trends in the human sciences that tend to regard online intersubjectivity as purely symbolic or representational. If these trends were to be correct, contra my assertions, then only extended or high-level empathy would be possible in such spaces: low-level or primary empathy - which relies on intercorporeality - would be incompatible. Marshalling evidence to the contrary, that intercorporeality can be enabled online (at lease while musicking interactively) will, I hope, spark new philosophical reflections on the nature of online collaboration and shared digital agency, as well as contribute to thinking about the social affordances engendered by community musick-making in particular.     Biography: Dr. Rachel Elliott works on social ontology at the level of intercorporeality and affect, particularly regarding improvised collective agency in art and politics. She has published on topics such as the transformation of the habit body in music, and the exclusionary tendencies of synchronization, in journals such as: the Journal for International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation, and Punta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology. She is currently working on a manuscript titled Intercorporeality Online. Dr. Elliott received her PhD in 2019 from the University of Guelph, and is currently Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Brandon University in Manitoba, Canada.       Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Lucy Osler of University of Copenhagen, Denmark   Abstract: Online forms of social encounter are typically evaluated based on how well they might (or might not) act as a replacement for our face-to-face encounters (e.g., Dreyfus 2009; Turkle 2015, 2017; Chalmers 2022). I highlight three reasons why we should reject the false dichotomy presented by discussions of “offline vs. online” and move beyond considering the role of online forms of sociality within the framework of ‘replacement’. First, we should be wary of buying into the replacement dichotomy considering how each side of the debate is typically framed. On the side of the techno-optimists is a promise of technology yet to be developed, as such any argument for the success of ‘full digital replacement’ remains wishful and hypothetical. On the techno-pessimist side, critiques of digital communication tend to present an overly reified view of fully embodied offline sociality, seemingly forgetting that not all face-to-face encounters are smooth, positive, valuable, successful, or even respectful. Second, when comparing offline and online sociality, there is tendency to suppose that the participants are ‘neutral’ universal subjects and that face-to-face embodied social encounters are superior to mediated embodied social encounters. What this ignores is that there are many cases where an individual may experience supposedly ‘diminished’ or ‘altered’ embodiment as preferable, e.g., when online platforms provide a safe or less sensorially overwhelming social space. There is, then, a normative assumption baked into discussions of offline vs. online sociality. Third, by assessing online sociality in terms of its suitability as a substitute for physically co-present encounters, we both lose sight of, as well as impede, creative ways for us to encounter others online. Rejecting the notion of replacement allows us to conceive of online sociality beyond substitution; pushing us to demand and design digital tools that do not merely simulate offline forms of interaction but support novel ways of encountering each other.   Biography: Lucy Osler is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen. She is interested in phenomenological approaches to intersubjectivity, online sociality, embodiment, perception, emotions, and psychopathology. She is currently writing on social inclusion and exclusion in the online world, online grief, feelings of belonging and community online, as well as the role social technologies play in mental health, well-being, and therapy.   Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/