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This podcast is for the British Society for Phenomenology and showcases papers at our conferences and events, interviews and discussions on the topic of phenomenology.
Episodes
Friday Jun 14, 2019
Friday Jun 14, 2019
Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Philip Tovey is from Canterbury Christ Church University, and the paper is titled ‘Temporal range, future mandate and strategic shaping; the existential and cognitive phenomenological ethics of preventative policing’.
Abstract: “Since the inception of modern policing, its founding strategic instruction was to ‘prevent crime’. Historically, policing strategy approached prevention through a geospatial predisposition in order to deter criminality. However recent years have seen a shift away from this area-based effect to an individual-centric model of tactical prioritisation, of which one's vulnerability to a given threat forms a transcendentally subjective centre of gravity. This paper will propose two fundamental challenges for UK policing operating a threat-based, preventative and individual-centric strategy; (1) prevention requires accurate prediction of and morally justifiable ingress into the subjective future and (2) there is no conceptual definition of what constitutes legitimate future reach in order to prevent crime. By firstly grounding strategy in an existential framing of 'the threat of meaninglessness', a cognitive phenomenological analysis of 'future-states' is conducted to expose issues of future mandate, temporal range and strategic shaping; providing a contemporary insight into, and an empirical reading of some of phenomenologies most challenging concepts such as time and more specifically, future-consciousness. Through the examination of some of policing's more divisive operational developments, such as para-militarization, early infant intervention programmes and advanced predictive analytics, the issue of futures and their disputably distinctive qualitative character, surfaces underlying strategic fallibilities in preventative, individual-centric approaches to policing within a paradigm of vulnerability”
The British Society for Phenomenology’s Annual Conference took place at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, UK during July, 2018. It gathered together philosophers, literary scholars, phenomenologists, and practitioners exploring phenomenological theory and its practical application. It covered a broad range of areas and issues including the arts, ethics, medical humanities, mental health, education, technology, feminism, politics and political governance, with contributions throwing a new light on both traditional phenomenological thinkers and the themes associated with classical phenomenology. More information about the conference can be found at:
https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/conference-2018/
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, conferences and other events, and its podcast. You can support the society by becoming a member, for which you will receive a subscription to our journal:
Friday May 31, 2019
Friday May 31, 2019
Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Rajan Nathan and Peter Wilson are from CWP NHS Foundation Trust & Universities of Liverpool and Chester, and the paper – presented by Wilson – is titled ‘Phenomenology and causal entities in psychiatry’.
Abstract: “Psychiatric training emphasises the need to make sense of the patient’s experience at the symptom and diagnostic level of abstraction. In so far as attention is given to obtaining a representation of mental phenomena, this is a means to satisfy rules that define symptoms and diagnoses. In view of the questionable historical and empirical provenance of these rules, it is not surprising that underlying causal entities have proved elusive.
The authors will draw on their clinical practice and the relevant academic literature to make the case for phenomenological analysis, not only to elucidate psychiatric experiences (in line with the tradition of Jaspers), but also as a process to generate data to explain these disturbances (i.e. extending beyond the limits of Jaspers’ notion of ‘static’ understanding).
In this paper, the authors will demonstrate that neurobiological and phenomenological disciplines can complement each other in explaining troubling psychic events. However, using solely the language of brain structure, chemistry and circuits does not allow description of either what is troubling or psychic. Therefore, a neurobiological account in itself will never be sufficient for understanding.
Additionally, the authors will make the case for identifying causal entities through phenomenological inquiry. The advantage of phenomenology over the traditional symptom enquiry approach will be illustrated by case examples of different types of psychopathology. The authors propose a two-step process comprising (i) phenomenological inquiry to produce a representation of the patient’s experiences without interference from preconceptions, and (ii) an analysis of this representation to identify an explanatory entity using principles emerging from the empirical literature in relation to mental mechanisms. Unlike the common use of existing psychological models in clinical practice, in the second step the psychiatrist must refrain from applying mechanisms that are generally associated with certain experiences and confine his/herself to the data elicited in that case.”
The British Society for Phenomenology’s Annual Conference took place at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, UK during July, 2018. It gathered together philosophers, literary scholars, phenomenologists, and practitioners exploring phenomenological theory and its practical application. It covered a broad range of areas and issues including the arts, ethics, medical humanities, mental health, education, technology, feminism, politics and political governance, with contributions throwing a new light on both traditional phenomenological thinkers and the themes associated with classical phenomenology. More information about the conference can be found at:
https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/conference-2018/
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, conferences and other events, and its podcast. You can support the society by becoming a member, for which you will receive a subscription to our journal:
Friday May 24, 2019
Friday May 24, 2019
Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Marcel Dubovec’s paper is titled ‘The Inner Structure of Heidegger’s Concept of Freedom’.
Abstract: “The purpose of this paper is to present Heidegger's concept of freedom between 1927 and 1930. It puts emphasis on the difference between the fundamental-ontological and the transcendental concept of freedom. The elaboration of this difference is founded on the transformation of the ontological difference in its three forms: the difference of the being of beings (existential approach), the difference of the being and beings (transcendental/metontological) and the cosmological difference as a difference between the thing and the world (phenomenological metaphysics). The central manifestation of the difference is the possibility of a deeper understanding of freedom beyond its existential structures (Being and time) that focus on authenticity. The transcendental concept of freedom is the essence of the ground in the context of transcendence and the world and as such it is also the ground for existentially conceived freedom. In order to show this hierarchy in particular, Heidegger's debate on Kant's concept of freedom as spontaneity will be explained. Spontaneity is a specific form of causality and as such it is also grounded in transcendental freedom. The limits of a hierarchical way of thinking illustrate themselves in the significance of freedom for the essence of truth. This refers to the inner transformation of Heidegger's philosophy into the thinking of being from itself. In this context, the importance of a possibility to evolve the concept of freedom in its metontological turn is emphasised. On this metontological way of Heidegger's thinking, Hungarian philosopher László Tengelyi follows with his concept of phenomenological metaphysics that is placed beyond the onto-theological constitution of metaphysics. Tengelyi's concept of freedom as a partial causality is of particular significance to this subject.”
The British Society for Phenomenology’s Annual Conference took place at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, UK during July, 2018. It gathered together philosophers, literary scholars, phenomenologists, and practitioners exploring phenomenological theory and its practical application. It covered a broad range of areas and issues including the arts, ethics, medical humanities, mental health, education, technology, feminism, politics and political governance, with contributions throwing a new light on both traditional phenomenological thinkers and the themes associated with classical phenomenology. More information about the conference can be found at:
https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/conference-2018/
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, conferences and other events, and its podcast. You can support the society by becoming a member, for which you will receive a subscription to our journal:
Friday May 17, 2019
Friday May 17, 2019
Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Lorenzo Girardi is from Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, and the paper is titled ‘The Constitution of the One World: Faith in Husserl’s Philosophy’.
Abstract: “Edmund Husserl’s philosophy is characterized by an eminently rationalist outlook. It contains some of the key features of the Enlightenment-project: a focus on the spirit of reason, a rational teleology, and universalism. It is perhaps the most critical version imaginable of this project, allowing for no justification that cannot be found in intuitive experience. This paper will point out a tension between this methodological limitation of Husserl’s phenomenology and the scope of his philosophy as a whole. It will do so by looking into the way Husserl conceives of the possibility of the constitution of one world for all of humankind.
While Husserl can experientially justify the process of universalization based on the horizonal nature of experience, he cannot justify the outcome of this process. That is, he cannot provide experiential justification for the idea that this process of universalization necessarily culminates in the same world for everyone who engages in this process. The possibility of a single rational world for all is more of a deeply entrenched assumption than a possibility that is properly justified.
After showing that recourse to experience is insufficient to justify the possibility of such a world, it will be shown that in the end Husserl backs up this speculative possibility through an act of faith. Showing the role of faith in Husserl’s account of the constitution of the one world puts the explicit references to faith in the Crisis in a new light. They might be more than rhetorical devices, revealing something about the nature of the crisis and Husserl’s solution to it, as well as providing a useful heuristic to distinguish Husserl’s thought from that of later phenomenologists. In doing so, the deep practical or even existential concern that forms the backbone of Husserl’s thinking, but that is not always acknowledged, is highlighted.”
The British Society for Phenomenology’s Annual Conference took place at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, UK during July, 2018. It gathered together philosophers, literary scholars, phenomenologists, and practitioners exploring phenomenological theory and its practical application. It covered a broad range of areas and issues including the arts, ethics, medical humanities, mental health, education, technology, feminism, politics and political governance, with contributions throwing a new light on both traditional phenomenological thinkers and the themes associated with classical phenomenology. More information about the conference can be found at:
https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/conference-2018/
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, conferences and other events, and its podcast. You can support the society by becoming a member, for which you will receive a subscription to our journal:
Friday May 10, 2019
Friday May 10, 2019
Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Julio Andrade is from the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, and the paper is titled ‘Normative provisionality as a means to navigate Levinasian infinite responsibility’.
Abstract: “The core of Emmanuel Levinas’s (1969) argument in Totality and Infinity is that because the other cannot be faithfully represented without reducing his/her alterity, I cannot discharge my responsibilities to him/her. As such, my responsibility to the other is infinite. Infinite responsibility is at the centre of Levinasian ethics, however, it is also the most problematic. If I am infinitely responsible for the other, what of my, and all the other others, needs and desires? Levinas responds by positing a third party to the face-to face encounter with the other. Levinas argues that justice (or the political) is “an incessant correction of the asymmetry of proximity” (1998; 158 emphasis added), i.e. justice or politics must constantly efface the alterity of the other in order to render the other representable, and thus comparable with the third.
However, what such a politics entails in practice is not something that Levinas develops in any depth. He remarks that “[m]y task does not consist in constructing ethics; I only try to find its meaning” (1985; 90). However, his follow-up to this remark hints at an endorsement of just such an enterprise: “one can without doubt construct an ethics in function of what I have just said, but this is not my own theme” (ibid).
It is by expanding on the above ‘incessant correction’ of justice that I hope to offer a way to ‘operationalise’ Levinasian ethics. In order to achieve this, I enlist Woermann and Cilliers’ (2012) ‘provisional imperative’. Pared to its essence, the provisional imperative reads as follows: “When acting, always remain cognisant of other ways of acting” (ibid; 451).I reinscribe this into Levinasian terms – ‘when representing the other, always be cognisant of other ways of representing the other.’ Then, by understanding responsibility as an ability to respond to the demands of the other, a response-ability, I argue that the other as infinity (Levinas takes the idea of infinity as the model for the other), should be understood as the other representing itself in an infinite number of ways, rather than a representation of itself as infinity.
The provisional imperative, I conclude, drives this incessant, and infinite revision of the representation of the other, and concomitantly my responsibility to the other. The provisional imperative operationalises Levinasian ethics such that infinite responsibility to the other is not rendered quixotic even as it is confirmed as the limit of our responsibility.”
The British Society for Phenomenology’s Annual Conference took place at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, UK during July, 2018. It gathered together philosophers, literary scholars, phenomenologists, and practitioners exploring phenomenological theory and its practical application. It covered a broad range of areas and issues including the arts, ethics, medical humanities, mental health, education, technology, feminism, politics and political governance, with contributions throwing a new light on both traditional phenomenological thinkers and the themes associated with classical phenomenology. More information about the conference can be found at:
https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/conference-2018/
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, conferences and other events, and its podcast. You can support the society by becoming a member, for which you will receive a subscription to our journal:
Friday May 03, 2019
Friday May 03, 2019
Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. James Rakoczi is from King's College London, and the paper is titled ‘Moving without movement: Merleau-Ponty’s “I can” in cases of global paralysis’.
Abstract: “In this paper, I aim to demonstrate how memoirs written by people who live with, or have experienced, global paralysis can illuminate and complicate Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s claim in Phenomenology of Perception that embodied movement is a necessary condition for a transcendental self. I argue that the kinds of movement these texts articulate shares an affinity with the kind of movement instantiated by Merleau-Ponty’s intentional arc: a ceaseless and adaptive movement, or a “therapeutic” movement, which constantly “recovers” from an incapacity to move. In short, Merleau-Ponty’s “I can” emerges ceaselessly from an “I cannot”. I shall make particular reference to two texts. First, I shall consider how any philosophy attempting to centre the importance of bodies-in-movement might align with the claims made in Kate Allatt’s memoir Running Free (2011), a text in which Allatt attributes an interior ‘running psyche’ as imperative to her miraculous recovery from locked-in syndrome. Second, I will read Jean-Dominique Bauby’s locked-in syndrome memoir The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly (Le scaphandre et le papillon, 1997) through the lens of Merleau-Ponty’s account of anosognosia, arguing that the text conceals its laborious method of production in the very process of describing that method. I will conclude by reflecting on the influence Merleau-Ponty has had on embodied therapies and textual accounts of lived illness experience, and indicate how understanding the ways in which embodied movement, textuality and therapeutics overlap has significance for our understanding of Merleau-Ponty’s claims.”
The British Society for Phenomenology’s Annual Conference took place at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, UK during July, 2018. It gathered together philosophers, literary scholars, phenomenologists, and practitioners exploring phenomenological theory and its practical application. It covered a broad range of areas and issues including the arts, ethics, medical humanities, mental health, education, technology, feminism, politics and political governance, with contributions throwing a new light on both traditional phenomenological thinkers and the themes associated with classical phenomenology. More information about the conference can be found at:
https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/conference-2018/
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, conferences and other events, and its podcast. You can support the society by becoming a member, for which you will receive a subscription to our journal:
Sunday Apr 28, 2019
Sunday Apr 28, 2019
Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Jack Price is from Cardiff University / the University of Exeter, and the paper is titled ‘Adorno and Scheler on Action and Experience’.
Abstract: “T.W Adorno’s work includes sustained critical engagement with phenomenology. While sympathetic to the attempt to engage with the ‘heterogenous’ and with the world of objects, Adorno argues that traditional phenomenology ultimately fails: Husserl relies too much on constitutive subjectivity and is unable to break from idealism. Perhaps as a result, Adorno tends to pass over much of the work of Max Scheler. Despite this, this paper argues that Scheler’s materialist phenomenology could engage with Adorno’s critical theory to mutual benefit.
Adorno’s work speaks to phenomenological attempts to understand experience. Emphasising the limitations of concepts, the primacy of the object and the value of embodied affective experience, Adorno builds a broad social critique emphasising mediation and the need for moving beyond traditional conceptual thought. But Adorno’s methodological negativity means that his account of the role of embodied subjectivity tends to be laconic, working more as a counterblast to transcendental idealism than as an articulated alternative.
Scheler’s model of the human being is drawn from a twofold distinction between ‘life’ and ‘spirit’, in which ‘life’ represents pre-rational and instinctual drives and behaviours and ‘spirit’ the rational and self-reflective element. The human being is thus not a singular entity ruled by reason, but a creature of conflicting drives, passions, and interests of which reason is a late and by no means omnipotent part. This model of the human being, however, is situated at times quite abstractly. Scheler lacks the critical resources needed to thoroughly interrogate the role of subjectivity under contemporary social conditions.
Dialogue between the two could therefore be very productive. While tensions undeniably exist, Max Scheler’s work, when brought together with Adorno’s critique of constitutive subjectivity and contemporary society, could present a plausible and phenomenologically-minded account of human action and experience under the current social order.”
The British Society for Phenomenology’s Annual Conference took place at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, UK during July, 2018. It gathered together philosophers, literary scholars, phenomenologists, and practitioners exploring phenomenological theory and its practical application. It covered a broad range of areas and issues including the arts, ethics, medical humanities, mental health, education, technology, feminism, politics and political governance, with contributions throwing a new light on both traditional phenomenological thinkers and the themes associated with classical phenomenology. More information about the conference can be found at:
https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/conference-2018/
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, conferences and other events, and its podcast. You can support the society by becoming a member, for which you will receive a subscription to our journal:
Friday Apr 19, 2019
Friday Apr 19, 2019
Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Erin Plunkett is from the University of Chichester, and the paper is titled ‘Patočka’s asubjective phenomenology’.
Abstract: “The return to the ‘object’ or ‘thing’ in contemporary Continental Philosophy is in part a reaction to the past sins of what Husserl calls Cartesian philosophy—a philosophy in which truth hinges on subjective consciousness and in which the res cogitans and res extensa are thought as radically separate. The environmentally disastrous consequences of such a position are hard to deny and are diagnosed by Husserl himself in his Crisis. Yet, today Phenomenology is often lumped together with this tradition (in part because of Husserl’s own emphasis on consciousness) and, so, implicated in these consequences.
Czech phenomenologist Jan Patočka, one of Husserl’s last students, was already thinking through the problem of subjectivism in phenomenology in the 1930s, and in 1971 wrote the essay ‘Husserl’s Subjectivism and the Call for an Asubjective Philosophy’, in which he argues that phenomena are not the mere ‘correlate of subjective processes’, nor the ‘accomplishment of subjective constitution’; rather, phenomena as such are primary. As for the subject, it is itself a phenomenon allowed by things, rather than the basis for the appearance of things. It is ‘not we but phenomenal being itself that indicates for us what possibilities there are for our own being’.
This conception, I argue, is an advance on Husserl on the one hand and contemporary philosophies of the object on the other. It avoids the consequences of Cartesianism while providing a more coherent account of subjectivity (as a no-thing) and retaining the idea of Being over against beings or things. With these considerations in the background, I present Patočka’s asubjective phenomenology as a viable and relevant philosophical methodology.”
The British Society for Phenomenology’s Annual Conference took place at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, UK during July, 2018. It gathered together philosophers, literary scholars, phenomenologists, and practitioners exploring phenomenological theory and its practical application. It covered a broad range of areas and issues including the arts, ethics, medical humanities, mental health, education, technology, feminism, politics and political governance, with contributions throwing a new light on both traditional phenomenological thinkers and the themes associated with classical phenomenology. More information about the conference can be found at:
https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/conference-2018/
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, conferences and other events, and its podcast. You can support the society by becoming a member, for which you will receive a subscription to our journal:
Friday Mar 29, 2019
Friday Mar 29, 2019
Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Bhaswar Malick is from the University of Cincinnati, and his paper is titled ‘Paradise on Earth: Tomb of Akbar at Sikandrabad’.
Abstract: “Globalization’s dissolution of boundaries parallels a resurgent identity politics, exacerbated by religious invocations. Evidently, the Islamic heritage of India is being repositioned as foreign and incongruent to the nation-state’s cultural legacy. A prime case in point is the recent exclusion of the Taj Mahal from the state government’s tourism booklet– this iconic heritage having been labelled as the architectural flagbearer of Islamic rule in India. But this exclusion is also symptomatic of the primacy of classifications: architecture’s ‘scientific method’ – a work identified by its style and age, its origin and author, and an objectified list of its features. This paper presents an alternative, rooted in the discourses of phenomenology, that can illuminate the nature of situated human interactions more holistically, and hermeneutics, that can reveal the continuing relationships between works of the distant past with the always new present. To account for the booklet’s missed opportunity, this paper will dwell not on the Taj Mahal, but on the tomb of the most powerful Mughal Emperor Akbar, at Sikandrabad. Ignored and attracting far fewer tourists, this monument recedes into relative obscurity, although located within the same city. This paper argues that the tomb remains relevant to modern India because it incites questions of life and death, of living and dying; it claims legitimacy as a work of art – a meaningful and on-going, ever-present human experience. The work works best by transforming a sense of being with the deceased in a place after death, to become a respite in mortal life for soulful contemplation; realised for heightened sensitivity, activated by bodily engagement, and explored within spatial sequences, all encompassed as a holistic architectural experience. In introspection, it provides insight into what Islam, and the human experience in general, are for you and me today, beyond yet through constructions of a defined past.”
The British Society for Phenomenology’s Annual Conference took place at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, UK during July, 2018. It gathered together philosophers, literary scholars, phenomenologists, and practitioners exploring phenomenological theory and its practical application. It covered a broad range of areas and issues including the arts, ethics, medical humanities, mental health, education, technology, feminism, politics and political governance, with contributions throwing a new light on both traditional phenomenological thinkers and the themes associated with classical phenomenology. More information about the conference can be found at:
https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/conference-2018/
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, conferences and other events, and its podcast. You can support the society by becoming a member, for which you will receive a subscription to our journal:
Friday Mar 22, 2019
Friday Mar 22, 2019
Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Arthur Rose is from Durham University, and his paper is titled ‘Reorienting Breathlessness: A Case against Symptom Discordance’.
Abstract: “In Phenomenology of Illness, Havi Carel identifies a ‘Janus-faced duality’ to breathlessness: ‘it is so real and overwhelming to the person experiencing it and yet so invisible to those around her’ (Carel 2016: 109). The discrepancy between external appearance and internal reality replicates a further discrepancy, known as symptom discordance, between the person’s perception of breathlessness (‘subjective experience’) and the oxygen saturation of their blood (‘objective measurement’). Not only is the breathless person challenged by another’s failure to recognize their experience, their own interoceptive ability may not match what they feel to what medicalised testing shows. Carel usefully relates this mismatch to Merleau-Ponty’s distinction between the objective and the lived body. The affordances of the objective body come to define new limits on the bodily habits that determine the lived body’s engagement with the world. To emphasize the reshaping of world that faces the person with breathlessness, Carel uses geographical metaphors or articulations that demonstrate both forms of discordance. But, Carel does not devote much attention to extremes of symptom discordance: either where a person has objectively low levels of oxygen saturation but does not complain of breathlessness or, conversely, where a person does complain of breathlessness but has no measurable oxygen deficiency.
This paper seeks to draw on Carel’s account of breathlessness to consider how it responds to the problems symptom discordance presents for ‘external’ verification, by either casual or medical perception. By shifting the terms of the account, from concordance-discordance to orientation-disorientation, it reframes a continued reliance on the subjective-objective distinction as a matter of cognitive direction. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s engagement with Merleau-Ponty’s account of orientation, it argues that the experience of breathlessness can be usefully thought of as a series of orientations: to the world, the sensations of breathlessness and their scientific measurement.”
The British Society for Phenomenology’s Annual Conference took place at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, UK during July, 2018. It gathered together philosophers, literary scholars, phenomenologists, and practitioners exploring phenomenological theory and its practical application. It covered a broad range of areas and issues including the arts, ethics, medical humanities, mental health, education, technology, feminism, politics and political governance, with contributions throwing a new light on both traditional phenomenological thinkers and the themes associated with classical phenomenology. More information about the conference can be found at:
https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/conference-2018/
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, conferences and other events, and its podcast. You can support the society by becoming a member, for which you will receive a subscription to our journal: