Het enactivisme is een benadering binnen de cognitiewetenschappen, waarvan aanhangers cognitieve processen beschouwen als lichamelijke processen die ontstaan door de wederkerige interactie tussen...Show moreHet enactivisme is een benadering binnen de cognitiewetenschappen, waarvan aanhangers cognitieve processen beschouwen als lichamelijke processen die ontstaan door de wederkerige interactie tussen het organisme en de omgeving. Enactivisten doen een poging om de cognitie- en neurowetenschappen te verreiken met ideeën uit de traditionele filosofie van de fenomenologie. In mijn onderzoek laat ik zien dat ze met deze poging in een spanningsveld terechtkomen, een spanningsveld tussen de subjectieve ervaring en objectieve meting van lichamelijke processen. Om verdieping en inzicht in het spanningsveld te bieden, onderzoek ik de verschillende epistemische waarden van beide stromingen. Zo beschouw ik dat binnen de cognitie- en neurowetenschappen het geven van causale verklaringen een belangrijke waarde is, om te kunnen interveniëren in processen. Daarnaast beschrijf ik dat binnen de fenomenologie betekenisvolle ervaring centraal staat, om terug te keren naar de dingen zelf. Ik beargumenteer dat enactivisten in staat zijn om de cognitie- en neurowetenschappen te integreren met ideeën uit de fenomenologie, op voorwaarde dat ervaring de gemeenschappelijke grond blijft waaruit onderzoek ontspringt en causale verbanden worden gezien als de stabiele eenheid van meerdere ervaringen.Show less
Patients suffering from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) develop self-narratives that are ‘too rigid’ or ‘too coherent’. Narrative therapies are developed to make the self-narrative more...Show morePatients suffering from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) develop self-narratives that are ‘too rigid’ or ‘too coherent’. Narrative therapies are developed to make the self-narrative more flexible by re-telling it (Jongedijk, 2014). However, these therapies are not as effective as some other treatments for PTSD (American Psychiatric Association, 2017). This could be explained by using the hyperreflexivity model (Fuchs, 2011) which illustrates how patients suffering from anxiety, mood- and sleep disorders overly reflect on their life. Therefore, retelling the self-narrative during narrative therapy may rather stimulate the rigidity of the self-narrative than make the self-narrative more flexible. Traumatic events and PTSD symptoms, such as flashbacks, are often experienced in a sensorial and ‘wordless’ way. Therefore, the traumatic experience and symptoms could be treated better by using narratives that include conditions of embodiment (Menary, 2008). Literature on embodied and body narratives (Gallagher & Hutto, 2017) are discussed and applied to the standard concept of narrative therapies. It will be concluded that working with a novel concept of a self-narrative that includes conditions of embodiment leads to better results in the narrative treatments of PTSD.Show less
The influential relationship between the two twentieth century philosophers Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida has profoundly challenged the way we perceive philosophy’s responsibility toward the...Show moreThe influential relationship between the two twentieth century philosophers Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida has profoundly challenged the way we perceive philosophy’s responsibility toward the other. While these philosophers in an ongoing exchange broach the question of the other’s response, there remains the question if the other can also respond to what they say. Challenging the attainability of “successful” dialogue, this thesis examines the limits of thinking the response of the other philosophically. It does this through an innovative reading of “At This Very Moment in This Work Here I Am,” a remarkable text by Derrida in which he examines what it means to write a response to the works of Levinas. It shows how such a response, in view of what Levinas writes, must necessarily fail. My reading of this text shows that we must nevertheless embrace the possibility of failure, even if it means putting Levinas’s entire work at risk, since the very finitude of my own response is also what allows the other to come in and respond. Seen this way, I propose that a reading specifically aimed at the “failures” at work in Derrida’s response to Levinas can be a viable strategy not only to arrive at a better understanding of this text, but also to come up with responses of our own.Show less
There is increasing awareness of the importance of the body in psychology and philosophy of mind. Embodied accounts of the self are promising in explaining the perceived unity and continuity...Show moreThere is increasing awareness of the importance of the body in psychology and philosophy of mind. Embodied accounts of the self are promising in explaining the perceived unity and continuity characteristic of it: the body provides spatiotemporal locatedness, and embodied experience provides relationships to and interaction with the environment. Given this emphasis on the body, it is surprising to find a lack of consideration of how the embodied self persists through time: as a three-dimensional entity, or rather as a four-dimensional one with temporal parts as well as spatial parts? Conversely, in discussions on persistence over time, a purely mental approach is dominant. I set out to detail the metaphysical debate on persistence, how it is typically applied to persons, and develop a novel account merging various influential lines of thought. The result is an embodied self as a perduring, bio-processual entity.Show less
Voor iedere mens sluit de dood het leven af en blijft voordien de grote onbekende. Desalniettemin willen zowel Kierkegaard als Heidegger doorgronden wat de sterfelijkheid betekent voor een...Show moreVoor iedere mens sluit de dood het leven af en blijft voordien de grote onbekende. Desalniettemin willen zowel Kierkegaard als Heidegger doorgronden wat de sterfelijkheid betekent voor een menselijk leven dat vooralsnog niet voorbij is, maar het wel zal zijn.Show less
Over the past decade, the Netherlands has performed evidently worse in terms of gender inequality in its labour market compared to other European countries. The psychological model of implicit bias...Show moreOver the past decade, the Netherlands has performed evidently worse in terms of gender inequality in its labour market compared to other European countries. The psychological model of implicit bias, gaining popularity within the academic world as well as public discourses, is thought to account for such structural and persistent gender inequality. According to the implicit bias model, people harbour mental associations with the words ‘female’ and ‘male’, eliciting subtle forms of discrimination, with gender inequality as a consequence. It is my contention that the model of implicit bias is inadequate in order to account for structural and persistent gender inequality in the Dutch labour market. I will argue that the implicit bias model is inherently based on a dualistic ontoepistemological framework that is problematic from a feminist philosophical perspective. Grounding my arguments in the theories of the feminist philosophers Simone de Beauvoir, Donna Haraway, Judith Butler, and Linda Martín Alcoff, I will show that theories of implicit bias overlook that (1) gender knowledge cannot be viewed independently from its producer and that (2) there is no reality of gender outside of the discursive. Based on the onto-epistemological findings on gender production, established throughout my thesis, I will introduce a non-dualistic framework from which gender inequality in the Dutch labour market can and should be studied, which I refer to as gender transactionalism. In this transactionalist model, gender inequality in the Dutch labour market is understood as the continuous transaction between unequal gender knowledges and the performativity of these genders as visible within our everyday lives. Implications of the findings and recommendations for future research will be discussed.Show less
