Dermot Moran

Thinking the Float Tank – Thursday, August 24, 2023 (Day 1)

The Nature of Self-Experience, Husserl’s Sphere of Ownness and the Experience of the Flotation Tank

Speaker Bio:

Dermot Moran (Boston College) is the Inaugural Holder of the Joseph Chair in Catholic Philosophy, Boston College. He was previously Professor of Philosophy (Logic & Metaphysics) at University College Dublin. He is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy and Institut International de Philosophie (IIP). Publications include: Introduction to Phenomenology (2000), Edmund Husserl: Founder of Phenomenology (2005), Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (2012) and, co-authored with Joseph Cohen, Husserl Dictionary (2012). Edited works include: Husserl’s Logical Investigations, 2 vols. (Routledge, 2001), The Shorter Logical Investigations, The Phenomenology Reader, co-edited withTim Mooney (Routledge, 2002), Phenomenology. Critical Concepts in Philosophy, 5 Volumes, co-edited with Lester E. Embree (Routledge, 2004), The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century Philosophy (Routledge, 2008); The Phenomenology of Embodied Subjectivity (Springer 2014) co-edited with Rasmus Thybo Jensen,; Empathy, Sociality, and Personhood. Essays on Edith Stein’s Phenomenological Investigations, co-edited with Elisa Magrì (Springer, 2017); Conscious Thinking and Cognitive Phenomenology, co-edited with Marta Jorba (Routledge, 2018); and, with Anya Daly, Fred Cummins, James Jardine, Perception and the Inhuman Gaze. Perspectives from Philosophy, Phenomenology, and the Sciences (Routledge, 2020).

Abstract:

Edmund Husserl and John C. Lilly were both explorers of consciousness – the essential nature of consciousness, the manner in which it is embodied in humans and in other animals. In this paper, I explore, from the phenomenological perspective, on the complex and intersecting phenomena of primary self-presence, self-awareness, self-affection, self-integrity and self-integration, the experience of being oneself, drawing on the rich and, I believe, still underexploited resources in the discussions of self in the classical phenomenologists, especially Husserl. Recently the Danish phenomenologist Dan Zahavi has spoken about the ‘minimal self’ as a requirement that all experience have the character of ‘for-me-ness,’ i.e., an immediate, non-objectifying, self-acquaintance of the self with itself. I broaden out this account of immediate self-experience drawing on the experiences reported by users of the flotation tank invented by John Lilly.