In an apparently original and radical departure from mainstream ideas, Alva Noë argues that perception does not involve inner representations but needs to be regarded a kind of active engagement with the environment. According to Noë’s enactive view, visual perception requires “sensorimotor knowhow”: the perceiver needs to have certain perceptual skills and expectations. In his influential book Action in Perception, Noë develops the enactive view as solution to the “problem of perceptual presence,” the problem of how to conceive of “the presence of that which, strictly speaking, I do not perceive” (Noë 2004, p. 60). According to Noë, the problem arises in various cases, e.g., the unattended parts of the perceptual scene, as well as objects’ back sides. Noë argues that it can be solved by appeal to the idea of sensorimotor knowhow. In a challenge to Noë, I argue for the thesis that his enactive view, as he states it in Action in Perception, does not succeed in solving or even adequately motivating the problem of perceptual presence, unless a Husserlian strand in his view is complemented by further Husserlian notions, especially fulfillment. For example, Noë has difficulty establishing that there even is a problem concerning the presence of the object’s back side. The prevalent view is that the object’s back sides are not perceptually present, i.e., they are not, in any sense, seen by the perceivers, and Noë has offered no argument to the contrary. Noë’s problem of perceptual presence is, in fact, ambiguous: there are two quite different problems and it takes quite different resources to solve them. First, there is the problem that the unattended parts of the perceptual scene may not be genuinely present to us: Noë presents us with empirical data which suggest that what seems to be plainly in view can be, “strictly speaking,” not seen by us. We may be subject to an illusion when we regard ourselves as having experience of the entire detailed scene. But Noë argues that the entire scene is genuinely present in the sense that it is readily accessible, by shifting one’s attention or making eye movements. Second, in cases like the object’s back side we are dealing with a different problem altogether. Noë concedes that the back side is not, “strictly speaking,” seen by the perceiver. Nevertheless, he argues, it is perceptually present, giving rise to the problem of how to account for its perceptual presence. Noë’s solution is that it is present by virtue of our having perceptual expectations about it. Notice that we cannot appeal to possible access to solve this problem: it may be impossible for the perceiver, say, to go round a house, to take a look. Husserl is centrally concerned with the latter problem, and the view Noë develops to solve it is rightly interpreted as a sketch of Husserl’s view, but it needs to be complemented with the crucial idea of fulfillment. When I look at an object, I experience the front side differently from the back side. This phenomenal difference can be captured by calling the experience of the front side “intuitive” and the experience of the back side “empty.” When I turn the object around, there is fulfillment, i.e., what was experienced emptily comes to be experienced intuitively. The back side can be regarded as perceptually present in the sense that we can have fulfillments (or disappointments) with regard to it. Husserl investigates perceptual content as determining fulfillment conditions, and not as determining accuracy conditions, as in the mainstream views. He engages in a kind of conceptual analysis, e.g., of the concept of shape or color, by investigating the fulfillment conditions pertinent to shape or color. Noë’s perceptual expectations are part of the Husserlian framework: they function to set the fulfillment conditions. Noë has given us parts and aspects of a comprehensive Husserlian framework. I aim to contribute to our understanding of it, and thereby of Noë’s enactive view.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1981. / Bibliography: leaves 441-449. / Microfiche. / viii, 449 leaves, bound 29 cm

In this descriptive phenomenological inquiry, I explored the experiences and meanings of five adult research participants who were raised in and later departed from evangelical fundamentalism in some measure. Life Review, a structured guided autobiographical group-based adult learning model designed to assist people in organizing life events, was utilized to explore the research participants' experiences and meanings of being raised in a religious fundamentalist orientation. As a result of participating in Life Review, the research participants generated thirty descriptive written narratives that served as the primary source of data for this inquiry. For the purpose of this inquiry, the research participants attended eight Life Review sessions. Sessions one and eight focused on group formation and closure, respectively. Sessions two through seven focused on assigned topics. In this regard, the research participants prepared six two-page single spaced narratives via a word processor describing their experiences and meanings specific to: 1) choosing to participate in this study, 2) major branching points in life, 3) family of origin, 4) parenting practices, 5) the effects of being raised in evangelical fundamentalism, and 6) the meaning of life. During Life Review sessions two through seven, the research participants read their respective narratives aloud to the other participants. A time limited reflective group discussion followed the reading of each narrative. A phenomenological data analysis model was applied to the research participant's narratives. The analysis of the data culminated in the emergence of themes that revealed the essence of the lived experience and meanings of being raised in and later departing from evangelical fundamentalism. The themes included the experience and meaning of: 1) unresolved pain, 2) unfulfilled longing, 3) coping strategies, 4) identity formation, 5) God and church, 6) being a Parent, 7) crippling fear, 8) engaging culture, 9) departing, and 10) finding home. These emergent themes described the essence of the research participants' life worlds specific to having been raised in and later departing from evangelical fundamentalism. The significance of the emergent findings and their relevance to evangelical fundamentalism, the psychology of religion, counseling psychology, and continued research were addressed, as were the limitations of the study.

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Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy / Preschool children frequently experience illness and consequently are significant users of health services. Despite children’s rights, children’s understandings of illness are rarely given due consideration in health care. Nursing practice tends to rely on adult accounts of the child’s illness. Children’s limited language ability is seen as a barrier to understanding their views. Thus this thesis is a search for what it means to preschool children to be ill. Careful analysis of the behavioural and cognitive literature on preschool children’s understandings of illness reveals a dependence upon abstract adult models of illness as a point of comparison. Despite being marginalized in the literature children’s kinaesthetic, intersubjective, situational, and spatial understandings of illness are uncovered. Existing research methodologies present barriers to understanding the world as children do. Drawing on the writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eugene Gendlin and other phenomenological scholars a new ethnographic phenomenological methodology is detailed. This methodology reveals a relational edge from which adults can begin to understand the world as children do. The methodology was used to identify how preschool children experience being ill from short-term illnesses and how they communicate those experiences to others. Field data was collected from 49 close observations with 10 children and eight parental interviews. Using field data and contemporary research, I explicate my thesis that preschool children understand illness inside-out, unimpeded by others. I examine how children, initially devoid of boundaries between inner and outer, and in advance of what they can say, articulate their meaning (‘inside’ experience/body sense) of the illness through movement and gesticulation (out) as expression. This inside-out expression of the illness experience is unimpeded by others. Adults in intimate situations with ill children can begin to understand children’s experience of illness by focusing on their own body-sense, which is related to the child’s body sense, because there is an incomplete differentiation between self and other. Knowing that children understand illness inside-out helps to understand the nature of preschool children’s experience of illness. Such understandings should influence adult interactions with sick children.

This dissertation is concerned with what it means to live well towards others. It develops a form of everyday ethics that emphasises how existing in the world and being ethical are entwined. To develop this approach to ethics this study employs Alfred Schutz’s phenomenological descriptions of everyday world and Emmanuel Levinas’s concept of the ethical. The purpose of the thesis is to develop an understanding of ethics that operates at the everyday level of human-to-human contact. This form of ethics is significant in that it indicates that being ethical is an important aspect of human life. My intention is to show that ethics is always more than simply the institution of codes of conduct that govern the way people act. The significance of the thesis is that it contributes both to ways in which ethics can be understood and to the manner in which ethics can be operationalised at an institutional level. My thesis has four specific aims. First, to examine the conditions and characteristics that constitute the everyday world as understood in Alfred Schutz’s work. Second, to explore Emmanuel Levinas’s understanding of the ethical. My third aim is to synthesise these theorists’ ideas through my heuristic device, Echoes of the Other. This device will allow me to extract the conditions for and features of an everyday ethics. My fourth aim is to point to an in situ illustration of this approach to ethics. This will be drawn from my observations at the Western Australian Police Academy. My argument is that synthesising Levinas’s and Schutz’s ideas will enable the development of an everyday ethics. This will highlight the ways in which ethics functions at the micro levels of human life. This study contributes to approaches to ethics, and specifically, ethics derived from Levinas’s ethical relation. This approach can be of use to people interested in ethics, phenomenology, the works of Levinas and Schutz and those concerned with developing ways to live well towards others.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy / Preschool children frequently experience illness and consequently are significant users of health services. Despite children’s rights, children’s understandings of illness are rarely given due consideration in health care. Nursing practice tends to rely on adult accounts of the child’s illness. Children’s limited language ability is seen as a barrier to understanding their views. Thus this thesis is a search for what it means to preschool children to be ill. Careful analysis of the behavioural and cognitive literature on preschool children’s understandings of illness reveals a dependence upon abstract adult models of illness as a point of comparison. Despite being marginalized in the literature children’s kinaesthetic, intersubjective, situational, and spatial understandings of illness are uncovered. Existing research methodologies present barriers to understanding the world as children do. Drawing on the writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eugene Gendlin and other phenomenological scholars a new ethnographic phenomenological methodology is detailed. This methodology reveals a relational edge from which adults can begin to understand the world as children do. The methodology was used to identify how preschool children experience being ill from short-term illnesses and how they communicate those experiences to others. Field data was collected from 49 close observations with 10 children and eight parental interviews. Using field data and contemporary research, I explicate my thesis that preschool children understand illness inside-out, unimpeded by others. I examine how children, initially devoid of boundaries between inner and outer, and in advance of what they can say, articulate their meaning (‘inside’ experience/body sense) of the illness through movement and gesticulation (out) as expression. This inside-out expression of the illness experience is unimpeded by others. Adults in intimate situations with ill children can begin to understand children’s experience of illness by focusing on their own body-sense, which is related to the child’s body sense, because there is an incomplete differentiation between self and other. Knowing that children understand illness inside-out helps to understand the nature of preschool children’s experience of illness. Such understandings should influence adult interactions with sick children.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2003. / Adviser: Laurence Senelick. Submitted to the Dept. of Drama and Dance. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 302-306). Access restricted to members of the Tufts University community. Also available via the World Wide Web;

Thesis (M.A.)--Liberty University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Drexel University, 2008. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 183-212).