A perceptual experience of a given object seems to make the object itself present to the perceiver’s mind. Many philosophers have claimed that naïve realism (the view that to perceive is to stand in a primitive relation of acquaintance to the world) provides a better account of this phenomenological directness of perceptual experience than does the content view (the view that to perceive is to represent the world to be a certain way). But the naïve realist account of this (...) phenomenology has a conspicuous shortcoming: it explains the phenomenological directness of veridical perceptual experiences but not of hallucinations. Conversely, I maintain that a particular variety of the content view provides a unified account of the phenomenological directness of both veridical and hallucinatory experiences. If so, then contrary to what is often assumed, the phenomenological facts concerning perceptual experience are explained better by the content view than by naïve realism, and consequently, we have a compelling reason to prefer the content view to naïve realism. (shrink)

In this article, I will discuss Aron Gurwitsch's criticism of Edmund Husserl's theory of hyletic data. First, Husserl’s doctrine will be summarized in its earliest complete formulation. It will then be seen that Gurwitsch's problem with this doctrine is primarily due to his acceptance of gestalt theoretic organization. He conceives of hyletic data as being a kind of formless stuff that undergoes organiza-tion by morphetic components of the noesis, which represents a dualism in percep-tion. Instead, Gurwitsch wants to show us (...) that the organization of these contents is autochthonous. I will consider Gurwitsch's criticism against Husserl's own writings, and especially those that were not available to Gurwitsch. It will be seen that Husserl continues to develop this doctrine and that it very interestingly undergoes a kind of noematization and exhibits certain displays of autochthonous organization that in the end are not far from Gurwitsch's own conception of these affairs.Este artículo versará sobre la crítica de Aron Gurwitsch de los data hylé-ticos de Edmund Husserl. En primer lugar, se resumirá la doctrina de Husserl en su primera formulación completa. A continuación, se verá que el problema de Gur-witsch con esta doctrina se debe principalmente a su aceptación de la organización teórica de la Gestalt. Él concibe los data hyléticos como una especie de material amorfo que se somete a organización por los componentes de morphé de la noesis, lo que representa un dualismo en la percepción. En cambio, Gurwitsch quiere mos-trarnos que la organización de estos contenidos es autóctona. Se examinará la críti-ca de Gurwitsch acerca de los escritos del propio Husserl y especialmente de aque-llos que no estuvieron al alcance de Gurwitsch. Se verá que Husserl sigue desarro-llando esta doctrina y que curiosamente sufre una especie de noematización y muestra ciertas manifestaciones de organización autóctona que, a la postre, no están lejos de la concepción gurwitscheana de estos asuntos. (shrink)

In this paper we examine the key phenomena associated with the notion of kairos in Heidegger’s pre‐Being and Time writings and show that they all fall short of the methodological constraints and conceptual requirements placed on authentic presence in 1927. Though Heidegger’s early studies of Aristotle and the New‐Testament are broadly suggestive of the notion of temporality that is presented in his systematic treatise, none of those earlier texts carry the differentiations within which the Augenblick of Being and Time is (...) situated. We thus claim that the ekstasis of authentic presence is neither reducible to an eschatological nor to a phronological kairos and furthermore, that the successor to kairos in Being and Time is more likely to be Jemeinigkeit than Augenblick. Establishing these distinctions gives us greater insights into the fundamental orientation of Heidegger’s inquiry in Being and Time. (shrink)

RESUMEN Husserl se esforzò por desarrollar vías de abordaje a la fenomenología que facilitaran su expansión. En "La filosofía como ciencia estricta" traza un diagnóstico de los obstáculos en el entramado de naturalismo e historicismo, y estudia su lógica de construcción a través de tres tópicos: apelación al psicologismo como elemento del naturalismo, interpretación de Hume como protofenomenólogo y lectura historicista de Dilthey. Esto permitirá observar datos relevantes sobre el modo como Husserl concibe en este período la especificidad y alcances (...) de la fenomenología. ABSTRACT Husserl endeavored to develop approaches to phenomenology that would facilitate its expansion. In "Philosophy as Rigorous Science", he provides a diagnosis of the obstacles found in the interweaving of naturalism and historicism, and analyzes the logic of its construction by means of three themes: the appeal to psychologism as an element of naturalism, the interpretation of Hume as a proto-phenomenologist, and the historicist reading of Dilthey. This makes it possible to obtain relevant information regarding the manner in which Husserl conceived the specificity and scope of phenomenology during that period. (shrink)

This paper argues that existing accounts of shame are incomplete in so far as they don’t take account of the problem of shame. This is the problem concerning the possibility of a primary experience...

The following investigation raises the question of indexicality’s phenomenological sense by tracing the development of this problem in Husserl’s phenomenology, starting with its emergence in the first of the Logical Investigations. In contrast to the standard approach, which confines the problem of indexicality to its treatment in the Logical Investigations, I argue against Husserl’s early solution, claiming that, from a specifically phenomenological perspective, the so-called “replaceability thesis” is unwarranted. I further show that Husserl himself unequivocally rejected his early (...) solution in his revisions of the Logical Investigations, although, admittedly, he never replaced his old conception with a new one. Thus, my central task here is that of reconstructing the main contours of Husserl’s new approach to indexicality. Following Husserl’s suggestion that the discovery of the horizon puts phenomenology in the position to actually solve the problem of indexicals, I trace the development of the horizon-intentionality in Husserl’s writings and show how the dynamic structure of the horizon invites the question of the genesis of expressibility. At the beginning of this reconstructive story lies Husserl’s discovery of the noema in Ideas I: this notion, whose discovery goes hand-in-hand with that of the horizon, recasts the problem of indexicals in a new light and brings the realisation that both subjective and objective expressions have the same subjective origins of sense. Yet for Husserl, the horizon is not only the horizon of objects, but also the horizon of the world. In the final analysis, the presence of indexicals in scientific discourse proves to be a faint echo of the life-world from which scientific discourse springs. (shrink)

This article aims to investigate the nature and role of linguistic “images” in Husserl’s philosophy. At first, I will explain the idea of rigorous language emerging in relevant pages of Ideas I as well as the challenges that linguistic “images” pose to it. I will then examine the nature of linguistic “images,” relying on the reflections collected in Husserliana XXIII to show their nature of intuitive-imaginative syntheses. Finally, I will focus on the role that such “images” play in phenomenologizing. Taking (...) decisive cues from Fink and Adorno, I will show the figurative essence of Husserl’s operative concepts and the productivity of “conceptual constellations” in phenomenology. The main contention of this article is that the rigor of phenomenological language essentially relies on a peculiar imaginative experience. (shrink)

In this paper, I compare the debate on phenomenal intentionality in the philosophy of mind with Husserl's phenomenology. I make a survey of various theoretical options within the " phenomenal intentionality research program ", in order to show how these issues are present also in phenomenology. I focus my analysis on the distinction between static and genetic phenomenology, in relation to the issue of the relationship between phenomenal consciousness and intentionality and I argue that, in order to address this issue, (...) we must turn to the analysis of the temporal self-manifestation of subjectivity. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the connection between meaning, the specific field of phenomenological philosophy, and mattering, the cornerstone of personal identity. Doing so requires that we take a stand on the scope and method of phenomenological philosophy itself. I will argue that while we can describe our lives in an “impersonal” way, such descriptions will necessarily omit what makes it the case that such lives can matter at all. This will require distinguishing between “personal” identity and “self” identity, (...) an idea well-established in the phenomenological literature – for instance, in Husserl’s distinction between the “transcendental ego” and the person -- but I will argue that self-identity is a normative achievement whose clarification requires a move into second-person phenomenology. The argument moves through three sections. First, I will discuss Aron Gurwitsch’s “non-egological” conception of consciousness and will explain the most important reason Husserl rejected this view in his transcendental phenomenology. Second, I will discuss some contemporary approaches to Husserl’s distinction between person and ego. Third, I will argue that these approaches testify to an ambiguity in Husserl’s account of being “true” to oneself that requires us to understand selfhood as having the structure Heidegger called care. The importance of this will be demonstrated phenomenologically in a critical examination of Paul Ricoeur’s ontology of selfhood, particularly his interpretation of the second-person phenomenology of conscience. (shrink)

In Phenomenology and the Problem of History. David Carr examines the paradox involving Husserl's transcendental philosophy and his later historicist theory.

I argue in this essay that Edmund Husserl distinguishes three levels within time-consciousness: an absolute time-constituting flow of consciousness, the immanent acts of consciousness the flow constitutes, and the transcendent objects the acts intend. The immediate occasion for this claim is Neal DeRoo’s discussion of Dan Zahavi’s reservations about the notion of an absolute flow and DeRoo’s own efforts to mediate between Zahavi’s view and the position Robert Sokolowski and I have advanced. I argue that the flow and the tripartite (...) distinction it introduces into consciousness is firmly grounded in Husserl’s texts and is philosophically defensible. The absolute flow is distinct but inseparable from what it constitutes. It is intentional in a nonobjectivating way, and accounts for the awareness I have of my individual acts of consciousness and of the unity and continuity of my conscious life. In its absence, consciousness would become an incoherent stream of episodic acts. There is nothing mysterious about the flow. What would be mysterious is consciousness without the flow. (shrink)

This book explores the problem of time and immanence for phenomenology in the work of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jacques Derrida. Detailed readings of immanence in light of the more familiar problems of time-consciousness and temporality provide the framework for evaluating both Husserl's efforts to break free of modern philosophy's notions of immanence, and the influence Heidegger's criticism of Husserl exercised over Merleau-Ponty's and Derrida's alternatives to Husserl's phenomenology. Ultimately exploring various notions of intentionality, these in-depth (...) analyses of immanence and temporality suggest a new perspective on themes central to phenomenology's development as a movement and raise for debate the question of where phenomenology begins and ends. (shrink)

The last years’ achievements in neuroscience are key for a philosophical analysis focused on the mind-body problem, such as the phenomenological approach.The digital evolution, on the one hand, faces us with the interaction between the world of reality and the world of possibility. This means more than a mere coexistence between these two dimensions. Rather, a concrete feedback occurs among them, and this brings out unprecedented and unavoidable issues with regard to perceptual processes. On the other hand, the digital (...) evolution allows for analyzing data and monitoring environmental systems, thus reasoning in a predictive way, anticipating problems, and checking ex ante their evolution and outcomes.Neuroscience, for its part, with the experiments of Libet and their subsequent interpretations, has highlighted a consciousness of the unconscious made of ballistic and automatic processes, which constitutes the starting phase of our decisions and actions. This further confirmed that sequential and linear thinking is unable to address the brain-environment relationship that is key in understanding any cognitive process.This analysis confirms the relevance of different aspects of Husserl’s phenomenology. There is, however, a “but,” which significantly reduces the extent of adherence to his point of view. Husserl assumed that an implicit horizon precedes or accompanies the acts of conscience. This is the material, impressional, passive, receptive, and, in some way, tacit dimension, strictly connected to the issue of genesis, i.e. the process of constitution of the analyzed entities. Thus, he drew a clear dividing line between this dimension and the phases of the self-controlling, vigilant conscience and its activity. In fact, his approach to the phenomenological problem is mainly oriented toward these phases. (shrink)

Early in the first volume of his Ideen zu einer reinen Phiinomeno logie und phiinomenologischen Philosophie, Edmund Husserl stated concisely the significance and scope of the problem with which this present study is concerned. When we reflect on how it is that consciousness, which is itself absolute in relation to the world, can yet take on the character of transcendence, how it can become mundanized, We see straightaway that it can do that only by means of a certain participation in (...) transcendence in the first, originary sense, which is manifestly the transcendence of material Nature. Only by means of the experiential relation to the animate organism does consciousness become really human and animal (tierischen), and only thereby does it achieve a place in the space and in the time of Nature. l Consciousness can become "worldly" only by being embodied within the world as part of it. In so far as the world is material Nature, consciousness must partake of the transcendence of material Nature. That is to say, its transcendence is manifestly an embodiment in a material, corporeal body. Consciousness, thus, takes on the characteristic of being "here and now" (ecceity) by means of experiential (or, more accurately, its intentive) relation to that corporeal being which embodies it. Accordingly, that there is a world for consciousness is a conse quence in the first instance of its embodiment by 2 that corporeal body which is for it its own animate organism. (shrink)

This paper does two things. Firstly, it clarifies the way that phenomenological data is meant to constrain cognitive science according to enactivist thinkers. Secondly, it points to inconsistencies in the ‘Radical Enactivist’ handling of this issue, so as to explicate the commitments that enactivists need to make in order to tackle the explanatory gap. I begin by sketching the basic features of enactivism in sections 1–2, focusing upon enactive accounts of perception. I suggest that enactivist ideas here rely heavily (...) upon the endorsement of a particular explanatory constraint that I call the structural resemblance constraint, according to which the structure of our phenomenology ought to be mirrored in our cognitive science. Sections 3–5 delineate the nature of, and commitment to, SRC amongst enactivists, showing SRC’s warrant and implications. The paper then turns to Hutto and Myin’s handling of SRC in sections 6–7, highlighting irregularities within their programme for Radical Enactivism on this issue. Despite seeming to favour SRC, I argue that Radical Enactivism’s purported compatibility with the narrow supervenience of perceptual experience is in fact inconsistent with SRC, given Hutto and Myin’s phenomenological commitments. I argue that enactivists more broadly ought to resist such a concessionary position if they wish to tackle the explanatory gap, for it is primarily the abidance to SRC that ensures progress is made here. Section 8 then concludes the paper with a series of open questions to enactivists, inviting further justification of the manner in which they apply SRC. (shrink)

The London and Bauer monograph occupies a central place in the debate concerning the quantum measurement problem. Gavroglu has previously noted the influence of Husserlian phenomenology on London's scientific work. However, he has not explored the full extent of this influence in the monograph itself. I begin this paper by outlining the important role played by the monograph in the debate. In effect, it acted as a kind of 'lens' through which the standard, or Copenhagen, 'solution' to the measurement problem (...) came to be perceived and, as such, it was robustly criticized, most notably by Putnam and Shimony. I then spell out the Husserlian understanding of consciousness in order to illuminate the traces of this understanding within the London and Bauer text. This, in turn, yields a new perspective on this 'solution' to the measurement problem, one that I believe has not been articulated before and, furthermore, which is immune to the criticisms of Putnam and Shimony. (shrink)

Attempts to determine whether nonhuman animals have minds are often thought to raise a particular sceptical concern; I call it the problem of animal minds. If there are such things as animal minds, the sceptic reasons, they will be private realms to which we humans do not have direct epistemological access. So how could one ever know for certain that animals are not mindless mechanisms? In this paper I use a phenomenological approach to show that this familiar sceptical problem (...) presupposes an account of our relations with others which is both too individualistic and too 'mentalistic' to shed interpretative light on our relations with animals. I conclude that although inquiries into how animals experience the world raise a host of difficult problems, they do not raise one big problem, the problem of animal minds, which must be solved before any such inquiries can get off the ground. (shrink)

This paper discusses the notion of the ‘phenomenological world’ and the problems it generates in the ‘hard’ paradigm of Husserl’s phenomenology, such as the lack of universality and intersubjectivity of this world, its closure and privacy, and its being only the personal world of a subject. Also, an attempt was made to show some of the sources of this problematic situation and the impossibility of solving it in a fundamentalist paradigm. It is only in the last period of (...) the development of Husserl’s phenomenology (the so-called period of the Crisis) that these problems find their satisfactory solution. (shrink)

Contributors to the latest Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume, _The Problem of Consciousness_, make connections regarding what is consciousness and how it is related to the natural world. The essays in this volume address this question from the perspective of phenomenological philosophy of mind, a new trend that integrates phenomenology, analytic philosophy, and cognitive science. The guiding principle of this new thinking is that precise and detailed phenomenological accounts of subjective experience are needed if significant progress is (...) to be made in understanding consciousness and its place in the natural world. From this standpoint, the essays collected here explore a variety of nuances concerning consciousness, including time consciousness, perception, schizophrenia, empathy, and intersubjectivity. Also addressed are fascinating methodological issues about the relationship between phenomenology and other approaches to understanding the mind in science and philosophy. (shrink)

The frame problem is the difficulty of explaining how non-magical systems think and act in ways that are adaptively sensitive to context-dependent relevance. Influenced centrally by Heideggerian phenomenology, Hubert Dreyfus has argued that the frame problem is, in part, a consequence of the assumption (made by mainstream cognitive science and artificial intelligence) that intelligent behaviour is representation-guided behaviour. Dreyfus' Heideggerian analysis suggests that the frame problem dissolves if we reject representationalism about intelligence and recognize that human agents realize the property (...) of thrownness (the property of being always already embedded in a context). I argue that this positive proposal is incomplete until we understand exactly how the properties in question may be instantiated in machines like us. So, working within a broadly Heideggerian conceptual framework, I pursue the character of a representation-shunning thrown machine. As part of this analysis, I suggest that the frame problem is, in truth, a two-headed beast. The intra-context frame problem challenges us to say how a purely mechanistic system may achieve appropriate, flexible and fluid action within a context. The inter-context frame problem challenges us to say how a purely mechanistic system may achieve appropriate, flexible and fluid action in worlds in which adaptation to new contexts is open-ended and in which the number of potential contexts is indeterminate. Drawing on the field of situated robotics, I suggest that the intra-context frame problem may be neutralized by systems of special-purpose adaptive couplings, while the inter-context frame problem may be neutralized by systems that exhibit the phenomenon of continuous reciprocal causation. I also defend the view that while continuous reciprocal causation is in conflict with representational explanation, special-purpose adaptive coupling, as well as its associated agential phenomenology, may feature representations. My proposal has been criticized recently by Dreyfus, who accuses me of propagating a cognitivist misreading of Heidegger, one that, because it maintains a role for representation, leads me seriously astray in my handling of the frame problem. I close by responding to Dreyfus' concerns. (shrink)

In “Is Justified True Belief, Knowledge?” Gettier shows us two counter examples of analyzing Knowledge, as “Justified True Belief” or “JTB”. Lots of scholars have reconstructed similar counter examples to JTB but we can see they follow a similar algorithm. Other scholars have tried to re-analyze knowledge by adding a fourth element to JTB and reformulating knowledge in a “JTB+X” formula and some replaced justification with another alternative component (Y) and proposed a “YTB” analysis of knowledge. In this article I (...) first overview Gettier’s problem and I show that we can construct a similar Gettier problem for each “JTB+X” or “YTB” formula. After that, I will focus on re-analyzing knowledge with a phenomenological attitude that can avoid Gettier’s problem. (shrink)

The article is an attempt at establishing a theoretical basis for a dialogue between phenomenology and contemporary philosophy, with regard to the problem of internalism-externalism. It is argued, according to Roman Ingarden, that one has to first of all put forward an adequate question about the problem, to be able to understand it appropriately. Moreover, the analysis is limited to the two forms of the internalism-externalism debate, namely semantics and the philosophy of the mind. Within Husserl’s phenomenology one can easily (...) point to basic intuitions that justify thesis that this philosophy refers to the internalism-externalism problem. Ultimately, by using phenomenological terminology, the article arrives at questions about possible internalism-or-externalism within Husserl’s phenomenological project. The questions, however, suggest that phenomenology can be neither clearly nor completely classified either as internalism or as externalism. (shrink)

We ordinarily think that self and other coexist as subjects with mutually exclusive mental lives. The conceptual problem of other minds challenges this common thought by raising doubts that coexistence and mutual exclusivity come together in a coherent idea of others. Existential phenomenology is usually taken to be exempt from skeptical worries of this sort because it conceives of subjects as situated or embodied, offering an inclusive account of coexistence. I submit that this well-entrenched view faces a serious dilemma: either (...) the ordinary distinction between self and other has to be given up, or accounts of situated and embodied coexistence presuppose a non-phenomenological solution to (a close relative of) the conceptual problem of other minds. I then propose a way out for existential phenomenology by sketching a Sartre-inspired phenomenological response to the problem. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 94, Issue 3, pp 391 - 409 The author outlines a provisional phenomenology of problem solving. He begins by reviewing the history of problem-solving psychology, focusing on the Gestalt approach, which emphasizes the influence of prior knowledge and the occurrence of sudden insights. He then describes problem solving as a process unfolding in a field of consciousness against a background of unconscious knowledge, which encodes action patterns, schemata, and affordances. A global feeling of wrongness or tension is (...) resolved by a series of field transitions, which are guided by peripheral experiences of coherence or “rightness.” The author treats the distinction between reproductive thought and productive thought as a difference in field structure. With reproductive thoughts and actions we perform operations to solve a problem in a semi-automatic sequence. In productive thought, by contrast, a kind of parallel search occurs. This may explain the otherwise obscure phenomenology of struggling to break an impasse. (shrink)

We argue in this article that Marx’s scientific method coupled with his analysis of the phenomenological consciousness of agents trapped within the capitalist mode of production provides a sufficient solution to the transformation problem. That is, Marx needs no amending – mathematical, philosophical, or otherwise – and the tools he uses to demonstrate and resolve the problem – science and phenomenology – were already clearly spelled out in his texts. Critics of Marx either fail to understand his scientific method, (...) or are themselves trapped within a non-scientific capitalist phenomenology. Similarly, Marxists that mathematically resolve the transformation problem fail to realise that Marx’s scientific analysis alone demonstrates that a mathematical solution to the transformation problem is a misapprehension of the relation between Marx’s abstract theory and concrete phenomena. Consequently, we also criticise the monetary theorists who try to dismiss the problem as pointless by claiming that Marx was not a pre-monetary theorist. (shrink)

Until recently, cognitive research in infantile autism primarily focussed on the ability of autistic subjects to understand and predict the actions of others. Currently, researchers are also considering the capacity of autists to understand their own minds. In this article we discuss selected recent contributions to the theory of mind debate and the study of infantile autism, and provide an analysis of intersubjectivity and self-awareness that is informed both by empirical research and by work in the phenomenological tradition. This (...) analysis uncovers certain problems in the theory-theory account of autism, and at the same time illustrates the potential value of phenomenology for cognitive science. (shrink)

It is a common intuition in scientific practice that positive instances confirm. This confirmation, at least based purely on syntactic considerations, is what Nelson Goodman’s ‘Grue Problem’, and more generally the ‘New Riddle’ of Induction, attempt to defeat. One treatment of the Grue Problem has been made along Bayesian lines, wherein the riddle reduces to a question of probability assignments. In this paper, I consider this so-called Bayesian Grue Problem and evaluate how one might proffer a solution to this problem (...) utilizing what I call a phenomenological approach. I argue that this approach to the problem can be successful on the Bayesian framework. (shrink)

What kind of reality is legal reality, how is it created, and what are its a priori foundations? These are the central questions asked by the early phenomenologists who took interest in social ontology and law. While Reinach represents the well-known “realist” approach to phenomenology of law, Felix Kaufmann and Fritz Schreier belonged to the “positivist” “Vienna School of Jurisprudence,” combining Hans Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law with Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology—and thereby challenging Reinach’s views on how legal reality and the (...) legal a priori were to be conceived. This paper addresses the controversy between these positivist and realist approaches to phenomenology of law, with the goal of introducing the lesser known theories of Kaufmann and Schreier. The special focus on their critique of Reinach’s outline should give us an overview of their positions vis-à-vis the basic and a priori elements of which legal reality consists and the role that phenomenology plays in analyzing them. There is one general tendency to be noted: While the phenomenological legal positivists see the root of legal reality in an act of interpretation according to a “normative scheme of interpretation,” Reinach locates the roots of legal reality in social interaction and argues for the existence of entities independent of any interpretation. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIf we take Heidegger's ontology to be a philosophy of history, then, for Husserl, the problem of history is only one among the three major directions of his thoughts. After Husserl met Dilthey in 1905, he more and more attended to the problem of history and reflected upon the longitudinal intentionality of time-genesis-history. His basic idea is to grasp the condition of possibility of history by means of an eidetic intuition upon the longitudinal intentionality. However, because Husserl never explicates his (...) thoughts on history in his published works, he is often regarded as a “non-historical” philosopher. In fact, like Dilthey, Husserl purports to combine historical enlightenment with critique of knowledge. It is hence Dilthey-Yorck, Husserl, Heidegger and Gadamer who established together the most important tradition of history of philosophy in the twentieth century, namely, phenomenological-ontological philosophy of history. (shrink)

This book details a history of the methodology of textual interpretation from Ancient Greece to the 20th century. It presents a complete English translation of Hermeneutics and Its Problems, written by Russian philosopher Gustav Gustavovich Shpet, along with insightful commentary. Written in 1918, Shpet's text remained unpublished in its original Russian until the collapse of the Soviet Union. This engaging translation will be of value to anyone interested in early phenomenology, Russian intellectual history, as well as the divergence of (...) phenomenology and the analytic philosophy of language. The volume also features translations of five key essays written by Shpet. The first presents an extended elaboration of a non-egological conception of consciousness on Husserlian grounds that considerably predates the well-known arguments of early Sartre and Gurwitsch. The second details the rudiments of a phenomenological philosophy of history that traces a central theme back to Parmenides. The next two reveal Shpet’s abiding philosophical interest in combating skepticism and what he took to be the reigning neo-Kantian model by which philosophy is a handmaiden to mathematical physics. The final one features a terse statement of Shpet’s overall philosophical viewpoint, written during the early years of the Stalinist period. Shpet offers an example of one facet of philosophy from a phenomenological viewpoint, demonstrating the progress as well as the deficiencies of successive eras along the historical journey. In doing so, he also gradually reveals the need for a theory of signs, interpretation, and understanding. This collection brings together key documents for assessing Shpet’s hermeneutic phenomenology and his perceived need to develop a phenomenological philosophy of language. (shrink)

These are the working notes/handouts given to the resident philosophers and scholars for the de Nobili Endowment Lecture held at Chennai, on 27th October, 2022. These have been printed and circulated among the attendees before the lecture. The lecture itself will be published in a book form. The de Nobili Endowment Lecture was given by the author at Satya Nilayam International Jesuit Centre for Philosophical Excellence affiliated to the University of Madras and which is part of Loyola (Autonomous) College, Chennai (...) on 27th October, 2022 at 6.20 pm in an offline event. The main contention of the paper is that Dr. Edith Stein through her work on Empathy resolves problems of Empathy encountered in Advaita Vedanta. (shrink)

Although recent cognitive science and traditional phenomenology has placed great importance on first-person descriptions, exactly what this entails goes undefined. I will seek to answer what's involved in phenomenological description, with reference to Husserl. I define phenomenological description according to its genus and differentia. I compare description in the natural sciences with description in phenomenology. I discuss how the basic particulars for Husserlian phenomenological description stem from the intentional relation -- particularly the distinction between noesis and noema. (...) I discuss the pivotal role of reflection in phenomenological description. I further argue that a phenomenological description is more than a statement which utilizes the 'I-[verb]' template. The final section analyses the difficulties inherent in describing intersubjectivity and argues these difficulties may have influenced Husserl's early, descriptive account of this topic. (shrink)

This volume features fourteen essays that examine the works of key figures within the phenomenological movement in a clear and accessible way. It presents the fertile, groundbreaking, and unique aspects of phenomenological theorizing against the background of contemporary debate about social ontology and collective intentionality. The expert contributors explore the insights of such thinkers as Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, Adolf Reinach, and Max Scheler. Readers will also learn about other sources that, although almost wholly neglected by historians of (...) philosophy, testify to the vitality of the phenomenological tradition. In addition, the contributions highlight the systematic relevance of phenomenological research by pinpointing its position on social ontology and collective intentionality within the history of philosophy. By presenting phenomenological contributions in a scholarly yet accessible way, this volume introduces an interesting and important perspective into contemporary debate insofar as it bridges the gap between the analytical and the continental traditions in social philosophy. The volume provides readers with a deep understanding into such questions as: What does it mean to share experiences with others? What does it mean to share emotions with friends or to share intentions with partners in a joint endeavor? What are groups? What are institutional facts like money, universities, and cocktail parties? What are values and what role do values play in social reality? (shrink)

A BSTRACT: I argue that theory theory approaches to autism offer a wholly inadequate explanation of autistic symptoms because they offer a wholly inadequate account of the non-autistic understanding of others. As an alternative I outline interaction theory, which incorporates evidence from both developmental and phenomenological studies to show that humans are endowed with important capacities for intersubjective understanding from birth or early infancy. As part of a neurophenomenological analysis of autism, interaction theory offers an account of interpersonal (...) class='Hi'>problems that is fully consistent with the variety of social and nonsocial symptoms found in autism. (shrink)

Resumen Las distintas dimensiones de la investigación fenomenológica y su vínculo intrínseco con las cuestiones de método llevan a prestar atención a la esfera de lo inaparente, y especialmente a la cuestión del acceso al plano trascendental. El inicio de la discusión se remonta al planteo sobre el abandono -o no- del cartesianismo en Husserl, tema que devino un tercer problema asociado con las vías de acceso a la reducción. En este trabajo estudiaremos este decurso con objeto de sugerir que (...) los desarrollos sobre generatividad y filosofía de lo inaparente invitan a redefinir el problema en términos más generales, explorando qué accesos a lo trascendental se despliegan en las diversas dimensiones de investigación fenomenológica. En este sentido, seguiremos la deriva de las dos primeras discusiones para bosquejar finalmente las direcciones que surgirían en una labor de desarrollo de la tercera.The different dimensions of phenomenological research and its intrinsic link to methodology lead to pay attention to this area and, within it, especially to the ways to transcendental dimension. The beginning of this discussion goes back to the abandonment -or absence of abandonment- of Cartesianism in Husserl, an issue that became a third problem in the issue of the ways to reduction. In this paper we study these problems in order to suggest that developments on generativity and phenomenology of the inapparent redefine the problem in more general terms, exploring the ways leading into the transcendental realm that unfold in the various dimensions of phenomenological research. In this regard, we will continue the first two discussions and finally point out the directions that arise in the development of the third question. (shrink)

This paper discusses Wittgenstein's take on the problem of other minds. In opposition to certain widespread views that I collect under the heading of the “No Problem Interpretation,” I argue that Wittgenstein does address some problem of other minds. However, Wittgenstein's problem is not the traditional epistemological problem of other minds; rather, it is more reminiscent of the issue of intersubjectivity as it emerges in the writings of phenomenologists such as Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Heidegger. This is one sense in which (...) Wittgenstein's perspective on other minds might be called “phenomenological.” Yet there is another sense as well, in that Wittgenstein's positive views on this issue resemble the views defended by phenomenologists. The key to a proper philosophical grasp of intersubjectivity, on both views, lies in rethinking the mind. If we conceive of minds as essentially embodied we can understand how intersubjectivity is possible. (shrink)

The article aims to show that the task of grounding categorial constituents in the specific founded acts of perception yields the problem field of phenomenological inquiry, within the framework of which remains Heidegger’s project of fundamental ontology. To achieve this goal the article reconstructs, first, the problem of the possibility of a priori correspondence between meaning and intuition of the intentional act; second, the phenomenological justification of extension of the traditional concept of truth, as a result of which (...) truth characteristic expands to intentional acts structured in a certain way, namely acts of total agreement between meaning and intuition (identification acts); third, the problem of the “categorial” in the phenomenological analysis of perception, which includes the extension of the concept of perception, limited in transcendental philosophy to the area of sensible intuitions, and justification of the specific categorial acts. On this basis, the article demonstrates that (1) phenomenology in a certain sense continues the project of transcendental philosophy, but the idea of a priori correspondence between notion and intuition within the framework of structural analysis of intentionality forms a new research problem. (2) The phenomenological understanding of truth in terms of the dynamics of empty and filled meaning intention is significant for the concept of truth presented by Heidegger in Being and Time. Heidegger explicates the concept of the truth in fundamental ontology based on the idea of identification. (3) The extension of the concept of object to its categorial constitution justified by Husserl provides fundamental ontology with the research subject. Heidegger interprets the categories, phenomenally represented in acts of categorial intuition, as a priori structures of the being of beings. The study also ascertains that new concepts of Husserl’s phenomenology saturate the conceptual framework of fundamental ontology. However, Heidegger also rethinks the key concepts of phenomenology in accordance with objectives which are different from the original objectives of the project of phenomenology designed by Husserl. (shrink)

What is phenomenology's contribution to contemporary debates in the philosophy of mind? I am here concerned with this question, and in particular with phenomenology's contribution to what has come to be called the problem of consciousness. The problem of consciousness has constituted the focal point of classical phenomenology as well as the main problem, and indeed perhaps the stumbling block, of the philosophy of mind in the last two decades. Many philosophers of mind, for instance, Thomas Nagel, Ned Block, Owen (...) Flanagan, Colin McGinn and David Chalmers, have acknowledged the properly phenomenological character of this problem; Nagel is even willing to entrust the study of phenomenal consciousness to what he calls an “objective phenomenology.” Yet, the phenomenology to which these philosophers resort has little to do with the conceptual framework that was developed within the phenomenological tradition. They put forward an entity they term “phenomenal consciousness,” but only in the hope that it may be explained by means of the theories that currently prevail in the philosophy of mind or in cognitive sciences. (shrink)