If we want to assess whether or not a naturalized phenomenology is a desideratum or a category mistake, we need to be clear on precisely what notion of phenomenology and what notion of naturalization we have in mind. In the article I distinguish various notions, and after criticizing one type of naturalized phenomenology, I sketch two alternative takes on what a naturalized phenomenology might amount to and propose that our appraisal of the desirability of such naturalization should be more positive, (...) if we opt for one or both of the latter alternatives. (shrink)

Can phenomenology contribute to the burgeoning science of consciousness? Dennett’s reply would probably be that it very much depends upon the type of phenomenology in question. In my paper I discuss the relation between Dennett’s heterophenomenology and the type of classical philosophical phenomenology that one can find in Husserl, Scheler and Merleau-Ponty. I will in particular be looking at Dennett’s criticism of classical phenomenology. How vulnerable is it to Dennett’s criticism, and how much of a challenge does his own alternative (...) constitute? I will argue that there are some rather marked differences between these two approaches to consciousness, but as I also hope to make clear, Dennett’s own account of where the differences are located is off target and ultimately based on a somewhat flawed conception of what classical phenomenology amounts to. (shrink)

In a number of papers, Hubert Dreyfus and Ronald McIntyre have claimed that Husserl is an internalist. In this paper, it is argued that their interpretation is based on two questionable assumptions: (1) that Husserl's noema should be interpreted along Fregean lines, and (2) that Husserl's transcendental methodology commits him to some form of methodological solipsism. Both of these assumptions are criticized on the basis of the most recent Husserl-research. It is shown that Husserl's concept of noema can be interpreted (...) in a manner that makes his theory far more congenial to a certain type of externalism, but ultimately it is argued that his phenomenological analysis of intentionality entails such a fundamental rethinking of the very relation between subjectivity and world that it hardly makes sense to designate it as being either internalist or externalist. (shrink)

Is it possible to investigate subjectivity reflectively? Can reflection give us access to the original experiential dimension, or is there on the contrary reason to suspect that the experiences are changed radically when reflected upon? This is a question that Natorp discusses in his Allgemeine Psychologie, and the conclusion he reaches is highly anti-phenomenological. The article presents Natorp's challenge and then goes on to account in detail for Heidegger 's subsequent response to it in his early Freiburg lectures, in particular (...) Die Idee der Philosophie und das Weltanschauungsproblem, Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, Phänomenologie der Anschauung und des Ausdrucks and Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles. Heidegger 's early views on reflection, selfhood, and pre-reflective self-awareness are expounded, and the article concludes with a discussion of the relationship between reflective phenomenology and hermeneutical phenomenology. (shrink)

In his book The Conscious Mind David Chalmers introduced a by now familiar distinction between the hard problem and the easy problems of consciousness. The easy problems are those concerned with the question of how the mind can process information, react to environmental stimuli, and exhibit such capacities as discrimination, categorization, and introspection (Chalmers, 1996, 4, 1995, 200). All of these abilities are impressive, but they are, according to Chalmers, not metaphysically baffling, since they can all be tackled by means (...) of the standard repertoire of cognitive science and explained in terms of computational or neural mechanisms. This task might still be difficult, but it is within reach. In contrast, the hard problem—also known as the problem of consciousness (Chalmers, 1995, 201)—is the problem of explaining why mental states have phenomenal or experiential qualities. Why is it like something to ‘taste coffee’, to ‘touch an ice cube’, to ‘look at a sunset’ etc.? Why does it feel the way it does? Why does it at all feel like anything? Chalmers’s distinction confronts us with a version of the so-called ‘explanatory gap’. On the one hand, we have certain cognitive functions, which can apparently be explained reductively, and on the other hand, we have a number of experiential qualities, which seem to resist this reductive explanation. We can establish that a certain function is accompanied by a certain experience, but we have no idea why that happens, and regardless of how closely we scrutinize the neural mechanisms we don’t seem to be getting any closer at an answer. In his book, Chalmers also distinguished two concepts of mind: a phenomenal concept and a psychological concept. The first captures the conscious aspect of mind: Mind is understood in terms of conscious experience. The second concept understands mind in functional terms as the causal or explanatory basis for behavior.. (shrink)

In his bookThe Conscious MindDavid Chalmers introduced a now-familiar distinction between the hard problem and the easy problems of consciousness. The easy problems are those concerned with the question of how the mind can process information, react to environmental stimuli, and exhibit such capacities as discrimination, categorization, and introspection. All of these abilities are impressive, but they are, according to Chalmers, not metaphysically baffling, since they can all be tackled by means of the standard repertoire of cognitive science and explained (...) in terms of computational or neural mechanisms. This task might still be difficult, but it is within reach. In contrast, the hard problem — also known astheproblem of consciousness — is the problem of explaining why mental states have phenomenal or experiential qualities. Why is it like something to ‘taste coffee,’ to ‘touch an ice cube,’ to ‘look at a sunset,’ etc.? Why does it feel the way it does? Why does it feel like anything at all? (shrink)

The analyses of the mind–world relation offered by transcendental idealists such as Husserl have often been dismissed with the argument that they remain committed to an outdated form of internalism. The first move in this paper will be to argue that there is a tight link between Husserl’s transcendental idealism and what has been called phenomenological externalism, and that Husserl’s endorsement of the former commits him to a version of the latter. Secondly, it will be shown that key elements in (...) Husserl’s transcendental idealism, including his rejection of representationalism and metaphysical realism, is shared with a number of prominent contemporary defenders of an externalist view on the mind. Ultimately, however, it will be suggested that the very alternative between internalism and externalism—an alternative based on the division between inner and outer—might be inapplicable when it comes to phenomenological conceptions of the mind–world relation. (shrink)

The article explores and compares the accounts of empathy found in Lipps, Scheler, Stein and Husserl and argues that the three latter phenomenological thinkers offer a model of empathy, which is not only distinctly different from Lipps’, but which also diverge from the currently dominant models.

In opposition to traditional forms of dualism and monism, the author holds that our bodily self includes certain aspects of otherness. This is shown concerning the phenomenological issues of intentionality, of self-awareness and of intersubjectivity, by emphasizing the dimension of pathos. We are affected by what happens to us before being able to respond to it by acts or actions. Every sense, myself and others are born out of pathos. The original alienness of our own body, including neurological processes, creates (...) shifting degrees of nearness and remoteness, and allows for pathological deviations such as depersonalisation, paranoia or trauma. Such a phenomenology of body crosses the borderlines of different disciplines. (shrink)

Since the end of the last century, there has been several ambitious attempts to naturalize Husserlian phenomenology by way of mathematization. To justify themselves in view of Husserl’s adamant antinaturalism, many of these attempts appeal to the new physico-mathematical tools that were unknown in Husserl’s time and thus allegedly make his position outdated. This paper critically addresses these mathematization proposals and aims to show that Husserl had, in fact, sufficiently good arguments that make his antinaturalistic position sound even today. The (...) starting point of the discussion presented in this paper is the mathematization project introduced by Jean-Michel Roy, Jean Petitot, Bernard Pachoud, and Francisco Varela in their introduction to the book Naturalizing Phenomenology. This proposal was followed by a number of critiques but also by several alternative naturalization attempts clearly inspired by Roy et al.’s ambitious project. The review of some of Husserl’s important arguments often overlooked or misinterpreted by both the naturalization advocates and their critics leads the author of the paper to the twofold conclusion which, on the one hand, explores the deeper reasons for the impossibility of a physical and mathematical treatment of phenomenology, on the other hand, clarifies the sense in which such treatments are possible, namely by way of restriction of the variety of experiential aspects that undergo naturalization and substitution of the aspects amenable to the direct mathematization for the directly unmathematizable ones. In the fourth section of this paper, the author attempts to demonstrate that, contrary to widespread belief, Husserl’s arguments are not obsolete by the standards of the contemporary physico-mathematical approaches employed in the mathematization of phenomenology and indeed stand the test of time. (shrink)

En Ideas I, la fenomenología se presenta como “idealismo trascendental”. Esta investigación muestra que cinco años antes, en 1908, Husserl accedió a la formulación del “idealismo trascendental”, pero desde una vía diferente a la de Ideas I. En 1913 y hasta 1921, el fundador de la fenomenología retoma y desarrolla la fundamentación inicial del “idealismo trascendental”. Presentamos los rasgos fundamentales de esta “demostración” del “idealismo trascendental” y ponderamos hasta qué punto se abre la posibilidad de un “trascendentalismo metodológico”, camino hacia (...) una filosofía trascendental no-idealista. (shrink)

Resumen Tanto la migración como el exilio, al lado del extranjero y el extraño, han sido objeto de la investigación fenomenológica. En este estudio se da un pequeño paso con respecto a la fenomenología de la migración. En particular, se lleva a cabo una profundización en torno a un estrato fundante: el éxodo en sus intrincadas relaciones con estratos tales como la frontera y la diáspora. Así, centramos la atención en el éxodo como experiencia y en los estratos protofundadores de (...) la comprensión de la migración. Con esta mirada, se dan tres pasos, a saber, se caracteriza la relación existente entre 1. El éxodo y la constitución trascendental; se establece la interrelación entre 2. La frontera y la comunidad de pertenencia; y, finalmente, se mira cómo 3. La diáspora opera la constitución trascendental de la esperanza. A manera de 4. Conclusiones se vuelve la atención a la constitución trascendental como fundamento de la ética.Migration like exile, alongside the stranger and the stranger, have been the subject of phenomenological research. In this study a small step is taken regarding the phenomenology of migration. In particular, a deepening is carried out around a founding stratum: the exodus in its intricate relation- ships with strata such as the border and the diaspora. Thus, we focus attention on the exodus as experience and on the foundational layers of the understanding of migration. With this view, three steps are taken, namely, the relationship between the exodus and the transcendental constitution is characterized; the interrelation is established between 2. The border and the community of belonging; and, finally, we look at how 3. The diaspora operates the transcendental constitution of hope. By way of 4. Conclusions, attention is turned to the transcendental constitution as the foundation of ethics. (shrink)

En 1936, en su última obra, Crisis, Husserl afirma que la filosofía ejerce una función orientadora con respecto a la cultura. El propósito de esta investigación es mostrar que la caracterización del filósofo como "funcionario de la humanidad" está en estrecha conexión con la fenomenología de la experiencia: ciencia de la ‘doxa’, ciencia del mundo de la vida. En la década del treinta, Husserl desarrolla una fenomenología de la facticidad, fenomenología de la subjetividad trascendental, cuyo carácter es monádico, pero cuyo (...) ser tan solo adviene real mediante relaciones intersubjetivas. La ciencia del mundo de la vida permite establecer que en la raíz de la crisis de la cultura occidental se encuentran el 'dualismo psico-físico', el 'objetivismo' y el 'naturalismo'. Para superarlos se requiere revalorizar la doxa, y mostrar cómo en ella tiene lugar la constitución, el a priori, del mundo de la vida. (shrink)

Recent philosophy of mind has seen an increase of interest in theories of intentionality in offering a functional account of mental states. The standard intentionalist view holds that mental states can be exhaustively accounted for in terms of their representational contents. An alternative view proposed by Tim Crane, called impure intentionalism, specifies mental states in terms of intentional content, mode, and object. This view is also suggested to hold for states of sensory awareness. This paper primarily develops an alternative to (...) the impure intentionalist account of states of sensory awareness. On the basis of Husserl’s phenomenological work, I argue that a focus on intentionality at the level of sensory awareness is phenomenologically implausible. The final part offers an alternative functional account of sensory awareness based on what Husserl called ‘immanent association’. (shrink)

This paper discusses the relation between the later Husserl and the later Heidegger regarding their criticisms of modern science and technology. It is suggested that the overlap between both accounts is more significant than is standardly acknowledged. The paper first explores Heidegger’s ideas about the ‘essences’ of science and technology, how they allegedly determine the contemporary worldview, conceal our relation to being, and how Heidegger warrants his critical attitude toward this. It then discusses Husserl’s philosophical–historical assessment of the ‘idea’ of (...) modern science, which Husserl believed resulted in the decapitation of philosophical questioning. Although key differences in method, aims, and their proposed solution to the dominance of the technological-scientific worldview should not be overlooked, the paper suggests that core aspects of Heidegger’s analyses can be traced back to Husserl. (shrink)

Let it be a network of voices... A network of voices that not only speak, but also struggle and resist for humanity.

The article is a translator’s commentary to the Ukrainian translation of E. Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations. The task of this article is twofold: On the one hand, to reveal the historical context of the writing and publishing of Cartesian Meditations, on the other hand, to outline the strategic and terminological aspects of the Ukrainian translation of this work. The first part of the article is devoted to the history of creation of the text of Cartesian Meditations. In particular, the author answers (...) the question of why the German text of Cartesian Meditations was not published until 1950, almost twenty years after the French translation of the book was released. The historico-philosophical investigation conducted in the article shows that Husserl considered the publication of Cartesian Meditations as an opportunity to systematically present his phenomenological philosophy and, eventually, recognized the impossibility of embracing the complexity of his doctrine within this work. The difficulty of this systematic presentation led to the enhancement of the role of Husserl’s assistant, Eigen Fink, in the editing of Cartesian Meditations and, ultimately, to the creation of Fink’s Sixth Meditation. The latter, as the author of the article demonstrates, puts previous developments in the phenomenology of static and genetic types into a new theoretical perspective, mainly by introducing the method of constructive phenomenology. In the second part of the article, the author offers one of the possible strategies for translating Husserlian texts that consists in structural simplification and stylistic improvement of the text. This strategy is proposed to be implemented by using simpler grammatical structures, by supplementing the text with translator’s comments, as well as by consistent usage of the Ukrainian phenomenological terminology. During the analysis of the terminological discourse of contemporary Ukrainian phenomenology, the author revises some of the established Ukrainian translations, such as the translation of the phenomenological terms Ausschaltung and Zeitbewusstsein and introduces the translation of new terms, such as Vergemeinschaftung, Person, reell and ideell. (shrink)

Despite the significant number of critical analyses devoted to the subject, the precise definition of the famed crisis-notion that lies at the heart of Husserl’s last work remains controversial. The aim of this article is to defend and expand the account of Husserl’s notion of the crisis of philosophy and of the resulting crisis of the European sciences that I have developed in a number of publications. This will be done by further exploring the notion of the meaningfulness of the (...) sciences for life as well as its relation to their scientificity. Based on this result, I will then respond to some objections advanced against my proposal, and I will present further arguments to the effect that the crisis of philosophy consists in the collapse of its pretension to be scientific, and the consequent crisis of the European sciences consists in the resulting enigmatic character of their scientificity. (shrink)

Current discussions on social cognition, empathy, and interpersonal understanding are largely built on the question of how we recognize and access particular mental states of others. Mental states have been treated as temporally individuated, momentary or temporally narrow unities that can be grasped at one go. Drawing on the phenomenological tradition—on Stein and Husserl in particular—I will problematize this approach, and argue that the other’s experiential states can appear meaningful to us only they are viewed in connection with further, non-simultaneous (...) experiential states of the other. I will focus on the temporal structure of mental states which has received less attention in the available literature. Building a comparison between empathy and music perception, I will argue that approaching the problem of other minds from the point of view of particular mental states is like considering music from the point of view of particular notes. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to build a bridge between the fields of social cognition and social ontology. Drawing on both classical and more recent phenomenological studies, the article develops an account ofgroup-directed empathy. The first part of the article spells out the phenomenological notion of empathy and suggests certain conceptual distinctions vis-à-vis two different kinds of group. The second part of the paper applies these conceptual considerations to cases in which empathy is directed at groups and elucidates the sense (...) in which individuals can empathically target not only other individual’s emotions, but also shared emotions as such. Clarifying the structure of group-directed empathy, it will also be argued that the latter is, by default, more informative than individual-directed empathy. The third and last section of the paper is devoted to one central consequence of the proposed account: if it is possible to empathize with groups as such, and if empathy necessary builds on body-perception, then both ideas seem to be conducive to the claim that groups as such have a body. (shrink)

Several works published in the last decades defend the claim that the concept of creativity should be demystified. With the aim of showing that creativity is not an obscure power owned by only few individuals and free from constraints, authors working at the intersection field between philosophy and cognitive science have notably focused on the structure and evolution of cognitive mechanisms underlying our creative capacities. While taking up the suggestion that we should try not to mystify creativity, this article argues (...) that what is required for such demystification is primarily a transcendental and phenomenological inquiry. Kant’s and Merleau-Ponty’s works are here discussed in order to develop such a transcendental inquiry into creativity. Both Kant and Merleau-Ponty bring to the fore the conditions of possibility for creative acts, and highlight fundamental role of creativity itself in the formation of meaningfulness. The keystone of both philosophers’ inquiries is the emphasis on the interdependence between creativity and rules. Yet, due to the different approaches to the transcendental, Kant’s and Merleau-Ponty’s accounts do not fully converge, but should rather be considered as complementary. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to develop a phenomenological analysis of pretense. In different forms of pretense, something we take to be fictive is somehow transposed into a context that we experience as real. Due to this ‘transposition’, the context itself, under certain respects, becomes unreal or fictional. When we ‘live’ in a pretense context, we bracket or conceal what we take for real. Departing from both meta-representational and simulationist approaches, the phenomenological interpretation of pretense is developed based, on (...) the one hand, on the analysis of the role of perceptual and, on the other hand, on the inquiry into the central moments making up the sociality of pretense. In relation to the intersubjective/social nature of pretense and to reassessment of the relation between ‘being’ and ‘appearing’, which result from the analysis of the role of perceptual, different forms of perspectival flexibility that are actualized in pretense will be discussed. (shrink)

In this paper I sketch a systematic reconstruction of Husserl’s fundamental concept of “attitude”. I first explore Husserl’s account with respect to the three faculties of intellect, will, and emotivity [Gemüt], which also define the three basic kinds of attitude. The attitude assumed by the subject plays at this level the important role of articulating and unifying, according to an overall direction, various underlying moments of a complex act. I then focus on the specific intellectual, viz. cognitive attitudes and highlight (...) the difference between the naturalistic attitude (which characterizes the natural sciences) and the personalistic attitude (which characterizes the human sciences). I then consider the notion of the natural attitude and argue that the personalistic attitude represents the systematic core of it. The natural attitude may be defined as the human attitude, i.e., as the attitude in which subjects posit themselves exclusively as human subjects belonging to the world , which is itself unceasingly posited as being. In the final part of the paper I explore the function of the phenomenological reduction insofar as it opens up a possibility of self-understanding that breaks with the natural, human self-apprehension and discloses subjectivity in its transcendental dimension. This opens up a radically new attitude, the phenomenological, which should not be confused with a first-person perspective within the framework of the natural attitude. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

Una vez aclarado qué entendemos por «utopía», adoptaremos la actitud fenomenológica para buscar el sentido de la interculturalidad en nuestro universo multicultural. Éste pierde su indiferencia cuando es comprendido e incorporado a nuestra praxis, gracias a la interculturalidad, la cual es, ante todo, un desafío moral. La centralidad del diálogo en la hermenéutica filosófica presta dinamicidad a este fenómeno. Nuestro ejercicio hermenéutico reactivará la fenomenología de la intersubjetividad como origen de la vida social y del encuentro entre culturas. Concluiremos defendiendo (...) la necesidad de restaurar una universalidad concreta para que el multiculturalismo no se disuelva ni en el relativismo ni en el culturalismo y adquiera sentido como interculturalidad. No llegamos a ella espontáneamente, ni negando la cultura propia y adhiriéndonos a las otras, sino formándonos y configurándola en común conscientemente como proceso de identificación consciente en el seno de las diferencias. (shrink)

This essay tries to account for a certain “speculative turn” in contemporary philosophy (Q. Meillassoux, G. Harman, M. Gabriel, etc.) from a phenomenological point of view . A first objective of it will consist in exposing the link between, on the one hand, the methodological sense of Husserl’s concrete phenomenological analyses (concerning, for example, time and intersubjective structure of transcendental subjectivity,) and on the other hand, the consequences that follow from the grounding of phenomenology as first philosophy. This will allow (...) a largely underestimated research angle to be opened up, one that I call a “constructive phenomenology,” that constitutes an essential and original figure of transcendental philosophy in general. A second objective will then consist in the attempt to sketch the foundation of knowledge as knowledge , the core of a “phenomenological metaphysics.” Whereas the first part will remain within a Husserlian framework, the second will develop some elements of a “speculative transcendentalism” in a phenomenological perspective. (shrink)

Este artículo estudia la razón de Zambrano desde sus albores como razón mediadora. Su rechazo del sistema va unido a su comienzo en la intuición y a su decurso temporal, que analizamos en relación con Bergson y Husserl. La razón poética va más allá de ese núcleo intuitivo para revelar re-flexivamente incluso lo invisible. Su inmersión en las profundidades, en la pasividad actuante, en las entrañas, en la multiplicidad de los tiempos es paralela a la fenomenología de la génesis merleau-pontiana, (...) a su poiesis carnal e incluso al telos de una razón ampliada al sentir. Ambos filósofos ejercitan su nueva concepción de la filosofía en la existencia. (shrink)

This paper aims to address the relevance of the natural sciences for transcendental phenomenology, that is, the issue of naturalism. The first section distinguishes three varieties of naturalism and corresponding forms of naturalization: an ontological one, a methodological one, and an epistemological one. In light of these distinctions, in the second section, I examine the main projects aiming to “naturalize phenomenology”: neurophenomenology, front-loaded phenomenology, and formalized approaches to phenomenology. The third section then considers the commitments of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology with (...) respect to the three varieties of naturalism previously discussed. I argue that Husserl rejected strong and weak forms of epistemological naturalism, strong methodological naturalism, and ontological naturalism. The fourth section presents the argument that Husserl endorsed a weak, conditional form of methodological naturalism. This point is illustrated with Husserl’s proposal of “somatology,” a natural science apt to study the corporeality of the lived body. The final section addresses the complementarity and respective limits of the transcendental phenomenological and the natural scientific frameworks. I argue that, on Husserl’s account, the function of transcendental phenomenology with respect to the natural sciences is to provide them with an epistemological foundation and an ontological clarification. I suggest that certain natural sciences can be understood, within the transcendental phenomenological framework, as “sciences of constitution,” that is, as sciences investigating the contribution of real structures acting as conditions of possibility for the occurrence of certain kinds of comprehensive unities in lived experience. (shrink)

A phenomenological approach to anthropology should not propose a static definition of man, but inquire into specific human motivations, which never occur isolated. Therefore, the autonomy-dependency connection is presented as a possible human motivational ground. The notion of autonomy, presented with reference to the Kantian idea of the self-determining reason and to the Husserlian account of self-constitution, reveals in itself elements of dependency. On the other side, the notion of vulnerability and reliance is displayed through different approaches of Gehlen, MacIntyre (...) and Toombs in order to illustrate dependency not as a mere capitulation of the subject, but as one of its intrinsic possibilities, which does not exclude autonomous will. (shrink)

Die vorliegende Arbeit thematisiert eine sowohl im deutschen als auch im spanischen und englischen Sprachraum weitgehend unbekannte philosophische Kontroverse zweier herausragender Figuren der Rezeptionsgeschichte von Husserls Phänomenologie in Mexiko zur Zeit des spanischen republikanischen Exils. Es handelt sich um die Diskussion zwischen José Gaos und Luis Villoro über den phänomenologischen Begriff der Lebenswelt. Im ersten Teil meiner Darstellung werde ich den akademischen Kontext dieser Diskussion erörtern. Im zweiten Teil gehe ich auf die Hauptthese eines Vortrags ein, den Gaos 1963 in (...) Mexiko-Stadt vor einem internationalen Publikum hielt und der als die erste dokumentierte Behandlung des Lebensweltbegriffs in der spanischsprachigen Philosophie gilt. Der dritte Teil behandelt Villoros Erwiderung auf Gaos’ Vortrag und die sich daraus ergebende Auseinandersetzung der beiden Philosophen. Im vierten Teil ziehe ich eine kritische Bilanz des Inhalts dieser Diskussion im Licht des aktuellen Stands der Husserlforschung. Dabei, und schließlich auch im fünften Teil, wird sich die unverkennbar radikale Bedeutung dieser Diskussion für die aktuelle phänomenologische Forschung herausstellen, insbesondere im Hinblick auf das Forschungsdesiderat einer Erklärung der systematischen Verhältnisse zwischen transzendentaler Erkenntniskritik und Lebenswelttheorie. (shrink)

In this paper we focuse on how the first Heidegger changed the essential idea of phenomenology: if the terms of intentionality, pure consciousness, transcendental subject, noema and noesis radically disappear from Heidegger’s conceptuality, what does it mean exactly? Does Heidegger preserve anything from the idea of intentionality, from Husserl’s task of clarifying the aprioristic correlation between consciousness and object, and from Husserl’s relation of foundation of intentional modalities of higher level on modalities of lower level? We want here to emphasize (...) some essential changes concerning the idea of phenomenology: the holistic structure of experience, the task of clarifying the structure of transcendance as a foundation of intentionality, and the inversion of Husserl’s relation of foundation. On the contrary, we show how Husserl’s concept of sense is essentially different from that of ideal signification. (shrink)

This synthetic survey of the models on which theEinflihlungstheorie is based has showed the deficiency of a pattern and the oscillation of a distinction.The hydraulic model, which following a radical subjectivism is specified as a projection or transfer of pathemic contents from the subject into the object, experiences a crisis if confronted with the rights of the object, which claims to be empathized in this way or in that way. Such a claim induces to recognize a character proper to the (...) object, which does not accept to be reduced to a mere neutral container ready to receive the subjective pathemic contents.Consequently, the distinction between empathy towards the human and empathy towards the sub-human — which appeared to be a major difference —vanishes, since the relation with the object (natural or artistic) is specified in terms of intersubjectivity andalter-ego.The subjectivistic hydraulic pattern is not just substituted by an opposite, objectivistic pattern, which would create the same difficulties, only upset; but rather by ananalogic model, in which sense is established in the correlation between subject and object, and on the aesthetic ground of the qualitative affinities, which determine a horizon of style.It is an analogic model which characterizes, in Husserl, the constitution of the transcendental intersubjectivity: empathy becomes the condition of possibility of the comprehension of other subjects in their typic or stylistic structure.InAesthetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft Max Dessoir severely criticizes the theorists of empathy because they hyposthatize organic metaphors creating a “schablonenhafte Versprachlichung.”44 Empathy is certainly metaphor, yet not in the sense of a figurative expression, but as a realmetapherein ortransfert: as translation of sense — not from a full to an empty vessel, but rather in the circular form of the analogic circuit. (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)

Since the publication of the Philosophical Investigations in 1953, Wittgenstein''s later philosophy of mind has been the subject of numerous books and articles. Although most commentators agree that Wittgenstein was neither a behaviorist nor a Cartesian dualist, many continue to ascribe to him a position that strongly resembles one of the alternatives. In contrast, this paper argues that Wittgenstein was strongly opposed to behaviorism and Cartesianism, and that he was concerned to show that these positions implicitly share a problematic assumption. (...) This assumption is a seemingly innocent idea that subjectivity, or mind, is some kind of object or thing. The paper provides a detailed survey of Wittgenstein''s critique of Cartesianism and behaviorism, as well as an outline of Wittgenstein''s alternative account of subjectivity. (shrink)

Alterations in consciousness are among the most common transdiagnostic psychopathological symptoms. Therefore clinical practice would benefit from a clear conceptual framework that guides the recognition, comprehension, and treatment of consciousness disorders. However, contemporary psychopathology lacks such a framework. We describe how pathology of consciousness is currently being addressed in clinical psychology and psychiatry so far, and how the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) and International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Edition (ICD-10) refer to this subject. A (...) brief review of the literature on consciousness is then given. After describing psychological perspectives on consciousness and discussing theoretical issues involved in exploring consciousness, we offer a practical clinical working definition of consciousness and we illustrate its connections with a variety of diagnoses. Making use of Jean-Paul Sartre’s distinctions among: states, functions, qualities, and structure, provide a conceptual framework to understand consciousness, to refine diagnostics and to guide the development of therapeutic possibilities in clinical practice. (shrink)

El presente trabajo se propone exponer los momentos centrales de la teoría husserliana de la apodicticidad, señalar sus dificultades y ofrecer un principio de solución para los problemas más acuciantes. En relación con lo último, la idea rectora que conduce las consideraciones siguientes es que la apodicticidad que Husserl reclama para el yo debe comprenderse a la luz de la síntesis temporal y, en especial, de las notas que son propias del presente viviente. The current paper seeks to expound the (...) principal aspects of the husserlian theory of apodicticity, to present its dificulties and to offer a posible solution to its mains problems. In conection to the latter the directive idea that leads the followings considerations is that we must understand the apodicticity of the "I" in terms of the temporal synthesis, in particular, in the characteristics features of the living present. (shrink)

This paper argues that the Husserl—Heidegger relationship is systematically misunderstood when framed in terms of a distinction between internalism and externalism. Both philosophers, it is argued, employ the phenomenological reduction to immanence as a fundamental methodological instrument. After first outlining the assumptions regarding inner and outer and the individual and the social from which recent epistemological interpretations of phenomenology begin, I turn to the question of Husserl's internalism. I argue that Husserl can only be understood as an internalist on the (...) assumption that immanence equates with internal. This, however, is not the case as can be seen once the reduction is understood not as setting aside the existence of the world, but rather a reflection on its meaning. Turning to Heidegger, I argue that his commitment to a form of the phenomenological reduction precludes him from being either a semantic or a social externalist. The place of authenticity and the first person perspective in his work derive from his phenomenological commitments, which can be seen in his accounts of discourse and language and of falling (Verfallen). I then go on to briefly outline a more plausible basis for understanding the difference between Husserl's and Heidegger's phenomenologies in terms of their respective emphases on logic and on poetics. (shrink)

Las corrientes filosóficas de inspiración cartesiana tarde o temprano tienen que afrontar el solipsismo como un resultado al menos plausible de su desarrollo. La Fenomenología no podía evitar la misma suerte. Después de un rápido panorama en lo tocante a la fenomenología husserliana y el solipsismo, pasamos a exponer críticamente el texto de las Meditaciones cartesianas de Husserl, específicamente la quinta. Intentaremos señalar la insuficiencia de la exposición husserliana a la hora de superar, desde sus propias bases, la amenaza del (...) solipsismo. (shrink)

In recent years there have been attempts to integrate first-person phenomenology into naturalistic science. Traditionally, however, Husserlian phenomenology has been resolutely anti-naturalist. Husserl identified naturalism as the dominant tendency of twentieth-century science and philosophy and he regarded it as an essentially self-refuting doctrine. Naturalism is a point of view or attitude (a reification of the natural attitude into the naturalistic attitude) that does not know that it is an attitude. For phenomenology, naturalism is objectivism. But phenomenology maintains that objectivity is (...) constituted through the intentional activity of cooperating subjects. Understanding the role of cooperating subjects in producing the experience of the one, shared, objective world keeps phenomenology committed to a resolutely anti-naturalist (or ) philosophy. (shrink)

Throughout his career, Husserl identifies naturalism as the greatest threat to both the sciences and philosophy. In this paper, I explicate Husserl’s overall diagnosis and critique of naturalism and then examine the specific transcendental aspect of his critique. Husserl agreed with the Neo-Kantians in rejecting naturalism. He has three major critiques of naturalism: First, it (like psychologism and for the same reasons) is ‘countersensical’ in that it denies the very ideal laws that it needs for its own justification. Second, naturalism (...) essentially misconstrues consciousness by treating it as a part of the world. Third, naturalism is the inevitable consequence of a certain rigidification of the ‘natural attitude’ into what Husserl calls the ‘naturalistic attitude’. This naturalistic attitude ‘reifies’ and it ‘absolutizes’ the world such that it is treated as taken-for-granted and ‘obvious’. Husserl’s transcendental phenomenological analysis, however, discloses that the natural attitude is, despite its omnipresence in everyday life, not primary, but in fact is relative to the ‘absolute’ transcendental attitude. The mature Husserl’s critique of naturalism is therefore based on his acceptance of the absolute priority of the transcendental attitude . The paradox remains that we must start from and, in a sense, return to the natural attitude, while, at the same time, restricting this attitude through the on-going transcendental vigilance of the universal epoché. (shrink)

The concept of habit enfolds an enormous richness and diversity of meanings. According to Husserl, habit, along with association, memory, and so on, belongs to the very essence of the psychic.1 Husserl even speaks of an overall genetic “phenomenology of habitualities”. In this paper, as an initial attempt to explicate the complexity of phenomenological treatments of habit, want to trace Husserl’s conception of habit as it emerged in his mature genetic phenomenology, in order to highlight his enormous and neglected original (...) contribution in this area. I shall show that Husserl was by no means limited to a Cartesian intellectualist explication of habitual action (as commentators such as Bourdieu and Dreyfus have claimed), but attempted to characterize its complexity across the range of human individual, sub-personal, personal, social and collective experience. Habit, as we shall see, for Husserl, is intimately involved in the constitution of meaningfulness (Husserl’s Sinnhaftigkeit) and forms of sense (Sinnesgestalten) at all levels, from the level of perceptual experience, through the formation of the ego, to the development of society, history and tradition, indeed to our whole sense of the harmonious course of worldly life and to the genetic constitution of worldhood as such. Habituality, furthermore, is a key structural principle in the genetic constitution of the transcendental ego itself, as it unfolds as a concrete living and acting person in an intersubjective, cultural and historical world. (shrink)

Husserlian variation, Bergsonian intuition and Peircean abduction are contrasted as methodological responses to the traditional philosophical problem of deriving knowledge of universals from singulars. Each method implies a correspondingly different view of the generation of the variations from which knowledge is derived. To make sense of the latter differences, and to distinguish the different sorts of variation sought by philosophers and scientists, a distinction between extensive, intensive, and abductive-intensive variation is introduced. The link between philosophical method and the generation of (...) variation is used to illuminate different philosophical conceptions of nature and nature's relation to meaning and sense. (shrink)

Husserl’s Logical Investigations has undergone explicitly conceptualist and non-conceptualist interpretations. For Richard Cobb-Stevens, he has extended understanding into the domain of sensuous intuition, leaving no simple perceptions that are actually separated from higher-level understanding. According to Kevin Mulligan, Husserl does in fact sunder nominal and propositional seeing from the simple or straightforward—and yet interpretative—seeing of particulars. To see simply is not to exercise an individual meaning or a general concept. Arguing that Logical Investigations provides evidence for both views, I endeavour (...) to show that the account of perceptual consciousness in Husserl’s subsequent work is far more clear and consistent. It is one of growing beyond the situation portrayed by Mulligan and into the one explicated by Cobb-Stevens. Though they are notionally separable, pre-conceptual syntheses at the passive and noematic levels are inevitably interwoven with conceptual and categorial articulations in a developed consciousness. (shrink)

This article discusses Husserl’s “epoche” and “phenomenological reduction” and early Heidegger’s “fear” and “anxiety” from a conceptual and terminological point of view. The basis for comparing “epoche” and “fear” is their main function of neutralizing the world. The author also considers the way of correlating the epoche and anxiety as philosophical concepts with three types of realizable experience that served as their source. The main points and stages of the introduction of the term “epoche” are highlighted; the main functional differences (...) between the terms “epoche” and “phenomenological reduction” in various works of Husserl are indicated. A number of Husserl’s attempts to transform the methodological principles put forward by him into a description of a special experience of detachment, accessible through moral efforts, courage and honesty, are considered. In this regard, the transformation of Cartesian doubt into the procedure of “epoche” through the artificial procedure of “attempt at doubt” is analyzed. Three types of restrictions on the universality of the epoche are distinguished. Terminological and meaningful relationships between neutralization as a mode of consciousness and the epoche are considered. Two main differences are revealed, with the help of which Husserl tries to transform principles into experience: the difference between positional and neutral consciousness and the difference between an epoche and a quasi-epoche. Husserl’s interpretation of the epoche and reduction as a special experience has two main sources: first, the experience of the imagination, or fantasy, and in this sense the source of the epoche is the quasi-epoche, and not vice versa. Secondly, the postulate of the identity of sensation from the real and illusory object. Heidegger’s distinction between fear and anxiety is critically analyzed. The author comes to the conclusion that a common source of the phenomena of anxiety, fear, horror, fright, and so on consists in the collision and mutual penetration of various human worlds. It is impossible to distance oneself from this diversity; further, it is the true source of philosophical reflection. (shrink)

How do we understand other minds? The current debate uses the iridescent term “empathy” to explain our quite different mindreading capacities. Since no alternatives seemed to be available the discussion has been mostly in a deadlock between “simulation theory” and “theory theory”. Only recently the relevance of phenomenological findings on the issue has been brought forward. In this paper Husserl’s two concepts of “Einfühlung”, as developed in the second volume of his Ideas, are set against the background of the latest (...) discussion. Husserl’s explanation of empathy in terms of analogical experience highlights the transcendental role of empathy in the context of constitution. At the same time it may solve some of the many riddles left by the recent debate. (shrink)