In this paper I piece present an account of Husserl’s approach to the phenomenological reconstruction of consciousness’ immemorial past, a problem, I suggest, that is quite pertinent for defenders of Lockean psychological continuity views of personal identity. To begin, I sketch the background of the problem facing the very project of a genetic phenomenology, within which the reconstructive analysis is situated. While the young Husserl took genetic matters to be irrelevant to the main task of phenomenology, he would later come (...) to see their importance and, indeed, centrality as the precursor and subsoil for the rationality of consciousness. I then argue that there is a close connection between reconstruction and genetic phenomenology, such that reconstruction is a necessary component of the program of genetic phenomenology, and I set out an argument of Husserl’s compelling one to enter into reconstructive territory. With that impetus, I schematically lay out the main contours one finds in Husserl’s practice of reconstructive techniques. We find him taking two distinct approaches, that of the individual viewed egologically (through the abstract lens of a single individual’s consciousness) and as embedded in interpersonal relations. Husserl occasionally calls these the approach “from within” and “from without,” respectively. Ultimately, the two approaches are not only complementary, but require one another. In closing, I argue that these considerations lead to a blurring of lines between the genetic and generative phenomenological registers, which challenges the prevalent view that there is a sharp demarcation of the two. (shrink)

This paper argues that John McDowell’s conceptualism distorts a genuine phenomenological account of perception. Instead of the seemingly forced choice between conceptualism and non-conceptualism as to what accounts for perceptual and discursive meaning, I provide an argument that there is a preconceptual intelligibility already in the perceptual field. With the help of insights from certain nonconceptualists I sketch out an argument that there is a teleological directedness in the way in which latent order and structure can be discriminated at the (...) level of perceptual content. This content can then be brought to discursive, conceptual clarity by understanding in such a way that it is guided by the order already discovered in perception. With the help of Husserlian phenomenology of perception, I argue that the fundamental roots of epistemic normativity lie in the discriminating intelligence or mindedness operative below the level of the explicitly conceptual. By preconceptual is meant the directedness of explication of the structures present in the sensory manifold toward fully explicit conceptual judgments. (shrink)

This paper examines the concept of evidence, with specific focus on the problem of evidence in Husserl's phenomenology. How this problem was dealt with and resolved by philosophers such as Plato, Descartes and Kant is compared and contrasted with Husserl's approach, and the implications of the solution offered by Husserl discussed. Finally, in light of the issues outlined, it is assessed whether or not Husserl can be said possibly to have been philosophically inclined towards notions such as idealism, empiricism, solipsism (...) and scepticism. (shrink)

In an Appendix to his Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis dating from the early 1920s, Husserl makes the startling assertion that, unlike the mundane ego, the transcendental ego is immortal. The present paper argues that this claim is an ineluctable consequence of Husserl’s relentless pursuit of the ever deeper levels of time-constituting consciousness and, at the same time, of his increasing reliance on Leibniz’s model of monads as the true unifiers of all things, including minds. There are many structural (...) and substantive parallels between Leibniz’s monadic scheme and Husserl’s later views on the primal ego, and these points of convergence are laid out step by step in this paper. For both theorists, the monad is a self-contained system of being, one “without windows”; a monad’s experiences unfold in harmonious concatenations; a monad is a mirror of its proximate environs and comprises multiple perspectives; the unconscious is a repository of potential activation; and, most importantly of all, a monad knows no birth and death and hence is immortal. In his very last years, Husserl proposed a third ego level, below (or beyond) the mundane ego and transcendental ego - the primal ego. It is neither psychical nor physical; it permits the transcendental ego to carry out its constitutive activities, including the mundane ego’s birth and death in time; it is always in a process of becoming, and so it can never be in a state of only “having-been”, that is, dead: and hence the primal ego’s enduring cannot itself ever come to an end. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 7, Edition 2 September 2007. (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)

This paper seeks to provide a noetic analysis of emotional trauma. It highlights three essential features of trauma, as well as one non-essential feature, and attempts to make sense of them phenomenologically. The first essential feature of trauma that the paper considers is the disbelief that pervades traumatic experience. When traumatized, we cannot believe that the traumatic event has taken place. This is because we will, not for the event not to have happened—we cannot will something that is in the (...) past—but to believe that it did not happen so as to shield ourselves from our painful emotional response to it. The second essential feature of trauma is our inability to distinctly categorially intuit the central state of affairs around which our trauma revolves. The traumatic situation is literally unthinkable by us, for it is incongruent with both our expectations regarding the subject of the trauma and our horizon of sense more generally. The third essential feature of trauma is the temporal disorientation that it brings about. Such disorientation arises from our prolonged and single-minded attention to an increasingly complex categorial object: the traumatic situation. Finally, the paper considers a non-essential feature of trauma, namely, how traumatic experience can motivate phenomenological and scientific reactions. (shrink)

Analytic philosophy is sometimes said to have particularly close connections to logic and to science, and no particularly interesting or close relation to its own history. It is argued here that although the connections to logic and science have been important in the development of analytic philosophy, these connections do not come close to characterizing the nature of analytic philosophy, either as a body of doctrines or as a philosophical method. We will do better to understand analytic philosophy—and its relationship (...) to continental philosophy—if we see it as a historically constructed collection of texts, which define its key problems and concerns. It is true, however, that analytic philosophy has paid little attention to the history of the subject. This is both its strength—since it allows for a distinctive kind of creativity—and its weakness—since ignoring history can encourage a philosophical variety of “normal science.”. (shrink)

An argument is made for the relevance of phenomenological hermeneutics to economics, with special attention to recent debates on hermeneutics among economists of the Austrian school of Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek. Hermeneutics is explicated in the context of Husserlian phenomenology, with special attention to phenomenology's Aristotelian roots. Naive and methodological forms of ?objectivism?; are contrasted with hermeneutics, which recovers the horizons of scientific knowledge: the whole, and the activities of the human knower. Finally, the charges that hermeneutics (...) entails pernicious forms of relativism and historicism are confronted. (shrink)

This essay explores the roots of social constructionism in the work of Alfred Schutz, the teacher of Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann and, beyond Schutz, Edmund Husserl. It is described how pregiven things are logically formed and then ideal types or constructs with content are also constituted about them. Schutz begins in the egological perspective but goes beyond that to the intersubjective perspective to show how the world of everyday life has constructs received from predecessors as well as contemporaries and (...) shared by in-groups. Common-sense constructs are constituted like cultural-scientific ones. Motivation in everyday life and the role of the ordinary vernacular in their transmission is shown. An analysis then focuses on how constructs have recently been received and/or reinforced by political election polling in the latest USA presidential election. These constructs involve results in percentages that can be understood qualitatively for Democrats and Republicans divided into gender groups, generations, races, regions, and by education, income or social class, religion. This account can be considered reflective, descriptive, and culture-appreciative and thus phenomenological. Similar constructing no doubt occurs in other industrialized countries and affects so-called common sense. Deeper understanding than this analysis reaches is called for at the end of this essay. (shrink)

The paper examines the roots of Husserlian phenomenology in Weierstrass's approach to analysis. After elaborating on Weierstrass's programme of arithmetization of analysis, the paper examines Husserl's Philosophy of Arithmetic as an attempt to provide foundations to analysis. The Philosophy of Arithmetic consists of two parts; the first discusses authentic arithmetic and the second symbolic arithmetic. Husserl's novelty is to use Brentanian descriptive analysis to clarify the fundamental concepts of arithmetic in the first part. In the second part, he founds the (...) symbolic extension of the authentically given arithmetic with stepwise symbolic operations. In the process of doing so, Husserl comes close to defining the modern concept of computability. The paper concludes with a brief comparison between Husserl and Frege. While Frege chose to subject arithmetic to logical analysis, Husserl wants to clarify arithmetic as it is given to us. Both engage in a kind of analysis, but while Frege analyses within Begriffsschrift, Husserl analyses our experiences. The difference in their methods of analysis is what ultimately grows into two separate schools in philosophy in the 20th century. (shrink)

In “Function and Concept” and “On Concept and Object”, Frege argued that certain differences between dependent and independent meanings were inviolable and “founded deep in the nature of things” but, in those articles, he was not explicit about the actual consequences of violating such differences. However, since by creating a law that permitted one to pass from a concept to its extension, he himself mixed dependent and independent meanings, we are in a position to study some of the actual consequences (...) of his having done so. To make certain of Frege’s ideas about the inviolability of logical form more tangible, I describe a string of very interrelated consequences that his attempt to transform dependent meanings into independent meanings actually brought in its wake. (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)

Dennett’s recent defense in this journal of the heterophenomenological method and its supposed advantages over Husserlian phenomenology is premised on his problematic account of the epistemological and ontological status of phenomenological states. By employing Husserl’s philosophy of science to clarify the relationship between phenomenology and evidence and the implications of this relationship for the empirical identification of ‘real’ conscious states, I argue that the naturalistic account of consciousness Dennett hopes for could be authoritative as a science only by virtue of (...) the very phenomenological evidences Dennett’s method consigns to the realm of fiction. Thus heterophenomenology, qua scientific method, is incoherent. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is twofold: (1) to clarify Ludwig Wittgenstein’s thesis that colours possess logical structures, focusing on his ‘puzzle proposition’ that “there can be a bluish green but not a reddish green”, (2) to compare modeltheoretical and gametheoretical approaches to the colour exclusion problem. What is gained, then, is a new gametheoretical framework for the logic of ‘forbidden’ (e.g., reddish green and bluish yellow) colours. My larger aim is to discuss phenomenological principles of the demarcation of the (...) bounds of logic as formal ontology of abstract objects. (shrink)

After a brief, personal reflection on Aron Gurwitsch’s life and his many influences on my career, I devote this lecture to some of the central themes of a phenomenology of medicine. Its core is the clinical encounter, which displays a certain structure I term the asymmetry of power (physician) and vulnerability (patient, family)—a complex contextual imbalance characterized by multiple points of view, hence points for reflective entrance. These are then interpreted phenomenologically in terms of epoché and reduction (practical distantiation), evidence, (...) reflection, and other related themes. I conclude with a suggestion about “the fundamental method” of phenomenology, free fantasy variation. (shrink)

Online collection of papers by Devitt, Dretske, Guarino, Hochberg, Jackson, Petitot, Searle, Tye, Varzi and other leading thinkers on philosophy and the foundations of cognitive Science. Topics dealt with include: Wittgenstein and Cognitive Science, Content and Object, Logic and Foundations, Language and Linguistics, and Ontology and Mereology.

Philosophical interest in the structure of perception is motivated by questions such as these: How does perception function to constrain and justify our empirical theories? How is it possible to perceive an extended process, when at any given moment of our perceiving it only one of its temporal phases is impinging on our senses? What determines the object or objects of perception - those things our experiences are about? The need to answer these and other questions about perception in a (...) satisfactory manner provides adequacy conditions for a theory of perception. (shrink)

This article develops an interpretation and defense of Husserl’s account of the omnitemporality of idealities. I first examine why Husserl rejects the atemporality and temporal individuation of idealities on phenomenological grounds, specifically that these attributions prove countersensical in how they relate idealities to consciousness. As an alternative to these conceptions, I develop a two-sided interpretation of omnitemporality expressed in modal terms of actuality and possibility, the actual referring to appearances in time and the possible, to reactivation at any time. In (...) defense of this interpretation of omnitemporality, I consider influential criticisms against Husserl’s account of idealities as they concern time, particularly whether the historical genesis of idealities compromises their omnitemporality by binding them to time. Ultimately, I argue that the transcendental historicity of idealities, despite being relevant to the question of validity and access, proves indifferent to their omnitemporality. (shrink)

Husserl is the philosopher who transformed the geological metaphor of sedimentation into a philosophical concept. While tracing the development of Husserl's reflections on sedimentation, I argue that the distinctive feature of Husserl's approach lies in his preoccupation with the question concerning the origins of sedimentations. The paper demonstrates that in different frameworks of analysis, Husserl understood these origins in significantly different ways. In the works concerned with the phenomenology of time consciousness, Husserl searched for the origins of sedimentation in the (...) field of subjective experience, and more precisely, in impressional consciousness. By contrast, in the later works concerned with history, he maintained that the origins of sedimentations lie in the field of historical past that stretches beyond the reach of individual experience. Building on the basis of these resources, I argue that the Husserlian concept of sedimentation has three distinct components of senses: static, genetic, and generative. In the static sense, sedimentations are modifications of retentions and necessary conditions of recollection. In the genetic sense, sedimentations are necessary for the formation of types, habits and moods, and as such, they shape present experiences. In the generative sense, sedimentations refer to what consciousness inherits from the historical tradition. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to provide an account of the role played by logic in the context of what Husserl names the “crisis of European sciences.” Presupposing the analyses offered in the Krisis, I look at Formale und Transzendentale Logik to demonstrate that the crisis of logic stems from the deviation of its original meaning as a “theory of science” and from its restriction to a mere “theoretical technique.” Through a comparison between Aristotelian syllogistic and modern logic, I (...) show why the modern discovery of the purely formal dimension of knowledge which makes possible such a mathematical technization is a positive achievement that hinders at the same time the disclosure of the truly philosophical nature of logic. The correct appraisal of this ambiguous phenomenon will explain why the rise of modern logic represents a decisive challenge for the success of Husserl’s late phenomenological project. (shrink)

Theories of meaning developed within the analytic tradition, starting with Gottlob Frege, and within continental philosophy, starting with Husserl, can be distinguished by their disagreement about the phenomenon of collapse or failure of meaning. Our text focuses on Frege’s legacy, taken up by Rudolph Carnap, which culminated in a view of the collapse of meaning defined first by a purely syntactic conception of categorial error and second, when Tarski entered the scene, by the paradoxes created by the conflict between the (...) use of the predicate truth and the concept of proof. As positivism’s conventionalism and late model-theoretic semantics became the paradigms derived from this position, the result, in our view, was a conception of meaning success and meaning failure dominated by dependence on a technological conception. We will argue that this dependence leads to the inability to evaluate the breaks in rational parameters and crises of meaning addressed by the phenomenological and transcendental perspectives. Husserl’s critique of logic as technology is the basis for the reflexive standpoint on the phenomena of meaning failure that leads to a theoretical and eidetic ideal approach to that phenomenon. It is then suggested that this phenomenological reflective standpoint on the problem of meaning failure is the origin of the doors that lead to the divergent paths between the analytic and continental traditions. Thus, this is an article with three argumentative phases connected into a larger unity. The first phase presents Husserl’s critique of a purely extensional, syntactic, and recursive conception of logical consequence and the concept of truth; the second presents Hussel’s larger conception of meaning-failure; the third—presented in an appendix— presents a lesson on the division between continental and analytic philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss, in a Heideggerian context, the possibility of de-subjectivizing the notion of the transcendental time-horizon and reinterpreting it as a formally indicated ‘whereto’ of releasement. The structures of the time-horizon depict the way beings unfold in the fullness of time in their alterity, and they orient the subject’s activity of ‘projection.’ What results is a field-oriented (as opposed to self-oriented) transcendental philosophy which would survive Heidegger’s critique of his own transcendental project, and which would avoid mystification. (...) I take three steps. First, I point out that the problematization of ‘transcendental Heidegger’ is based on the subjectivist interpretation of the time-horizon. I problematize a recent account in the subjectivist vein, arguing that it is neither indispensable, nor very plausible, nor the most illuminative of Heidegger’s work. Second, with the help of Dahlstrom, Golob, Engelland, Sheehan, and Vasterling, I gradually dissociate the notion of the horizon from subjectivism, the visual metaphor, and the assumption of an absolute ground. I suggest instead that the horizonality of the horizon be understood temporally, i.e., as an interplay of presencing and absencing where what matter most are the structures, themselves affected by time, which the transcendental field displays when beings unfold themselves within it. Third, I identify three of those structures when performing a de-subjectivizing reading of Heidegger’s interpretation of the threefold synthesis in Kant’s A-Deduction. These structures capture the way every being manifests itself, without themselves being necessarily grounded in the subject’s activity. This gives an example of how transcendental philosophy can clarify what the time-horizon is like while bracketing the question of its provenance. (shrink)

Although the semantic insights about natural language produced so far by neuroscientific research have been meagre, (Pulvermüller 2010) they have provided one important empirical finding which lang...

In this paper, I attempt to address some of the themes of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus logico-philosophicus with the aim of their deconstructionist interpretation. My analysis is based on David Gunkel’s book Deconstruction (MIT Press 2021). Based on some of its findings, I show how the Tractatus allows deconstruction and its practice to be thought. I show that the graphic structure of signs is crucial for the young Wittgenstein’s analysis and that it justifies the metaphysical findings in favor of which he (...) argues. ------------------------- Received:11/09/2022. Reviewed: 17/11/2022. Accepted: 1/12/2022. (shrink)

I argue against the interpretation of propositions as intentions and proof-objects as fulfillments proposed by Heyting and defended by Tieszen and van Atten. The idea is already a frequent target of criticisms regarding the incompatibility of Brouwer’s and Husserl’s positions, mainly by Rosado Haddock and Hill. I raise a stronger objection in this paper. My claim is that even if we grant that the incompatibility can be properly dealt with, as van Atten believes it can, two fundamental issues indicate that (...) the interpretation is unsustainable regardless: (1) it is hard to determine, without appealing to propositional intentions on pain of circularity, what intention a proof-object should be understood as a fulfillment of; (2) due to a difficult fulfillment dilemma, it is unclear, at best, what the object of an intention corresponding to a proposition is. (shrink)

I argue that there are no irrational visual experiences, if we mean just the experiences that one is having now, but there are irrational visual experiences, if we mean also the experiences that one has had in the past. In other words, I will be arguing that perceptual irrationality is a retrospective phenomenon. So as to further support the first conjunct of my thesis, and to contextualize it among contemporary discussions, I also critique Susanna Siegel’s proposal that one could be (...) having an irrational experience, in the sense of a hijacked experience that has inherited a sub-threshold epistemic charge from a corrupt outlook. The present discussion is conducted from a Husserlian point of view, according to which perception is rational, rather than arational. I am, however, in this paper, not undertaking to defend the Husserlian view or the rationality of perception, or even to argue that the view I refer to as Husserlian is, in all aspects, the view that Edmund Husserl actually held. I aim merely to provide certain clarifications concerning the more specific topic of irrational visual experiences. (shrink)

This article discusses passive and active aspects of consciousness as two equally justified roots of life experiencing the world. The passive domain involves the synthesis of internal time, association, habituality, bodily aspects, etc. The active domain includes strictly cognitive competences of consciousness: thinking, judging, etc. What has been actively constituted becomes passive as the basic level for higher form of understanding. The two domains interweave, influence each other, complement each other, and also remain in a certain tension and discrepancy. In (...) the broader perspective of the system of consciousness and its various layers, the passive-active differentiation must be treated functionally, and not as hierarchically arranged or constituted by separable concepts. It reflects the dynamics of the consciousness system at all its levels, and its meaning oscillates between the opposite and the overlapping. --------------------- Received: 26/01/2022. Reviewed: 28/03/2022. Accepted: 12/05/2022. (shrink)

The paper analyses Peirce’s hypoiconicity through the lens of Husserlian intentionality. Peirce’s triple structure of hypoiconicity as resemblance relation, diagrammatical reasoning and metaphoric displacement is shown to require intentional acts in its production and interpretation. Regarding hypoiconicity as a semiotic schematization of Vorstellung, the paper places it in the context of Husserl’s conception of intentionality in which iconicity appears as a stepping-stone towards the skeletonization of resemblance in diagrammatical abstraction and as schematic displacement in metaphor. As such, hypoiconic intentionality is (...) argued to play a role also in Peirce’s community conception of language. The paper’s core claim is that intentionality provides an avenue for revealing hypoiconicity as a major, critical concept of semiotics, functioning as paradigm case for investigating the convergence of semiotics and phenomenology. (shrink)

Vaccine hesitancy has been a major cause for concern throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The World Health Organization have previously addressed vaccine hesitancy via the ‘3C model’ (Convenience, Complacency, and Confidence). Recent scholarship has added two more ‘Cs’ (Context and Communication) to formulate a ‘5C model’ that is more equipped to adapt to the uncertainties of the pandemic. This paper focuses on the four ‘Cs’ that explicitly concerns trust (Complacency, Confidence, Context, and Communication) and phenomenologically distinguishes confidence from trust. Experts view (...) vaccines in terms of confidence, where the prospect of an undesirable outcome is extremely rare. Hence, not vaccinating and compromising herd immunity is seen to be unreasonable. Hesitant individuals contest the expert perspective and view vaccines in terms of trust, where the prospect of disappointment is likely. From this perspective, to vaccinate is to take a risk, and it is within reason to have the freedom to choose otherwise. This paper focuses on the hesitant perspective to identify the two social indicators of trust in vaccines most prominently shown during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Global North: (i) the expert reaction to hesitant concerns and (ii) the loss of freedom in relation to vaccine requirements. (shrink)

This essay examines the possibility that phenomenological laws might be implemented by a computational mechanism by carefully analyzing key passages from the Prolegomena to Pure Logic. Part I examines the famous Denkmaschine passage as evidence for the view that intuitions of evidence are causally produced by computational means. Part II connects the less famous criticism of Avenarius & Mach on thought-economy with Husserl's 1891 essay 'On the Logic of Signs (Semiotic).' Husserl is shown to reaffirm his earlier opposition to associationist (...) (Humean) and adaptationist (Darwinian) explanations of our thought-machine on the ground that they cannot reconstruct the notion of truth and its syntactic mental preservation in symbolic thought-trains. Part III reveals Husserl's interesting commitment to the idea that descriptive sciences necessarily transform into explanatory sciences on pain of contradicting the essence of science as a rational ideal. Since explanation in relation to phenomenology means causal explanation, and causal explanation in the form of the Denkmaschine accounts for phenomenological intuition, it is inferred that the rationally compelling ideal of explanatory science requires a computationalist reading of the subsequent logical investigations. (shrink)

Both John Campbell and Quassim Cassam have argued that we perceptually experience objects as mind-independent (MI), purportedly solving a problem they refer to as “Berkeley’s Puzzle.” In this paper, I will consider the same topic from a Husserlian perspective. In particular, I will clarify the idea of MI and argue that there is, indeed, a sense in which we can perceptually experience objects as MI, while also making objections to Campbell’s and Cassam’s respective arguments to the same effect. In particular, (...) I will argue that objects can be experienced as MI in the sense of the experience’s not being due to the malfunctioning of a perceptual organ, e.g., when one examines the ways in which the object displays itself, and gains confidence that there is, indeed, nothing the matter with one’s eyes. I will address the issue of MI from the perspective of Husserlian evidentialism, according to which perceptual content is conceived in terms of ways of perceptually exploring the object, thereby gaining evidence pertinent to the object and its properties, e.g., as when one takes a look at the object’s shape from a different angle, or scrutinizes its color in better lighting. (shrink)

What is the relation of logic to thinking? My dissertation offers a new argument for the claim that logic is constitutive of thinking in the following sense: representational activity counts as thinking only if it manifests sensitivity to logical rules. In short, thinking has to be minimally logical. An account of thinking has to allow for our freedom to question or revise our commitments – even seemingly obvious conceptual connections – without loss of understanding. This freedom, I argue, requires that (...) thinkers have general abilities to respond to support and tension among their thoughts. And these abilities are constituted by following logical rules. So thinkers have to follow logical rules. But there isn’t just one correct logic for thinking. I show that my view is consistent with logical pluralism: there are a range of correct logics, any one of which a thinker might follow. A logic for thinking does, however, have to contain certain minimal principles: Modus Ponens and Non-Contradiction, and perhaps others. We follow logical rules by exercising logical capacities, which display a distinctive first-person/third-person asymmetry: a subject can find the instances of a rule compelling without seeing them as instances of a rule. As a result, there are two limits on illogical thinking. First, thinkers have to tend to find instances of logical rules compelling. Second, thinkers can’t think in obviously illogical ways. So thinking has to be logical – but not perfectly so. When we try to think, but fail, we produce nonsense. But our failures to think are often subjectively indistinguishable from thinking. To explain how this occurs, I offer an account of nonsense. To be under the illusion that some nonsense makes sense is to enter a pretence that the nonsense is meaningful. Our use of nonsense within the pretence relies on the role of logical form in understanding. Finally, while the normativity of logic doesn’t fall directly out of logical constitutivism, it’s possible to build an attractive account of logical normativity which has logical constitutivism as an integral part. I argue that thinking is necessary for human flourishing, and that this is the source of logical normativity. (shrink)

To be more than a meta-ethical stance, moral phenomenology must provide an account of moral norms. This paper unites two sorts of phenomenological considerations. The first considers the teleological character of intentional experiences as ordered toward "truthfulness" in all the spheres of reason and toward a notion of self-responsibility for our beliefs, attitudes, and actions as the flourishing of rational agents. The second considers the phenomenological tradition's identification of empathy as the experience in which we encounter others as conscious agents (...) like me but irreducibly different from me and that grounds the emotions of respect and sympathy. Respect grasps the other conscious agent as an irreducibly different cognizing, rational, reflection-capable being, as making articulated judgments of value, and as making articulated choices about what activities conduce to what ends. Respect for others cannot be separated from a sympathetic care for others, a sympathy that inclines one toward caring for and aiding the other person in developing her own rational capacities. Sympathy, in brief, complements respect. At the same time, respect complements sympathy insofar as sympathy runs the risk of transmuting into paternalism. This is why, just as we need sympathy in relation to respect, we need respect in relation to sympathy. The paper introduces a distinction between first-order goods for an agent and the second-order goods associated with truthfulness. The second-order goods, the paper argues, necessarily override first-order goods when they prevent the attainment of the second-order goods for anyone. (shrink)

In several papers, Mark Wrathall argued that French phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, identifies a sui generis type of grounding, one not reducible to reason or natural causality. Following the Phenomenological tradition, Merleau-Ponty called this form of grounding “motivation,” and described it as the way in which one phenomenon spontaneously gives rise to another through its sense. While Wrathall’s suggestion has been taken up in the practical domain, its epistemic import has still not been fully explored. I would like to take up (...) the epistemic dimension of Wrathall’s thought in this paper. Following Wrathall, I explain how motivation can help us understand the manner in which perceptions ground singular, experiential judgments. But I extend this work in two ways. First, I suggest some additional considerations that support Wrathall’s view. Second, I argue that motivation can also help account for the way perceptions ground general judgments. My aim here will not be so much to rule out other answers to these longstanding epistemological questions, as to show that motivation carves out an attractive epistemological space. (shrink)

The article is devoted to historico-philosophical investigation of the grounds of universalism of special type. This universalism, inherent in transcendental thinking, was radicalized in quasi-transcendental discourse of Jacques Derrida. It is established that explicit critique of universalism in deconstructive philosophy is aimed at “logo-centric” paradigm of universality which is questioned by (quasi)transcendental philosophy. Constitutive function of difference and otherness in establishment of transcendental and especially quasi-transcendental universality was brought to light. It was shown that in (quasi)transcendental discourse singularity is involved (...) into the sphere of universal, whereas “dogmatic” universalism brought singularity and/or particularity outside, thus questioning its own claims. Tracing transcendentalist tendency to balance status and significance of universal and particular (singular), the author concludes that relation between them makes possible constituting hyper-universality of special type. Universal implications of the Derrida’s notion “quasi-transcendental” are defined. It was determined that one of the main factors constituting universalism of quasi-transcendental type is the deconstruction of binary thinking, accomplished first of all with the help of principles: differance, insolvability (aporia) and trace. Among them insolvability implies universality revealing the overlap and mutual conditioning of alternative (at a glance) elements. Instead, the trace conditions superiority of logo-centric alternatives “primary-secondary” and “presence-absence”. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to establish a phenomenological mathematical intuitionism that is based on fundamental phenomenological-epistemological principles. According to this intuitionism, mathematical intuitions are sui generis mental states, namely experiences that exhibit a distinctive phenomenal character. The focus is on two questions: what does it mean to undergo a mathematical intuition and what role do mathematical intuitions play in mathematical reasoning? While I crucially draw on Husserlian principles and adopt ideas we find in phenomenologically minded mathematicians such as (...) Hermann Weyl and Kurt Gödel, the overall objective is systematic in nature: to offer a plausible approach towards mathematics. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss some significant aspects of Husserl’s phenomenology which could not be adequately known without studying the manuscripts, unpublished during his lifetime and then published gradually since 1950 by Husserl Archives in Leuven founded by Father van Breda in 1939. The aspects I discuss here are listed under 6 subjects: Husserl’s phenomenological analyses of the constituting corporeal subjectivity, Husserl’s phenomenological analysis of the conditions of possibility of representifications, concept of I-consciousness, conception of transcendental subjectivity as intersubjectivity, the (...) development of Husserl’s conception of phenomenological philosophy, and Husserl’s metaphysics. This paper is drawn from, and an extension of, a lecture given at the Catholic University of Louvain in the occasion of 80th anniversary of the foundation of the Husserl Archives. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide a dynamic interpretation of Kant’s logical hylomorphism. Firstly, various types of the logical hylomorphism will be illustrated. Secondly, I propose to reevaluate Kant’s constitutivity thesis about logic. Finally, I focus on the design of logical norms as specific kinds of artefacts.

In this paper, I develop a comparison between the philosophies of Husserl and James in relation to their concepts of experience. Whereas various authors have acknowledged the affinity between James’ early psychology and Husserl’s phenomenology, the late development of James’ philosophy is often considered in opposition to Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. This is because James’ radical empiricism achieves a non-dual dimension of experience that precedes the functional division into subject and object, thus contrasting with the phenomenological analysis of the dual structure (...) of intentionality. However, I argue that the later “genetic” development of phenomenology converges with some central aspects of James’ radical empiricism. This is because genetic phenomenology leads us to conceive of the flow of primal impressions as a fundamental dimension of experience that precedes the subject-object duality and is at the base of the process of co-constitution of the subject and the object in reciprocal dependence. At the same time, Husserl conceives of the impressional core of experience as structured by formal conditions that depend on the concrete constitution of an embodied subject. For this reason, I argue that Husserl’s genetic phenomenology can complement James’ radical empiricism, thus leading to the development of the doctrine of pure experience as a form of empirical and not metaphysical realism. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I provide an interpretation and defense of Merleau-Ponty's thesis of the primacy of perception, namely, the thesis that all knowledge is founded in perceptual experience. I take as an interpretative and argumentative key Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological conception of motivation. Whereas epistemology has traditionally accepted a dichotomy between reason and natural causality, I show that this dichotomy is not exhaustive of the forms of epistemic grounding. There is a third type of grounding, the one characteristic of the grounding relations (...) found in perception: motivation. I argue that introducing motivation as a form of epistemic grounding allows us to see how Merleau-Ponty's thesis of the primacy of perception avoids both rationalism and empiricism. Whereas empiricism has argued that all the content of our knowledge is grounded in causal interactions between the world and our senses, and rationalism has held that experience does not suffice as a reason for knowledge, thinking of the relation between experience and knowledge in terms of motivation accommodates the best insights of rationalism and empiricism. Motivation allows us to see how knowledge can be grounded in experience without the content of knowledge being reducible to that of experience. (shrink)

In a recent article appearing in this journal, Theresa Scavenius compellingly argues that the traditional “rational-individualistic” conception of responsibility is ill-suited to accounting for the sense in which moral agents share in responsibility for both contributing to the causes and, proactively, working towards solutions for climate change. Lacking an effective moral framework through which to make sense of individual moral responsibility for climate change, many who have good intentions and the means to contribute to solutions for climate change tend to (...) dismiss or put off addressing the root causes. With this tendency arises the practical problem that climate change calls for urgent global collective action, both in terms of mitigation and adaptation, in order to prevent global temperature rise from exceeding 2C and avoid worst case climate scenarios. In this paper, I develop a phenomenological theory of ecological responsibility which addresses the conceptual problem Scavenius brings out and contributes to clarifying the sense in which moral agents share responsibility for both the causes and solutions for climate change. To develop this theory, I draw from, combine, and transform insights from the late work of Husserl on open horizons, transcendental intersubjectivity, and genetic phenomenology with breakthroughs from Emmanuel Levinas in articulating an original, asymmetrical theory of unlimited, diachronic responsibility. In drawing from Husserl, I show how what Levinas describes as the source of a demand for unlimited, diachronic responsibility can be phenomenologically reinterpreted in terms of a horizon of indeterminacy. I then show how horizons of indeterminacy arise in phenomenological descriptions of both human and nonhuman entities in such a way that discloses the demand for responsibility as a broad-ranging demand for unlimited, diachronic ecological responsibility. An important implication of this phenomenological theory of ecological responsibility is that it contributes to clarifying the sense in which individual moral agents share in responsibility for long range collective moral problems such as climate change. (shrink)

Husserl’s Logical Grammar is intended to explain how complex expressions can be constructed out of simple ones so that their meaning turns out to be determined by the meanings of their constituent parts and the way they are put together. Meanings are thus understood as structured contents and classified into formal categories to the effect that the logical properties of expressions reflect their grammatical properties. As long as linguistic meaning reduces to the intentional content of pre-linguistic representations, however, it is (...) not trivial to account for how semantics relates to syntax in this context. In this paper, I analyze Husserl’s Logical Grammar as a system of recursive rules operating on representations and suggest that the syntactic form of representations contributes to their semantics because it carries information about semantic role. I further discuss Husserl’s syntactic account of the unity of propositions and argue that, on this account, logical form supervenes on syntactic form. In the last section I draw some implications for the phenomenology of thought and conjecture that the structural features it displays are likely to convey the syntactic structures of an underlying language-like representational system. (shrink)

This monograph offers a fresh perspective on the applicability of mathematics in science. It explores what mathematics must be so that its applications to the empirical world do not constitute a mystery. In the process, readers are presented with a new version of mathematical structuralism. The author details a philosophy of mathematics in which the problem of its applicability, particularly in physics, in all its forms can be explained and justified. Chapters cover: mathematics as a formal science, mathematical ontology: what (...) does it mean to exist, mathematical structures: what are they and how do we know them, how different layers of mathematical structuring relate to each other and to perceptual structures, and how to use mathematics to find out how the world is. The book simultaneously develops along two lines, both inspired and enlightened by Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological philosophy. One line leads to the establishment of a particular version of mathematical structuralism, free of “naturalist” and empiricist bias. The other leads to a logical-epistemological explanation and justification of the applicability of mathematics carried out within a unique structuralist perspective. This second line points to the “unreasonable” effectiveness of mathematics in physics as a means of representation, a tool, and a source of not always logically justified but useful and effective heuristic strategies. (shrink)

I argue that, on Husserl's account, affectivity, along with the closely related phenomenon of association, follows a form of sui generis lawfulness belonging to the domain of what Husserl calls motivation, which must be distinguished both (1) from the causal structures through which we understand the body third-personally, as a material thing; and also (2) from the rational or inferential structures at the level of deliberative judgment traditionally understood to be the domain of epistemic import. In effect, in addition to (...) recognizing a “space of causes” and a “space of reasons,” Husserl’s account of affectivity and the epistemology of passive synthesis in which it is situated suggest that we should recognize a separate “space of motivations.” Within this space, on Husserl’s phenomenological picture, we can isolate two different sorts of epistemic import, one belonging directly to the passive-synthetic content of experience, as explained in Husserl’s account of association and his closely aligned notion of nonlinguistic sense, and a second—my primary focus—affectivity, which is still relevant for that content, albeit indirectly, and holds epistemic import in its determination not of what that content is but of how it comes to matter for us. (shrink)

This paper argues for a Husserlian account of phenomenal intentionality. Experience is intentional insofar as it presents a mind-independent, objective world. Its doing so is a matter of the way it hangs together, its having a certain structure. But in order for the intentionality in question to be properly understood as phenomenal intentionality, this structure must inhere in experience as a phenomenal feature. Husserl’s concept of horizon designates this intentionality-bestowing experiential structure, while his concept of motivation designates the unique phenomenal (...) character of this structure as it is experientially lived through. The way experience hangs together is itself a phenomenal feature of experience. (shrink)

Foundationalism and coherentism are two fundamentally opposed basic epistemological views about the structure of justification. Interestingly enough, there is no consensus on how to interpret Husserl. While interpreting Husserl as a foundationalist was the standard view in early Husserl scholarship, things have changed considerably as prominent commentators like Christian Beyer, John Drummond, Dagfinn Føllesdal, and Dan Zahavi have challenged this foundationalist interpretation. These anti-foundationalist interpretations have again been challenged, for instance, by Walter Hopp and Christian Erhard. One might suspect that (...) inconsistencies in Husserl’s writings are the simple reason for this disagreement. I shall argue, however, that the real question is not so much how to read Husserl, but how to define foundationalism and that there is overwhelming textual evidence that Husserl championed the most tenable version of foundationalism: a moderate foundationalism that allows for incorporating coherentist elements. (shrink)

The article deals with the problem of phenomenological interpretation of Cartesian idea of evidence. The author demonstrates that implicit but constitutive characteristic of evidence is a property of excessiveness. The analysis of its conceptual versions and methodological representations in Husserl, Marion and Derrida’s philosophies deconstructs some stereotype interpretations of evidence as an attribute of I-centric philosophical systems and also as a carrier of qualities of fullness and presence. The author claims that excessiveness of evidence has two main aspects: (1) non-belonging (...) to the system assured by this very evidence and (2) tendency to self-surpassing (hyperbolization). The excessiveness of evidence is shown in particular with regard to the system of thinking governed by the “truth-falsehood” opposition. The author brings to light a trend to the increasing of degrees of evidence as a consequence of phenomenological critique and deconstruction as methodological hyperbolizations of Cartesian doubt. The common ground between Marionian and Derridian critiques of Husserl’s conception of evidence is found that is inconsistency between the principle of fulfillment of intention and the unrealizable regulative of the “Idea in Kantian sense” as two main ways of representation of evidence idea in Husserlian phenomenology. It is shown that in accordance with the paradigm of possibility as the common denominator of phenomenological attitude in general the very same criticized evidence becomes assimilated in Marion’s conception of “saturated phenomena” (a principle of hyperbolical givenness) and in Derridian deconstruction (hyperbolicity-excessiveness as heterogeneity and impossibility within the framework of his critique of presence). The author uncovers the essential connection between the idea of evidence and basic elements of deconstructive discourse, such as the metaphorical concept of secret and the quasi-concept différance. (shrink)