Paul Natorp, John Dewey and Sergius Hessen are usually considered to represent three different philosophical and pedagogical doctrines developed at the turn of the Twentieth century. These are, respectively: neo‐Kantianism, pragmatism and humanistic pedagogy widely rooted in Wil‐ helm Dilthey’s philosophy. Contrary to this common classification, Hessen himself described his own concept of pedagogy as an applied philosophy as a continuation of Natorp’s thought. However, Hessen also noted that an approach very similar to his one can be found in John (...) Dewey’s theory. In this case, the fundamental issue is to determine the relationship between philosophy and pedagogical theory and practise. The main part of this article will identify the specificity of this relationship: the specificity implied by the concept of pedagogy understood as applied philosophy. The concept of pedagogy, understood as an applied philosophy in its theoretical and practical aspects, is the basis for critical reconstruction of social life in general. It is the opinion shared by all three philosophers that this type of reconstruction should be based on the communal dimension of basic social interactions, that is, on the communal dimension of work. The only way for the renewal of a different form of social life leads through regaining through them an essential communal dimension of human work. All three authors agreed that to regain the communal dimension of human work by another form of social interaction would only be possible when certain conditions are present; that is, when work will be permeated by individual creativity. The presence of such conditions shall be ensured by the educational community. Thus, the educational community should be a starting and end point for any critical social reconstruction as well as for the pedagogy understood as an applied philosophy. (shrink)

For Advaita Vedānta, consciousness is to be distinguished from all contents of consciousness that might be introspectively detectable: It is precisely consciousness of whatever contents it is conscious of and not itself one of these contents. Its only nature is, Advaita holds, prakāśa ; in itself it is devoid of any content or structure and can never become an object. This paper elaborates on this kind of understanding of consciousness in order to next explain why it might be fruitful for (...) developing a clear understanding of the nature of the so-called problem of consciousness. Today’s philosophy of mind tends to conceive of consciousness in terms of qualia, thereby taking it as a special kind of object. This renders the antimaterialist claim of the distinctness of consciousness from all physical features vulnerable to the materialist reply that the difference in question might be a merely epistemological matter, i.e., a matter of different modes of givenness without difference in what is thus given. This move, however – this paper argues –, is impossible without resulting in circularity or infinite regress with regard to consciousness in the sense of givenness itself. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is Cassirer’s Neo-Kantian reading of Kant’s conception of unity of space. Cassirer’s neo-Kantian reading is largely in conformity with the mainstream of intellectualist Kant-scholars, which is unsurprising, given his own intellectualist view of space and perception and his rejection of the existence of a ‘merely sensory consciousness’ as a ‘formless mass of impression’. I argue against Cassirer’s reading by relying on a Kantian distinction first recognized by Heinrich Rickert, a neo-Kantian from the Southwest school, between (...) Kenntnis (roughly knowledge by acquaintance) and Erkenntnis (roughly propositional knowledge). Correspondingly, I claim that concepts and categories are conditions for Erkenntnis of objects as such, namely for thinking of and apprehending the pre-existing unity as an object, rather than for the ‘constitution’ of this very unity. (shrink)

This paper examines the evolution of Edmund Husserl’s theory of perceptual occlusion. This task is accomplished in two stages. First, I elucidate Husserl’s conclusion, from his 1901 Logical Investigations, that the occluded parts of perceptual objects are intended by partial signitive acts. I focus on two doctrines of that account. I examine Husserl’s insight that signitive intentions are composed of Gehalt and I discuss his conclusion that signitive intentions sit on the continuum of fullness. Second, the paper discloses how Husserl (...) transforms his 1901 philosophy in his 1913 revisions to the Sixth Logical Investigation, affirming that the occluded parts of perceptual objects are intended by empty contiguity acts. I demonstrate how he overturns the two core doctrines of his theory from the Investigations in these revisions, claiming that empty intentions are not composed of Gehalt and asserting that those acts break with the continuum of fullness. Husserl implements these changes to solve problems that arise from his recognition of two new kinds of intentions; darker and completely dark acts. Finally, in the conclusion, I cash out this analysis, by indicating that, in 1913, Husserl transforms his theory of fulfillment on the basis of his new insights about empty acts. (shrink)

Social ontology is the study of the nature and properties of the social world. It is concerned with analyzing the various entities in the world that arise from social interaction. -/- A prominent topic in social ontology is the analysis of social groups. Do social groups exist at all? If so, what sorts of entities are they, and how are they created? Is a social group distinct from the collection of people who are its members, and if so, how is (...) it different? What sorts of properties do social groups have? Can they have beliefs or intentions? Can they perform actions? And if so, what does it take for a group to believe, intend, or act? -/- Other entities investigated in social ontology include money, corporations, institutions, property, social classes, races, genders, artifacts, artworks, language, and law. It is difficult to delineate a precise scope for the field (see section 2.1). In general, though, the entities explored in social ontology largely overlap with those that social scientists work on. A good deal of the work in social ontology takes place within the social sciences (see sections 5.1–5.8). -/- Social ontology also addresses more basic questions about the nature of the social world. One set of questions pertains to the constituents, or building blocks, of social things in general. For instance, some theories argue that social entities are built out of the psychological states of individual people, while others argue that they are built out of actions, and yet others that they are built out of practices. Still other theories deny that a distinction can even be made between the social and the non-social. -/- A different set of questions pertains to how social categories are constructed or set up. Are social categories and kinds produced by our attitudes? By our language? Are they produced by causal patterns? And is there just one way social categories are set up, or are there many varieties of social construction? -/- The term ‘social ontology’ has only come into wide currency in recent years, but the nature of the social has been a topic of inquiry since ancient Greece. As a whole, the field can be understood as a branch of metaphysics, the general inquiry into the nature of entities. (shrink)

Understanding the “intentionality” of mental phenomena is widely regarded as a key problem in philosophy of mind. Franz Brentano (along with his students, especially Edmund Husserl) is widely credited with bringing intentionality to philosophers’ attention. In early treatment by the Brentano school, intentionality is at least nominally understood as executed, brought about, or achieved in mental acts. And in the early 20th century, historians of psychology regarded this “act conception” of intentionality as integral for understanding the phenomenon. Yet the secondary (...) literature on Brentano and Husserl provides no clarification of mental acts as acts, and in contemporary philosophy, we have no workable account of what it could mean for intentionality to arise through mental acts. The main difficulty is that “act” is widely regarded as synonymous with “volitional personal action.” Since we as human agents certainly do not willfully bring about much of our own mental life, and since (on the standard analyses) all such volition presupposes intentionality, it is a mystery to work out what the act conception of intentionality could have amounted to. This dissertation is a systematic explication of the historical act concept of intentionality. Part I examines Brentano. I show that his early work on Aristotle’s psychology provides resources to think coherently about many mental phenomena as acts, even if they are not personal actions. However, I also show that Brentano’s mature psychology is not Aristotelian, at least insofar as it does not (and cannot) deploy an Aristotelian conception of mental acts. Part II examines Husserl. I show that Husserl’s mature transcendental phenomenology works with a robust and many-layered conception of mental acts, and that understanding intentionality as active is essential to the phenomenological viewpoint. Moreover, I argue that Husserl’s conception of mental acts can be viewed as a transcendentalized, neo-Aristotelian view. The results will be of special interest to historians of philosophy, but also have a much broader significance. Husserl’s view provides us with a model of what can be called an “internalist enactivism.” Any view along these lines represents a novel position that has not been articulated (or even considered) in contemporary debates. (shrink)

The work of the Latvian phenomenologist Theodor Celms provides an interesting attempt to reinterpret Husserl’s phenomenological reduction in terms of Natorp’s subjectivation. This paper summarizes in broad outline some salient features of Celms’ theory of subjectivation and discusses some of its similarities and differences with Husserl’s and Natorp’s views. I focus on two more central points. First, Celms proposes to interpret Husserlian reduction as radicalizing or generalizing an operation of thought that is pervasive throughout all forms of cognition. Secondly, he (...) makes a distinction between epistemological and ontological subjectivation that leads him to adopt a critical stance toward both Husserl’s transcendental idealism and Natorp’s general psychology. (shrink)