This paper examines the idea of "objective phenomenology," or a way of understanding the phenomenal character of conscious experiences that doesn’t require one to have had the kinds of experiences under consideration. My central thesis is that structural facts about experience—facts that characterize purely how conscious experiences are structured—are objective phenomenal facts. I begin by precisifying the idea of objective phenomenology and diagnosing what makes any given phenomenal fact subjective. Then I defend the view that (...) structural facts about experience are objective. I also argue that structural facts about experience, despite being objective, nevertheless still give rise to an explanatory gap. (shrink)

This paper is focused on the possibility of a dialogue between Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) and phenomenology, a dialogue concerning the problem of objects and relations. In the first part, the author shows what is interesting in OOO from a phenomenological perspective and why it should be considered as a challenge for contemporary philosophy. The second part develops the phenomenological perspective of the author, a perspective based on Merleau-Ponty’s “carnal” phenomenology, as well as some suggestions coming from the Italian (...) school of Gaetano Kanizsa. The third part is dedicated to the objections of the author to the OOO view regarding the separation between objects and relations: a separation which leads to Harman’s quadruple object. In the concluding portion, the author shows that, despite evident differences between phenomenological and OOO’s views of relations, OOO offers new starting points for phenomenological reflections, thanks to its specific focus on objects and its pluralistic view of reality. (shrink)

Gottlob Frege and Edmund Husserl are two seemingly different philosophers in their methodology. Both have significantly influenced Western philosophy in that their contributions established fields within philosophy that are of intensive study today. Still, their differences in methodology have, in certain instances, yielded similar or distinct results. Their results ranged from the distinction of sense and reference, objectivity, and the theory of mathematics: specifically, their definition of number. Frege and Husserl have such striking similarities in their theory of sense and (...) reference and related notions that from their apparent correspondence, Frege seems to have acknowledged the coincidences in their theories (Frege & Kluge, 1972) (Hill & Rosado Haddock Intro, 4, & 30-33). That is not to say there are exact parallels between Frege and Husserl and their results, as I will acknowledge their similarities and differences within scale. So, I intend to demonstrate their respective theories and results descriptively to show their likenesses while still recognizing their divergences in scope and methodology. Indirectly, I would also hope to illustrate the ties, in terms of subject matter, of these two philosophers who are historically considered at odds with one another; be it personally, in their schools of philosophy, or methodologically (Hartimo 47-53). (shrink)

This paper is a result of a remarks delivered at the 2014 conference of the Florida Philosophical Association during a book symposium on Elijah Chudnoff's Intuition.

Perceptual experience has the phenomenal character of encountering a mind-independent objective world. What we encounter in perceptual experience is not presented to us as a state of our own mind. Rather, we seem to encounter facts, objects, and properties that are independent from our mind. In short, perceptual experience has phenomenal objectivity. This paper proposes and defends a Kantian account of phenomenal objectivity that grounds it in experiences of lawlike regularities. The paper offers a novel account of the connection (...) between phenomenology and intentionality. It also sheds some light on one of the central themes in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. (shrink)

There is an inherent phenomenological tendency in British moral theory, especially from John Locke onward. The purpose of his Essay was, he said, to consider the discerning faculties of a man, as they are employed about the objects which they have to do with. This is language that might serve well in a general description of the work of Husserl and other phenomenologists.

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)

What is the phenomenology of hope? A common view is that hope has a generally positive and pleasant affective tone. This rosy depiction, however, has recently been challenged. Certain hopes, it has been objected, are such that they are either entirely negative in valence or neutral in tone. In this paper, I argue that this challenge has only limited success. In particular, I show that it only applies to one sense of hope but leaves another sense—one that is implicitly (...) but widely employed in the hope literature—untouched. Moreover, I argue that hope construed in this latter sense is inherently positively valenced. The paper concludes by discussing some of the implications of this defense of hope's positive phenomenology, including the ontological question of whether hope is an emotion. (shrink)

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

This chapter aims to reconstruct the phenomenological theories on hatred developed by Scheler, Pfänder and Kolnai and to refl ect upon its anthropological implications. Four essential aspects of this phenomenon are analyzed, taking as point of departure the works of these authors: (1) its place in the taxonomy of the affective life; (2) the world of its objects; (3) its expression in the form of bodily manifestations and motivating force; and (4) the inherent possibilities for overcoming it. The chapter concludes (...) that hatred is a key phenomenon for understanding aspects of human nature that we generally try to ignore or overlook. (shrink)

In this paper, we defend the main claims of our earlier paper “Mental Fictionalism as an Undermotivated Theory” (in The Monist) from Gábor Bács’s criticism, which appeared in his “Mental fictionalism and epiphenomenal qualia” (in Dialectica). In our earlier paper, we tried to show that mental fictionalism is an undermotivated the-ory, so there is no good reason to give up the realist approach to the folk psychological discourse. The core of Bács’s criticism consists in that our argumentation rests on an (...) equivocation concerning the folk psychological concepts of conscious experiences. In our present argumentation, at first, we shortly recapitulate our earlier argumentation and Bács’s main objection to it. After that, we argue against the case of equivocation, claiming that it rests on a highly implausible and unsupported verificationist approach. Lastly, in answering another remark of Bács’s, we discuss the possibility of a realist mental fic-tionalism and conclude that it is an incoherent standpoint. (shrink)

This chapter offers a phenomenological interpretation of Brentano’s view of mentality. The key idea is that mental phenomena are not only characterized by intentionality; they also exhibit a distinctive way of appearing or being experienced. In short, they also have a distinctive phenomenology. I argue this view may be traced back to Brentano’s theory of inner perception. Challenging the self-representational reading of IP, I maintain the latter is best understood as a way of appearing, that is, in phenomenological terms. (...) Section 1 addresses Brentano’s claim that IP is one mark of the mental alongside intentionality. Sections 2 and 3 present support for a phenomenological interpretation of IP. And Section 4 briefly discusses two objections. (shrink)

On the one hand, Scheler's critique of Kant's concept of a priori benefits from Husserl to a large extent, and it complements and deepens Husserl's. On the other hand, Scheler also critiques Husserl's definition of a priori. Husserl's material a priori as ideal object primarily thanks to his so-called "Bolzano- turn". In this connection, Scheler grabs hold of the relation of Husserl to Bolzano from the very beginning. For Scheler, Husserl thinks in a "platonic" way, and still falls in a (...) new type of "Platonism", or rather, logical Platonism, although he correctly refuses the ordinary Platonism. In Scheler's view, Husserl's phenomenological reduction is "not purely" executed, and therefore his phenomenological experience is problematic, or more precisely, the relation between categorial intuition and sensuous intuition is problematic. The final aim of Scheler's critique of Husserl's phenomenological understanding of "objective a priori" is to win the primary position of categorial intuition and its content , ethical insight and its correlate , and ultimately of phenomenological ethics of material value.Einerseits nimmt Schelers Kritik an Kant bezüglich des Begriffs des Apriori die Einsichten Husserls in großem Umfang auf. Schelers Kritik an Kant ergänzt und vertieft die Husserlsche Kant-Kritik. Andererseits kritisiert er aber auch Husserls Bestimmung des Apriori. Vor allem verdankt sich das materiale Apriori als idealer Gegenstand bei Husserl der sogenannten “Bolzano’schen Wendung”. Von Anfang an kritisiert Scheler Husserl in diesem Punkt, indem er dem Verhältnis zwischen Bolzano und Husserl immer präziser nachging. Für Scheler unterliegt Husserl mit Recht keinem platten Platonismus. Aber dennoch verfahre Husserl immerhin “platonistisch”, er unterliege einem “Neoplatonismus”, bzw. einem logischen Platonismus. Weil die phänomenologische Reduktion bei Husserl nach Schelers Meinung “nicht reinlich” durchgeführt wird, ist die phänomenologische Erfahrung bei Husserl problematisch, genauer gesagt ist das Verhältnis zwischen der kategorialen Anschauung und der sinnlichen Anschauung problematisch. Der Endzweck von Schelers Kritik an der phänomenologischen Auffassung des gegenständlichen Apriori bei Husserl besteht darin, die primäre Stelle der kategorialen Anschauung und ihrer Gehalte , sowie der sittlichen Einsicht und ihrer Korrelate und zuletzt der phänomenologisch materialen Wertethik zu gewinnen.S jedne strane, Schelerova kritika Kantova pojma a priori u velikoj mjeri duguje Husserlu, te dopunjuje i produbljuje Husserlovu. S druge strane, Scheler kritizira i Husserlovu definiciju apriorija. Husserlov materijalni a priori kao idealni predmet prvenstveno proizlazi iz njegova takozvanog bolzanovskog obrata. Prema Scheleru, Husserl razmišlja na "platonski" način te upada u novi tip "platonizma" ili, točnije, logičkog platonizma, iako s pravom odbacuje obični platonizam. Scheler smatra da Husserlova fenomenološka redukcija nije izvedena "čisto" te da je stoga njegovo fenomenološko iskustvo proble- matično ili, točnije, problematičan je odnos između kategorijalnog zora i osjetilnog zora. Krajnji cilj Schelerove kritike Husserlova fenomenološkog shvaćanja "objektivnog a priori" jest zadobivanje primarne pozicije kategorijalnog zora i njegova sadržaja , etičkog uvida i njegova korelata te, na koncu, fenomenološke etike materijalne vrijednosti. (shrink)

I argue that phenomenology should take seriously what Wilfrid Sellars calls “the Myth of the Given”. Phenomenologists have either ignored this idea or misunder-stood it. I argue that the Myth of the Given, if understood correctly, could be an objection to phenomenological method. Specifically I argue that Husserl’s static phenomenology is vulnerable to a Sellarsian criticism. However, I also show that Merleau-Ponty is not vulnerable to a Sellarsian criticism because of how he navigates the relationship between phenomenology (...) and science. This shows that the question as to whether phenomenology is vulnerable to the Sellarsian criticism is more complicated than has been assumed by phenomenologists or their critics. (shrink)

I develop a view of the common factor between subjectively indistinguishable perceptions and hallucinations that avoids analyzing experiences as involving awareness relations to abstract entities, sense-data, or any other peculiar entities. The main thesis is that hallucinating subjects employ concepts (or analogous nonconceptual structures), namely the very same concepts that in a subjectively indistinguishable perception are employed as a consequence of being related to external, mind-independent objects or property-instances. These concepts and nonconceptual structures are identified with modes of presentation types. (...) Since a hallucinating subject is not related to any such objects or property-instances, the concepts she employs remain empty. I argue that the phenomenology of hallucinations and perceptions can be identified with employing concepts and analogous nonconceptual structures. By doing so, I defend an ontologically minimalist view of the phenomenology of experience that (1) vindicates Aristotelianism about types and (2) amounts to a naturalized view of the phenomenology of experience. (shrink)

Phenomenology has been described as a “non-argumentocentric” way of doing philosophy, reflecting that the philosophical focus is on generating adequate descriptions of experience. But it should not be described as an argument-free zone, regardless of whether this is intended as a descriptive claim about the work of the “usual suspects” or a normative claim about how phenomenology ought to be properly practiced. If phenomenology is always at least partly in the business of arguments, then it is worth (...) giving further attention to the role and form of phenomenological argumentation, how it interacts with its more strictly descriptive component, and the status of phenomenological claims regarding conditions for various kinds of experience. I contend that different versions of phenomenological reasoning encroach upon argument forms that are commonly thought to be antithetical to phenomenology, notably abductive reasoning, understood in terms of its role in both hypothesis generation and in terms of justification. This paper identifies two main steps to making this case. The first step takes seriously the consequences of the intrinsically dialectical aspect of phenomenology in intersection with other modes of philosophy, the natural attitude, and non-philosophy. The second step focuses on transcendental reflection and arguments about the conditions/structures they contain. Together, these two steps aim to rescue phenomenology from the objection that it has an “ostrich epistemology” with regard to the ostensible purity of description, the intuition of essences, or the “conditions” ascertained through transcendental reflection. (shrink)

When you have a perceptual experience of a given physical object that object seems to be immediately present to you in a way it never does when you consciously think about or imagine it. Many philosophers have claimed that naïve realism (the view that to perceive is to stand in a primitive relation of acquaintance to the world) can provide a satisfying account of this phenomenological directness of perceptual experience while the content view (the view that to perceive is to (...) represent the world to be a certain way) cannot. I argue that this claim is false. Specifically, I maintain that the only acceptable naïve realist account of the relevant phenomenology is circular and that the content view can provide a similar account. In addition, I maintain that a certain specific variety of the content view provides a non-circular and thus more satisfactory account of this phenomenology. If so, then contrary to what is commonly assumed there are powerful phenomenological grounds for preferring the content view to naïve realism. (shrink)

The objective of this research essay is to understand the episteme of phenomenology using the recent construction of Mark D. Vagle which understands phenomenological knowledge as a conceptual tripod between encounters, way of living and crafting. There is here a preliminary view on the subject where it seeks to understand the phenomenology beyond its big names such as Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, among others. It is a phenomenology of vision for the twenty-first century, focusing on the (...) epistemological and methodological construction of phenomenological research. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper, I will focus on the phenomenological notion of sense which Husserl calls in Ideen I noematic sense. My reading of Ideen I is based on the interpretation of noema as “object as it is intended”. This notion is developed from “filling sense” in LU. Similar to the Russellian “knowledge by acquaintance”, Husserl means by this notion the direct intuitive acquaintance with an intentional object. However, unlike Russell, Husserl doesn’t restrict this notion to sense data, but extend it (...) to the acquaintance with the perspective way of appearance of an intentional object (Erscheinungsweise, Abschattungen). This is because, unlike Frege, Husserl includes not only intension (Materie), but also illocutionary force (Aktqualität) into his notion of sense (LU, 6. Untersuchung, p. 617). This performative notion of sense requires him to take account of the acquaintance with the background of speech acts as a constitutive part of the broadest notion of sense (Ideen I, p. 233f., 322). If a conjecture e.g. about the back side of a cube: “the back side must be a square”, changes through a perception into a claim about it: “this side is indeed a square”, the change of the illocutionary forces, that is, the “filling sense” of the perception is expressed not by intentional materials (side, square etc.), but by indexicals, modal verbs or tenses, which are understood in a direct acquaintance with the perspective appearance of the cube. Thus, “the changing noematic way of appearance of the whole object as sense” (Husserliana vol. XI, p. 333) is the background or horizon, in implicit acquaintance with which illocutionary forces (Aktqualität in LU, noetischer Charakter in Ideen I) of propositional attitudes towards perceptual objects can be understood. (shrink)

¿Cómo objetivar la subjetividad sin caer en subjetivismos inmanentistas ni en objetivismos ajenos a la existencia personal? Desde el realismo filosófico la clave parece encontrarse en la adecuada articulación entre conciencia y subjetividad. Estudiaremos las teorías de la conciencia de Antonio Millán-Puelles y Karol Wojtyła desde la onto-fenomenología para hallar el modo de superar esta aporía. -/- How to objectify subjectivity without falling into either immanent subjectivisms or objectivisms foreign to personal existence? From the perspective of realist philosophy the key (...) seems to be found in an appropriate articulation between consciousness and subjectivity. We are going to study the theories of consciousness in Antonio Millán-Puelles and Karol Wojtyła from onto-phenomenology in order to find the way to overcome this aporia. (shrink)

The recent debate on cognitive phenomenology has largely focused on phenomenal aspects connected to the content of thoughts. By contrasts, aspects pertaining to their attitude have often been neglected, despite the fact that they are distinctive of the mental kind of thought concerned and, moreover, also present in experiences and thus less contentious than purely cognitive aspects. My main goal is to identify two central and closely related aspects of attitude that are phenomenologically salient and shared by thoughts with (...) experiences, namely the rational role that they play in our mental lives and their determination by factors external to them, such as external objects or reasons. In particular, I aim to defend Phenomenal Rationalism about judgemental thoughts and perceptual experiences: the view that their phenomenal character reflects their rational role, that is, their capacity to provide and/or respond to reasons. I conclude with some remarks about how this view may be extended to other kinds of th... (shrink)

Although Husserlian phenomenology appears to require that practitioners bracket all metaphysical questions and claims, this requirement runs against the evidence of experience in which objects themselves are presented as constituents of experience. Moreover, to completely bracket metaphysical considerations would suggest that phenomenology is compatible with metaphysical views it should in principle deny. Nonetheless, permitting metaphysical claims threatens to contravene the critical limits of phenomenology, to invite claims that would require a perspective different in kind than our own (...) to verify. These tensions raise an important question, namely, what are the metaphysical implications of the phenomenologically intuitive claim that objects themselves are constituents of experience? To answer this question, I draw on a broad swath of thought on transcendental idealism and phenomenology. I argue that a modest metaphysics of appearance is warranted within the critical limits of Husserlian phenomenology. Through discussing and addressing the problems that typically plague transcendental arguments, I show that Husserlian phenomenology permits stronger claims about objects of experience than deflationary accounts allow but does not permit claims about intrinsic properties allowed by some forms of transcendental idealism. (shrink)

A number of philosophers endorse, without argument, the view that there’s something it’s like consciously to think that p, which is distinct from what it’s like consciously to think that q. This thesis, if true, would have important consequences for philosophy of mind and cognitive science. In this paper I offer an argument for it, and attempt to induce examples of it in the reader. The argument claims it would be impossible introspectively to distinguish conscious thoughts with respect to their (...) content if there weren’t something it’s like to think them. This argument is defended against several objections. Then I use what I call “minimal pair” experiences—sentences read without and with understanding—to induce in the reader an experience of the kind I claim exists. Further objections are considered and rebutted. (shrink)

In this article I present the phenomenological tradition as a new grounding for human rights as universal rights. The hypothesis defended is to conciliate Husserl’s phenomenological method and Reinach’s a priori law in order to offer a new grounding to human rights. In order to combine Husserl and Reinach’s ideas, I propose to expand the comprehension of a priori. It would be present as eidos of each object and I name it as material a priori; it also be present in (...) the eidetic relations and I name it as formal a priori. Yet the object would have an essence, a necessary content, a material a priori, and necessary states of affairs, necessary relations and connections, a formal a priori. Reinach, in The A priori Foundations of the Civil Law, describes eidetic relations, such as, the relation between promise, claim and obligation. I propose three eidetic universalities to ground law, these are what I will call human rights. I also face a few difficulties presented by DuBois and De Vecchi derived from the amoral approach of a priori laws. Then, I highlight the difference between this proposition and Albert’s. Finally, I defend the proposition that a priori laws are beyond natural and positive laws. (shrink)

In order to conduct medical examinations, physicians transform patients from social subjects into medical objects. The routines associated with conducting medical examinations constitute rituals for effecting this transformation: moving from public space to private space; changing into ritual costumes; taking up ritual positions in an examination room; conducting ritual verbal and physical examinations. The transformations endow participants with a different ontological status from the one they hold in everyday life. They address the phenomenological problem of how a self is inserted (...) into a body. (shrink)

Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is a complex disorder characterised by self-starvation, an act of self-destruction. It is often described as a disorder marked by paradoxes and, despite extensive research attention, is still not well understood. Much AN research focuses upon the distorted body image that individuals with AN supposedly experience. However, based upon reports from individuals describing their own experience of AN, I argue that their bodily experience is much more complex than this focus might lead us to believe. Such research (...) often presents an overly cognitive understanding of bodily experience in AN, underplaying the affective, felt experience of individuals with AN, as well as descriptions of empowerment, strength and control reported in the early stages of AN. This paper seeks to enrich our understanding of bodily experience in AN as it progresses throughout the various stages of the disorder. I show how the classical phenomenological distinction between the body-as-subject and the body-as-object, as well as Leder’s conception of the visceral body, can inform our understanding of bodily experience in AN. I suggest that the project of self-starvation is an attempt to overcome the noisy demands of the visceral body, which are experienced as threatening the body-as-subject, through a process of objectifying the body-as-object. By cashing out AN as a project of radical bodily control that, tragically, comes to control the individual, we can capture important aspects of the bodily experience of AN and the temporal progression of the disorder. -/- . (shrink)

Background: The application of the philosophical mode of investigation called “phenomenology” in the context of sport. Objective: The goal is to show how and why the phenomenological method is very often misused in the sportrelated research. Methods: Interpretation of the key texts, explanation of their meaning. Results: The confrontation of concrete sport-related texts with the original meaning of the key phenomenological notions shows mainly three types of misuse – the confusion of phenomenology with immediacy, with an epistemologically (...) subjectivist stance (phenomenalism), and with empirical research oriented towards objects in the world. Conclusions: Many of the discussed authors try to take over the epistemological validity of phenomenology for their research, which itself is not phenomenological, and it seems that this is because they lack such a methodological foundation. The authors believe that an authentically phenomenological analysis of sport is possible, but it must respect the fundamental distinctions that differentiate phenomenology from other styles of thinking. (shrink)

I shall defend the view that the experience of resistance gives us a direct phenomenal access to the mind-independence of perceptual objects. In the first part, I address an objection against the very possibility of experiencing mind-independence. The possibility of an experience of mind-independence being secured, I argue in the second part that the experience of resistance is the kind of experience by which we access mind-independence.

Phenomenology is the study of appearance as such. It is a branch of both Ontology and Epistemology, since appearing is being known. By an ‘appearance’ is meant any existent which impinges on consciousness, anything cognized, irrespective of any judgment as to whether it be ‘real’ or ‘illusory.’ The evaluation of a particular appearance as a reality or an illusion is a complex process, involving inductive and deductive logical principles and activities. Opinion has to earn the status of strict knowledge. (...) Knowledge develops from appearances, which may be: (a) objects of perception, i.e. concrete phenomena in the physical or mental domains; (b) objects of intuition, i.e. one’s subjective self, cognitions, volitions and valuations (non-phenomenal concretes); and/or (c) objects of conception, i.e. simple or complex abstracts of preceding appearances. Abstraction relies on apprehensions of sameness and difference between appearances (including received or projected appearances, and projected negations of appearances). Coherence in knowledge (perceptual, intuitive and conceptual) is maintained by apprehensions of compatibility or incompatibility. Words facilitate our construction of conceptual knowledge, thanks to their intentionality. The abstract concepts most words intend are common characters or behaviors of particulars (concrete material, mental or subjective experiences). Granting everything in the world is reducible to waves, ‘universals’ would be equalities or proportionalities in the measures of the features, motions and interrelations of particular waves. Such a theory of universals would elucidate sensation and memory. In attempting to retrace the development of conceptual knowledge from experience, we may refer to certain major organizing principles. It is also important to keep track of the order of things in such development, interrelating specific concepts and specific experiences. By proposing a precise sequence of events, we avoid certain logical fallacies and are challenged to try and answer certain crucial questions in more detail. Many more topics are discussed in the present collection of essays, including selfhood, adduction and other logical issues, the status of mathematical concepts and theology. (shrink)

Aron’s writings are lauded for their contributions to liberal political theory, international relations, and sociology. I argue that his early thought also offers phenomenological considerations for a relativist view of historical meaning, whose important role in the text’s argument has been suppressed by received interpretations. Drawing a direct link between introspective, intersubjective, and historical understanding, Aron argues that the “objectification” of intentions necessarily transforms their meaning. This impedes an objective account of historical subjects’ lived experience. Some of the Introduction’s (...) appraisals of historical understanding rely on Aron’s phenomenological observations, and indicate that the intentionality of historical understanding circumscribes claims to historical objectivity. These results highlight the broader implications of largely overlooked phenomenological commitments in Aron’s thought, offer a fresh interpretation of the Introduction, and suggest that the standard account of Aron’s relation to the phenomenological movement should be reconsidered. (shrink)

This is a response to a Symposium on Phenomenology and Scripture. In examining a move from phenomenology to scripture, this symposium does not address all possible readers; it addresses a specific readership, for a specific reason, and within the framework of specific assumptions. By way of response, I want first to identify a few features of what I take to be the symposium’s specific address or context. Then, I will comment on what messages I believe the authors have (...) delivered to this context. The symposium specifically addresses those who participate willy nilly in the transcendental project of modern philosophy and of modern northern Europe. In that project, knowing, as noesis, means intentionality: its subject or agent is ultimately reducible to the unity of apperception; and its object— noema—is the object of the ego’s intentional knowing—the thematized object. It appears, furthermore, that the symposium identifies phenomenology not only with the species of Husserlian philosophy, but also with the broader genus of all efforts, from Descartes to Kant to Hegel to Husserl to Heidegger, to identify philosophy with an effort to frame the a priori conditions for, or the possibility of, knowing what we would know: from self to world to being itself—or to God. (shrink)

The consensus in contemporary philosophy of mind is that how a perceptual experience represents the world to be is built into its sensory phenomenology. I defend an opposing view which I call ‘moderate separatism’, that an experience's sensory phenomenology does not determine how it represents the world to be. I argue for moderate separatism by pointing to two ordinary experiences which instantiate the same sensory phenomenology but differ with regard to their intentional content. Two experiences of an (...) object reflected in a mirror can possess the same spatial phenomenology while representing that object to occupy different spatial locations. So, contrary to the current consensus, the representation of spatial location is not fixed by an experience's sensory phenomenology. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe central hypothesis of this paper is that the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty offers significant philosophical groundwork for an ethics that honours key feminist commitments – embodiment, situatedness, diversity and the intrinsic sociality of subjectivity. Part I evaluates feminist criticisms of Merleau-Ponty. Part II defends the claim that Merleau-Ponty’s non-dualist ontology underwrites leading approaches in feminist ethics, notably Care Ethics and the Ethics of Vulnerability. Part III examines Merleau-Ponty’s analyses of embodied percipience, arguing that these offer a powerful critique of (...) the view from nowhere, a totalizing God’s-eye-view with pretensions to objectivity. By revealing the normative structure of perceptual gestalts in the intersubjective domain, he establishes the view from everywhere. Normativity is no longer deferred to higher authorities such as duty, utility or the valorized virtue, but through the perceptual gestalt it is returned to the perceiving embodied subject. This... (shrink)

According to the phenomenological argument for disjunctivism, the reasons why we should prefer the disjunctive theory over its rivals is that (1) the disjunctive theory conforms the most to our pretheoretical or natural convictions about perception (what Michael Martin calls naïve realism), and (2) we should commit ourselves to naïve realism because it conforms the most to the phenomenology of the perceptual experience of objects. In this paper, I try to explain why is the phenomenal argument exceptionally strong argument (...) for disjunctivism and at the same time against sense-datum and intentional theories. Furthermore, I try to show that the disjunctivist’s explanation of hallucination (which is allegedly the weak point of the theory) is as plausible as its rivals’. (shrink)

Husserl’s phenomenology is developed in explicit contrast to naturalism. At the same time, various scholars have attempted to overcome this opposition by naturalizing consciousness and phenomenology. In this paper, I argue that, in order to confront the issue of the relationship between phenomenology and naturalism, we must distinguish between different forms of naturalism. In fact, Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology is developed in contrast to a metaphysical form of naturalism, which conceives of nature as a mind-independent ontological domain (...) that can be known as it is “in itself”, independently of the cognitive relationship. At the same time, I argue that the genetic development of phenomenology, through the investigation of the temporal structure of experiences, leads to an empirical form of naturalism, which conceives of nature as the objective pole in a process of co-constitution of the subject and the object of experience. -/- Winner of the Philosophy Essay Prize “Vittorio Sainati” XIIth Edition. (shrink)

This study clarifies the need for a renewed account of the body in physiotherapy to fill sizable gaps between physiotherapeutical theory and practice. Physiotherapists are trained to approach bodily functioning from an objectivist perspective; however, their therapeutic interactions with patients are not limited to the provision of natural-scientific explanations. Physiotherapists’ practice corresponds well to theorisation of the body as the bearer of original bodily intentionality, as outlined by Merleau-Ponty and elaborated upon by enactivists. We clarify how physiotherapeutical practice corroborates Merleau-Ponty’s (...) critical arguments against objectivist interpretations of the body; particularly, his analyses demonstrate that norms of optimal corporeal functioning are highly individual and variable in time and thus do not directly depend on generic physiological structures. In practice, objectively measurable physical deviations rarely correspond to specific subjective difficulties and, similarly, patients’ reflective insights into their own motor deficiencies do not necessarily produce meaningful motor improvements. Physiotherapeutical procedures can be understood neither as mechanical manipulations of patients’ machine-like bodies by experts nor as a process of such manipulation by way of instructing patients’ explicit conscious awareness. Rather, physiotherapeutical practice and theory can benefit from the philosophical interpretation of motor disorders as modifications of bodily intentionality. Consequently, motor performances addressed in physiotherapy are interpreted as relational features of a living organism coupled with its environment, and motor disorders are approached as failures to optimally manage the motor requirements of a given situation owing to a relative loss of the capacity to structure one’s relation with their environment through motor action. Building on this, we argue that the process of physiotherapy is most effective when understood as a bodily interaction to guide patients towards discovering better ways of grasping a situation as meaningful through bodily postures and movements. (shrink)

In recent years, the notion of the body schema has been widely discussed, in particular in fields connecting philosophy, cognitive science, and dance studies, as it seems to have bearing across disciplines in a fruitful way. A main source in this literature is Shaun Gallagher’s distinction between the body schema – the “pre-noetic” conditions of bodily performance – and the body image – the body as intentional object –, another is Merleau-Ponty’s writings on the living body, that Gallagher often draws (...) upon. In this paper, I will first discuss Gallagher’s presumed clarification of body schema–body image, and discuss a recent critique by Saint Aubert (2013), who evaluates it against the backdrop of Merleau-Ponty’s thoughts on this issue. While I believe that Saint Aubert’s criticism overshoots the mark, it is useful for a clarification of Gallagher’s analysis and points to a problematic feature, namely the alleged inscrutability of the body schema to phenomenological reflection. This is particularly interesting in relation to contemporary dance and performance practice, where working with – and against – habitual structures is a core element. Certain contemporary training techniques are explicitly aimed at raising awareness of those bodily aspects that condition movement and expression – that Gallagher sees as pertaining to the body schema – and that in ordinary activities often remain hidden. In order to clarify the role that reflection on our own body and its habitual patterns plays in contemporary dance practice, I will examine the movement language and improvisation practice “Gaga”, where this aspect is arguably fundamental. (shrink)

As touch remains commonly defined by the closeness it physically implies and it rhetorically evokes, the mere notion of distant touch and of distal haptic perception seems peculiar. But Aristotle’s perspective, which I wish to take as a point of departure, is firm: we perceive the objects of touch, the hot and the cold, the hard and the soft, the curved and the sharp, through other things: δι' ἑτέρων. In this article, I would like to explore this ἕτερος by showing (...) how the otherness of perception always implies an intermediary, a middle point (μέσος), i.e. an other not so other, an other that is able to translate the much more distant otherness of the perceived object. To explore these forgotten layers of alterity that fall into what we commonly conceive of as the impalpable emptiness of distance, I propose to study the idea of distant touch from the perspective of phenomenological aesthetics. In order to do so, I will first examine some aspects of the Husserlian account of perception and will then focus on the phenomenology of distant touch in Alejandra Costamagna’s novel El Sistema del Tacto [The System of Touch] (2018). (shrink)

The fact that you see some particular object seems to be due to the causal relation between your visual experience and that object, rather than to your experiences’ phenomenal character. On the one hand, whenever some phenomenal element of your experience stands in the right sort of causal relation to some object, your experience presents that object (your experience’s phenomenology doesn’t need to match that object). On the other hand, you can’t have a perceptual experience that presents some object (...) unless you stand in the right sort of causal relation to that object (no matter how closely your experience’s phenomenology matches some object). According to the continuity thesis, property perception is similar to object perception in these two respects. A standard reason to reject the continuity thesis is the assumption that the environmental properties that a perceptual experience presents are determined by its phenomenal properties (which are not determined by the environmental properties that cause the experience). I maintain that the continuity thesis is false but for a different reason: perceptual experiences present both objects and properties via manners of presentation; but, whereas perceptual manners of presentation for objects are purely relational, perceptual manners of presentation for properties are satisfactional. (shrink)

A new form of skepticism is described, which holds that objectivity and understanding are incompossible ideals of modern science. This is attributed to Weyl, hence its name: Weylean skepticism. Two general defeat strategies are then proposed, one of which is rejected.

An important distinction lies between consciousness attributed to creatures, or subjects, (creature consciousness) and consciousness attributed to mental states (state consciousness). Most contemporary theories of consciousness aim at explaining what makes a mental state conscious, paying scant attention to the problem of creature consciousness. This attitude relies on a deeper, and generally overlooked, assumption that once an explanation of state consciousness is provided, one has also explained all the relevant features of creature consciousness. I call this the priority of state (...) consciousness thesis (PSC). In this paper, I want to explore how the renewed centrality bestowed to phenomenology in contemporary discussions on consciousness challenges PSC and, consequently, the standard way of framing the problem of consciousness. More precisely, I examine PSC in light of a view about the structure of phenomenal character that is paradigmatic of the approach above. This is subjectivism about phenomenal character (SUBJ), according to which a mental state is conscious when it acquires the property of for-me-ness. I argue that PSC and SUBJ are incompatible because the latter implies that creature consciousness is explanatorily prior to state consciousness. Consequently, if SUBJ is true, then PSC is false, and what constitutes the problem of consciousness is primarily a problem of explaining (a kind of) creature consciousness. I conclude by defending my claim from a pair of possible objections and drawing some implications for the discussion of for-me-ness and the debate on the explanation of consciousness. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the relationship between phenomenology and metaphysics by reassessing the relationship between phenomenological and metaphysical transcendence. More specifically, I examine the notion of phenomenological transcendence in Husserl and the early Heidegger: Husserl defines transcendence primarily as the mode of givenness of phenomena that do not appear all at once, but must be given in partial profiles; Heidegger defines transcendence primarily as Dasein’s capacity to go beyond entities toward being. I argue that these divergent understandings of (...) phenomenological transcendence have resulted in a significant difference in reception among French phenomenologists of religion. These thinkers assert that phenomenology, when properly conceived and utilized, can make room for the divine and its revelation, i.e., for a metaphysical transcendence. I further argue that these thinkers prefer Heidegger’s phenomenology to Husserl’s because they understand Heidegger’s transcendence as the subject’s openness to being, while they understand Husserl’s transcendence as a limit, as the inability to capture worldly objects. I take up Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenology of givenness as a “case study” to illustrate this point. Finally, I argue that this preference for Heidegger over Husserl is misplaced and should be reversed. A close reading of Heidegger’s Phenomenology of Religious Life shows that Dasein is confined to its own possibilities and cannot be open to a relationship with the divine. By contrast, Husserl’s phenomenology provides the radical openness necessary to welcome revelation. While Husserl cannot envision a “worldly God,” the structures of horizonality and temporality characterize a subject capable of an authentic openness to revelation. (shrink)

Terence Horgan and John Tienson argue that there is phenomenal intentionality, i.e., “a kind of intentionality, pervasive in human mental life, that is constitutively determined by phenomenology alone” (p. 520). However, their arguments are open to two lines of objection. First, Horgan and Tienson are not sufficiently clear as to what kind of content it is that they take to be determined by, or to supervene on, phenomenal character. Second, critics have objected that, for their conclusion to follow, Horgan (...) and Tienson would first have to establish the co-variation of phenomenology and intentional content, but even so, phenomenal intentionality would still emerge as less plausible than its converse, representationalism. I will address these two challenges by appeal to Husserlian ideas. A consideration of perceptual phenomenology (i.e., phenomenal character) shows that there is a kind of perceptual content that is, indeed, determined by phenomenal character. Such content is conceived in terms of fulfillment conditions, or what it takes to bring aspects of objects and scenes to different, and more complete, ways of givenness. We can establish the primacy of phenomenology, relative to such fulfillment-conditional content, by tracing it back to the basic phenomenology of visual and other sensations. (shrink)

Evan Thompson and Francisco Varela ground the affectively, valuatively felt contingency of intentional acts of other-relatedness in what they presume to be a primordial neutral point of pre-reflective conscious auto-affective awareness. Through meditative practice, we can access this pre-reflective state , and avail ourselves of ‘unconditionally intrinsic goodness', 'spontaneous compassion', 'luminosity', 'blissfulness', and ' a calm and peaceful life guided by the fundamental value of nonviolence'. But how do such feelings emerge as ultimate outcomes of a philosophy of groundlessness? Aren't (...) they motivated by a sort of 'will to goodness', a preferencing of one affective dimension over others? It would seem that groundlessness for Varela and Thompson doesn't apply to the thinking of affect and desire. Despite their claim that nihilism cannot be overcome by assimilating groundlessness to a notion of the will, they appear not to recognize that the positive affectivities they associate with meditative practice are, as dispositions of feeling opposed to other dispositions, themselves forms of willing. Phenomenologists like Husserl and Merleau-Ponty show that attention, as a species of intention, is sense-making, which means it is sense-changing. Attention is affectively, valuatively and meaningfully implicated in what it attends to as co-participant in the synthesis, creation, constitution of objects of regard. As auto-affection turns reflexively back toward itself, what it finds is not the normative sameness and constancy of a neutral positivity( blissful, self-less compassion and benevolence toward all phenomena) but a newly sensing being. Thus, the basis of our awareness of a world isn’t simply compassionate, empathic relational co-determinacy, but the motivated experience of disturbing CHANGE in relational co-determinacy. (shrink)

Tomasello offers an evolutionary, palaeoanthropological account of the human origin of objects and objectivity. Husserl gives a phenomenological account of the constitution of objects by intersubjectivity. Comparing the two, I claim that Tomasello’s “naturalized” approach closely parallels Husserl’s transcendental approach.

What are fictional emotions and what has phenomenology to say about them? This paper argues that the experience of fictional emotions entails a splitting of the subject between a real and a phantasy ego. The real ego is the ego that imagines something; the phantasy ego is the ego that is necessarily co-posited by any experience of imagining something. Fictional emotions are phantasy emotions of the phantasy ego. The intentional structure of fictional emotions, the nature of their fictional object, (...) as well as the process of constituting the phantasy ego in representificational acts of consciousness are further elaborated to provide the groundwork for a phenomenological analysis of fictional emotions. (shrink)

The paper begins by acknowledging that weakened systematic precision in phenomenology has made its application in philosophy of science obscure and ineffective. The defining aspirations of early transcendental phenomenology are, however, believed to be important ones. A path is therefore explored that attempts to show how certain recent developments in the logic of self-reference fulfill in a clear and more rigorous fashion in the context of philosophy of science certain of the early hopes of phenomenologists. The resulting dual (...) approach is applied to several problems in the philosophy of science: on the one hand, to proposed rejections of scientific objectivity, to the doctrine of radical meaning variance, and to the Quine-Duhem thesis, and or. the other, to an analysis of hidden variable theory in quantum mechanics. (shrink)