Genetic phenomenology is Husserl's philosophical successor to his earlier eidetic phenomenology; it represents the highest development in Husserl's project. Husserl's eidetic phenomenology holds that both the structure of intentional acts and the intentional object are given (Detmer 165). Husserl later comes to doubt the givenness in eidetic phenomenology; these structures and objects of consciousness must have developed throughout history (Detmer 166). This is the process of sedimentation: patterns of understanding and expectations gradually influence later experiences (Zahavi 94). Intentional acts themselves have eidetic structures that are not immediately given; they must be analyzed if the phenomenological project is to continue. A close …show more content…
Husserl begins his critique of eidetic phenomenology by positing that consciousness does not have a direct relationship with itself; consciousness always leaves ripples behind. The temporal relationship between intentional acts and intentional objects was largely ignored; temporality must exist as a condition of possibility for intentionality itself (Zahavi 80). When analyzing a temporal object (such as a melody), Husserl finds that temporal consciousness contains not just the current temporal moment (or primal impression); it also contains a retention of the previous temporal moment and a protention of a future temporal moment (Smith 203). In consciousness of retention, one is aware of both the past tone and the past hearing of the tone; an analogous process occurs for retention (Smith 203). Time consciousness is complex; one is conscious of the melody and their own experience of the melody (Smith 204). Temporal consciousness is thus a flow of current retentions and original impressions that could not be pointedly doubted …show more content…
Husserl uses the lifeworld as a means to explain the rational structures underlying transcendental intersubjectivity; the structures are initially unconscious to us (Beyer). Act ascription is ultimately based upon and epistemically justified by the lifeworld. The lifeworld is the unthematic sociolcultural world shaped by normativity, historicity and tradition (Zahavi 133). The lifeworld is shaped by certain morphological structures that are historically mediated by communities; the lifeworld would be chaotic otherwise. (Zahavi 130). The lifeworld that is shared by a single community of subjects is known as the homeworld (Beyer). Subjects from different lifeworlds can share a general a priori framework; this allows for translation between the lifeworlds (Beyer). The subjective-relative lifeworld exists as the condition of possibility for our scientific and epistemological claims, yet is rooted in practical experience (Franck
The mind-body problem has kept philosophers busy ever since Descartes proposed it in the sixteenth century. The central question posed by the mind-body problem is the relationship between what we call the body and what we call the mind—one private, abstract, and the origin of all thoughts; the other public, concrete, and the executor of the mind’s commands. Paul Churchland, a proponent of the eliminative materialist view, believes that the solution to the mind-body problem lies in eliminating the single concept that allows this problem to perpetuate—the folk psychological concept of mental states. Churchland argues that the best theory of mind is a materialistic one, not a folk psychological one. Unlike other materialist views such as identity theory, Churchland wants to remove the idea of mental states from our ontology because mental states cannot be matched 1:1 with corresponding physical states. This is why Churchland’s view is called eliminative materialism—it is a materialistic account of the mind that eliminates the necessity for us to concern ourselves with mental events. At first this eliminative materialism appears to be a good solution to the mind-body problem because we need not concern ourselves with that problem if we adopt Churchland’s view. However, there is a basic flaw in his argument that raises the question of whether we should actually give up folk psychology. In this paper, we will first walk through the premises of Churchland’s argument, and then we will explore whether Churchland does a suitable job of justifying our adoption of eliminative materialism.
ABSTRACT: Phenomenology and logical positivism both subscribed to an empirical-verifiability criterion of mental or linguistic meaning. The acceptance of this criterion confronted them with the same problem: how to understand the Other as a subject with his own experience, if the existence and nature of the Other's experiences cannot be verified. Husserl tackled this problem in the Cartesian Meditations, but he could not reconcile the verifiability criterion with understanding the Other's feelings and sensations. Carnap's solution was to embrace behaviorism and eliminate the idea of private sensations, but behaviorism has well-known difficulties. Heidegger broke this impasse by suggesting that each person's being included being-with, an innate capacity for understanding the Other. To be human is to be "hard-wired" to make sense of the Other without having to verify the Other's private sensations. I suggest that being-with emerged from an evolutionary imperative for conspecific animals to recognize each other and to coordinate their activities. Wittgenstein also rejected the verifiability criterion. He theorized that the meaning of a term is its usage and that terms about private sensations were meaningful because they have functions in our language-games. For example, "I'm in pain," like a cry of pain, functions to get the attention of others and motivate others to help. Wittgenstein's theory shows how Dasein's being-with includes "primitive" adaptive behavior such as cries, smiles, and threatening or playful gesture. As Dasein is acculturated, these behaviors are partially superseded by functionally equivalent linguistic expressions.
This paper will take a look at Salvador Dali’s painting, The Persistence of Memory, painted in 1931. As the viewer can tell, this is a story of time and life. The memories start in the background where all is well and things are straight and calm. Moving on to the cliff, the observer possibly sees a well-behaved teenager. There is nothing horrible here that leads the spectator to gasp, and the viewer knows this person made it through that time in their life. Then the picture moves on to the age of about twenty, the memories are fond but in the distant past. The memories are protected by a white blanket so that they do not just fall into the background. Then something happened where the person had some times in their life that had not been so great. They are there as a reminder, but they are part of a very dead place. The person’s being becomes full of life again as the clock on the shelf seems to be newer. The clock is placed on the shelf and the numbers are able to be read. This tells of a recent time, yet starting to decay by the fly being there. The pocket watch is there to let the observer know the story is not done; there are more wonderful memories on their way.
Creo que no es una mala estrategia a la hora de abordar qué entiende Husserl por cultura, el comenzar por la bipartición ontológica que hace del mundo en naturaleza (Natur) y espíritu (Geist). Son muchos los lugares donde se nos habla profusamente de ello. Haciendo un resumen sumario del tema, podríamos decir que el ámbito de la naturaleza es el de las cosas materiales, el de los entes vistos desde la pura exterioridad espaciotemporal, siendo la ley en base a la cual se rigen la necesidad causal. En contraposición a ello, el mundo del espíritu es aquel en el que lo esencial no viene dado por las relaciones exterior-causales que se dan entre los objetos, sino por la significatividad humana que conforma nuestro primer y primordial contacto con la realidad. Es decir, el mundo del espíritu es el mundo del significado, del sentido, aquello que constituye propiamente nuestro cosmos y nos es dado, en primera instancia, como un regalo por nuestros antepasados. Semejante mundo sólo puede brotar del yo y su vida de conciencia o, mejor dicho, de un yo (no entro aquí en la distinción yo, hombre, persona, subjetividad trascendental) y una vida de conciencia que se encuentran siempre en constante interrelación con otros yoes.
Rosenthal D 2002, 'Explaining Consciousness', in Philosophy of mind classical and contemporary readings,Chalmers D J (eds), Oxford University press, New York
3. M. Davies and G. Humphreys, eds. Consciousness: Psychological and Philosophical Essays. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993. [BACK UP]
Sounds as well as thoughts have relation both between each other and towards that which they represent, and a perception of the order of those relations has always been found connected with a perception of the order of the relations of thoughts. Hence the language of poets have ever affected a certain uniform and harmonious recurrence of sound, without which it were not poetry, and which is scarcely less indispensable to the communication of its influence, than the words themselves, without reference to that peculiar order. (Shelley 92)
The relation between the self and the otherness is necessary to define human awareness and more importantly desire. This desire is part of the primordial human experience. The problem is that, the consciousness respond...
Husserl's Phenomenology can be seen as a response to the intrusion of psychology into the essential studies of man; he felt that the study of man should, instead be conducted on a purely philosoph...
Traditionally Empiricists claim that all knowledge and all basic concepts are derived from experience. At the same time they argue that all experience is reducible to private entities, the so-called 'sense data'. Phenomenologists claim that there is nothing in experience itself to suggest that it is reducible to sense data, and that this doctrine is derived from metaphysical prejudices, the so-called 'assumptions of the natural attitude'. They argue that if we could in some way 'bracket' these assumptions and reflect only on our experience of perceiving and on the results of scientific measurements of our perceptual powers, we would discover that perception, rather than presenting us with private entities or 'data', 'opens up' to the world itself. (1)
Such theoretical discovery is crucial to the my argument in that it entails that as part and parcel of embodied cognition, sound is never just sound, but it also and always-already refers to a past and a space-time constellation of individual and collective sense-making: “acoustemology means that as a sensual space-time, the experience of place potentially can always be grounded in acoustic dimension.”
ABSTRACT: Most versions of the knowledge argument say that if a scientist observing my brain does not know what my consciousness 'is like,' then consciousness is not identical with physical brain processes. This unwarrantedly equates 'physical' with 'empirically observable.' However, we can conclude only that consciousness is not identical with anything empirically observable. Still, given the intimate connection between each conscious event (C) and a corresponding empirically observable physiological event (P), what P-C relation could render C empirically unobservable? Some suggest that C is a relation among Ps which is distinguishable because it is multi-realizable; that is, C could have been realized by P2 rather than P1 and still have been the same relation. C might even be a 'self-organizing' process, appropriating and replacing its own material substrata. How can this account explain the empirical unobservability of consciousness? Because the emotions motivating attention direction, partly constitutive of phenomenal states, are executed, not undergone, by organisms. Organisms-self-organizing processes actively appropriating their needed physical substrata-feel motivations by generating them. Thus, experiencing someone's consciousness entails executing his or her motivations.
Throughout Beyond Nature and Culture Philipe Descola presents an ontological fourfold seeking to describe and account for the continuities and discontinuities experienced by humans and non humans. In other words, he lays out a new approach to making the empirical completely intelligible. Included in his model are what he calls the four modes of identification; naturalism, animism, totemism, and analogism. He distinguishes between these four modes of identification by describing whether the “interiorities” and “physicalities” of humans and non humans are similar or dissimilar to one another (interiority consisting in the universal belief that a being has characteristics that are internal to it or that take it as their source). Animism being an identification of similar interiorities, but dissimilar physicalities.
The unheard sounds came through, and each melodic line existed of itself, stood out clearly from all the rest, said its piece, and waited patiently for the other voices to speak. That night I found myself hearing not only in time, but in space as well. I not only entered the music, but descended, like Dante, into its depths (Ellison 7).2
“There are in each of us, as we have said, two forms of consciousness: one which is common to our group as a whole, which consequently, is not ourself, but society living and acting within us; the other, on the other hand, represents that in us which is person...