Perception and Normative Self-Consciousness (2015) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Kant’s and Husserl’s agentive and proprietary accounts of cognitive phenomenology
I draw from Kantian and Husserlian reflections on the self-awareness of thinking for a contribution to the cognitive phenomenology debate. In particular, I draw from Kant’s conceptions of inner sense and apperception, and from Husserl’s notions of lived experience (Erlebnis) and self-awareness for an inquiry into the nature of our awareness of our own cognitive activity. With particular consideration of activities of attention, I develop what I take to be Kant’s and Husserl’s “agentive” and “proprietary” accounts. These, I believe, augment contemporary discussions in interesting ways and further bolster the case for cognitive phenomenology. Moreover, the historical comparison highlights a number of assumptions made today that were not yet part of the framework at the time of Kant or at the time of Husserl. This helps reflect on the legitimacy of these assumptions.
Thinking about (self-)consciousness: Phenomenological perspectives
In the following contribution, I will outline and discuss some central elements in the phenomenological account of consciousness. Generally, one should not overestimate the homogeneity of the phenomenological tradition-a tradition inaugurated by Husserl (1859Husserl ( -1938, and comprising among its most well-known champions philosophers like Scheler, Heidegger, Schutz, Gurwitsch, Fink, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Levinas, Ricoeur, and Henry. Like any other tradition, it spans many differences. When it comes to the question concerning the relation between consciousness and selfconsciousness, however, one will fi nd a case of widespread agreement. Literally all of the major fi gures defend the view that the experiential dimension of consciousness is as such characterized by a tacit self-consciousness.
“Phenomenal Objectivity and Phenomenal Intentionality: In Defense of a Kantian Account.”
2013
Perceptual experience has the phenomenal character of encountering a mindindependent 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. Phenomenal objectivity distinguishes perceptual experience from those types of experience, for example mood experiences, that have the phenomenal character of presenting to one only the states of one's own mind. An account of phenomenal objectivity would be useful to believers in phenomenal intentionality-a form of intentionality that is constituted by phenomenality. Th is chapter proposes and defends a Kantian account of phenomenal objectivity.
Experience and Normativity: The Phenomenological Approach
Final version in: Cimino & Leijenhorst (eds.): Phenomenology and Experience: New Perspectives. Brill, 2019
The relation between experience and normativity is often conceived as a hierarchical relation. Norms, both in practical and theoretical contexts, are supposed to guide and assess experience, and are taken to emerge from a different source (“reason” as opposed to “experiential input”). In my paper, I aim to show that phenomenologists have a different picture. They argue that experience is not “formed” by conceptuality and therefore normatively permeated, but that it yields and carries these normative structures within itself thanks to its intrinsic feature of intentionality. I systematize and spell out three different forms of normativity that all relate to our engagement with the world and others: “operative normativity,” “imperative normativity,” and “critical normativity.” My aim is to show how each of these forms is rooted in a respectively different kind or structure of experience and how, in each case, normativity is gained from experience. This will give us a (non-exhaustive) panorama of phenomenology’s conceptions of experience with respect to questions of normativity. I start out with the normativity in perception and bodily experience. This involves a discussion of the experiential relation of mind. Then move on to another kind of normativity in experience that confronts me with an “ought.” Finally, I take a look at how the proto-normative and normative structures gained from experience become norms with a “critical” function. This means that they become norms which we actively apply to our practical lives and which we constantly have to re-examine. The final version of this article appeared in: Antonio Cimino and Cees Leijenhorst (eds): Phenomenology and Experience: New Perspectives. Brill, 2019 Please cite accordingly. Thanks!
Archivio di Filosofia , 2015
In this paper, I offer an outline of the contemporary debate between phenomenology and ana- lytic philosophy of mind regarding the relationship between intentionality, consciousness, and self-consciousness in the early phenomenological movement, namely the work of Brentano and Husserl. The discussion focuses on the notion of phenomenal consciousness and interpretations of Brentano’s account of consciousness. I discuss some current interpretations (Thomasson, Kriegel), known as one-level theories of consciousness. I argue that the intrinsic property of a mental state is not phenomenal consciousness but the agential character of a mental act. My main conclusion is that in Brentano – and in the phenomenological tradition generally – there is an original view about the nature of intentionality and consciousness as a mental agency. This approach assumes that there is a conceptual coextension between intentionality, consciousness, and self-consciousness, in accordance with the one-level theory interpretation, where, however, the mental state as a real part of the act comes first and awareness of it follows. My main aim is to highlight some points from contemporary discussions in phenomenology that are connected to other contemporary concerns in philosophy of mind, in order to contribute to the current debate.
In my ‘Mind’s Eye’: introspectionism, detectivism, and the basis of authoritative self-knowledge
Synthese, 2014
It is widely accepted that knowledge of certain of one's own mental states is authoritative in being epistemically more secure than knowledge of the mental states of others, and theories of self-knowledge have largely appealed to one or the other of two sources to explain this special epistemic status. The first, 'detectivist', position, appeals to an inner perception-like basis, whereas the second, 'constitutivist', one, appeals to the view that the special security awarded to certain self-knowledge is a conceptual matter. I argue that there is a fundamental class of cases of authoritative selfknowledge, ones in which subjects are consciously thinking about their current, conscious intentional states, that is best accounted for in terms of a theory that is, broadly speaking, introspectionist and detectivist. The position developed has an intuitive plausibility that has inspired many who work in the Cartesian tradition, and the potential to yield a single treatment of the basis of authoritative self-knowledge for both intentional states and sensation states.
Presence to Self: An Essay on the Phenomenal Origins of Intentionality
My dissertation is an examination of an oft-invoked but insufficiently understood feature of perceptual experience, namely, its presentational character. We open our eyes and a world is before us. Someone strikes a tuning fork, and a sound is simply present. To experience is always, in part, to appreciate phenomenally something as other or as before one; it is always, in part, to appreciate phenomenally a manifest opposition between the self--that before which the other is present--and the other--that which is present before the self. I call this aspect of experiential phenomenality, this universally appreciable but non-sensuous sense of otherness in experience, phenomenal presence. Phenomenal presence is uniquely suited to illuminate the substantive interrelations that exist between two fundamental features of perceptual experience: intentionality and phenomenality. I argue that (i) the intentional features of experience, understood in isolation from experiential phenomenality, neither constitute nor explain phenomenal presence, (ii) phenomenal presence is itself the minimal realization of experiential intentionality, and (iii) the intentionality embodied in phenomenal presence is constitutively and explanatorily prior to all other forms of experiential intentionality. I then show how these conclusions can be brought to bear on the intentional status of our non-phenomenal, mental states. These discussions guide us toward an account of perceptual experience in which experiential phenomenality is competent to direct us intentionally beyond ourselves, independently of the contributions made by the understanding or intellect. Modeling the intentionality and self-awareness involved in perceptual experience upon the intentionality and self-awareness involved in belief and judgment, or insisting that the former depend on the latter obscures both the role of and the contribution made by the exercises of our perceptual capacities. This tendency to assimilate the perceptual and the intellectual realms and to privilege the intellectual leads inevitably to accounts of perceptual experience that either render epiphenomenal the distinctive contributions of experiential phenomenality or neglect those contributions altogether.