Some Husserlian Reflections on the Contents of Experience (original) (raw)

Is perception inadequate? Husserl's case for non-sensory objectual phenomenology

One key difference between perceptual experience and thought is the distinctly sensory way perception presents things to us. Some philosophers nevertheless suggest this sensory phenomenal character doesn’t exhaust the way things are made manifest to us in perceptual experience. Edmund Husserl is maintains that there is also a significant non-sensory side to perception’s phenomenal character. We may experience, for instance, an object’s facing surface in a sensory mode and, as part of the same perceptual experience, also that object’s out-of-view surface in a non-sensory mode. To the extent that perceptual experience makes things available to us in a non-sensory mode, Husserl calls it inadequate. Here I reconstruct four arguments for the conclusion that perceptual experience is inadequate found in various of Husserl’s writings and critically evaluate then. My aim is both to showcase the variety and sophistication of Husserl’s reasons for thinking perceptual experience is inadequate and to problematize that idea.

The double structure of experience

In this essay I would like to explore a theme which is eminently phenomenological in that it deals with the relationship between experience and thinking. I am interested in the structure of experience as such and in the possibilities of thinking which can be developed from experience. My particular inquiry will deal with the moment when experience exceeds thinking and is exceeded by it at the same time. Although the care concerning this experience of exceeding can be understood as an enterprise in the phenomenological tradition, it is obvious, however, that it requires a reinterpretation of the classical phenomenological method. It concerns rather the moment of experience which is concealed and overlooked by classical phenomenology and which emerges only when thinking subordinates itself again to the authority of experience. The method of this work might seem to be philosophically suspect at first: it does not try to assert itself, including its presuppositions, by means of its performance, but it risks a somewhat centrifugal tendency within which it can leave itself.

The Content and Phenomenology of Perceptual Experience

2013

The paper’s main target is strong and reductive “representationalism”. What we claim is that even though this position looks very appealing in so far as it does not postulate intrinsic and irreducible experiential properties, the attempt it pursues of accounting for the phenomenology of experience in terms of representational content runs the risk of providing either an inadequate phenomenological account or an inadequate account of the content of the experience.

Husserl and Merleau-Ponty on Embodied Experience

Advancing Phenomenology. Essays in Honor of Lester Embree

The purpose of the series is to serve as a vehicle for the pursuit of phenomenological research across a broad spectrum, including cross-over developments with other fields of inquiry such as the social sciences and cognitive science. Since its establishment in 1987, Contrihutions fo Phenomenology has published nearly 60 titles on diverse themes of phenomenological philosophy, In addition to welcoming monographs and collections of papers in established areas of scholarship, the series encourages original work in phenomenology, The breadth and depth of the Series reflects the rich and varied significance of phenomenological thinking for seminal questions of human inquiry as well as the increasingly international reach of phenomenological research.

Phenomenology and Perceptual Content

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 2019

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.

Thought and Experience: Robust Conceptions of Phenomenology (Please only cite published version)

Revista Eletrônica Estudos Hegelianos, 2016

In this paper, I argue that Hegel’s critique of Kant’s theory of experience aims at defending a thick (or robust) account of experience: whilst both Kant and Hegel oppose the Myth of the Given and a non-conceptualist understanding of the content of experience, Hegel’s disagreement with Kant is centred on the fact that Kant only provides this conceptualist account of experience on the basis of transcendental (and hence subjective) idealism. The paper begins with a discussion of Hegel’s charge that Kant has a ‘thin’ conception of experience, and what this means. I then move on to discuss a Kantian rebuttal of Hegel’s criticisms, one which I ultimately conclude does not adequately overturn the Hegelian critique. Having discussed the interpretive dimensions of Hegel’s charge of ‘thinness’, the paper turns to the Hegelian critique in relation to the contemporary debate between conceptualists and non-conceptualists in analytic philosophy of mind in an effort to explicate its enduring philosophical importance and relevance. I argue that one can interpret Hegel’s critique of Kant as a proto-McDowellian critique of modern philosophy. For, like John McDowell, Hegel is concerned with providing a robust conception of phenomenology, one which sees both our environment and our experience of our environment as conceptually articulated in and of itself.

The duality of non-conceptual content in Husserl’s phenomenology of perception

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2005

Recently, a number of epistemologists have argued that there are no non-conceptual elements in representational content. On their view, the only sort of non-conceptual elements are components of sub-personal organic hardware that, because they enjoy no veridical role, must be construed epistemologically irrelevant. By reviewing a 35-year-old debate initiated by Dagfinn Følledal, I believe Husserlian phenomenology can be updated to offer an important contribution to this discussion. On my interpretation, what Husserl calls "hyletic data" may be read as that subjective quality of experience inarticulable as a propositional attitude-and, thus, hyletic data are non-conceptual. In anticipation of the recent conceptualist position, Føllesdal and his adherents argued that what Husserl had called "noema" or representational content is, however, entirely conceptual. A closer inspection of the relevant texts, however, reveals that Husserl admits non-conceptual elements into his characterization of the noema. If that is correct, then Husserl must have been a dualist about non-conceptual content. In turn, I believe what explains this dualism is a non-foundationalist reconstruction of Husserl's phenomenological reduction.

On the Reality of Percepts: Husserl and Gibson

Phenomenology & Mind, 4, p. 62-72., 2013

Although the theoretical background of Edmund Husserl and James Gibson respectively could be hardly more distant, their accounts of perception show high compatibility. This compatibility does not extend to the ontological status of percepts. We propose here a short contrastive analysis of Gibson’s and Husserl’s theses on the relation between perception and reality. We dwell on three restrictions formulated by Gibson with regard respectively to the nature of memory, imagination and the biological meaning of affordances. These restrictions, which are functional to Gibson’s direct realism, are then criticised in the light of relevant Husserlian analyses. Finally, we suggest a phenomenological line of inquiry able to address and resettle the ordinary notion of perceptual reality.

Representationalism and Husserlian Phenomenology

Husserl Studies, 2011

According to contemporary representationalism, phenomenal qualia-of specifically sensory experiences-supervene on representational content. Most arguments for representationalism share a common, phenomenological premise: the so-called ''transparency thesis.'' According to the transparency thesis, it is difficult-if not impossible-to distinguish the quality or character of experiencing an object from the perceived properties of that object. In this paper, I show that Husserl would react negatively to the transparency thesis; and, consequently, that Husserl would be opposed to at least two versions of contemporary representationalism. First, I show that Husserl would be opposed to strong representationalism, since he believes the cognitive content of a perceptual episode can vary despite constancy of sensory qualia. Second, I then show that Husserl would be opposed to weak representationalism, since he believes that sensory qualia-specifically, the sort that he calls ''kinesthetic sensations''-can vary despite constancy in representational content.