A series of online workshops organized on behalf of the Network for Phenomenological Research: Next talk Friday, 3 June 2022.
MONTHLY PHENOMENOLOGY
An online forum of discussion on recent work in phenomenology
Description: This series of talks gathers together scholars interested in phenomenology and its relation to contemporary issues in philosophy, especially in the philosophy of mind. It establishes a forum of discussion where people can meet on a regular basis and present their work-in-progress or recent publications. The topics addressed will stretch from the history of early phenomenology to the systematic application of phenomenological insights in recent debates in analytic philosophy.
Schedule: The talks will take place once a month on a Friday from September to June. Time: 10:15am ET, 3:15pm GMT, 4:15pm CET. Talks last 90 minutes, including a 45 minutes Q&A.
Participation: Talks are held on zoom. To participate, please send an email to [email protected] with the heading “Registration Monthly Phenomenology”. A zoom link will be sent to you the day preceding each talk.
Next talk:
Kyle Banick (Chapman University/California State University Long Beach)
Constitutive Realism and Internalism about Phenomenology
Friday, 3 June 2022
10:15am ET, 3:15pm GMT, 4:15pm CET
Abstract: Recently, Tieszen, Follesdal, and Smith have argued that Husserlian phenomenology is best understood as a variety of realism they call ‘constitutive realism’. This talk problematizes and attempts to further refine this notion. Using Fink’s discussion of “transcendental predication” in the Sixth Cartesian Meditation as a launchpad, I articulate a puzzle that arises about how language can talk about constitution and about the semantic properties of intentional synthesis. Can we “get outside” the constitution structure and talk about intentional synthesis and constitution itself? I use the tools of model theory to give a logical analysis of the structures of intentional synthesis to help solve this puzzle. In particular, Smith offers a strategy called “reflective ascent” in which one turns from speaking of ontic matters to speaking of their noematic correlates. The problem with Smith’s strategy is that it makes intentional synthesis vulnerable to traditional model-theoretic arguments: consciousness is either unable to reach transcendent objects or is epistemically invulnerable to them. I try to sketch a position, which I call ‘internalism about phenomenology’, which allows a recovery of Smith’s strategy while avoiding the model-theoretic problems. The result is a way of making concrete the shopworn claim that Husserlian phenomenology can “go beyond” the traditional distinctions between realism and idealism. Furthermore it turns out that the problem about transcendental predication can be understood as a simple confusion of logical types, which demonstrates that at least some protracted debates in phenomenology can be clarified through a logical analysis of the structures of intentional synthesis.
Convenors:
Guillaume Fréchette (University of Geneva)
Marta Jorba (University Pompeu Fabra)
Alessandro Salice (University College Cork)
Hamid Taieb (Humboldt University Berlin)
Íngrid Vendrell-Ferran (Goethe University Frankfurt)
Organized on behalf of the Network for Phenomenological Research