Announcement of the next talk of the series organized on behalf of the Network for Phenomenological Research, 6 December 2024.
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 October to May. Time: 10:15am ET, 3:15pm GMT/GMT+1, 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.
Programme:
Next talk
Giulia Martina (TU Dortmund)
Joint Attention to Flavour
Friday, 6 December 2024
10:15am ET, 3:15pm GMT, 4:15pm CET
Abstract: Consider the following scenarios. 1) We are at a wine tasting, and I notice a ripe pear note in the wine; I point it out and you then notice it too. 2) We are cooking a chili, and we both taste it to decide on the seasoning; you suggest adding some lime juice to balance out the spiciness; I am sceptical, but when we try the chili with lime, I exclaim ‘I see what you mean! It really works’. In these scenarios, it is natural to think, we are jointly attending to flavours. Attending to the flavours together makes it possible to think and talk about those flavours, agree or disagree on some of their features, and affect how the other experiences, or thinks about, those flavours.
There is a vast philosophical and psychological literature on joint attention, which is taken to be central to language learning, understanding of other minds, and collective action. Joint attention is characterised as a relation between (at least) two subjects who attend to the same object and are mutually aware of this attending. There is disagreement about what this mutual awareness requires, but subjects minimally need to be in a position to check, monitor, and affect each other’s attention, for instance through gaze following, pointing and other declarative gestures, and facial expressions. The focus of this literature has largely been on vision. The case of attending together to the flavours of foods and drinks raises questions that current accounts do not clearly address.
First, the object question. How can we be sure we have the same object of attention if, as in most cases of tasting together, we are not literally tasting the same particular object, but different glasses of wine, different portions of stew, or different cookies? Would attending to the same stuff, or the same properties, suffice? Do we always need vision to establish a common object? Second, the attention monitoring question. Since the things we taste may not be public objects we can point to and follow with our gaze, how can we monitor and affect how the other attends to the object? While the most sophisticated aspects of joint attention, such as intentional communication and explicit common knowledge, are present in many scenarios of tasting together (structured ‘tastings’ being the paradigm), the most basic perceptual tools for monitoring attention may not be available. I will explore these questions building on empirical evidence on joint attention in deaf and blind children and on examples of tasting without seeing.
I will argue that joint attention can be established without vision: we can jointly attend to objects, stuffs, and properties that are not seen; we can check, monitor and affect each other’s attention without relying on visual tools – in the right context, linguistic communication may suffice. I conclude by highlighting how the case of flavour provides new support for accounts on which joint attention is an essentially communicative phenomenon.
Upcoming talks
Ruth Rebecca Tietjen (Tilburg University)
The Politics of Loneliness
17 January 2025
Adriana Alcaraz-Sánchez (University of Edinburgh)
TBA
28 February 2025
Joan González Guardiola (University of the Balearic Islands)
A Contribution to Phenomenology of Spatial Orientation: A Phenomenological Description of Laterality Phenomena
28 March 2025
Julio De Rizzo (University of Vienna)
Husserl on Perception (1894–1907)
25 April 2025
Maja Spener (University of Birmingham)
Introspective Methods in Early Experimental Psychology
9 May 2025
Convenors:
Guillaume Fréchette (University of Geneva)
Marta Jorba (Pompeu Fabra University)
Alessandro Salice (University College Cork)
Hamid Taieb (Humboldt University Berlin)
Íngrid Vendrell-Ferran (Philipps University Marburg)
Organized on behalf of the Network for Phenomenological Research