Philipp Berghofer (University of Graz)

"Why We Need a Phenomenological Turn in Epistemology"

Friday, 28 October 2022

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Abstract: Contemporary analytic epistemology is dominated by externalist approaches. In this picture, evidence is not constituted by our experiences but by facts and the epistemic status of our beliefs is not determined by what is internally accessible to us but by external factors such as reliability. This implies that there is nothing intrinsically special about experience. The process of experiencing may lead to justified beliefs, but only if this process qualifies as reliably producing true beliefs. My objective is to introduce, motivate, and defend a phenomenological experience-first epistemology. This system rests on the cornerstones that (1) all epistemic justification and every piece of knowledge can be traced back to epistemically foundational experiences and that (2) justification-conferring experiences gain their justificatory force by virtue of their distinctive presentive phenomenology. I submit that there are various types of justification-conferring experiences, including (types of) perceptual experiences, intellectual experiences, evaluative experiences, and introspective experiences, such that every type of justification-conferring experience exhibits a distinctive justification-conferring phenomenology. I will specify some of the virtues of this phenomenological epistemology and ponder what it implies for the relationship between epistemology and science.

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Walter Hopp (Boston University)

"Knowledge and the Foundations of Intentionality"

18 November 2022

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Abstract: In this paper I will attempt to provide a broadly Husserlian defense of the thesis that all objectifying or object-directed intentionality is either itself knowledge, or is founded upon knowledge. No intentional acts of any type could occur without a foundation in knowledge. The argument, quite simply, is that all intentionality is founded on what Husserl calls "Evidenz" or givenness, and that Evidenz in all of its varieties is knowledge. I will examine the various roles that Evidenz plays in conscious life, including its indispensable role in what Husserl calls "constitution", and also argue that both (a) conceptual Evidenz or fulfillment and (b) nonconceptual Evidenz or originary intuition qualify as knowledge. I’ll try to address some objections along the way.

 

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Katja Crone (TU Dortmund University)

"Personal Identity, Narrativity, and the Self-understanding of Persons"

9 December 2022

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Abstract: Many narrative approaches assume a tight relation between narrative and selfhood. They hold that the self-understanding of persons as individuals possessing a set of particular character traits is above all narratively structured for it is constituted by stories persons tell or can tell about their lives. Against this view, it is argued that the self-understanding is also characterized by certain non-narrative and invariant mental features. In order to show this, a non-narrative awareness of self-identity over time will be analyzed. It will be argued that this basic form of awareness plays a fundamental role for the possibility of a richer form of self-understanding. To further analyze this awareness of self-identity over time, various mental phenomena will be explored as relevant sources of information. It will be argued that the narrative approaches at issue should expand their focus towards an integration of phenomenological and invariant aspects of the awareness of persons as persisting subjects.

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Ditte Munch-Jurisic (University of Virginia/University of Copenhagen)

"Vagueness in Emotion Perception: Disorientation as the Norm?"

20 January 2023

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Abstract: Most psychological and philosophical theories assume that emotions have a clear, transparent intentionality. Experimental psychology theorizes that we can distinguish between emotions on basis of intentionality, motivation, or physiological markers like a facial expression. Psychologist Daniel Batson, for example, argues that the distress we feel over someone’s suffering is either empathic distress or personal distress, vicariously induced. From this perspective, we can distinguish these two emotions based on their "ultimate goals": empathic distress has the potential to motivate empathic concerns; personal distress, on the other hand, is self-oriented, motivating only egoistic concerns. In this presentation, I argue against this and similarly teleological views of emotions and affect. Through a close study of the emotional breakdown of an American drone analyst, Chris Aaron, I make the case that emotion perception entails much more vagueness than dominant theories assume. Disorientation and confusion are often the norm. For a long time, Aaron did not know what his emotional distress was about. Drawing on Hannah Arendt and Peter Goldie, I argue that such experiences of disorientation are in fact common and discuss the implications of taking indeterminacy in emotion perception more seriously.

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Alba Montes Sánchez (University of Copenhagen)

"Towards a Phenomenology of Migrant Nostalgia"

10 February 2023

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Abstract: In this talk I seek to articulate a notion of "sense of belonging" that can shed light on the emotional impact of migration. Psychology research into the latter focuses on two complex phenomena, acculturation stress and migratory grief, but studies them in isolation from each other, and pays little attention to their common root: a challenged sense of belonging. The sense of belonging has recently been conceptualized in two ways. According to one account, it is an "existential feeling": a background affective orientation that shapes an individual’s space of possibilities (Ratcliffe 2008). As such, it amounts to a pre-reflective sense of togetherness that allows us to experience the world as a shared space (Wilde 2021). According to another proposal, the sense of group belonging is an episodic feeling, akin to other standard emotions, with an intentional target (the subject’s relation to the group), a formal object (the hedonically positive value of certain commonalities between oneself and the group) and a focus of concern (roughly, fitting in and being valued by other group members) (Szanto forthcoming). I argue that both notions are necessary. Episodic feelings of belonging arise against the backdrop of an existential feeling and respond to its disturbances and alterations, and these in turn shed light on the relations between acculturation stress and migratory grief.

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Davide Bordini (University of Fribourg)

"Self-Representationalism, Intimacy, and Mental Representation"

31 March 2023

 

Abstract: According to a longstanding story, phenomenal consciousness requires awareness of one’s own mental states—inner awareness (IA). In searching for a reductive and naturalistic account, many have understood IA in terms of mental representation. One well-known problem for this approach, however, is that it would fail to capture the ‘intimacy’ that obtains between IA and our conscious states, thereby mischaracterizing consciousness itself. Proponents of Self-representationalism (SR) have often claimed that their view can capture the required intimacy without having to drop the original explanatory and naturalistic program that led to accounting for IA in terms of mental representation. In particular, in developing the best and most articulated version of SR, Kriegel (2009) replies to the intimacy objection by suggesting that IA should be construed as a constituting representation. In my talk, I focus on this proposal and argue that, upon closer inspection, it is not a good solution for the naturalistically minded self-representationalist, as it leads to the following dilemma: either the self-representationalist accommodates intimacy by appealing to constituting representation; or they provide a naturalistic explanation of consciousness in terms of mental representation—but they cannot do both.

 

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Jonathan Mitchell (Cardiff University)

"The Intentional Horizons of Visual Experience"

21 April 2023

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Abstract: How is it that we can visually experience complete three-dimensional objects despite the fact we are limited, in any given perceptual moment, to perceiving the sides facing us from a specific spatial perspective? To make sense of this, such visual experiences must refer to occluded or presently unseen back-sides which (i) are not sense-perceptually given (which are strictly not visually experienced), and (ii) which cannot be sense-perceptually given while the subject is occupying the spatial perspective on the object that they currently are – I call this the horizonality of visual experience. Existing accounts of these horizonal references are unsatisfactory. In providing a satisfactory account, this paper argues that the content and structure of the visual experience of complete three-dimensional objects is as follows: we are perceptually presented with the objects being perceptible from yet-to-be-determined different ego-centric locations. As part of the content of visual experience, this motivates non-propositional attitudes of anticipation. Explicating this proposal is the central positive aim of this paper.

 

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