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Samantha Matherne (Harvard University)

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The Normativity of Color: Perspectives from Edith Landmann-Kalischer and Maurice Merleau-Ponty

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Friday, 20 November 2020 (4:15pm CET)

 

Abstract: Does color place any demands on us? Is there any sense in which we should respond to it? Does it give us reason to engage in certain ways? Often, it is assumed that the answer to these questions is ‘no’, and that it is only value-laden properties, like aesthetic or moral properties, which generate demands, shoulds, and reasons. However, I consider two phenomenological accounts of why it only seems that color is normatively neutral, when it, in fact, places demands on us, viz., the accounts defended by Edith Landmann-Kalischer and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Although each defends a different view of the normativity of color, they both develop their views by means of an analysis of the symmetry between color and aesthetic properties. I argue that this strategy reveals something not only about the normativity of color, but also its continuity with aesthetic properties.

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Chiara Russo Krauss (University of Naples Federico II)

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Was Mach a Phenomenalist? And How His Pupil Petzoldt Can Help Us Answer This Question

 

Friday, 11 December 2020

10:15am EST, 3:15pm GMT, 4:15pm CET

 

Abstract: Ernst Mach’s claim that the objects are bundles of sensation was (and still is) widely interpreted in a phenomenalistic sense, as if he was asserting that there only exist our perceptual experiences. The talk will reconstruct the philosophical system of Mach’s pupil Joseph Petzoldt, to propose a different interpretation of Mach’s work, that put it into the wider context of the polemic against the widespread neo-Kantianism of that time.

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Carlota Serrahima (University of Antwerp)

 

Sensory Fields: The Visual and the Bodily

 

Friday, 29 January 2021

10:15am EST, 3:15pm GMT, 4:15pm CET

 

Abstract: In recent literature on bodily awareness, philosophers talk about how somatosensation involves a "sense of bodily ownership": when I feel the body somatosensorily, I typically self-attribute it. In this paper I will propose an analysis of what it is like to experience the body as one’s own. I will do so by means of a comparison between the phenomenologies of somatosensation and visual perception. According to some views on visual perception, the content and phenomenology of visual experiences is constrained by the fact that they rely on a visual field. The visual field accounts for the partially subjective character of some properties of visual experiences. I will argue that an analogous analysis for somatosensation is cogent: in somatosensation, we experience the body as a sensory field. This fact explains the peculiarly subjective character of the body when we perceive it "from the inside".

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Chad Kidd (City University of New York)

 

Sensory and Cognitive Presence to Mind

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Friday, 12 March 2021 (rescheduled)

10:15am EST, 3:15pm GMT, 4:15pm CET

 

Abstract: What is it for a thought to be conscious? In this talk, I will articulate and defend the view, presented separately by Tim Crane and Marta Jorba, that thoughts and sensory experiences are both conscious in the same fundamental way: they are both phenomenally conscious occurrences in the stream of consciousness in which the contents of thoughts and sensory experiences are made manifest to the subject. It is compatible with this view that, even though they are conscious in the same way, thoughts and sensory experiences nonetheless have distinctive phenomenal characters. I will argue that the phenomenal characters of thoughts and sensory experiences are distinctive, not because they have completely different contents, but because they employ different modes of presentation of their contents. To make this case, I will develop a concept of the “mode of presentation” of a content that is inspired by the Husserlian/phenomenological notions of “constitution” and active and passive synthesis.

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Marta Jorba (University Pompeu Fabra)

 

Possibilities for Action in Thought

 

Friday, 9 April 2021

10:15am EDT, 3:15pm GMT, 4:15pm CET

 

Abstract: According to Husserl’s phenomenology, the intentional horizon is a general structure of experience. However, its characterisation beyond perceptual experience is a quite unexplored aspect of the mind. In this talk I argue that there is a viable notion of cognitive horizon that presents features that are analogous to features of the perceptual horizon. Then I propose to characterise a specific structure of the cognitive horizon—that which presents possibilities for mental action—as a cognitive affordance, a key notion in ecological psychology. Finally I explore a prominent kind of cognitive affordances, i.e., those that are linguistically embedded, arguing that the phenomenon of silently talking to ourselves can be characterised both as a mental action and as a verbal affordance. This conceptualisation provides a new framework with significant implications for the metaphysics and epistemology of inner speech, as well as for the main philosophical and psychological theories of inner speech.

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Anna Giustina (University of Liège)

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An Acquaintance Alternative to Self-Representationalism

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Friday, May 7, 202

10:15am EDT, 3:15pm GMT, 4:15pm CET

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Abstract: The primary goal of this paper is to provide substantial motivation for exploring an Acquaintance account of phenomenal consciousness, on which what fundamentally explains phenomenal consciousness is the relation of acquaintance. Its secondary goal is to take a few steps towards such an account. Roughly, my argument proceeds as follows. Motivated by prioritizing naturalization, the debate about the nature of phenomenal consciousness has been almost monopolized by representational theories (first-order and meta-representational). Among them, Self-Representationalism is by far the most antecedently promising (or so I argue). However, on thorough inspection, Self-Representationalism turns out not explanatorily or theoretically better than the Acquaintance account. Indeed, the latter seems to be superior in at least some important respects. Therefore, at the very least, there are good reasons to take the Acquaintance account into serious consideration as an alternative to representational theories. The positive contribution of this paper is a sketch of an account of consciousness on which phenomenal consciousness is explained partly in representationalist terms, but where a crucial role is played by the relation of acquaintance.

 

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Joel Smith (University of Manchester)

 

The Possibility of Communication: Perceptual Demonstratives in the Logical Investigations

 

Friday, 25 June 2021

10:15am EDT, 3:15pm GMT, 4:15pm CET

 

Abstract: There is a well-known puzzle as to how successful communication is possible via the use of demonstrative and indexical terms. Focussing on the case of perceptual demonstratives, I outline the puzzle and explore a distinctively Husserlian solution. Leaning primarily on the account of "occasional expressions" in Logical Investigations, but drawing also on his later work, this solution involves thinking of the senses of demonstratives as less finely individuated than is sometimes presupposed. I briefly compare this view with more familiar direct reference, and moderate Fregean alternatives.

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Matt Bower (Texas State University)

 

Against Inadequacy

 

Friday, 9 July 2021

10:15am EDT, 3:15pm GMT, 4:15pm CET

 

Abstract: One of Husserl’s signature ideas is that perceptual experience is structured into fulfilled and empty components. To illustrate, consider that when visually inspecting a cup only some of its exterior and interior fall into your line of sight and to that extent are experienced in fulfillment. However, you are perceptually sensitive to the fact that the cup’s exterior and interior exceed what falls into your line of sight. The contents of that sort of awareness are experienced emptily, without fulfillment. Or so Husserl would characterize the experience. His view that perceptual experience is structured into fulfilled and empty components is the immediate consequence of his thesis that perceptual experience is inherently inadequate. That means, roughly, that a perceptual experience never presents things to us exactly as the experience itself takes them to be. There is always more to how things are perceptually taken to be than how they are given. Here I explicate the conceptual pair adequacy/inadequacy, locate it in Husserl’s larger philosophical vision, sketch his rationale for thinking perceptual experience is inherently inadequate, and then question this last thought by raising criticisms concerning both its rationale and the consequences it entails. I hope to show that Husserl’s conception of perceptual experience as inherently inadequate is untenable.

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