Elijah Chudnoff (University of Miami)

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"Inferential Seemings"

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24 September 2021

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Abstract: There is a felt difference between following an argument to its conclusion and keeping up with an argument in your judgments while failing to see how its conclusion follows from its premises. In the first case there’s what I’m calling an inferential seeming, in the second case there isn’t. Inferential seemings exhibit a cluster of functional and normative characteristics whose integration in one mental state is puzzling. Several recent accounts of inferring suggest inferential seemings play a significant role in the process, but none provides a fully satisfactory understanding of inferential seemings themselves. In this paper I critically examine theoretical options on offer in the existing literature, then develop an alternative view. I’ll also discuss implications for recent debates about general principles governing inference, such as Fumerton’s Principle of Inferential Justification and Boghossian’s Taking Condition.

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Anna Ichino (State University of Milan)

 

"Conspiracy Theories and Make-Believe"

 

29 October 2021

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Abstract: To a large extent, recent debates on conspiracy theories have been based on what we can call the "doxastic assumption". According to that assumption, a person who supports a conspiracy theory does ipso facto believe that such theory is (likely to be) true. In this paper I question the doxastic assumption. I argue that conspiracy theories’ supporters often do not really believe, but just imagine, that their theories are true – engaging in peculiar games of make-believe in which such theories are used as props. This view has important normative implications for the assessment of conspiracy theories’ rationality, as well as practical implications for interventions aimed at reducing conspiracy theories’ spread.

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Jean Moritz Müller (University of Bonn)

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"Knowing Value and Acknowledging Value"

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12 November 2021

Abstract: On a popular view, emotions apprehend value properties exemplified in our surroundings (e.g. Roberts 2013; Tappolet 2016; Mitchell 2020). This view (which I call the Epistemic View) conceives of their primary significance in epistemic terms: the point of emotions is to make us aware of value. In this talk, I argue against the Epistemic View and motivate a different account on which the significance of emotion is practical rather than epistemic. In the first, negative part, I show that the Epistemic View radically misconceives the intentionality of emotion. Emotions are directed at something in response to values we have already apprehended. This is incompatible with emotions themselves affording awareness of value (cf. von Hildebrand 1916; Mulligan 2010; Müller 2017). In the main, positive part of my talk, I argue that, given their responsive character, emotions are more adequately conceived as ways of acknowledging value. Accordingly, we should think them as practically rather than epistemically significant: as forms of acknowledgment emotions confer validity upon values, making them ‘count’, instead of making them known.

 

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Anna Bortolan (Swansea University)

 

"Epistemic Emotions and Self-Trust: A Phenomenological Proposal"

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17 December 2021

 

Abstract: Epistemic emotions – namely affects like curiosity, wonder, and doubt – have been claimed to play a key role in epistemic evaluation and motivation, and, relatedly, to be an integral aspect of epistemic virtues. In this paper I argue that the experience of these emotions is extensively shaped by self-trust. More specifically, I claim that the set of epistemic emotions that one can undergo, and how these unfold over time, is modulated by trust in one’s own abilities as a knower and agent. I maintain that this dynamic can be best accounted for by conceiving of self-trust through the lenses of phenomenological research on affectivity, suggesting that self-trust is to be conceived as an affective background orientation which has a structuring role in cognition and action.

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Witold Płotka (Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw)

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"Blaustein on Husserl’s Theory of Intentionality: Sources, Context and Main Arguments"

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14 January 2022

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Abstract: The paper deals with Leopold Blaustein’s (1905–1942 [or 1944]), a Polish-Jewish philosopher, aesthetician and psychologist, account of Husserl’s theory of intentionality. Blaustein was educated in Lvov (under, e.g., Twardowski and Ingarden), but he also held fellowships in Freiburg im Breisgau (in 1925; studies under Husserl) and in Berlin (in 1927/28; studies under the Gestaltists). Under Twardowski’s supervision, Blaustein wrote a thesis on Husserl’s theory of intentionality. The paper explores sources, context and main arguments elaborated by Blaustein in this very book. It is argued that for Blaustein Husserl’s “Untersuchungen” and the idea of act matter presented therein are best understood within the framework of the tradition that can be traced back to Bolzano and Brentano. According to Blaustein Husserl adopted an object-theory of intentionality. The paper also explores Blaustein’s criticism of Husserl’s theory of sensations understood as the content of consciousness.

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Sanneke de Haan (Tilburg University)

 

"Self-Illness and Self-Medication Ambiguity in Patients with Recurrent Depressions: Preliminary Results from a Qualitative Study"

 

25 February 2022

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Abstract: Self-illness ambiguity refers to the difficulties in how to relate to one's psychiatric disorder, in particular to the difficulty of teasing out the effect of the disorder on one's experiences. As Karp (2006) put it: ‘‘If I experience X, is it because of the illness, the medication, or is it ‘just me’?’’ In this talk I will discuss some preliminary findings from a qualitative interview study with people with recurrent depressions on these topics.

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Hayden Kee (Chinese University of Hong Kong)

 

Unsymbolized Thinking? A Reinterpretation Through the Horizonality of Linguistic Experience

 

11 March 2022

 

Abstract: Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) is a method for describing inner experience. DES subjects carry a beeper that sounds at random intervals. Subjects take notes of what they were experiencing at the moment of the beep, then develop their descriptions through expositional interviews with DES researchers. Many DES subjects report experiences of Unsymbolized Thinking (UT): explicit, differentiated thinking that does not include the experience of words, images, or any other symbols (Hurlburt and Akhter 2008). Many philosophers and cognitive scientists deny the existence of UT. I offer a reinterpretation of UT in terms of the horizonal character of experience. All present experience contains horizonal references to further possible continuations of experience. DES subjects' reports of UT, I propose, are retroactive reconstructions and light falsifications of experiences that contained strongly motivated horizonal possibilities of linguistic expression at the moment of the sampled experience. I explain how DES' theory and methods obscure the nature of experience and lead to unreliable reports. I conclude by discussing how my account compares to alternative explanations of UT.

 

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Angela Mendelovici (Western Ontario)

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20 May 2022

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Singular Experiences (With and Without Objects)

 

Abstract: Perceptual experiences seem to in some sense have singular contents. For example, a perceptual experience of a brown dog seems to represent some particular dog as being brown. There are important phenomenological, intuitive, and semantic considerations for thinking that perceptual experiences represent singular contents, but there are also important phenomenological, epistemic, and metaphysical considerations for thinking that they do not. This paper proposes a two-tier picture of the content of singular perceptual experiences that is based on phenomenal intentionality theories of intentionality combined with self-ascriptivism about derived representation, a combination of views that allows mental states to have two types of contents: phenomenal contents and derived contents. On the proposed picture, singular perceptual experiences represent singular phenomenal contents, which do not involve worldly objects, as well as singular derived contents, which do involve worldly objects. This picture accommodates and reconciles the considerations for and against thinking that perceptual experiences have singular contents.

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Kyle Banick (Chapman University/California State University Long Beach)

 

Constitutive Realism and Internalism about Phenomenology

 

3 June 2022

 

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.

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