Husserl and McDowell on the Role of Concepts in Perception (2011)

Phaenomenologica, 2014

Teorema Revista Internacional De Filosofia, 2013

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2020

Various attempts have been made recently to bring Husserl into the contemporary analytic discussion on sensory illusion and hallucination. On the one hand, this has resulted in a renewed interest in what one might call a 'phenomenology of sense-deception.' On the other hand, it has generated contrasting-if not utterly incompatible-readings of Husserl's own account of sense perception. The present study critically evaluates the contemporary discourse on illusion and hallucination, reassesses its proximity to Husserl's reflection on sensory perception, and highlights the philosophical limits and structural deficiencies of the current debate in light of some of Husserl's insights. The analysis first provides a synopsis of the argumentative structures, aims, and assumptions informing the conjunctivism-disjunctivism debate. This assessment is then critically elaborated through the lens of Husserlian phenome-nology in its historical and theoretical distance from the recent debate. Contrary to certain readings of Husserl, the reconstruction of some cardinal phenomenological themes provides all the elements necessary to dislocate his own account from the conjunctivism-disjunctivism dispute, by means of both a 'global' and a 'local' analysis, and both exegetically and theoretically. Most importantly, a 'return' to Husserl shows the philosophical untenability of the whole controversy as not only leaving untouched the core problem of perception but also altering some of its essential traits. This critique of the image of experience portrayed in the contemporary discussion is conducted through a phenomenological clarification of perception as a distinct 'structure of rules' of consciousness and, more specifically, by means of a descriptive analysis centered on the core notion of horizonal-intentionality.

Noûs, 2011

A satisfactory theory of perception must meet a variety of metaphysical and epistemological demands. What is wanted is a view that simultaneously accounts for, among other things, the epistemic significance of experience, the nature and status of illusion and hallucination, the possibility of unmediated perceptual contact with the world, the “richness” of experience, and the source of perceptual concepts. It has been argued that experience must be conceptual in order to secure the justificatory role of perceptual states; at the same time, it has been thought that such states cannot be conceptual given their phenomenological and explanatory features. Our aim is to introduce and defend a new framework for conceptualism that, by marking ontological and epistemic differences between sensory awareness and perceptual experience, promises to resolve this dispute while accounting for all of the above phenomena. In §1, we clarify the conceptualist thesis at issue. In §2, we present and motiv...

Various attempts have been recently made to project Husserl into the contemporary analytic discussion on sensory illusion and hallucination. On the one hand, this has resulted in a renewed interest in what one might call a ‘phenomenology of sense-deception.’ On the other hand, it has generated contrasting—if not utterly incompatible—readings of Husserl’s own account of outer perception. The present study critically evaluates the contemporary discourse on illusion and hallucination, reassesses its proximity to Husserl’s reflection on sensory perception, and suggests important corrections to the current debate in light of some of Husserl’s insights. The analysis first provides a synopsis of the argumentative structures, aims, and assumptions informing the conjunctivism-disjunctivism debate. This assessment is then critically elaborated through the lens of Husserlian phenomenology in its historical and theoretical distance from the recent debate. Contrary to certain readings of Husserl, the reconstruction of some cardinal phenomenological themes provides all the elements necessary to dislocate his own account from the conjunctivism-disjunctivism dispute, by means of both a ‘global’ and a ‘local’ analysis, and both exegetically and theoretically. Most importantly, a ‘return’ to Husserl shows the philosophical untenability of the whole controversy as both leaving untouched the core problem of perception and altering some of its essential traits. This critique of the image of experience portrayed in the contemporary discussion is conducted through a phenomenological clarification of perception as a distinct ‘structure of rules’ of consciousness and, more specifically, by means of a descriptive analysis centered on the core notion of horizonal-intentionality.

Continental Philosophy Review, 2024

This article critiques Husserl's notion of grounding through an exploration of the lifeworld. The first section sketches Husserl's account of the lifeworld in the Crisis. The lifeworld is meant to serve as an ultimate ground for sense-formation, yet to do so Husserl must abstract from its concrete-historical dimension. The lifeworld is determined one-sidedly as the world of perception, whose correlate is universal nature. The second section critiques this one-sided determination, arguing that Husserl's notion of nature is rooted in contingent historical circumstances-in particular a Cartesian metaphysics of space and time. Thus, perception is never simply of nature, but always involves cultural interpretations. To the extent that the lifeworld is concrete-historical, it cannot be a universal foundation, and to the extent that it is a universal foundation, it cannot be concrete-historical. The final section explores alternatives that move beyond this deadlock. Rather than determining the lifeworld from the top-down (teleology) or from the bottomup (archeology), we should be attentive to the way that different patterns and structures of experience emerge within concrete life. Instead of a single, unified world or a plurality of relative worlds, experience takes place in an intermediate zone in which new ways of seeing and knowing constantly emerge. No single perspective can claim a total view. This new understanding of the lifeworld has implications for the relation between science and phenomenology. Rather than viewing the latter as the basis for the former, we can see how phenomenology and science intertwine and mutually enrich one another. Ultimately, a phenomenology of the lifeworld must embrace the groundlessness of sense and the possibility of different ways of organizing experience.

Horizon. Studies in Phenomenology, Special Issue "Phenomenology and Structuralism", Ed. G. Chernavin., 2023

This paper deals with the problem of the origin of sense and meaning. For Husserl, the determination of the ideal identity of something new can only take place retroactively in the totality of the preceding series by stepping back towards the original foundation of sense. In this regard, J.Derrida questions the ideality of the same as presence and the possibility of retrieving any arché of sense in his writings Speech and Phenomena and Edmund Husserl's Origin of Geometry. Phenomenology is not oblivious to these difficulties, as results from a closer reading of the correlation between idealities and sensory experience: It will show that there are at least four interrelated gaps in the Husserlian phenomenology which testify the difficulty in grasping a retraceable arché of sense. First, the gap between the ideality of sense and its representation. Second, the gap between sensory and categorial intuitions, whereby both exceed one another. Third, the gap between the ideality of sense and the sense which exceeds our expectations. Fourth, the gap between the experience of the new that overcomes us and its apprehension by consciousness. Hence, there is a fundamental gap between the conceptual idealities and the essential indeterminacy of our phenomenological sensory experience, which is correlative to an excess of one in respect to the other. In this sense, Derrida's concepts of «différance» and "invention" allow us to conceive of this self-givenness of sense as the expression of its constant self-renewal. This expression takes the form of a trace, which, neither present nor absent, suspends meaning and full presence, leaving the narrative "open" for the reinvention of sense.

Synthese, 2008

This paper argues that transcendental phenomenology (here represented by Edmund Husserl) can accommodate the main thesis of semantic externalism, namely, that intentional content is not simply a matter of what is 'in the head,' but depends on how the world is. I first introduce the semantic problem as an issue of how linguistic tokens or mental states can have 'content'-that is, how they can set up conditions of satisfaction or be responsive to norms such that they can succeed or fail at referring. The standard representationalist view-which thinks of the problem in first-person terms-is contrasted with Brandom's pragmatic inferentialist approach, which adopts a third-person stance. The rest of the paper defends a phenomenological version of the representationalist position (seeking to preserve its first-person stance) but offers a conception of representation that does not identify it with an entity 'in the head.' The standard view of Husserl as a Cartesian internalist is undermined by rejecting its fundamental assumption-that Husserl's concept of the 'noema' is a mental entity-and by defending a concept of 'phenomenological immanence' that has a normative, rather than a psychological, structure. Finally, it is argued that phenomenological immanence cannot be identified with 'consciousness' in Husserl's sense, though consciousness is a necessary condition for it.

In Études phénoménologiques - Phenomenological Studies (2017, Vol. 1): Special Issue on “Phenomenology and the Challenges of the Philosophy of Mind” Abstract: In this paper, I seek to contribute to the debate regarding the normative character of perceptual experience. I argue that a new insight into the discussion can be gained if we turn to a somewhat overlooked aspect of Edmund Husserl's phenomenology: namely, his peculiar notion of reason (Vernunft). Husserl discusses reason in terms of the process of legitimation (Ausweisung) of a pre-predicative claim which is constitutive of all perceptual experience. According to Husserl this process unfolds in perception itself. I furthermore show how the horizonal structure of perception opens up a system of possible appearances of the perceived object. To perceive the object rationally—and thus to place oneself in the normative space of reasons—is to be pre-reflectively aware of which of these possible appearances the subject ought to (or in Husserl's terms, is more " motivated " to) anticipate in the perceptual process. Link: http://poj.peeters-leuven.be/content.php?url=issue&journal_code=EPH&issue=0&vol=1