A Presence without Present: Making Sense with the Other

Journal of The British Society for Phenomenology, 1979

Frontiers in Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 2021

In the Origin of the work of art, Heidegger claimed that the work of art opens to us the truth of Being, the opening of the world. Two problematics arise from this. First, his idea of "world-disclosure" evoked a sense of everydayness (which captures, for me, the idea of credulism in perception). Second, the senses of truth, Being, and world are metaphysically condensed. Hence the question: how then could the "truth of Being" or the "world" that artworks reveal be experienced? Among other ways (mimesis, imagination, perception, etc.) by which artworks are experienced, I choose to examine perception since it confirms this idea of everydayness. The questions that confront us to this effect are: can perception lead us into, to encounter, this world opened by artworks? Does the nervous/visual system suffice to enter into that world in which the artist invites us? This is where Richir becomes important. In response to the first problem, he shows that the "perception" (experience) of artworks is beyond mere everydayness since artworks open for us a world that "never was" and "never will be" (i.e., "virtuality" and not a veridical sense of everydayness as captured in the perceptive act that is objectrelated). This is because the material stuff or object given in perception is neutralized by the phantasia to become what Richir calls Sache. This Sache is in itself a phenomenon that is disclosed in artworks. In response to the second problem, Richir shows how artworks cannot disclose just metaphysical categories of Being, truth, or world. The disclosure has to be phenomenological, corporeal, and affective. He therefore proposes another mode of "perception" beyond mere perception in a revolutionary interpretation of the husserlian "perceptive" phantasia. With this, he shows how the aforementioned metaphysical condensations are liveable in experience. I concretize this with an illustration from the theater. Finally, I suggest participation as a phenomenological approach that can make both Heidegger's and Richir's intuitions meaningful.

Synthesis Philosophica, 2005

What is the distinctively philosophical problem of perception? Here it is argued that it is the conflict between the nature of perceptual experience as it intuitively seems to us, and certain possibilities which are implicit in the very idea of experience: possibilities of illusion and hallucination. Perceptual experience seems to us to be a relation to its objects, a kind of 'openness to the world' which involves direct awareness of existing objects and their properties. But if one can have an experience of the same kind without the object being there -a hallucination of an object -then it seems that perceptual experience cannot essentially be such a relation. This is the fundamentally philosophical problem of perception; the various philosophical theories of perception in the 20 th and 21 st centuries can be seen as responses to it.

2016

█ Abstract In this paper, we want to support Kriegel's argument in favor of the thesis that there is a cogni-tive form of phenomenology that is both irreducible to and independent of any sensory form of phenom-enology by providing another argument in favor of the same thesis. Indeed, this new argument is also intended to show that the thought experiment Kriegel's argument relies on does describe a genuine metaphysical possibility. In our view, Kriegel has not entirely succeeded in showing that his own argument displays that possibility. We present our argument in two steps. First, we attempt to prove that there is a cognitive phenomenology that is irreducible to any form of sensory phenomenology. Our proof relies on a kind of phenomenal contrast argument that however does not appeal to introspection. Second, by showing that the link between this form of cognitive phenomenology, the phenomenology of having thoughts, and sensory phenomenology in general is extrinsic, we also aim to demonstrate that the former is independent of the latter. █ Riassunto Un altro argomento in favore della fenomenologia cognitiva – In questo articolo intendiamo corroborare l'argomento di Kriegel in favore dell'esistenza di una forma cognitiva di fenomenologia irri-ducibile a e indipendente da ogni altra forma di fenomenologia della sensibilità, avanzando un altro ar-gomento a sostegno della stessa tesi. Nei fatti, questo nuovo argomento vuole anche mostrare che l'esperimento mentale su cui poggia l'argomento di Kriegel descrive effettivamente una genuina possibili-tà metafisica; e tuttavia crediamo che l'argomento di Kriegel non abbia mostrato fino in fondo proprio questa possibilità. Vogliamo presentare il nostro argomento in due passi. In un primo momento, tentere-mo di provare l'esistenza di una fenomenologia cognitiva irriducibile a ogni altra forma di fenomenologia sensoriale. La nostra prova poggia su un tipo di argomento basato su un contrasto fenomenico che non si appella all'introspezione. In un secondo momento, mostrando che il legame tra questa forma di fenome-nologia cognitiva, ossia la fenomenologia del possesso dei pensieri, e la fenomenologia sensoriale è un le-game estrinseco, intendiamo dimostrare che la prima è indipendente dalla seconda.

Unconsciousness Between Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis. Springer, 2017

The notion of repression as active forgetfulness already found in Nietzsche and systematised by Freud and his successors is employed in a distinctive manner by Merleau-Ponty in Phenomenology of Perception. By showing how we appropriate our environment towards outcomes and respond to other people, he contends, we can unearth hidden modes of operative intentionality. Two such modes are the motor intentional projection of action and the anonymous intercorporeality that includes touching and being touched. Each of these is an aspect of a past that was never a present. Merleau-Ponty does have something to say about pasts that were once present and that linger on in human life. Yet he shows little interest in the unconsciousness of psychoanalysis for its own sake. Psychoanalytic accounts of repression are assimilated into his theory of the body itself, serving merely as means for illustrating the latter. I suggest that this move follows on a conception of an integrated existent whose past acquisitions are remarkably enabling and untroubling.

Kaygı. Uludağ Üniversitesi Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi Felsefe Dergisi, 2017

My guiding research hypothesis is as follows: the significant progress made by the phenomenology of immanence (according to which no worldly hetero-givenness would be possible without subjectif self-givenness) and by the phenomenology of transcendence (which states that no subjectif self-givenness would be possible without worldly hetero-givenness) are not distinguished so much by the positing of new problems as by the reformulation of "the question of the ground of intentionality" that fueled the entire phenomenological tradition. It is striking that despite the different solutions they offer, these two approaches have the same critical orientation regarding phenomenology (they characterize intentionality by its failure to ensure its own foundation), and they have the task of testing phenomenology in a confrontation with its various outsides such as "Invisible", "Totality", "Affectivity" or "Le visage" which escape the Husserlian concept of experience determined by the consciousness and its correlative noetic-noematic structure. This pathos of thought which is proper to the French phenomenology wants to go further than what remains unquestioned in Husserl (presence determined in the solid figures of intuition and objectness), and in Heidegger (presence determined as phenomenon of being). This new phenomenological movement reorganize and revise the method of classic phenomenology and deal with a certain experience of "hyper-phenomenon" or "counter-phenomenon" which is an event of appearing that establishes itself by itself.

Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy (https://jffp.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/jffp/article/view/928), 2020

This paper compares the enactive approach to perception, which has recently emerged in cognitive science, with the phenomenological approach. Inspired by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, the enactive theorists Alva Noë and Evan Thompson take perception to be a result of the interaction between the brain, the body and the environment. Their argument turns mostly on the role of self-motion and sensorimotor knowledge in perceptual experience. It was said to be entirely consistent with phenomenology, indeed its revival. However, this issue is under debate. To show this, I begin with analyzing the enactive conception as a physicalist attempt to overcome the challenge of dualism and representationalism. I then turn to Husserl’s transcendental method and argue that Noë’s solution, unlike Husserl’s, remains naturalistic, as it does not take the phenomenon of intersubjectivity and the constitution of the “cultural world” into account. Afterwards I turn to Merleau-Ponty and demonstrate that there is some certain common ground with Noë, but also major differences. I conclude that the enactive approach is not completely refuted by the phenomenological one, insofar as the latter partly contains the first. Yet the enactivists deal merely with the necessary physiological conditions of perception qua animal perception, not with the sufficient sociocultural conditions for the understanding of human perception, like the inquiry into the historical and linguistic circumstances under which the understanding of human mind is made possible. The reason why the recent transformation of phenomenology into neurophenomenology is perceived as a revival is virtually inherent to the specific scientific ethos of enactivism and reveals a certain oblivion of the objectives of philosophical phenomenology. https://jffp.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/jffp/article/view/928

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2011

In his book Action in Perception, Alva Noë poses what he refers to as the “problem of perceptual presence” and develops his enactive view as solution to the problem. Noë describes the problem of perceptual presence as the problem of how to conceive of the presence of that which, “strictly speaking,” we do not perceive. I argue that the “problem of perceptual presence” is ambiguous between two problems that need to be addressed by invoking very different resources. On one hand, there is the problem of how to conceive of the presence of objects as wholes, front side and back, and their constant properties. On the other hand, there is the problem of how to account for the presence of unattended detail. I focus on the first problem, which Noë approaches by invoking Husserlian ideas. I argue that Noë’s enactive view encounters difficulties, which can be dealt with by complementing it with Edmund Husserl’s idea of fulfillment and generally restoring the view to its original Husserlian context. Contrary to Noë’s purport, this involves regarding the view not as a theory of perception and perceptual content but as part of a descriptive-clarificatory project of conceptual analysis. The Husserlian phenomenologist analyzes, e.g., the concept of shape or color by investigating the fulfillment conditions pertinent to shape or color. In general, my critique of Noë’s enactive view serves to caution philosophers against unprincipled uses of Husserlian ideas.

Phenomenology, Signs, and Representation: An Examination of Husserl and Derrida, 2013

Final paper for an undergraduate class on phenomenology. PHIL 337: Twentieth-Century Continental Thought: Phenomenology. Spring 2013. Professor Wayne J. Froman. Course info: https://philosophy.gmu.edu/courses/phil337/course_sections/10608 Abstract: Throughout the history of the Western intellectual tradition, the subject of human experience has remained central to philosophy. Attempting to understand how experience is possible, how meaning emerges in human consciousness, whether the mind and brain are separate or can be reduced to physical states, how human beings experience time, emotion, thought, and memory, and whether anything or anyone can be said to exist outside of our own experience are concerns that occupy a wide spectrum of inquiry over a long period of time. Many philosophers have tried their hand at penetrating these aporias in their many guises and philosophical offspring: the brain, soul, mind, matter, dualism, epiphenomenalism, spirit, care, theodicy, emergence, solipsism, idealism, vitalism, and, more recently, consciousness, to name a few. Some succeeded in their own way at mapping out a kind of “consciousness cartography,” adding to a growing nebula of various structures and theories, while nevertheless leaving something unresolved about the mystery of human experience. While progress has been made across a trajectory spanning thousands of years, which has since branched off into various disciplines and schools of thought, few in present day have devoted as much rigor or attention to the subject as the philosophical movement of phenomenology, whose ripples of influence can be felt throughout the world. In turn, the purpose of this paper will be to provide a brief overview of some of the central ideas of the founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, while additionally examining some potential problems with phenomenology. In particular, I will focus the modest lens and rudimentary scope of this paper on the criticisms raised by Jacques Derrida, most notably those concerning Derrida’s poststructuralist theory of signs and representation as they play out in his attack on Husserl by way of the latter’s work, Logical Investigations. In doing so I will argue that, despite the poignancy and strength of Derrida’s attacks, the validity and necessity of phenomenology as a philosophical practice nevertheless remains unscathed.

1996