Pedro M. S. Alves (Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa)
Carlos Morujão (Centro de Estudos de Filosofia da UCP)
Dates:
23 e 24 de Abril; Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa, sala D. Pedro V
26 e 27 de Abril: UCP, Edifício da Biblioteca, Piso 2, sala 421.
10:00 h — 13:00 h
ENTRADA LIVRE
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Participants:
Pedro M. S. ALVES (Lisboa):
“Theoretical stance and life-world: foundation or overthrow?”
In this paper, I begin with an exposition of Husserl’s project for an ontology of the life-world as a pure eidetic science, contrasting it with the customary emphasis on sheer facticity, as Landgrebe remarked in section 11 of his introduction to Erfahrung und Urteil. I proceed with an appraisal of the explanatory powers of such a pure science of the life-world, focusing my discussion, firstly, on the eidetic relationship between passivity and the two forms of activity (receptivity and spontaneity), and, secondly, on the very limits of Husserl’s concept of such an eidetic science, comparing it with Kant’s transcendental theory about the a priori conditions of the possibility of experience. Finally, I address the central issue of my paper, namely the relationship between theoretical stance and life-world, questioning whether the sense-formations, the partition of reality into ontological domains, and the unbroken belief we find in the (naïve) life-world experience are of any use for the emergence and growth of the theoretical stance. Regarding science, I distinguish between “to start with the pre-giveness” of a world, and “to be founded in” (and bound by) the content of this pre-giveness. I agree with dependence in the first sense, but I am inclined to deny that the original formations of meaning and the very world of pure experience could be a theme or a canon for the development of scientific theoretical thinking as such.
Mark van ATTEN (Paris):
“On the fulfillment of categorial intentions”
In Erfahrung und Urteil, Husserl discusses the constitution of sets at some length. Yet, as Burt Hopkins has noted in his recent book The Origin of the Logic of Symbolic Mathematics}, Husserl's account there leaves a wide gap, and moreover may be considered a lapse into psychologism. In this paper, I propose a model of categorial intuition that fills that gap, and argue that the resulting account is not psychologistic. Along the way, references will also be made to Husserl's sixth logical investigation and to earlier, influential discussions of categorical intuition by Tugendhat and Lohmar.
Fernando FERREIRA (Lisboa):
“Notes on the objectivity of mathematics”
I make some comments regarding the fundamental notions of mathematics, e.g., number and set. I discuss evidence concerning truths pertaining to these notions and Gödelian distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic evidence. I also ask what is it that the instantiation of a notion adds to that notion. Finally, I briefly consider Feferman’s anti-realistic position according to which the objectivity of mathematics is, in his words, an intersubjectivity.
Denis FISETTE (Montréal):
“Sensory perception and primary content: Husserl’s contribution to the problem of consciousness”
The background of this study is the problem of consciousness in philosophy of mind and more specifically the recent debates on the so--‐called neo--‐Brentanian theories of consciousness. My starting point is an objection raised against these theories and according to which this return to Brentano is not desirable because the conception of consciousness he advocated in his Psychology of 1874 has been convincingly refuted by Husserl. This objection raises the question regarding the bearing of Husserl's criticism of his teacher Brentano. I have addressed this issue in Husserl’s Logical Investigations and this workshop gives me an opportunity to examine this question in Husserl’s writings during his last period in Freiburg, more specifically in his „Vorlesungen über transzendentale Logik“, which have been used for the composition of Experience and Judgment. Although his analysis of consciousness and of the passive dimension of experience differs significantly from that of Brentano, I will argue that Husserl’s views on consciousness during this period and according to which primary contents of phenomenal experience are wholes structured by relations is in many ways indebted to Brentano. My study is divided into three parts. The first part commences with an examination of the multiple meanings of the term phenomenology in the writings of Freiburg; I then introduce Brentano through his conception of belief that represents, in this context, a special case of the doxa--‐episteme dichotomy that Husserl seeks to overcome in Experience and Judgment. In the second part, my starting point is the privilege granted to sensory perception in the genesis of the predicative judgment and I propose my own genesis of some key aspects of the pre--‐predicative experience in Husserl’s earlier writings by focusing on three main concepts: primary content, primary relations and apprehension understood as a non--‐intentional mode of consciousness. In the last part of my study, I use cases of illusion and misperception in order to uncover some of the properties of the structure of phenomenal experiences, and I then argue that pre--‐predicative and passive experiences are partly structured by mereological relations.
François de GANDT (Lille):
"Passivity and Interest in Erfahrung und Urteil §§ 15-20"
Before any apprehension of isolated objects, we must be "affected" by something which is not yet an object. To describe this lower stratum of experience, Husserl invents the concept of "pre given", which is a surprise and a challenge for phenomenology ( a pre-given is not necessarily given, since a pre given becomes a given only if the Ego yields to the affection and "directs its ray" toward it). The pre given, with its affecting power, possesses the structure of a "field", with unity and difference (homogeneity and contrast). To the affecting "stimulus" (Reiz) the Ego reacts according to various degrees of active participation : awakening, turning toward, interest and attention, intention and striving, belief. The introduction and third part of Analysen zur passiven Synthesis (Husserliana XI) offer useful developments of several themes in EU §§ 15-20 (perceptive belief, fusion and association, link between affective force and formation of unity, relations of these "passive syntheses" with the lowest level of synthesis, i.e. the flowing unity of time).
Claire Ortiz HILL (Paris)
“The Strange Worlds of Pure Logic and Actual Consciousness”
Still obsessed with understanding the interplay between the strange realms of the purely logical and actual consciousness that had begun tormenting him decades earlier, in Experience and Judgment, Husserl confronted the ultimate challenge of analyzing the subjective foundations of a part of formal logic. The underlying paradox of the science of intentionality used to meet this challenge is that his science of subjectivity was his science of objectivity and vice versa. So in reappraising the fundamental tenets of Husserlian phenomenology as exposed in Experience and Judgment, it is necessary to understand the interplay between the two, something upon which texts and research published during the last few decades are shedding considerable light. However, even if the task of Experience and Judgment were to prove feasible, it is the now the Fregeo-Russello-Quineo logic that has come to dominate the logical landscape that needs to be dismantled and rebuilt from the bottom up. While Husserl’s insights into formal logic have a role to play in this, his genealogy of logic is not pertinent.
Carlos Aurélio MORUJÃO (Lisboa)
“Beziehungserfassung and prädikative Leistung: the relations between the 3d chapter of the Section I and the 1st chapter of Section II of Experience and Judgment”.
The relation between the 3rd. chapter of Part 1 and the 1st. chapter of Part 2 of Experience and Judgement raises one of the most interesting problems of this work. Husserl’s success in articulating two different levels of intentional life is a challenge to the validity of his «genetic phenomenology». We will show that, between §§ 33 and 57, Husserl addresses at least four different issues: 1) the distinction between Erfassung and Erkenntnis; 2) the teleological orientation of Erfassung, without which Erkenntnis would be unexplainable; 3) the relation between inner and outer horizons, i.e. the integration of a thing in a web of relations with other things, as a process of constitution of its own identity; and 4) the predikative Leistung both as a transformation of the thing into an object and of the inner and outer relations into a indefinite process of objective determination (according to the procedure: und so weiter). Finally, we will show how, for Husserl, the kind of intentional life underlying the syntheses of identification with its specific logical meaning presupposes the level of passive experience.
Francesc PEREÑA (Barcelona)
“Perception, Life-World and Being-in-the-world”
Starting from an interpretation of a passage in #15 of Sein und Zeit in which the distinction and the relation of dependence between “presence-at-hand” (Vorhandenheit) and “readiness-to-hand” (Zuhandenheit) are presented, this paper tries to show that, within this framework, the “analysis of Dasein” cannot account for the phenomenon of perception as a primary relation of the “being-in-the-world” with the “entity within-the-world”. A brief reflection on the remarkable differences shown by the two spanish translations of vorhanden is aimed at illustrating the ambiguity of the meaning of the term. After a comment on a passage of Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs in which Heidegger establishes the distinction between Umweltding and Naturding, I move on to the analysis of the external perception of the “natural thing” in the “Introduction” of Erfahrung und Urteil. I focus specially on the relation between perception and “knowledge of the world”. In this context, I discuss the possible sense of a “hidden naturalism” in Husserl, as well as the fact that the “life-world” to which one has to go back in a “logic of the world” is finally that of the individual subject, abstracting from any sedimentation dependant of others or of “expression”. I finally wonder about the special proximity between perception and theory and, in connection with this, about the relation between the sense of the perceptive evidence and the sense of the phenomenological evidence, as well as about the status of the “existenzial” point of view in front of the “existenziell” one in Sein und Zeit.
Jairo José da SILVA (São Paulo)
“Husserl and the principle of bivalence”
“Every distinct judgment is in itself either true or false, tertium non datur”. This is the principle of bivalence, a basic principle of truth-logic. Its most striking feature, which Husserl himself recognized, is the attribution of definite truth-values to proper judgments independently of verifications being carried out. Given any judgment p, how can it be the case that either p is true or p is false if the subject has not experienced either the adequation or the conflict of the content of p with the facts of reality? Doesn’t this contradict the most basic tenet of Husserl’s epistemology, that no judgment can be declared true (resp. false) if not actually experienced as true (resp. false)? Doesn’t the validity of bivalence require then presuppositions concerning domains of cognitive interest themselves or the ability of the subject to implement experiences of verification? I want to argue here that the first question must be answered in the negative, by pointing out that the concept of intrinsic truth is not the same as that of truth simpliciter, and that the second can only admit a positive answer if we do not give these presuppositions metaphysical or epistemic relevance. They have instead, or so I argue, a transcendental constitutive role, concerning the sense with which domains of cognitive interest and, correlatively, the field of evidential experiences in principle available to the subject are constituted. I will also, in the spirit of Experience and Judgment, bring out the hidden presuppositions which, by acting at the level of passive receptivity, are at the root of the presuppositions, working at the judicative level, embodied in the principle of bivalence in its two versions, objective and subjective. From this perspective, I close with a critical analysis of the views put forward by some philosopher who have considered these questions, Dummett and Quine particularly.
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