Grad Seminar Class Notes

AUG 30

Course Introduction

SEP 6

Work on Method

• Haug, "Introduction"

• armchair methods vs. empirical knowledge
• the background of linguistic philosophy in methodology
• constructive naturalism vs. deflationary naturalism p. 9

• Haug, "Williamson / Rosenberg pieces"

• Jones, "Phenomenology"

• we'll try to gloss key terms to develop a common reference and understanding of H's phenomenology
• natural standpoint, bracketing, epoch, experience of "essences"
• phenomenology's critiques of science.
• absolute subjectivity as a basis for absolute objectivity.
• phenomenology as solution to a crisis in the culture.

• Nagel - Dennett on being a bat

• Wiki Pages on Method

• Philosophical Methodology [1]
• Socratic Method [2]

• Here's something I took from the SEP article on phenomenology that I thought was clear:

To begin an elementary exercise in phenomenology, consider some typical experiences one might have in everyday life, characterized in the first person:

I see that fishing boat off the coast as dusk descends over the Pacific.

I hear that helicopter whirring overhead as it approaches the hospital.

I am thinking that phenomenology differs from psychology.

I wish that warm rain from Mexico were falling like last week.

I imagine a fearsome creature like that in my nightmare.

I intend to finish my writing by noon.

I walk carefully around the broken glass on the sidewalk.

I stroke a backhand cross-court with that certain underspin.

I am searching for the words to make my point in conversation.

Here are rudimentary characterizations of some familiar types of experience. Each sentence is a simple form of phenomenological description, articulating in everyday English the structure of the type of experience so described. The subject term “I” indicates the first-person structure of the experience: the intentionality proceeds from the subject. The verb indicates the type of intentional activity described: perception, thought, imagination, etc. Of central importance is the way that objects of awareness are presented or intended in our experiences, especially, the way we see or conceive or think about objects. The direct-object expression (“that fishing boat off the coast”) articulates the mode of presentation of the object in the experience: the content or meaning of the experience, the core of what Husserl called noema. In effect, the object-phrase expresses the noema of the act described, that is, to the extent that language has appropriate expressive power. The overall form of the given sentence articulates the basic form of intentionality in the experience: subject-act-content-object.

Rich phenomenological description or interpretation, as in Husserl, Merleau-Ponty et al., will far outrun such simple phenomenological descriptions as above. But such simple descriptions bring out the basic form of intentionality. As we interpret the phenomenological description further, we may assess the relevance of the context of experience. And we may turn to wider conditions of the possibility of that type of experience. In this way, in the practice of phenomenology, we classify, describe, interpret, and analyze structures of experiences in ways that answer to our own experience.

In such interpretive-descriptive analyses of experience, we immediately observe that we are analyzing familiar forms of consciousness, conscious experience of or about this or that. Intentionality is thus the salient structure of our experience, and much of phenomenology proceeds as the study of different aspects of intentionality. Thus, we explore structures of the stream of consciousness, the enduring self, the embodied self, and bodily action. Furthermore, as we reflect on how these phenomena work, we turn to the analysis of relevant conditions that enable our experiences to occur as they do, and to represent or intend as they do. Phenomenology then leads into analyses of conditions of the possibility of intentionality, conditions involving motor skills and habits, background social practices, and often language, with its special place in human affairs.

Method at Work

• Alfino, "Sourcing Values in Food Philosophy" - discussion of topic and consideration of methods and directions for project.

SEP 13

Work on Method

Method at Work

NOV 15

==NOV 22== t day pre

DEC 6

==DEC 13== last week of semester