Phenomenological Epistemology

Phenomenological Epistemology
Author: Henry Pietersma
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2000-01-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0195351142

This work offers a provocative new historical and systematic interpretation of the epistemological doctrines of three twentieth-century giants: Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. Pietersma argues that these three philosophers, while connected by their phenomenological doctrines, have underappreciated and interestingly-linked views on the theory of knowledge.

Hegel’s Epistemological Realism

Hegel’s Epistemological Realism
Author: K.R. Westphal
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9400923422

The scope of this study is both ambitious and modest. One of its ambitions is to reintegrate Hegel's theory of knowledge into main stream epist~ology. Hegel's views were formed in consideration of Classical Skepticism and Modern epistemology, and he frequently presupposes great familiarity with other views and the difficulties they face. Setting Hegel's discussion in the context of both traditional and contemporary epistemology is therefore necessary for correctly interpreting his issues, arguments, and views. Accordingly, this is an issues-oriented study. I analyze Hegel's problematic and method by placing them in the context of Sextus Empiricus, Descartes, Kant, Carnap, and William Alston. I discuss Carnap, rather than a Modern empiricist such as Locke or Hume, for several reasons. One is that Hegel himself refutes a fundamental presupposition of Modern empiricism, the doctrine of "knowledge by acquaintance," in the first chapter of the Phenomenology, a chapter that cannot be reconstructed within the bounds of this study.

Kant and Phenomenology

Kant and Phenomenology
Author: Tom Rockmore
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2011
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0226723402

Phenomenology, together with Marxism, pragmatism, and analytic philosophy, dominated philosophy in the 20th century and Edmund Husserl is usually thought to have been the first to develop the concept. The author argues for a return to phenomenology's origins in epistemology and does so by locating its roots in the work of Immanuel Kant.

Hegel's Epistemology

Hegel's Epistemology
Author: Kenneth R. Westphal
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2003-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780872206458

Provides a succinct philosophical introduction to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit for non-specialists and students, focusing on Hegel's unique and insightful theory of knowledge and its relations to 20th-century epistemology.

Kant & Phenomenology

Kant & Phenomenology
Author: Tom Rockmore
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2011-01-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0226723410

Phenomenology, together with Marxism, pragmatism, and analytic philosophy, dominated philosophy in the twentieth century—and Edmund Husserl is usually thought to have been the first to develop the concept. His views influenced a variety of important later thinkers, such as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, who eventually turned phenomenology away from questions of knowledge. But here Tom Rockmore argues for a return to phenomenology’s origins in epistemology, and he does so by locating its roots in the work of Immanuel Kant. Kant and Phenomenology traces the formulation of Kant’s phenomenological approach back to the second edition of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. In response to various criticisms of the first edition, Kant more forcefully put forth a constructivist theory of knowledge. This shift in Kant’s thinking challenged the representational approach to epistemology, and it is this turn, Rockmore contends, that makes Kant the first great phenomenologist. He then follows this phenomenological line through the work of Kant’s idealist successors, Fichte and Hegel. Steeped in the sources and literature it examines, Kant and Phenomenology persuasively reshapes our conception of both of its main subjects.

Epistemology for the Rest of the World

Epistemology for the Rest of the World
Author: Stephen Stich
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2018-06-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0190865105

Since the heyday of ordinary language philosophy, Anglophone epistemologists have devoted a great deal of attention to the English word 'know' and to English sentences used to attribute knowledge. Even today, many epistemologists, including contextualists and subject-sensitive invariantists are concerned with the truth conditions of "S knows that p," or the proposition it expresses. In all of this literature, the method of cases is used, where a situation is described in English, and then philosophers judge whether it is true that S knows that p, or whether saying "S knows that p" is false, deviant, etc. in that situation. However, English is just one of over 6000 languages spoken around the world, and is the native language of less than 6% of the world's population. When Western epistemology first emerged, in ancient Greece, English did not even exist. So why should we think that facts about the English word "know," the concept it expresses, or subtle semantic properties of "S knows that p" have important implications for epistemology? Are the properties of the English word "know" and the English sentence 'S knows that p' shared by their translations in most or all languages? If that turned out to be true, it would be a remarkable fact that cries out for an explanation. But if it turned out to be false, what are the implications for epistemology? Should epistemologists study knowledge attributions in languages other than English with the same diligence they have shown for the study of English knowledge attributions? If not, why not? In what ways do the concepts expressed by 'know' and its counterparts in different languages differ? And what should epistemologists make of all this? The papers collected here discuss these questions and related issues, and aim to contribute to this important topic and epistemology in general.

Phenomenological Approaches to Physics

Phenomenological Approaches to Physics
Author: Harald A. Wiltsche
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2020-06-23
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030469735

This book offers fresh perspective on the role of phenomenology in the philosophy of physics which opens new avenues for discussion among physicists, "standard" philosophers of physics and philosophers with phenomenological leanings. Much has been written on the interrelations between philosophy and physics in the late 19th and early 20th century, and on the emergence of philosophy of science as an autonomous philosophical sub-discipline. This book is about the under-explored role of phenomenology in the development and the philosophical interpretation of 20th century physics. Part 1 examines questions about the origins and value of phenomenological approaches to physics. Does the work of classical phenomenologists such as Husserl, Merleau-Ponty or Heidegger contain elements of systematic value to both the practice and our philosophical understanding of physics? How did classical phenomenology influence “standard” philosophy of science in the Anglo-American and other traditions? Part 2 probes questions on the role of phenomenology in the philosophies of physics and science: - Can phenomenology help to solve “Wigner’s puzzle”, the problem of the "unreasonable effectiveness" of mathematics in describing, explaining and predicting empirical phenomena? - Does phenomenology allow better understanding of the principle of gauge invariance at the core of the standard model of contemporary particle physics? - Does the phenomenological notion of “Lifeworld” stand in opposition to the “scientific metaphysics” movement, or is there potential for dialogue? Part 3 examines the measurement problem. Is the solution outlined by Fritz London and Edmond Bauer merely a re-statement of von Neumann’s view, or should it be regarded as a distinctively phenomenological take on the measurement problem? Is phenomenology a serious contender in continuing discussions of foundational questions of quantum mechanics? Can other interpretational frameworks such as quantum Bayesianism benefit from implementing phenomenological notions such as constitution or horizonal intentionality?

The Phenomenology of a Performative Knowledge System

The Phenomenology of a Performative Knowledge System
Author: Shay Welch
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2019-04-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3030049361

This book investigates the phenomenological ways that dance choreographing and dance performance exemplify both Truth and meaning-making within Native American epistemology, from an analytic philosophical perspective. Given that within Native American communities dance is regarded both as an integral cultural conduit and “a doorway to a powerful wisdom,” Shay Welch argues that dance and dancing can both create and communicate knowledge. She explains that dance—as a form of oral, narrative storytelling—has the power to communicate knowledge of beliefs and histories, and that dance is a form of embodied narrative storytelling. Welch provides analytic clarity on how this happens, what conditions are required for it to succeed, and how dance can satisfy the relational and ethical facets of Native epistemology.

Transcendental Phenomenological Psychology

Transcendental Phenomenological Psychology
Author: Jon L. James
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2011-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1426968345

From the Preface to the Revised Edition: Since its publication in 2007, Transcendental Phenomenological Psychology has been sold on every continent (except Antarctica), and is in the collections of research libraries in North America, Europe, and Asia. Even so, its presentation to the academic community rightly provoked many comments, corrections, suggestions, and criticisms. Such input, while mostly welcome, provided the impetus to publish a revised edition. A phenomenological explanation of human consciousness has long been sought in regions of psychology since the discipline was first carved out of philosophical concepts and theories about the human condition. In its earliest years, Western psychology was faced with two possible directions for this explanation: an empirical naturalistic approach along with physics and biology, or a non-empirical eidetic approach along with logic and mathematics. Edmund Husserl took up the latter. His phenomenological tradition of inquiry successfully spanned nearly forty years until suddenly stopped and largely suppressed during the Second World War. This book recovers Husserl's revolutionary approach toward the human sciences, just as it was developed, and just as it is presented for further study. Here, the author systematically gathers what Husserl calls the "leading clues" in the phenomenological method proper for a psychology of affective inner experience, and then for the first time applies Husserl's own methodology for introducing a phenomenological psychology in the transcendental register of human consciousness. Unlike contemporary phenomenological psychology in the existential register, transcendental phenomenological psychology is presented as an eidetic non-empirical "act psychology" in Husserl's mature genetic phenomenology. This novel approach takes in the full range of solipsistic and transcendental subjectivity in Husserl's theories of human consciousness, and follows Husserl's lead in presenting phenomenological psychology as an "applied geometry" of intentional experience within a step-wise theory of inquiry. This book is unique in human science today, not only in its presentation of the development and applications of Husserl's key concepts for the discipline of psychology, but also for introducing a psychology that could be intuitively grasped as self-evidently valid wherever one's interest might lie.

Critical theory and epistemology

Critical theory and epistemology
Author: Anastasia Marinopoulou
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2017-06-26
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1526105381

This volume in the Critical Theory and Contemporary Society series explores the arguments between critical theory and epistemology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Focusing on the first and second generations of critical theorists and Luhmann’s systems theory, the book examines how each approaches epistemology. It opens by looking at twentieth-century epistemology, particularly the concept of lifeworld (Lebenswelt). It then moves on to discuss structuralism, poststructuralism, critical realism, the epistemological problematics of Foucault’s writings and the dialectics of systems theory. The aim is to explore whether the focal point for epistemology and the sciences remain that social and political interests actually form a concrete point of concern for the sciences as well.