Corijn van Mazijk

How does perception give us access to external reality? This book critically engages with John McDowell's conceptualist answer to this question, by offering a new exploration of his views on perception and reality in relation to those of Immanuel Kant and Edmund Husserl. In six chapters, the book examines these thinkers' respective theories of perception, lucidly describing how they fit within their larger philosophical views on mind and reality. It thereby not only reveals the continuity of a tradition that underlies today's fragmented scholarly landscape, but also yields a new critique of McDowell's conceptualist theory. In doing so, the book contributes to the ongoing bridging of traditions, by combining analytic philosophy, Kantian philosophy, and phenomenology. Perception and Reality in Kant, Husserl, and McDowell will appeal to scholars and students working in the history of philosophy, phenomenology, Kantian philosophy, and in particular the philosophy of perception.

The current medical approach to erectile dysfunction (ED) consists of physiological, psychological and social components. This paper proposes an additional framework for thinking about ED based on phenomenology, by focusing on the theory of sexual projection. This framework will be complementary to the current medical approach to ED. Our phenomenological analysis of ED provides philosophical depth and illuminates overlooked aspects in the study of ED. Mainly by appealing to Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, we suggest considering an additional etiology of ED in terms of a weakening of a function of sexual projection. We argue that sexual projection can be problematized through cognitive interferences, changes in the ‘intentional arc’, and modifications in the subject’s ‘body schema’. Our approach further highlights the importance of considering the ‘existential situation’ of patients with ED. We close by reflecting briefly on some of the implications of this phenomenological framework for diagnosis and treatment of ED.

Both Kant and Husserl claim to endorse a form of transcendental idealism which includes some sufficient form of realism in itself. This chapter offers a systematic comparison of this claim for both authors. The first half of this chapter discusses (i) Kant’s criticism of Cartesian skepticism, (ii) his identification of transcendental realism as a fallacious source of that position, and (iii) his own solution based on the fusion of empirical realism with transcendental idealism. I subsequently discuss (iv) whether the negative concept of noumenon Kant accepts obscures this position, and I argue that it need not. Turning to Husserl, the second part discusses his criticism of Cartesian skepticism and the problem of the relation between the intentional and the real object. I argue that Husserl’s position resembles Kant’s on important points. I then turn to Husserl’s concept of a “world beyond ours” in Ideas I and argue that Husserl’s account of the material counter-sense, but also logical possibility of a world beyond consciousness, mirrors Kant’s negative noumenon. I conclude that, disregarding details of their respective proof structures, both views on transcendental idealism are similar in important respects, also regarding the possibility of a noumenal world.

Although the term ‘transcendental consciousness’ seems like a rather basic notion in Husserl’s philosophy, its precise meaning is in fact one of the principle dividing points among scholars. In this paper I first outline three different views on transcendental consciousness and identify reasons for maintaining them. The most interesting opposition this exposition yields is between the latter two positions. The rest of the paper is then devoted to developing a solution to this interpretative problem which should satisfy intuitions underlying both camps. Particularly novel about this solution is that it understands Husserl’s notion of transcendental consciousness as involving a kind of metaphysical commitment, and takes it not as any kind of object or regional ontology, but as encompassing the totality of being considered from a unique transcendental-phenomenological perspective.

This paper discusses the relation between the later Husserl and the later Heidegger regarding their criticisms of modern science and technology. It is suggested that the overlap between both accounts is more significant than is standardly acknowledged. The paper first explores Heidegger’s ideas about the ‘essences’ of science and technology, how they allegedly determine the contemporary worldview, conceal our relation to being, and how Heidegger warrants his critical attitude toward this. It then discusses Husserl’s philosophical–historical assessment of the ‘idea’ of modern science, which Husserl believed resulted in the decapitation of philosophical questioning. Although key differences in method, aims, and their proposed solution to the dominance of the technological-scientific worldview should not be overlooked, the paper suggests that core aspects of Heidegger’s analyses can be traced back to Husserl.

Recent philosophy of mind has seen an increase of interest in theories of intentionality in offering a functional account of mental states. The standard intentionalist view holds that mental states can be exhaustively accounted for in terms of their representational contents. An alternative view proposed by Tim Crane, called impure intentionalism, specifies mental states in terms of intentional content, mode, and object. This view is also suggested to hold for states of sensory awareness. This paper primarily develops an alternative to the impure intentionalist account of states of sensory awareness. On the basis of Husserl’s phenomenological work, I argue that a focus on intentionality at the level of sensory awareness is phenomenologically implausible. The final part offers an alternative functional account of sensory awareness based on what Husserl called ‘immanent association’.

This paper discusses Husserl’s theory of intentionality and compares it to contemporary debates about intentionalism. I first show to what extent such a comparison could be meaningful. I then outline the structure of intentionality as found in Ideas I. My main claims are that – in contrast with intentionalism – intentionality for Husserl covers just a region of conscious contents; that it is essentially a relation between act-processes and presented content; and that the side of act-processes contains non-representational contents. In the third part, I show that Husserl also offers resources against intentionalism’s exclusive concern with propositional content.

In this paper I compare McDowell′s conceptualism to Husserl′s later philosophy. I aim to argue against the picture provided by recent phenomenologists according to which both agree on the conceptual nature of experience. I start by discussing McDowell′s reading of Kant and some of the recent Kantian and phenomenological non-conceptualist criticisms thereof. By separating two kinds of conceptualism, I argue that these criticisms largely fail to trouble McDowell. I then move to Husserl’s later phenomenological analyses of types and of passive synthesis. Although Husserl appropriates McDowell’s idea of conceptually ‘saddled’ intuitions as a ‘secondary passivity’, I argue that he also provides a strong case for non-conceptual synthesis