Computational foundations of phenomenology

The purpose of the dissertation is to investigate the degree of compatibility of two fields: phenomenology and computational cognitive science. The former field proposes to explicate all structures of conscious experience in terms of conscious experience. The latter proposes to explicate all structures of consciousness partly in terms of unconscious causal factors. These endeavors have been seen as mutually exclusive. I put forward the thesis that the original formulation of phenomenology may be seen to have a computational theory of mind in the background. To this end, I show in the first chapter that the founder of phenomenology articulated, prior to founding phenomenology, a computational theory of mind in terms of its two modern theses: (1) syntactic representations, and (2) their causal generation and interaction. Insofar as I am able to provide sufficient evidence for this thesis, I am theoretically licensed to proceed to trace its influence on the founding of phenomenology proper. On the above textual basis, I proceed in the second chapter to discuss Husserl's methodology in the founding work of phenomenology - the Logical Investigations. I there show how my compatibility thesis may be true; indeed, I demonstrate that formal evidence is the causal product of what Husserl calls “unsere Denkmaschine” – a thought-machine that manipulates syntactic symbols. The third chapter discusses several arguments against (Humean) associationism, and by extension against (Churchlandian) connectionism, and show that they demand in their stead computationalism, both on account of the nature of the explananda as well as for the sake of theoretical completeness. In the fourth chapter, I discuss, with a view to deepening my interpretation, the much-celebrated property (since Chomsky) of productivity. This leads to a discussion of the methodological relation between “universal grammar,” as it appears directly in the 4th Logical Investigation, and the computational theory of mind. In the fifth chapter, I discuss how Husserl’s descriptive treatment of the propositional attitudes (as act-matters & act-qualities), nominalization, and categorial intuition may be supplemented on the explanatory side by a language of thought

The structure of linguistic behaviour : using evidence from aphasiology to corroborate and develop Merleau-Ponty's theory of language and intersubjectivity

Bibliography: pages 370-373.The theme of this thesis occurred to me while reading Luria's Basic Problems of Neurolinguistics. Many of Luria's patients manifest forms of a disintegration of speech and of the understanding of speech, which resemble the disintegration of movement in space and perception of space of Goldstein's patient, Schneider, the case Merleau-Ponty described in so many of his arguments, particularly those in the chapter of the Phenomenology of Perception entitled "The spatiality of one's own Body and Motility". It seemed to me that I could analyse the speech syndromes Luria reveals, and Luria's explanations, in much the same way that Merleau-Ponty analysed Schneider's syndrome and the explanations offered by Goldstein and others. I felt that in this way I would be able to exhibit certain features of the speaking subject and its relations with others, in the same way that Merleau-Ponty revealed the spatiality of the body and its relations with the world. This seemed to me to be a useful project, firstly because of the central role that the problem of language plays in Merleau-Ponty's later philosophy and because the later reflections on language seem to presuppose such an analysis of pathological forms of speech

Husserl on 'Besinnung' and formal ontology

Peer reviewe

Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Between Phenomenology and Structuralism

Made available in Digital Common by permission of James Schmidt, author and rights owner

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Between phenomenology and structuralis

Gödel Mathematics Versus Hilbert Mathematics. II Logicism and Hilbert Mathematics, the Identification of Logic and Set Theory, and Gödel’s 'Completeness Paper' (1930)

The previous Part I of the paper discusses the option of the Gödel incompleteness statement (1931: whether “Satz VI” or “Satz X”) to be an axiom due to the pair of the axiom of induction in arithmetic and the axiom of infinity in set theory after interpreting them as logical negations to each other. The present Part II considers the previous Gödel’s paper (1930) (and more precisely, the negation of “Satz VII”, or “the completeness theorem”) as a necessary condition for granting the Gödel incompleteness statement to be a theorem just as the statement itself, to be an axiom. Then, the “completeness paper” can be interpreted as relevant to Hilbert mathematics, according to which mathematics and reality as well as arithmetic and set theory are rather entangled or complementary rather than mathematics to obey reality able only to create models of the latter. According to that, both papers (1930; 1931) can be seen as advocating Russell’s logicism or the intensional propositional logic versus both extensional arithmetic and set theory. Reconstructing history of philosophy, Aristotle’s logic and doctrine can be opposed to those of Plato or the pre-Socratic schools as establishing ontology or intensionality versus extensionality. Husserl’s phenomenology can be analogically realized including and particularly as philosophy of mathematics. One can identify propositional logic and set theory by virtue of Gödel’s completeness theorem (1930: “Satz VII”) and even both and arithmetic in the sense of the “compactness theorem” (1930: “Satz X”) therefore opposing the latter to the “incompleteness paper” (1931). An approach identifying homomorphically propositional logic and set theory as the same structure of Boolean algebra, and arithmetic as the “half” of it in a rigorous construction involving information and its unit of a bit. Propositional logic and set theory are correspondingly identified as the shared zero-order logic of the class of all first-order logics and the class at issue correspondingly. Then, quantum mechanics does not need any quantum logics, but only the relation of propositional logic, set theory, arithmetic, and information: rather a change of the attitude into more mathematical, philosophical, and speculative than physical, empirical and experimental. Hilbert’s epsilon calculus can be situated in the same framework of the relation of propositional logic and the class of all mathematical theories. The horizon of Part III investigating Hilbert mathematics (i.e. according to the Pythagorean viewpoint about the world as mathematical) versus Gödel mathematics (i.e. the usual understanding of mathematics as all mathematical models of the world external to it) is outlined

HUSSERL\u27S DYADIC SEMANTICS

Husserl’s Logical Investigations contain an apparent discrepancy in their account of meaning. They first present meanings, contra psychologism, as commonly available, reiterable, invariant, possibly valid, and independent of our “acts of meaning”. They then present meaning, almost psychologistically, as a kind of intentional experience on which all truths and other transcendent meanings depend. I offer a critical developmental study of this problem within Husserl’s semantics. I argue (1) that Husserl had reason to adopt his dyadic account of signification, (2) that this “two-sided” account shaped, and was reciprocally informed by, the two-step phenomenological method, and (3) that Husserl’s proposed resolution to the strain within his semantics, while driven by legitimate motivations, is precarious. I begin with the Logical Investigations and their context. I represent their two sets of semantic claims, recalling how the discord between claims of those sets would have been especially conspicuous when the Investigations were published, amid much debate over psychologism, in 1900-01. I then show why Husserl embraced two discordant views of meaning. I survey the 19th century sources for these views, confirming Jocelyn Benoist’s genealogical thesis that Husserl’s semantics took its psychological and logical sides primarily from Franz Brentano and Bernard Bolzano, respectively. And I present the Bolzanian arguments and Brentanian descriptions that served as grounds for Husserl’s semantics, showing how these pieces of reasoning were appropriated, and weighing their strength. Next, I trace how Husserl’s two-sided theory of meaning, and its apparent incoherence, both inspired and determined the transcendental and eidetic reductions. I then examine how Husserl subsequently used the phenomenological method to reinforce, to integrate, and to revise his theory of meaning. And I address a methodological criticism that this circular development prompts. Finally, I assess Husserl’s attempt to explain the division within the phenomenon of meaning by reference to what he called “transcendental subjectivity”. I consider two contrary objections to this explanation. I indicate how Husserl’s explanation is responsive to the insight behind each objection, but contend that it is perhaps not adequately responsive to the insight behind either

Phenomenology and Existentialism

Originally published in 1967. Focusing on key philosophers and the tenants of their thought, Phenomenology and Existentialism forms a wide-ranging introduction to two important movements in modern philosophy. Included are essays by Roderick M. Chisholm on Brentano, Aron Gurwitsch on Husserl, E.F. Kaelin on Heidegger, J. Glenn Gray on Heidegger, George L. Kline on Hegel and Marx, James M. Edie on Sartre, Frederick A. Olafson on Merleau-Ponty,Herbert Spiegelberg on Phenomenology and psychology, and Albert William Levi on the alienation of man