Online research in philosophy

INTRODUCTION Phenomenology as transcendental phenomenology is centered in a description of meaning interpreted in relationship to acts of consciousness. ...

Husserl is well known for his critique of the “mathematizing tendencies” of modern science, and is particularly emphatic that mathematics and phenomenology are distinct and in some sense incompatible. But Husserl himself uses mathematical methods in phenomenology. In the first half of the paper I give a detailed analysis of this tension, showing how those Husserlian doctrines which seem to speak against application of mathematics to phenomenology do not in fact do so. In the second half of the paper I focus on a particular example of Husserl’s “mathematized phenomenology”: his use of concepts from what is today called dynamical systems theory.

Historians should not use their own up-to-date methodologies to judge the rationality or correctness of the research strategies of scientists in history. For the history of science is, in part, the history of the rational growth of methodology and the historian's own up-to-date methodology is, in part, a product of the scientific revolutions of the past. Historians who use their own methodologies to judge the rationality of past research strategies are being too wise after the event. I show, using the case of Charles Darwin, how we can judge the rationality and correctness of research strategies and revolutions without being too wise after the event. I do this by rejecting the idea that methodologies double as rationality theories and by drawing instead on Popper's competing view of rationality as critical debate.

In the literature related to the study of sport, the idea of phenomenology appears with various meanings. The aim of this paper is to sketch the nature, methods and central concepts of phenomenology, and thereby to distinguish philosophical phenomenology from its empirical applications. We shall begin by providing an overview of what we think phenomenology is and is not, by introducing the following points: we distinguish phenomenology from phenomenalism; the ontological from the ontic; transcendental subjectivity from subjectivity; phenomenology from phenomenography; and phenomenology from other kinds of empirical qualitative methodology. Next, we examine the two most important British studies to include overviews of phenomenological work in relation to sociology of sport. We then take a critical view of the work of one research paper that gives a particularly clear description of the method of ?empirical phenomenology?. Throughout, we insist on the simple basics: that phenomenology is not simply the study of empirical phenomena, is not a form of subjectivism, is not about someone's personal experience or personal perspective, and that it is not to be confused with ?qualitative research methods?. We further insist that, if a researcher wishes to use the name ?phenomenology? for his or her research, he or she should explain just what it is (about the method or the concepts, or the outcomes) that informs or results from the research programme, in order to justify the name.

Translator's preface -- Introduction: The question of phenomenology -- Hyletic phenomenology and material phenomenology -- The phenomenological method -- Pathos-with reflections on Husserl's Fifth cartesian meditation -- For a phenomenology of community.

"Phenomenology on (the) Rocks" shows how an interest in the natural realm can be congruent with globalization if we conceive this globality in a vernacular way. Husserl and Merleau-Ponty first developed a tentative conceptual instrumentarium for this direction of thought. Through a broadening of traditional phenomenology as a philosophy of primordial constitution based upon intentionality of the subject, they began thinking in terms of co-constitution and operative intentionality. In the rest of the paper I mainly show how operant intentionality works in and through the way we take up - or are taken up by - that which seems the most indifferent and impervious to us, namely - the world of stones.

I want to raise the question of why we should give the Preface this special treatment. What do we hope to learn from such an extended examination of the Preface that will help further the study of Hegel's work beyond its present state? My comments will be limited to a few central issues, such as (a) the relationship between the Phenomenology and the system, (b) the Phenomenology as an introduction to the system, and (c) the Phenomenology as a ladder, in order to best address what is of value in the Phenomenology's Preface for us today.

Dennett’s recent defense in this journal of the heterophenomenological method and its supposed advantages over Husserlian phenomenology is premised on his problematic account of the epistemological and ontological status of phenomenological states. By employing Husserl’s philosophy of science to clarify the relationship between phenomenology and evidence and the implications of this relationship for the empirical identification of ‘real’ conscious states, I argue that the naturalistic account of consciousness Dennett hopes for could be authoritative as a science only by virtue of the very phenomenological evidences Dennett’s method consigns to the realm of fiction. Thus heterophenomenology, qua scientific method, is incoherent.

Philosophers often suggest that their theories of free will are supported by our phenomenology. Just as their theories conflict, their descriptions of the phenomenology of free will often conflict as well. We suggest that this should motivate an effort to study the phenomenology of free will in a more systematic way that goes beyond merely the introspective reports of the philosophers themselves. After presenting three disputes about the phenomenology of free will, we survey the (limited) psychological research on the experiences relevant to the philosophical debates and then describe some pilot studies of our own with the aim of encouraging further research. The data seem to support compatibilist descriptions of the phenomenology more than libertarian descriptions. We conclude that the burden is on libertarians to find empirical support for their more demanding metaphysical theories with their more controversial phenomenological claims.

Husserl made certain assumptions about the nature of the components of experienced phenomena derived from and similar to the assumptions of the psychologists of his time. I will present some of those assumptions, and argue, and support that argument with evidence, that they are incorrect. I claim that if that is true, then Husserlian methodology is flawed, to the extent that for certain investigations both the epoch? and the method of eidetic variation necessitate circularity which invalidates their utility. These arguments and some of their implications are presented in detail.