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Objections to Pokropski’s proposal to marry functional mechanistic explanation with phenomenology

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Notes

  1. As a small aside, Pokropski misrepresents my position on the relationship between phenomenology and personal level explanation in my 2020 article on the topic (Williams, 2020). In that article, I say that within Husserl’s corpus, we can eke out a theory of personal level explanation. I do not suggest that phenomenology ought to be thought of as a form of personal level explanation in that article, as Pokropksi intimates (though others have made the claim that phenomenology is a form of personal level explanation involving motivational relations). For my position on the relationship between phenomenology and personal level explanation, see Williams, this issue.

  2. I focus here only on the former.

  3. Concepts that Husserl does makes extensive use of that has relevance to any discussion of explanation are ‘law’ and ‘ground’ (Williams & Byrne, 2022), but Pokropski neglects the role these concepts play in Husserl’s work due to his rejection of nomological explanation, and his comments concerning the distinction between phenomenological and natural/causal laws.

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  1. Faculty of Theology and Philosophy, University of Note Dame, Note Dame, United States

    Heath Williams

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Williams, H. Objections to Pokropski’s proposal to marry functional mechanistic explanation with phenomenology. Phenom Cogn Sci 22, 743–751 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-022-09871-1

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