Phenomenology Of Thinking

This book draws connections between recent advances in analytic philosophy of mind and insights from the rich phenomenological tradition concerning the nature of thinking. By combining both analytic and continental approaches, the volume arrives at a more comprehensive understanding of the mental process of "thinking" and the experience and manipulation of objects of thought. Contributors scrutinize aspects of thinking that have a common grounding in both the phenomenological and analytic tradition: perception, language, logic, embodiment and situatedness due to individual history or current experience. This collection serves to broaden and enrich the current debate over "cognitive phenomenology," and lays the foundations for further dialogue between analytic and continental approaches to the phenomenal character of thinking.

This book concerns the nature and character of conscious thinking from a philosophical perspective. One main aspect of conscious thinking addressed by the contributors is the phenomenal character involved in undergoing an episode of thinking or, in other words, the question of what it is like to think a certain thought, what has been called ‘cognitive phenomenology’. This contested phenomenal character constitutes a form of phenomenal consciousness that needs clarification and further consideration within consciousness studies, cognitive psychology and philosophy. The present volume brings together chapters on the topic that contribute to clarify the notions and questions involved in the discussion, expanding the scope of the debate on cognitive phenomenology to other relevant aspects of conscious thinking and related domains. Several different topics are treated in the book, such as the relation of cognitive phenomenology with rationality, with the self, with attention or with the notion of cognitive access, as well as consideration of particular kinds of experiences of recognition and the so-called ‘aha’ experiences. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Philosophical Explorations.

Phenomenology is about subjective aspects of the mind, such as the conscious states associated with vision and touch, and the conscious states associated with emotions and moods, such as feelings of elation or sadness. These states have a distinctive first-person ‘feel’ to them, called their phenomenal character. In this respect they are often taken to be radically different from mental states and processes associated with thought. This is the first book to fully question this orthodoxy and explore the prospects of cognitive phenomenology, applying phenomenology to the study of thought and cognition. Does cognition have its own phenomenal character? Can introspection tell us either way? If consciousness flows in an unbroken ‘stream’ as William James argued, how might a punctuated sequence of thoughts fit into it? Elijah Chudnoff begins with a clarification of the nature of the debate about cognitive phenomenology and the network of concepts and theses that are involved in it. He then examines the following topics: introspection and knowledge of our own thoughts phenomenal contrast arguments the value of consciousness the temporal structure of experience the holistic character of experience and the interdependence of sensory and cognitive states the relationship between phenomenal character and mental representation. Including chapter summaries, annotated further reading, and a glossary, this book is essential reading for anyone seeking a clear and informative introduction to and assessment of cognitive phenomenology, whether philosophy student or advanced researcher. It will also be valuable reading for those in related subjects such as philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology and epistemology.

This book aims to guide its reader through the notorious difficulties of Merleau-Pony's famous "Phenomenology of Perception". The author contextualizes, reconstructs, clarifies and, where necessary, completes Merleau-Ponty's analyses chapter by chapter.

Philosophy's Moods is a collection of original essays interrogating the inseparable bond between mood and philosophical thinking. What is the relationship between mood and thinking in philosophy? In what sense are we always already philosophizing from within a mood? What kinds of mood are central for shaping the space of philosophy? What is the philosophical imprint of Aristotle’s wonder, Kant’s melancholy, Kierkegaard’s anxiety or Nietzsche's shamelessness? Philosophy's Moods invites its readers to explore the above questions through diverse methodological perspectives. The collection includes twenty-one contributions by internationally renowned scholars as well as younger and emerging voices. In pondering the place of the subjective and personal roots that thinking is typically called to overcome, the book challenges and articulates an alternative to a predominant tendency in philosophy to view the theoretical content and the affective side of thought as opposed to one another.

The central concern of the cognitive phenomenology debate is whether there is a distinctive 'cognitive phenomenology, ' that is, a kind of phenomenology that has cognitive or conceptual character in some sense that needs to be precisely determined. This volume addresses the question of whether conscious thought has cognitive phenomenology.

In this fresh translation of five lectures delivered in 1907 at the University of Göttingen, Edmund Husserl lays out the philosophical problem of knowledge, indicates the requirements for its solution, and for the first time introduces the phenomenological method of reduction. For those interested in the genesis and development of Husserl's phenomenology, this text affords a unique glimpse into the epistemological motivation of his work, his concept of intentionality, and the formation of central phenomenological concepts that will later go by the names of `transcendental consciousness', the `noema', and the like. As a teaching text, The Idea of Phenomenology is ideal: it is brief, it is unencumbered by the technical terminology of Husserl's later work, it bears a clear connection to the problem of knowledge as formulated in the Cartesian tradition, and it is accompanied by a translator's introduction that clearly spells out the structure, argument, and movement of the text.