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This paper compares the enactive approach to perception, which has recently emerged in cognitive ... more This paper compares the enactive approach to perception, which has recently emerged in cognitive science, with the phenomenological approach. Inspired by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, the enactive theorists Alva Noë and Evan Thompson take perception to be a result of the interaction between the brain, the body and the environment. Their argument turns mostly on the role of self-motion and sensorimotor knowledge in perceptual experience. It was said to be entirely consistent with phenomenology, indeed its revival. However, this issue is under debate. To show this, I begin with analyzing the enactive conception as a physicalist attempt to overcome the challenge of dualism and representationalism. I then turn to Husserl’s transcendental method and argue that Noë’s solution, unlike Husserl’s, remains naturalistic, as it does not take the phenomenon of intersubjectivity and the constitution of the “cultural world” into account. Afterwards I turn to Merleau-Ponty and demonstrate that there is some certain common ground with Noë, but also major differences. I conclude that the enactive approach is not completely refuted by the phenomenological one, insofar as the latter partly contains the first. Yet the enactivists deal merely with the necessary physiological conditions of perception qua animal perception, not with the sufficient sociocultural conditions for the understanding of human perception, like the inquiry into the historical and linguistic circumstances under which the understanding of human mind is made possible. The reason why the recent transformation of phenomenology into neurophenomenology is perceived as a revival is virtually inherent to the specific scientific ethos of enactivism and reveals a certain oblivion of the objectives of philosophical phenomenology.

https://jffp.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/jffp/article/view/928

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Hegel's Naturalism?

Full text: http://ojs.hegelbrasil.org/index.php/reh/article/view/166 ""Abstract: The recent te... more Full text:

http://ojs.hegelbrasil.org/index.php/reh/article/view/166
""Abstract:

The recent tendency to detect naturalism in Hegel’s epistemology is more than just a phenomenon within contemporary Anglophone scholarship, insofar as it mirrors a questionable state of the art at the intersection between philosophy of science and philosophy of mind. According to the naturalist reading, Hegel maintains that the natural world is the only presupposition for satisfying the needs of self-consciousness. Such reading considers the essence of self-consciousness as naturally embodied in its essence, while downplaying the intersubjective dimension of reciprocal recognition needed for self-consciousness. Self-consciousness, as the thinking subject or the mind, is then lead to allegedly unavoidable delimitation of any knowledge-claims. On this reading, the natural is an insurmountable obstacle to the mind. Hegel, on his side, evidently offers an ongoing multifaceted dialogue with divergent streams of naturalism. Yet, the question arises: in which sense can we appropriately speak of Hegel’s naturalism? This paper presents the recent naturalistic approaches to Hegel, along with deliberations on Hegel’s possible response to them, namely his concept of the transsubjective thinking mind, the Geist."

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