The Announcement of Kobe Philosophy Seminar (1) The Dreyfus-McDowell Debate from a Phenomenological Perspective (December 19, 2023)

Title: The Dreyfus-McDowell Debate from a Phenomenological Perspective
Speaker: Giulia Lanzirotti (University of Padua)

Abstract:
The presentation aims to focus on the Dreyfus-McDowell Debate and Classic Phenomenology. The talk will move from John McDowell’s claim that concepts already permeate our perceptions. In particular, McDowell and Dreyfus’ exchange has neatly highlighted one of the core questions of our comprehension of concepts debating over the problematic relationship between the two spheres of mind and perception. An increasingly wider debate is raised discussing whether and to what extent concepts actually interlace the sensuous extra-intellectual bodily dimension of our experience or whether, on the contrary, our perception experience is a non-mental, non- linguistic, embodied and practical dimension, in which conceptual rationality is not in play. Accordingly, the debate is framed into the contrast between conceptualism and non-conceptualism. Nowadays, the debate has reached a stalemate. 

This presentation aims 1) to show that the philosophical stalemate about the role of concepts rises from a representational shared understanding of concepts that have not been fully recognized; 2) to overcome the impasse by exploiting Husserl’s notion of Type and Heidegger’s notion of praxis. The notion of Type, presented in Husserl’s Experience and Judgment and mostly overlooked by scholars, is a structure that indicates how concepts arise from the perceptual and practical domain. In order to clarify how the notion of Typus may serve us as a nonrepresentational conceptuality, the project will offer a renovated interpretation of early Heidegger’s praxis, conceiving it as the domain which can explain the functioning of typified experience. The overall goal of the presentation is to assess whether we can reconceive conceptuality by looking at the problems raised by the Debate and the solutions provided by Classic Phenomenology.

Place: 17:00-18:30, December 19, 2023, Student Hall, Building A, Graduate School of Humanities, Kobe University.
No advanced registration required. Free Admission.