Kevään kansainvälisiä luennoitsijoita humanistisessa tiedekunnassa

Professori Gábor Betegh (CEU, Budapest) luennoi torstaina 17.4. klo 16–18 (Janus, Sirkkala) aiheesta ”Colocation: Can Two Bodies be in the Same Place at the Same Time?”

It seems to be trivially true that two bodies cannot occupy the same place at the same time and that they can’t simply pass through one another. But why is this so? Prof. Betegh will examine the philosophers’ take on this issue, working his way backwards from some contemporary views through Descartes and Locke to the provocative claim of the Stoics that two bodies can share the same location, continuing with Aristotle’s and Plato’s arguments, to end up with a discussion of some Pre-socratic views which apparently ignore this principle.

Professori emeritus Manfred Frank (Tübingenin yliopisto) vierailee Turun yliopistossa 24.–25.4. Frank on johtava varhaisromanttisen filosofian tuntija, jonka kiinnostuksen kohteisiin kuuluu myös tämänhetkinen analyyttinen mielen filosofia (philosophy of mind) ja sen yhteys klassiseen filosofiaan, erityisesti juuri romantiikan aikakauden filosofiaan.

Professori Frank luennoi torstaina 24.4. klo 16–18 (Janus, Sirkkala) aiheesta ”What Does That Mean: Early Romantic Philosophy?”

Perennial prejudice wants us to believe that early romantic philosophy developed in the footsteps of Fichtean foundationalism. We call ‘foundationalist’ a position which thinks knowledge grounded in an ultimate certitude. In Fichte’s case this was supposed to be an ‘absolutized Ego’. The prejudiced serpent continues to whisper: ‘Attention, Fichte’s philosophy marks the highest peak of subjectivity’s totalitarian seizure of power (Machtergreifung) over Being or différance. And early romantic philosophy is just an (immature) upshot of Fichtean subjectivistic dazzlement.’ It is demonstrated in this lecture that we have excellent reasons for trusting a recently developed research method called Constellation Research. Partially based on lately disclosed new source-text bases, it has entirely changed our view of Early Romanticism as a philosophical movement. We now see clearly that (and why) it was skeptical against foundationalist pretensions, respectful of subjectivity without promoting it to a ‘highest point of philosophy’, ironical with regard to ultimate knowledge claims, ontologically realistic, and more modern than most of us thought it is.

Vierailu jatkuu samana päivänä, to 24.4. klo 18–20 (seminaarihuone E223) seminaarilla, jossa keskustellaan Frankin kirjoituksesta ”Zeit und Selbst” (teksti löytyy moodle2:sta: Frank-seminaari). Seminaarin keskustelukieli on englanti.

Tekstiä käsitellään tätä ennen yhdessä prof. Liisa Steinbyn johdolla tiistaina 15.4. (klo 16–18, seminaarihuone E223). Myös tämä esiseminaari, jossa valmistellaan yhdessä professori Frankille tehtäviä kysymyksiä, on kaikille avoin.

Prof. Frank luennoi perjantaina 25.4. klo 14–16 (Publicum 4) aiheesta ”From Fichte’s ’Original Insight’ to a Moderate Defense of Self-Representationalism”

‘Self-representationalism’ is a relatively recently explored view on the nature of occurrent mental states which we are used to calling ‘conscious’. Some of its main representatives, Charles Siewert, Terence Horgan, Uriah Kriegel and Kenneth Williford have recently proved curious about classical phenomenology and even some achievements of the so called ‘Heidelberg School’. With some important differences of emphasis and interpretation, these authors think that (1) all consciousness is representational or intentional, and that representation or intentionality is, in general, the appropriate basic term for any philosophy of mind. Secondly, they maintain that (2) those and only those acts or experiences may pass for ‘conscious’ that, in addition to their intentional (or representational) object, co-represent themselves. This co- (or peripheral) representation of the conscious episode itself does not, on this view, come about by a different, higher-order act or by an inner duplication (‘reflection’), but is, rather, thought to be ‘built-into’ the primitive experience itself (hence the appellation ‘Same-Order Theory’). This form of self-awareness is supposed to be ‘ubiquitous’, occurring wherever mental states occur as conscious events.

Self-representationalism thereby embraces a basic conviction of Fichte as it was presented in Henrich’s ground-breaking paper ‘Fichte’s Original Insight’ (in 1966). Differently than Fichte, self-representationalists keep sticking to ‘representation’ as the basic core concept in understanding the problem of self-awareness – and thereby adopt the erroneous ‘reflection model of self-consciousness’. This is what the lecture turns against, defending a ‘pre-reflective’ model of self-awareness. Constructing his argument on the thought of Michael Tye, Tyler Burge and Jean-Paul Sartre, a model is proposed in which the non-objectuality and transparency of self-awareness appears compatible with a concept of representation of outer reality.

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