HUSSERL

SPRING 2003

PHI 591

Barry Smith

141 Park

Wednesdays 6.30pm


Jan. 29 Husserl and the Phenomenological Movement

Feb. 1 Special Saturday Workshop on Intentionality and Its Biological Foundations (in 280 Park Hall)

Schedule:

9.30am Barry Smith: Insects, Robots
10.45am Coffee
11am Ingvar Johansson: Three Modes of Intentionality
12.15pm Pizza Lunch
1.15pm David Hershenov: The Subject of Thought
2.30pm Coffee
2.45pm Randall Dipert:
Causal, Genetic, and Biological Forms of Explanation of the Mental


Feb. 5 Philosophy of Mathematics

Feb. 12 Ontology: Husserl's 3rd Logical Investigation

Feb. 19 Logic and Meaning: Bolzano, Frege, Husserl (with Sandra LaPointe, Universite du Quebec a Montreal)  

Feb. 26 Applied Phenomenology: Reinach and the Munich School

Mar. 5 The Phenomenological Method from Scheler to Heidegger

(Mar. 12 Spring Break)

Mar. 19 Idealism, Ingarden and the Relational Theory of the Act

Mar. 26 Common Sense

Apr. 2 Politics and History

(Apr. 9 No class)

Apr. 16 Husserlian Ecology


Course Description: The course will address the philosophical ideas propounded in Husserl's major writings, including Philosophy of Arithmetic, Logical Investigations , Ideas (books I, II and III), Formal and Transcendental Logic, Experience and Judgment and The Crisis of European Sciences. Topics will include: Husserl’s theory of linguistic meaning and its application to the theory of speech acts; common sense and the constitution of reality; the phenomenological method and its problems. The course will involve a day-long workshop on Feb. 1 devoted to the topic of “Intentionality and Its Biological Foundations”.


The text for the class is Smith and Smith (eds.), Cambridge Companion to Husserl. Other recommended reading includes: Willard, Logic and the Objectivity of Knowledge, and Sokolowski, The Formation of Husserl's Concept of Constitution. See also the following papers by BS:

A Relational Theory of the Act

Acta cum fundamentis in re

A Husserlian Theory of Indexicality

The Cognition of States of Affairs

Truth and the Visual Field

History of Speech Act Theory

Husserlian Ecology

Husserl, Language and the Ontology of the Act

Against Idealism


Supplementary primary literature is included in Elliston and McCormick (ed.), Husserl: Shorter Works and in Willard (ed.), Early Writings in Logic and the Philosophy of Mathematics.


Assessment: The grade for the course will be compounded out of two components: participation in class and listserv discussions throughout the semester (25%), one substantial essay (75%) ( deadline for submission: April 16).