HPhil Seminar: February 20, 2025

The HPhil (History of Philosophy) Research Group of the Centre of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon announces the 2024/25 edition of its permanent seminar on the history of philosophy, devoted to the presentation of conferences by renowned specialists while also creating opportunities to emerging scholars, aiming to promote advanced studies in groundbreaking debates and the permanent training of its academic community.

In this session of the seminar, Yuri Ferrete (CFUL) will present a paper, entitled “Consciousness as Verhalten and the Phenomenological Horizon of Aufmerksamkeit” (abstract below)

The session will take place on February 20, 2025 at 5 p.m., in the Room C201.J (Room Mattos Romão, Department of Philosophy). Admission is free.

Abstract

 

The present investigation aims to define the internal structures of the behavior (Verhalten) of mental life through attentional modifications.

According to the technical phenomenological understanding, the intention to foster a purpose and act accordingly already constitutes a highly complex structure of acts, involving perceptual, prospective, volitional, and bodily processes. At a more basic level, individual acts can be analytically isolated, as in the case of the act of seeing something. To assert that every act of seeing has an intentional structure means, first of all, that it is perspectival and referentially directed. Other correlative structures arise in the intentional experiences of remembering, expecting, or imagining, as well as in the perception of others.

However, none of these structures, in isolation, can be considered as the dimension that leads consciousness (Bewusstsein) as a behavior (Verhalten). This is because the very possibility of knowledge, as a pure structure of the conditions of knowing, does not manifest in the noetic pole as the phase of the behavior of mental life. For this to occur, a subsequent field, hierarchically situated, is necessary, in which passively affected mental life transforms into active mental life — into Verhalten.

It becomes necessary, therefore, to overcome the statics of appreciation that contemplates (schauendes Hinnehmen), a hegemonic conception in interpretations of phenomenology from its beginnings to the present day, to achieve an understanding of intentional consciousness (Bewusstsein als Intentionalität) as a behavior (Verhalten) of mental life. In this context, analyses of attentionality emerge as a privileged path of investigation, since all active mental life begins with an attentional modification.

To this end, the adopted approach is as follows: (i) re-evaluate the hegemonic concept of behavior, as well as its own structures, such as reflex and stimulus (Reiz); (ii) reorganize intentional consciousness as an intentional consciousness that behaves; (iii) analyze attentional modifications and demonstrate them as privileged methodological paths for the analysis of consciousness.