Philosophy 290-4

Despite work in neuroscience, cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, and other allied fields, the use of the methods of modern science to study human nature faces fundamental obstacles. Can there be a natural science of us? What are the broader implications of this question, for science, for philosophy, and for our broader culture? These questions give of us the topic of this seminar.

In the first part of the seminar we will undertake a close reading of Husserl’s The Crisis of European Sciences (translated by David Carr, Northwestern, 1970). In the second part of the seminar, we will turn to a selection of writings from Hans Jonas, PF Strawson, Daniel Dennett, Robert Boyd, as well as some new work by Alva Noë.

A complete list of texts will be provided at the first meeting, but for background, interested participants might wish to read Phenomenology: The Basics, by Dan Zahavi, and Robert Crease’s The Workshop and the World (Norton, 2019).