Dirk Michael Hennrich

Praxis-CFUL

Posthuman Landscapes: Pathways through the Anthropocene

28 November 2023, 16h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

The future habitability of landscapes in the context of the current dramatic climate changes worldwide depends on a fundamental paradigm shift in our ethical and political relationships. The Anthropocene, which must be understood not only as a geological phase of natural history but also as a civilizational phase of human history, is characterized by extreme anthropocentric action. Still not officially recognized as a new geological epoch, the term Anthropocene is to be understood above all as an operative term that encourages us to think about the human himself and his future on earth. It is a term that complements the term Gaia and is inextricably linked to Earth system science and the problem of climate change. My lecture assumes that thinking about posthuman landscapes, as a common ground for a future ethics and politics beyond the Anthropocene, must follow a double approach; on the one hand, the Philosophy of Landscape and, on the other, the Animal Philosophy.  The landscape, understood as the specific environment and biome in which humans are inserted alongside all other forms of life; and the non-human beings, the radical alterity and origin of human self-constitution and self-reflection.  Both philosophical disciplines question the relationship of humans to the non-human without closing themselves off to the question of technology.

5^th PLM MASTERCLASS

with Elisabeth Pacherie

Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon

Room B 112.D

November 23 and 24, 2023

Program

Thursday, Nov 23

14h00 -15h45:  Elisabeth Pacherie (Jean Nicod)

Varieties of goal-directedness in intentional action

16h00 -17h10:  Eline Kuipers (Bochum)

 Enhancing Pacherie’s theory of intentional bodily action through a sensorimotor space

Friday, Nov 24

10h00 -11h10:  Daphne Moss (Pompeu Fabra)

Agentive phenomenology and the disappearing agent

11h20 -12h30:  Cato Benschop (Utrecht)

Disorder of agency, or disordered because of agency?

The Life Project Account of Eating Disorders

14h00 -15h10:  Miguel Núñez de Prado (Utrecht) & Manuel Almagro-Holgado (Valencia)

Mindshaping Dispositionalism to Defend Doxasticism About Delusions

15h20 -16h30:  Caroline Stankozi (Bochum)

A predecessor to goal-directed intentions: need-directed bio-intentions

Jan Straßheim

University of Hildesheim

Misunderstanding as the Basis of Social Action: Alfred Schutz’s Pragmatic Phenomenology

21 November 2023, 16h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

According to social phenomenologist Alfred Schutz (1899-1959), individual perspectives and social structures shape one another through the medium of action. His view implies a central place of social action, i.e., action inherently oriented towards other people. Common sense, as well as influential social philosophers (e.g., Habermas, Searle), stress “understanding” as the basis of social action. However, Schutz’s analysis can help us see that misunderstanding plays an even more fundamental role that is often overlooked. What is ordinarily called “understanding” builds on several interrelated levels of misunderstanding. Most fundamentally, the tension between the selectivity of action and the fullness of “lived experience” (Bergson) is a fruitful “self-misunderstanding.” Selectivity enables individuals to mutually coordinate their actions by ignoring most of what they are or could be. Socially shared “types” channel such coordination by abstracting away from contextual and individual differences. However, unlike “rules,” types are flexible and allow us to tap back into the fullness of lived experience to recover these differences. Action is an essentially open process which, in social action, involves a plurality of perspectives. This openness and plurality make social action a critical medium in which fundamental misunderstandings constantly motivate, test, and fine-tune understanding.

Impostor Concepts and Hermeneutical Injustice

Laura Delgado (LanCog, Centre of Philosophy, University of Lisbon)

17 November 2023, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Hermeneutical injustice, as introduced by Miranda Fricker (2007), occurs when subjects are unable to make some significant experiences intelligible to themselves and to others owing to their being hermeneutically marginalized. Hermeneutical injustice has been widely characterized by Fricker and others as arising because there is a ‘lacuna’ or a ‘gap’ in the collective hermeneutical resources such that the terms or concepts needed to make some experience intelligible and communicable are lacking. This situation constitutes an injustice because this gap or lacuna is due to the fact that these subjects are unfairly denied sufficient participation in the creation or development of concepts or other tools of social interpretation and this exclusion or limitation is caused by some identity prejudice. In this paper we highlight a species of hermeneutical injustice that arises both because there is a conceptual lacuna with regard to certain experiences in the collective interpretative resources and, importantly, also because there is a powerful authoritative concept in place that does render the experience intelligible, albeit incorrectly. We call this an ‘impostor concept’ because it takes a place where a better, more adequate concept should be, and because it deceivingly provides intelligibility to the target experiences; whereas in reality it conceals them, effectively obstructing the possibility of arriving to better interpretations. We analyse the workings of impostor concepts and argue that their use constitute cases of hermeneutical injustice. We compare this with other similar cases discussed in the literature, aiming to widening our understanding of hermeneutical injustice. (Joint work with Claudia Picazo.)

Andrea Oldofredi’s (LanCog) paper “Orthodox or dissident? The evolution of Bohm’s ontological reflections in the 1950s” was selected to be highlighted on the website of the European Physical Journal.

You can find the piece here.

The Instance Theory of Location

Fabrice Correia (University of Geneva)

10 November 2023, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: The concept of location—of something being located at, or occupying, a place or a region—has been an important topic of philosophical investigations in the past fifteen years or so. Despite all the attention that has been paid to the concept, we still do not have a satisfactory general theory of location. By “general theory”, I mean a theory that both (i) does justice to the fact that location goes way beyond location at a spatial or temporal or spatiotemporal region and (ii) does not rule out phenomena whose possibility is a matter of substantial philosophical dispute. My aim is to put forward a general theory of location that fares better than those that have been developed so far. The key ideas of the theory are as follows: (i) there are two kinds of occupants, direct occupants and indirect occupants; (ii) every indirect occupant has at least one instance, which is a direct occupant; and (iii) indirect occupants occupy regions by having instances occupying these regions.

Irene Viparelli

University of Évora

“Diferença Marxiana” e Singularidade de L. Althusser

14 November 2023, 16h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

A publicação póstuma dos manuscritos de L. Althusser tem acarretado uma Renaissance dos estudos dedicados ao filosofo francês. Neste contexto, a presente intervenção visa em primeiro lugar apresentar os principais enfoques da mais recente bibliografia sobre Althusser. De acordo com Montag (Althusser and His Contemporaries. Philosophy’s Perpetual War, Duke University Press, 2013) há duas abordagens produtivas ao pensamento de Althusser: por um lado, a publicação dos escritos sobre o “materialismo aleatório” tem permitido leituras que tendem a inserir a reflexão althusseriana no contexto filosófico da época, destacando a proximidade com o horizonte pós-estruturalista. Seria, assim, a pertença à especifica “conjuntura teórica francesa” que garantiria o persistente interesse teórico do pensamento de Althusser. Por outro lado, a publicação dos textos políticos sobre a “crise do marxismo” tem originado interpretações que fazem da reflexão de Althusser uma “intervenção na conjuntura política”; uma resposta teórica aos problemas colocados pelo estalinismo e pela “crise do marxismo”. Nesse quadro, o interesse da teoria de Althusser seria, no fundo, enraizado na sua indissolúvel inatualidade. A presente intervenção procura apresentar uma diferente hipótese de leitura que, mantendo organicamente ligadas as dimensões teórico-filosófica e política, visa realçar a especificidade da posição de Althusser relativamente ao horizonte pós-estruturalista, i. e., uma “diferença marxiana” que representa a singularidade do seu pensamento.

Darian Meacham

Maastricht University

Why potatoes aren’t institutions? Or why institutions might help the phenomenology of technology

31 October 2023, 16h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

In this talk I have a fairly straightforward aim. I ask whether the phenomenological concept of “Institution” (Stiftung), which sometimes goes under the translation (into both French and English) foundation or establishment, can help to better articulate how phenomenology or phenomenological method can contribute to the philosophical examination of technology. I think that the answer is yes. Nonetheless, it is not clear from the outset that the concept of institution as developed in the phenomenological tradition and then further in certain branches of political theory can be rendered easily as a method or tool in the philosopher of technology’s quiver. The application of phenomenological method in the philosophy of technology under the umbrella of post-phenomenology has also come under recent criticism for being insufficiently attentive to questions of broader historical and political context (Cressman 2020), a classic critique of phenomenology, and as being insufficiently phenomenological (Ritter 2021). The aim here is not to intervene in these debates about the merits and shortcomings of post-phenomenological method in the philosophy of technology or whether post-phenomenology is sufficiently phenomenological but rather to understand how the concept of institution transformed phenomenological analysis and how this might be of some use in approaching the question of technology from a phenomenological perspective. Looking at institution in this way may also shed some light on the concept itself and help us to understand it’s limitations.

Conceptual Engineering in Inferentialist Terms

Metodiy Apostolov (LanCog, Centre of Philosophy, University of Lisbon)

27 October 2023, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: In a recent paper Jorem and Löhr (2022) criticize Herman Cappelen’s Austerity Framework (2018) for not providing a good rationale for doing conceptual engineering. They go on to suggest that Inferentialist semantics as developed by Sellars (1954) and Brandom (1994) provides a good rationale for the practice, therefore conceptual engineering is in the business of improving our inferential devices. I will examine the criticism and its extent over strict representationalist theories of conceptual engineering. I will argue that even if the inferentialist take on conceptual content provides a good rationale for engaging in the practice, this does not constitute a sufficient reason to pick it over other alternatives, e.g. functionalist accounts. Finally, I will discuss some advantages of the broad inferentialist approach to conceptual engineering and use it to propose an alternative reading of a particular case of metalinguistic disputes, i.e., metalinguistic negotiation.

Tiago Carvalho

U Porto

Já Está Arranjado? Do Estatuto e Sentido da Reparação de Artefactos

24 October 2023, 16h00 (Lisbon Summer Time — GMT+1)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

O título da minha comunicação baseia-se em larga medida no capítulo escrito para um livro ainda no prelo sobre manutenção e reparação de artefactos e infra-estruturas. A ideia ao longo da apresentação será explorarmos como a reparação de um artefacto levanta várias questões metafísicas e epistémicas. Será que reparar implica restaurar a função própria de um certo artefacto? E o que implica saber reparar um artefacto? Há alguma relação entre o saber científico e tecnológico necessário à construção de um artefacto e o saber necessário à respectiva reparação? Pode haver uma ciência da reparação? Para tentar responder a estas questões utilizarei conceitos da pós-fenomenologia e de teorias metafísicas da função de artefactos de forma a avançar com uma teoria geral da reparação que coloca a ênfase no sentido que um certo artefacto cumpre no mundo da vida dos seus utilizadores. Pretendo também estabelecer como a natureza do saber necessário à reparação é um saber prático, tácito e altamente contextualizado, mas precisamente por isso, um saber frágil e precário. A reparação é uma acção hermenêutica que abre a caixa negra do artefacto e põe em jogo a sua ambiguidade, i.e., e a forma como as intenções e as formas de vida dos utilizadores interagem com as intenções dos fautores dos artefactos. Essa ambiguidade é por sua vez posta em evidência através da forma como a transferência de artefactos entre diferentes culturas gera diferentes interpretações sobre a sua função.