Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Attempted Definition

As I was reading Horkheimer's "Traditional and Critical Theory", and being fairly new to this whole concept of philosophy, I came across a term that I've never heard before. Here it is: Phenonmenologically. Since this word has "logic" in it, I'm assuming it has something to do with a method of philosophy and logic concerning a phenomenon? I don't know. I'll find out what this term means on Friday.
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4 comments:

  1. cmccallSeptember 9, 2009 at 10:31 AM

    good word...so what is a phenomenon? How do we use this term?

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  2. HALPINSeptember 11, 2009 at 10:42 AM

    Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions.

    Phenomenology as a discipline is distinct from but related to other key disciplines in philosophy, such as ontology, epistemology, logic, and ethics. Phenomenology has been practiced in various guises for centuries, but it came into its own in the early 20th century in the works of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and others. Phenomenological issues of intentionality, consciousness, qualia, and first-person perspective have been prominent in recent philosophy of mind.

    The discipline of phenomenology may be defined initially as the study of structures of experience, or consciousness. Literally, phenomenology is the study of “phenomena”: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view. This field of philosophy is then to be distinguished from, and related to, the other main fields of philosophy: ontology (the study of being or what is), epistemology (the study of knowledge), logic (the study of valid reasoning), ethics (the study of right and wrong action), etc.

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  3. cmccallSeptember 11, 2009 at 10:49 AM

    Just as you would for a paper, make sure that you cite your source. I'm assuming this came from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, right? If you're quoting (or cutting-and-pasting), make sure that you make that clear.

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  4. HALPINSeptember 17, 2009 at 8:15 PM

    The above definition was found on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/

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