It seems to me that one of the big chasms of misunderstanding between people sympathetic to Continental thought and those hostile to it is over phenomology vs. theory. This is going to be the brief overview. The simplest answer to what phenomenology is comes from Descartes. Husserl said that if you stopped reading Descartes with the second meditation you pretty well have phenomenology. That is, we focus on how experience is given to our consciousness. For more scientific types, it's probably useful to point out that Husserl was influenced by physicist Ernest Mach. Mach, in addition to wanting to relativize mechanics (following Leibniz and then later continued by Einstein with GR) wanted to conceive of electrons in terms of the sum of all our possible experiences of it. Husserl went further down this line, attempting to find a science of the kinds experiences we have. Husserl was very critical of psychologizing methods in philosophy at the time, and thought, much like Descartes, that by "bracketing" the kinds of other experiences or aspects of experiences we could have an experience of the object in question. He was very concerned with the experience of mathematics and other such things. It became, in a way, the very height of arm-chair philosophy. That is, he sat back in his chair and conducted these experiments in his mind to get to the basic phenomena itself.
The important thing to conceive of though is that the focus was on an experience, and having the experience. While Husserl tried to describe these experiences, one always had to keep in mind the difference between the experience and theory. A theory isn't the experience but at best corresponds to it.
Now there were many problems with Husserl's approach. One big one comes with his notion of "bracketing" experience. This is somewhat similar to the notion of doubt in Descartes. It is basically withholding all our assumptions about the external world and trying to get to the fundamental experience itself. (This process was called the reduction and was probably key for Husserl) However can we do this? Most people would instinctively say we can't. Our experiences are always contaminated by our pre-suppositions and past experience.
Without getting into a long discussion, one can see that Heidegger and many who followed him reject the basic assumptions of Husserl (and Descartes) and focus in on the hermeneutic character of our experiences. That is, we are always already in the process of experiencing and understanding. There is no privileged starting place. Our past understanding structures our experiences and we can't say we have experiences of things is a pure or complete sense.
This isn't as new a position as some think. Long before Heidegger, C. S. Peirce was criticizing Descartes as offering a false doubt that we never could actually conduct. I suspect were he to have read Husserl he'd reject Husserl's bracketing as naive and never possible. Likewise I think Peirce would have criticized Husserl's foundationalism as ignoring our fallibilism and secondarily that all our knowledge - including intuitions - are mediated by signs. Indeed I think many of Peirce's criticisms of Descartes apply to Husserl and often parallel Continental thinkers' criticisms of both.
Getting back to Husserl though, what those who came after him in Continental thought did agree with is that our focus ought be on our experiences and what makes them possible. Contrast this with the theorizing that one finds in say a closely related movement of empiricism.
If Husserl tried to ground philosophy as a science of our experience of things, the empiricists tried to ground it in sense data. They are quite similar in a way. The empiricsts took the nebulous sense data that we then built theories out of. Husserl didn't do that. We don't have a bunch of moments of sense-data that we then theorize reflect a tree, for instance. There is nothing like the "pixels" of an image out of which we theorize the thing imaged. Rather we have an experience of a tree itself. Even after Heidegger and others seriously critiqued Husserl, I think that basic approach remained. And it is the fundamental misunderstanding of their writings. If you read, say Being and Time without understanding that Heidegger is doing phenomenology or something like it, you'll miss the point. He isn't presenting theories. You have to read it with a focus on the experiences discussed. Indeed many of the arguments such as those of dread, don't work unless you are thinking through your experiences directly.
Contrast this with what goes on frequently in Analytic philosophy. There appeals to intuition aren't for some fundamental experience of some object. Rather they are to gauge our mental models of terms or concepts. It is closer to the empiricist approach. We build models which we use to judge the world. Phenomenology reverses this, especially under Heidegger. The experiences are more important or at least as important.
Now the big error is, I think, to assume that Continental thought devalues theory. I don't think it does. Heidegger was very favorable towards science, for instance. He just critiques it as being all there is. Further we understand what things are (conditioning our experience) because of the practices, aims, and other such things we are engaged in. We don't have a nice generalization from sense data or the like. We can't narrow things that much.
Anyway, that's the brief outline. And, as ever, brief outlines can be misleading. So don't take it too far.
One of the catch phrases of Husserlian phenomenology is that "consciousness is always consciousness of something", or even better, "some thing" and the Heidegger of the 1920s takes that as a given. One of the issues I'm grappling with now is that the later Heidegger says that Ereignis or Beyng preceeds any thing, or being, and even preceeds the being of beings. That implies to me that it is impossible to make any propositions about Ereignis or Beyng. If phenomenology explains how one can speak intelligibly beyond the limits of languages circumscribed by the limits of representation, calculation, logic or science, does phenomenology also mark the outer boundaries of what one can reasonably say?
Clark
I have been reading continental philosophy of late. Husserl is definitely an important philosopher in the phenomenological tradition, and I will be getting to him at some point. I have one question: What is the best entry point into Husserl's philosophy? By that I mean something written by Husserl, not an overview of his thought. I have looked, as I have read a couple of overviews of continental philosophy, but I haven't found the obvious entry point.
Also, could you please explain in what context Continental philosophy devalues theory? I see both traditions as having their theorists and their anti-theorists. However when a continental philosopher does theory and an analytical philosopher does theory I suspect that they share the word "theory" and not much else.
I think that I definitely agree phenomenology limits or perhaps de-limits the boundaries not only of speech but of thought and (being as general as possible) any semiotics in general. That's one reason why, as much as I love reading Heidegger, that I find myself so frequently turning to Derrida. I think he puts that it a profile that's a little more stark than what I find in Heidegger. (Not that I've read the entire Heidegger corpus in the least - I am after all primarily an amateur philosopher)
David, I'm not sure starting with reading Husserl is the best bet. That might be controversial, but I think he's like Kant or even Heidegger a really difficult philosopher. That's not to say don't read him. Just that I think some introductory materials might be more approachable at first than diving in the deep end. I really, really like Dermot Moran's Introduction to Phenomenology. He spends probably the first 1/3 on Husserl, then to Heidegger, and then covers the major post-Heideggarian phenomenologists (Sartre, Levinas, Gadamer, Derrida, etc.) It's been a while since I read it last, but as I recall it does a great job contextualizing Heidegger and company in a way most books don't. He has a few other books on Husserl, including some readers. I'd probably suggest the Cambrdige Companion to Husserl as well. The Cambridge series is kind of hit or miss, in my opinion. (I didn't think much of the Heidegger volume, for instance) But the Husserl one is great. There's a section comparing Husserl and Bertrand Russell that's well worth reading. I discussed it in passing last year and even lifted a diagram that I'd found helpful when first studying Husserl. After that, I'd probably just get a reader. (IMO)
If you are moving on past Husserl to Derrida or Heidegger there are lots of books that discuss their relation to Husserl. My two favorites are Lawlor's Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problem of Phenomenology. It's an excellent book, and shows some surprising similarities between the early Derrida and Eugene Fink, one of the students Husserl trusted as a expounder of phenomenology. (He felt Heidegger had got it all wrong) There's a negative review on Amazon for it, but it's more of the sort "I wish he'd focused on this and not what he did." The book really is great. The other one I'm still reading, but reportedly is one of the best. It's Paola Marrati's Genesis and Trace: Derrida Reading Husserl and Heidegger.
Oh, I forgot your comment on theory.
I don't think Continental thinkers necessarily devalue theory. Of course they do attack the correspondence theory in certain ways. I commented on that last month. I don't actually think Continentals and Analytics think of theory that differently. I think they just disagree over the place of theory. To a Continental, theory always excludes a lot. It is incomplete. Often theory excludes the role and place of the experience that makes the theory possible. To take possible a misleading analogy, consider how there is the role of the observer in many interpretations of both QM and GR. Beyond lip service, doesn't theory address it? Does that affect the description given?
The most obvious place the disagreement comes up is over the debate in AI. Herbert Dreyfus, for example, has written several famous papers and books on the subject. The issue is basically whether the human mind is like a theory. That is, do minds work by building complete theories that then interact with their environment? Put an other way, are people like computers with nice boundaries and clear inputs and outputs. That's the model of theory. The Continental view (put into the words of more Analytic philosophy) might be terms externalism. What makes a mind depends not just what is "in the theory" (or in the brain if you like). Rather it depends upon the things outside. You can't talk about minds delimited spatially to one part of the body. My experience of the computer I'm looking at is an essential part of my mind and yet essentially involves the computer.
You can see how that approach goes back to Husserl and his cry of "to the things themselves." Husserl tried to deal with that with the idea of intents towards objects and then fulfilling acts. (i.e. I intend to interact with this computer and I have acts that fulfill those intentions) With the radicalization of Husserl by Heidegger, Derrida and most other Continental thinkers, we end up with something we might call more transcendent. There isn't a point, like Husserl thought, where our mental intents and the objects meet completely. Rather there is this odd transcendence in immanence where objects that are more than our experience are given to us. That's why Heidegger talks of truth as letting things unveil themselves. It's still similar to Husserl, yet with a somewhat different twist since instead of the object we get the unveiling of the object but never the object unveiled.
I don't know if that helps or not. But I don't think any Continental thinker would devalue theory outright. They'd say it is incomplete and perhaps includes errors as well, just as there is a difference between some equations about electricity and the experience of electricity itself. A distinction anyone who has been shocked recognizes immediately.
Where Continentals get upset is when theory is thought to be complete. Thus certain concepts like Justice, Giving, Forgiveness, and so forth as conceived of in Continental thought are very different than in Analytic thought. What Analytics do with say ethics, Continentals will critique as a kind of technology. It's akin to thinking a limited mathematical model is the phenomena in question. So when doing trigonometry by treating a mountain as a triangle, we know my model (the theory) is incomplete. We'd not use that model to deal with say the issue of rockfall because we recognize the limits of theory. To Continentals, Analytic philosophy often forgets that, and seems to just say, "well we just need a better theory." They don't realize that there is a fundamental issue with Theories in general.
But the Continental philosophy wouldn't argue that theory is useless or doesn't have its place. We just have to constantly look for and be aware of limits. The Theory is always made available in a network of behaviors, practices and goals that make it possible. (The Pragmatists said that as well - Dewey in particular argued this around the same time as Husserl was doing his philosophy)
I understand that Husserl is probably tough reading. My plan in reading continental philosophy doesn't have me getting to Husserl until several months from now. I finished An Introduction to Continental Philosophy a week ago and have started reading Critique of Pure Reason as that seems to be the logical entry point into continental philosophy, at least according to David West.
In that book West only directly references two of Husserl's books Philosophy of Arithmetic and The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. The former seems to have been torn apart by Frege (and Husserl agreed with what Frege said) while the latter is the last work that Husserl wrote and seems to concede that the project of phenomenology is difficult and incomplete. Both seem to be inadequate entry points into Husserlian phenomenology. I wanted a book to put on my amazon wish list so that when father's day or my birthday rolls around next time I'll have something on the list as I am notoriously hard to buy presents for. I'll add the Introduction to Phenomenology that you suggested.
As regarding theory, I see what you're saying. I don't think it's that far from what I was saying, but I could be wrong. Analytical philosophers tend to think of theory as either scientific (evolution, quantum mechanics) or the result of some conceptual analysis. Continentals view theory as something one does, as in critical theory or marxist theory. It is usually described as historical, critical, or dialectical. Again I could be wrong.
I'd really suggest the Moran book, if you're interested in getting into Continental thought. While there are obviously things he doesn't discuss, it's a great introduction. I also think that it's hard to understand Continental thought without having at least a bit of an understanding in Husserl.
Regarding your latter point, I don't think that's a fair distinction. Certainly one can discuss theory as historically independent or historically situated. The latter is typically found in Continental discussions although I personally think robust real universals also play a big role in some Continental thinkers. But how it does tends to be a tad more complex. But even in the Analytic tradition there are a lot of people who think we can't overlook the historical situatedness of theories. You find that a lot in philosophy of science, for instance. Thus say Thomas Kuhn would not argue that we can separate out a theory.
Now outside of all that, since most Marxists tend to still largely be influenced from a European intellectual culture, one expects Continental thought to engage Marxism more. However it is very important to note that the biggest challenges to Marxism in the 70's through 80's intellectually came from Continental thought. There were some pretty scathing criticisms that in a way really affected Marixist thought. Marxist thought proper has much more in common with Analytic thinking than Continental (IMO). It's highly flawed of course, from an Analytic perspective, but much more in keeping with the basic Enlightenment project. Now there is a kind of new Marxism that attempted to engage and react to the devastating intellectual critiques of the past 30 years. And so that's a kind of new approach.
I wouldn't say that discussions of Marx or Freud necessarily mean that Continental thought accepts them though. Rather I think it is Continental thinkers trying to engage with the cultural foundations of European thought - and frankly one just can't do that without engaging Freud and Marx. In the US, because of our very different history (outside of perhaps academia) the approach is simply quite different as is the emphasis.
I concede your points, however the concession is one from a position of ignorance. Perhaps after knowing more the concession will be one of actual agreement.
I plan on getting the Moran book. I would prefer to read Kant and Hegel before moving on to Husserl, though I agree that he is an extremely important philosopher for understanding continental thought. Also there I happened upon a recommendation list for reading Husserl. The Moran book, Cartestion Meditations, and The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology ranked on the list so it looks like these three books might be good introductions into Husserl.
Also, two other names consistently come up in relation to Husserl: Brentano and Bolzano. They also influence Frege and hence a lot of analytical philosophy. Would you recommend them in relation to Husserl or is it better to simply jump in and read Husserl?
As I said, I'm not sure reading the philosophers themselves is the best idea. (That's not true of all philosophers of course - with Derrida in particularly I always advise reading him rather than about him) However the Moran book on phenomenology does a pretty good discussing of Brentano and Bolzano with respect to Husserl. I'll confess I've not read any of their writings directly.
Hegel is important, although his kind of phenomenology and influence actually comes into Continental thought as phenomenology later. But certainly with figures like Derrida the three H's are probably key: Husserl, Heidegger, and Hegel. With Heidegger it is more Husserl, Aristotle and Kant. (IMO)
Just to add, while it's my own approach to learning, I tend to think that the best approach to a kind of field is to read a few overviews, take notes on the jargon and main structures, and then pick a topic in that field to question.
I read a lot of Continental philosophers before I think I really started grasping certain important figures. And that's primarily because of how that questioning led me through topics. For instance I'll fully admit that I only really figured out Heidegger years after I think I'd figured out Derrida. The fact that all the figures are doing phenomenology really makes it easy to misread them. (IMO) Herbert Dreyfus who had a series of debates with John Searle confesses to realizing, after several years of debate, that they were completely misunderstanding each other precisely because Dreyfus was thinking in terms of phenomenology while Searle was thinking in terms of theory.
I don't think everything "clicks in" which leads people to be able to write about Heidegger, master the terminology, yet still miss the point. That's partially why I wrote the above post. If one doesn't realize the distinction between at least the aims and approach of phenomenology over theory, one will mis-read the phenomenologists.
I think it's important to read both the original works and the commentaries on the original works. The commentaries provide both a guide to understanding and a check against off the wall interpretations. However, the original works as always need to be the primary sources for one's understanding of a philosopher.
As I stated previously I am currently reading Critique of Pure Reason and am most of the way through the transcendental analytic. Now, I thought that I understood him before, but I only had read about him. However, reading the Critique is a much different experience than reading the commentaries. They just can't do justice to Kant. Grappling with Kant's vocabulary and terminology helps one to really understand Kant. Also, I don't really think a commentary can do justice to Kant's transcendental arguments (by that I mean the methods he uses to describe and derive the transcendental aesthetic, the categories, synthetic unity of apperception, the transcendental logic etc.). With Kant, the way he gets from point A to point B is at least as important as his final conclusions.
Now I am not arguing that Husserl is the same. That would be ignorant of me, having never read Husserl. My plan of attack would be to read the Moran book, followed by one or more of Husserl's work.
Just a note David, the blog Continental Philosophy has some suggestions on starting with Husserl.
Thanks for the link to the Continental Philosophy blog. It seems like Cartesian Meditations, Crisis of the European Sciences, and the Ideas are the best Husserl texts to read when starting to read Husserl.
On a related note, which of Husserl's texts have you enjoyed the most and/or found to be the most illuminating?
I'll confess right up front that I've had tremendous problems reading both Kant and Husserl. I've read big chunks of Crisis, Cartesian Meditations and Ideas I & II. But I've not read them through all the way. (Nor have I read Kant all the way through either - so I'm at least consistent) I've not read any Kierkegaard all the way through either. I can say I've read the early Wittgenstein all the way through though.
So I'm probably defending a guilty conscience when I say you don't have to read Husserl all the way through. (grin) I think one of the many Husserl readers are sufficient.
Clark, thanks for your primer on Husserl -- I really need to start reading him one of these days...
I think though, especially if the idea is to clear up misunderstandings about continental thought that it is important to stress that continental thought is not limited to phenomenology and its methods of analysis, and I would especially point to the huge theoretical influence precisely freud and marx had on many who might be termed continental philosophers. In terms of Marx, I think its safe to say that continental philosophers tend to be leftist (if not radically so), and so are at least sympathetic to the marxist project. Though one can indeed stress that continental philosophers are wary of dogmatic applications of theory, drawing attention to the way theory leaves things (and often people) out of its sights, Marxist theory played a huge role in the philosophies of numerous philosophers including the Frankfurt School in Germany (Horkheimer, Adorno, etc.), and in France Kojeve, Bataille, Sartre, Althusser, etc. Today, one should probably mention someone like Zizek, too. Very few of these you could actually call phenomenologists.
Furthermore, Freud and psychoanalytic theory is hugely important for continental debates, oftentimes coming through Lacan (not to mention the Frankfurt School once again).
Long story short, many continental philosophers actively use and theorize with tools borrowed from marxism and psychoanalysis.
Phenomenology, however, remains the best starting point for coming to Continental Thought.
That's an excellent point. After all Cassier and that batch of neo-Kantians are Continentals. Then there is Foucalt, who appears more Nietzschean than a phenomenologist to me. (I'll confess I'm not up on the naunces of his thought - I read a reader and then History of Sexuality v. 1 and nothing else) Finally you have Habermas and that whole school of critical theory. Further, depending upon how one uses the term, Descartes, Leibniz, Hegel, Kant, Schopenhauer, Schiller and others are all Continentals. (As opposed to say the British Empiricists and the Cambridge Platonists)
With regards to using tools borrowed from Marxism and psycho-analysis, I certainly agree. But it seems to me that how they are used are rather transfigured in significant ways. The new Marxism after the intellectual turmoil of the 70's and 80's seems a different beast than what you'd meet in the 20's and 30's.
An excellent introduction to Husserl's thought is the 1927 encyclopedia Britannica article he wrote with Heidegger. It was published in a terrible, abridged, translation- but the original is very clear and concise.
This article can be found complete in the collection "Husserl: Essential Writings," edited by Donn Welton. This collection also includes major portions from all of Husserl's main works (btw/ most of Husserl's published works were subtitled "Introduction to Phenomenology," this was probably the reason he called himself a "philosopher of beginnings".)
I've never read that encyclopedia article Blaise, but from what I understand, that article had quite a few tensions between Heidegger's thought and Husserl's thought.
That's exactly right Clark, apparently Husserl kept giving the article to Heidegger to work on and was always unsatisfied with Heidegger's ammendments. The whole story is told in Thomas Sheehan's and Richard Palmer's introduction to Husserl's "Collected Works VI" (English edition).
Steve Crowell has also written some excellent articles on Husserl and Heidegger's different versions of phenomenology. I think he clearly shows in his writings just how deeply the two thinkers misunderstood each other.
One thing I found particularly interesting was Merleau-Ponty in all this. He apparently didn't take Heidegger as really being that out of odds with Husserl. Indeed he read Being and Time as being a reasonable expansion on Husserl. His own Phenomenology of Perception which is typically taken to be very Heideggarian was really done independent of an appreciation of Heidegger or the differences with Husserl. Likewise Derrida, according to Lawlor, was highly influenced by Eugene Fink and Fink's take on Husserl. Once again there are pretty remarkable parallels yet Fink was considered by Husserl to have the "authorized" version of Husserl's own phenomenology.
It seems like there is a real interesting "mess" in terms of the real differences between Husserlian phenomenology and Heideggarian phenomenology. And of course, Husserlian philosophers don't agree on how to take Husserl with the traditional divide between the more idealists and those who are more realists.
And in the French tradition there is the debate about whether modern French phenomenology in the Heideggarian/Levinasian tradition is even phenomenology anymore. (By both supporters and detractors of the philosophers like Derrida who critique Husserl)
Clark: my take on the vicissitudes of the “phenomenological movement” is this: Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger are far closer to each other than either are (philosophically) to Husserl. Derrida is a descendent of Heidegger philosophically: he basically develops Heideggarian themes (specifically Heidegger’s attack of traditional metaphysics as ‘onto-theology’). I hope it is not unfair to say that Derrida bases his entire career on a brilliant (but completely unfair) attack on Husserl.
That Merleau-Ponty misunderstood large aspects of Husserl’s thought and approach is apparent, cf., his famous misinterpretation of certain passages from the Crisis- where Husserl writes of the dream of philosophy as strict science being “dreamed out” and MP thinks this is descriptive not of the philosophical scene of the time but of Husserl’s own position. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Husserl was, in many ways, a man of the nineteenth rather than twentieth century. The optimistic faith in science and the possibility of founding philosophy as a strict rigorous science never left him. Granted, in his later years, he seems to have acklowdged that the problem of foundationalism was more complex than he earlier suspected. Nonetheless, by the late twenties there was a sharp divide between Husserl and the younger generation in Germany.
Subsequently, Husserl’s research assistants Fink and Landgrebe are excellent guides to many aspects of Husserl’s thought but should not be taken as completely representing Husserlian phenomenology. Fink’s famous article in Kant Studien for example was probably looked over by Husserl but it is dubious how much time he devoted to actually reading and listening to Fink. And of course, it should not be forgotten, Fink was a student of Heidegger as well as Husserl.
I would maintain the one of the best ways to understand Husserlian phenomenology is to look at Husserl’s critiques of “the younger generation.” Husserl’s marginal comments to Heidegger’s Being and Time and Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics are both illuminating.
I think, though, that Derrida is only secondarily a descendent of Husserl. Like Merleau-Ponty, it appears to me that he arrives at his views largely independent of Heidegger. Once he is there then there is the engagement with Heidegger and later Levinas (who I also think is unintentionally Heideggarian).
I confess I don't know as much about Husserl's criticisms of Heidegger. I'd be interested in reading more about that. Any good online resources?
Clark,
There were writings posted online from Husserliana IX "Phänomenologische Psychologie," available in an English translation, here:
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/relstud/faculty/sheehan/TSbookcontents.html
Unfortunately, they seem to have been taken down. I can't find anything else available online.
Clark,
I just finished reading Introduction to Phenomenology by Dermot Moran. Some thoughts on the book and its contents.
The book itself is clearly written. Dr. Moran covers each philosopher well and gives good summaries of their lives, writings, and influences. He does his best to give concise summaries of the philosophers and more often than not makes the philosophy accessible and readable. I would recommend this book to anyone seeking a summary of phenomenology. Overall it was well worth my time to read this book and I thank you for the recommendation.
I initially wanted to use this book as an entry into studying the actual authors in the phenomenological tradition. However after reading this I really have very little desire to study the authors themselves. Husserl does still strike me as interesting, but attempting to read Husserl is a massive undertaking, akin to coming to grips with Kant. Since Kant is my current focus, I really don't have the desire or time to take on another philosopher of equal difficulty at this time. Gadamer also interests me, but as he is so Heideggerian reading him without reading Heidegger may be futile.
For the most part the way the phenomenologists philosophize, their writing style, and their chosen philsophical subjects all combine together to underwhelm my interest in them. I could go into specifics as to why each philosopher does not appeal to me (other than Gadamer or Husserl), but I don't think that it would be very fruitful because the others (at least Derrida and Heidegger) do appeal to you. My guess is that in your mind the reasons wouldn't be very persuasive.
Actually this disappoints me a lot. I had hoped to be able to better discuss philosophy with you and since you seem to be very much influenced by Heidegger and Derrida, becoming more familiar with them seemed a logical step to speak the language you speak. Otherwise one ends up with the situation of Dreyfus and Searle, they end up spending more time misunderstanding each other than doing any philosophy. Unfortunately I don't want to take that path to alleviate this problem, at least not at this time. I plan on moving back to more analytically focused philosophy and seeking philosophical discussion elsewhere.
I actually alternate between primarily discussing more Continental philosophy and more analytic. I'm of the opinion that the so-called divide isn't a real divide. I think there are many cross-overs such as in the issue of mental externalism.
So I hope you don't stop contributing just because I like reading Heidegger and Derrida. If no one else, then Peirce is a nice common ground given how influential he is in analytic thought - even if only superficially so.
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
and Theology
Number of unique visitors:
Blogged by Clark Goble