Professori emeritus Manfred Frankin (Tübingenin ylipisto) vierailu Turun yliopistossa 24.-25.4.
Professori Frank on johtava varhaisromanttisen filosofian tutkija, jonka kiinnostuksen kohteisiin kuuluu myös tämänhetkinen analyyttinen mielen filosofia (philosophy of mind) ja sen yhteys klassiseen filosofiaan, erityisesti juuri romantiikan aikakauden filosofiaan.
Prof. Frank pitää perjantaina 25.4. klo 14-16 Publicumin luentosalissa IV luennon aiheesta ”From Fichte’s ’Original Insight’ to a Moderate Defense of Self-Representationalism”.
“Self-representationalism” is a relatively recently explored view on the nature of occurrent mental states which we are used to calling “conscious”. Some of its main representatives, Charles Siewert, Terence Horgan, Uriah Kriegel and Kenneth Williford have recently proved curious about classical phenomenology and even some achievements of the so called ‘Heidelberg School’. With some important differences of emphasis and interpretation, these authors think that (1) all consciousness is representational or intentional, and that representation or intentionality is, in general, the appropriate basic term for any philosophy of mind. And secondly they maintain that (2) those and only those acts or experiences may pass for “conscious” that, in addition to their intentional (or representational) object, co-represent themselves. This co- (or peripheral) representation of the conscious episode itself does not, on this view, come about by a different, higher-order act or by an inner duplication (“reflection”), but is, rather, thought to be “built-into” the primitive experience itself (hence the appellation “Same-Order Theory”). This form of self-awareness is supposed to be “ubiquitous”, occurring wherever mental states occur as conscious events.
Self-representationalism thereby embraces a basic conviction of Fichte as it was presented in Henrich’s ground-breaking text on “Fichte’s Original Insight” (in 1966). Differently than Fichte, self-representationalists keep sticking to ‘representation’ as the basic core concept in understanding the problem of self-awareness – and thereby adopt the erroneous “reflection model of self-consciousness”. This is what the lecture turns against, defending a ‘pre-reflective’ model of self-awareness. Constructing his argument on the thought of Michael Tye, Tyler Burge and Jean-Paul Sartre, a model is proposed in which the non-objectuality and transparency of self-awareness appears compatible with a concept of representation of outer reality.