PREVIEW-Episode 31: Husserl’s Phenomenology

Discussing Edmund Husserl's Cartesian Meditations (1931). How can we analyze our experience? Husserl thinks that Descartes was right about the need to ground science from the standpoint of our own experience, but wrong about everything else. Husserl recommends we "bracket" the question of whether the external world exists and just focus on the contents of our consciousness (the "cogito"). He thinks that with good, theory-free observations (meaning very difficult, unnatural language), we can give an account of the essential structures of experience, which will include truth, certainty, and objectivity (intersubjective verifiability): all that science needs. We'll find that we don't need to ground the existence of objects in space and other minds, because our entire experience presupposes them; they're already indubitable. Looking for the full Citizen version? The post PREVIEW-Episode 31: Husserl’s Phenomenology first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.