The Intentional Spectrum and Intersubjectivity

Phenomenology and the Pittsburgh Neo-Hegelians

Michael D. Barber

• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9780821443682
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

World-renowned analytic philosophers John McDowell and Robert Brandom, dubbed "Pittsburgh Neo-Hegelians, " recently engaged in an intriguing debate about perception. In The Intentional Spectrum and Intersubjectivity Michael D. Barber is the first to bring phenomenology to bear not just on the perspectives of McDowell or Brandom alone, but on their intersection. He argues that McDowell accounts better for the intelligibility of empirical content by defending holistically functioning, reflectively distinguishable sensory and intellectual intentional structures. He reconstructs dimensions implicit in the perception debate, favoring Brandom on knowledge's intersubjective features that converge with the ethical characteristics of intersubjectivity Emmanuel Levinas illuminates.

Phenomenology becomes the third partner in this debate between two analytic philosophers, critically mediating their discussion by unfolding the systematic interconnectionamong perception, intersubjectivity, metaphilosophy, and ethics.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 The Debate about Perception: Inferentialism, Representationalism, and Intelligible Empirical Content
• 2 The Debate about Perception: Rational Constraint, Phenomenology, and Interiorization
• 3 The Fullness of Perception
• 4 Tradition and Discourse, I-We and I-Thou: McDowell and Brandom on Intersubjectivity
• 5 McDowell’s Wittgensteinian Quietism
• 6 Self-Reflectivity, Radical Reflection, and Consciousness: Brandom’s Philosophy of Philosophy
• 7 The Levels of Ethics
• 8 Phenomenology, the Intentional Spectrum, and Intersubjectivity
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index