The Dynamic Phenomenology of Conscious Occurrent Thinking: A First-Person Approach

By Fergus Anderson

In this book I address the question of the nature of the experience of occurrent, conscious thought. My enquiry draws on cognitive phenomenology, which is a field in contemporary philosophy of mind, and I use what I call a 'first-person approach', which takes its inspiration from a methodology called microphenomenology. Drawing loosely on this methodology, I present five descriptions of the experience of occurrent conscious thought, and on the basis of these, I develop a thesis concerning thought's diachronic structure. My thesis - which I call the dynamic phenomenology of thought thesis (DPT) - is that the experience of conscious, occurrent thought typically entails four distinct stages. The central chapters of the book are dedicated to articulating these stages, both with respect to what they are like to experience and with respect to how they relate to contemporary views in philosophy of mind. A further theme that I develop in the book has to do with the distinction between genuine thinking experiences and other kinds of occurrent cognitive states. What characterises thinking is what I call 'objective character'. Objective character refers to the momentary experience of feeling oneself identified with that which one thinks. I suggest that this phenomenal quality is a distinctive feature of thinking experience, and one that seems to be rarely articulated in the literature. The book also contains a discussion of a little known description of the experience of thinking that was given by Rudolf Steiner in the late 19th century. I include this because it has some similarities with the thesis I present.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 198020084X
• ISBN13: 9781980200840
• Release Date: February 2018
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 204 Pages
• Weight: 0.81 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.5" x 6.0"