What is Phenomenology and what does it have to do with authenticity?

Join Michael Wheeler and Mirko Prokop as they dive into Heidegger’s phenomenology and its relevance for cognitive science as well as Michael’s recent work in the nascent field of the cognitive arts and humanities. Touching on philosophical and existential questions about the nature of mind and our relationship to the world and others, they explore the structure of human experience, its bodily, biological and social dimensions and discuss how artistic improvisation and creativity can lead us to see authenticity as the basic dynamic of thinking.

00:00: Introduction and guest welcome

02:26: Michael Wheeler’s journey into philosophy

04:23: What is phenomenology?

07:17: Introspection

10:57: The transcendental in the light of history

14:35: Heidegger’s Kantian side

17:17 : Heidegger vs. Descartes

21:22: Dasein: Heidegger’s conception of the subject

24:36: Being thrown into a meaningful world

26:00: "Equipment" in Heidegger

29:00: Being-in-the-world: totalities of involvement

36:55: Disturbances and skillful coping

41:00: The primacy of "online intelligence“

45:46: How often do we experience flow?

50:52: The extended mind

01:00:15: McDowell on the personal and subpersonal

01:05:00: "Orthodox" cognitive science

01:10:00: Heideggerian Robots

01:12:36: Embodiment

01:18:57: Michael’s current work on authenticity

01:21:24: Anxiety: being thrown into a social world

01:22:03: Authenticity as the basic dynamic of thinking

01:26:29: The Cognitive Arts and Humanities

01:32:30: Biology, culture, and non-human animals

01:29:21 Integrating Cognitive Science with the Humanities

01:44:46: Concluding thoughts and personal reflections Mirko Prokop:   

Michael Wheeler’s book Reconstructing the Cognitive World (2007, MIT Press): https://mitpress.mit.edu/978026273182...

John McDowell’s paper The Content of Perceptual Experience (1994, The Philosophical Quarterly): https://www.jstor.org/stable/2219740

Gilbert Ryle’s paper Improvisation (1976, Mind): https://www.jstor.org/stable/2253256 Miguel A. Sepúlveda-Pedro’s paper Levels and Norm Development: A Phenomenological Approach to Enactive-Ecological Norms of Action and Perception (2020, Frontiers in Psychology): https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/...

Further Reading: Julian Kiverstein and Michael Wheeler (eds.) Heidegger and Cognitive Science (2012, Palgrave Macmillan): https://link.springer.com/book/978023...

Cognitive Futures in the Arts and Humanities: https://cognitive-futures.com/