Kristjan Laasik

• Ph.D
• Professor (Associate) at Zhejiang University

In this chapter, I limn not one but two different accounts of visual noise—an attempt to do justice to the openness of the conceptual space. Roughly, my two conceptions provide for a visual noise that objectively correlates with a kind of problematic, conflicted visual experience, on the one hand, and a visual noise that interferes or intervenes wi...

Despite studying with Heinrich Rickert in Freiburg, Wilhelm Dilthey in Berlin, and Edmund Husserl in Göttingen, Wilhelm Schapp (1884-1965) has, until now, been largely neglected in phenomenological scholarship.As the first English-language volume dedicated to Schapp’s thought, this book seeks to correct this by investigating Schapp’s pioneering phi...

I argue that there are no irrational visual experiences, if we mean just the experiences that one is having now, but there are irrational visual experiences, if we mean also the experiences that one has had in the past. In other words, I will be arguing that perceptual irrationality is a retrospective phenomenon. So as to further support the first...

Both John Campbell and Quassim Cassam have argued that we perceptually experience objects as mind-independent (MI), purportedly solving a problem they refer to as “Berkeley’s Puzzle.” In this paper, I will consider the same topic from a Husserlian perspective. In particular, I will clarify the idea of MI and argue that there is, indeed, a sense in...

Corijn van Mazijk’s book is a critical exploration of the relations between Immanuel Kant’s, Edmund Husserl’s, and John McDowell’s transcendental philosophies. His primary aim is not to conduct a historical study, but “to show that history provides us with viable alternatives to McDowell’s theory of our perceptual access to reality.” The book cover...

I argue for the following claims: (1) A core Husserlian account of perceptual constancy needs to be given in terms of indicative future‐oriented conditionals but can be complemented by a counterfactual account; (2) thus conceived, constancy is a necessary aspect of content. I speak about a “core Husserlian” account so as to capture certain ideas th...

Susanna Schellenberg has presented several arguments for the "situation-dependency thesis" (SDT), i.e. the claim that (visual) perceptual experiences are necessarily situation-dependent, insofar as they represent objects' situation-dependent properties. In my critical response to her paper, I focus on her argument from the "epistemic dependence the...

In his new book, Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness, Philip Goff defends panpsychism, the view that ‘consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the physical world’ (2019, p. 23), arguing that the view is superior to the dualist and materialist alternatives. Since Goff regards the study of consciousness as...

In this paper, I propose a Husserlian account of perceptual confidence, and argue for perceptual confidence by appeal to the self‐justification of perceptual experiences. Perceptual confidence is the intriguing view, recently developed by John Morrison, that there are not just doxastic confidences but also perceptual confidences, that is, confidenc...

In this paper, I sketch an account of emotion that is based on a close analogy with a Husserlian account of perception. I also make use of the approach that I have limned, viz., to articulate a view of the kind of “conflict without contradiction” (CWC) which may obtain between a recalcitrant emotion and a judgment. My main contention is that CWC ca...

In this paper, I discuss aspects of Herbert Leyendecker’s 1913 doctoral dissertation, Towards the Phenomenology of Deceptions (Zur Phänomenologie der Täuschungen), which he defended in 1913 at the University of Munich. Leyendecker was a member of the Munich and Göttingen Phenomenological Circles. In my discussion of his largely neglected views, I e...

Terence Horgan and John Tienson argue that there is phenomenal intentionality, that is, “a kind of intentionality, pervasive in human mental life, that is constitutively determined by phenomenology alone”. However, their arguments are open to two lines of objection. First, Horgan and Tienson are not sufficiently clear as to what kind of content it...

In a discussion of the constitutive role of colour in our visual perceptual experiences, Wilhelm Schapp centrally argues that we cannot visually perceive certain distant things, like a house seen far down in the valley. My main contention is that, in cases relevantly similar to Schapp’s, we do perceptually experience distant things, viz., as drasti...

In a paper titled “Seeing Empty Space,” Louise Richardson argues for the thesis that seeing empty space involves a certain “structural feature,” namely, “it [s] seeming to one as if some region of space is one in which if some visible object were there, one would see it” (SF; Richardson, 2010, p. 237). I will argue that there is a reason to questio...

Peter Goldie has argued for the view that the intentionality of emotions is inseparable from their phenomenology (IPE), but certain criticisms have revealed his argument as problematic. I will argue that it is possible to address these problems, at least in the case of the emotion of fear, thereby vindicating IPE, by appeal to a Husserlian version...

The familiar Husserlian conception of fulfillment involves a contrast between the same content as being represented emptily and then (more) fully, and also the idea that the empty givenness is rightly conceived in terms of anticipations of fullness. Since perceptual experiences provide a paradigmatic case of such fulfillment, I will call it “P-fulf...

In her paper, ‘Action and Self-location in Perception’, Susanna Schellenberg argues that perceptual experience of an object's intrinsic spatial properties, such as its size and shape, requires a capacity to act. More specifically, Schellenberg argues that, to have a perceptual experience of an object's intrinsic spatial properties, a subject needs...

In 1909, Wilhelm Schapp, a student of Edmund Husserl's at Göttingen, defended his doctoral thesis, Beiträge zur Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung. In this text, Schapp argues that color presents things to the sense of sight by contributing a certain order, or form, that manifests itself in the orderly, predictable variation of perspectives, in the cou...

In his paper, “The Dorsal Stream and the Visual Horizon,” Michael Madary argues that “dorsal stream processing plays a main role in the spatiotemporal limits of visual perception, in what Husserl identified as the visual horizon” (Madary 2011, p. 424). Madary regards himself as thereby providing a theoretical framework “sensitive to basic Husserlia...

In his book Action in Perception, Alva Noë poses what he refers to as the “problem of perceptual presence” and develops his enactive view as solution to the problem. Noë describes the problem of perceptual presence as the problem of how to conceive of the presence of that which, “strictly speaking,” we do not perceive. I argue that the “problem of...

In an apparently original and radical departure from mainstream ideas, Alva Noë argues that perception does not involve inner representations but needs to be regarded a kind of active engagement with the environment. According to Noë’s enactive view, visual perception requires “sensorimotor knowhow”: the perceiver needs to have certain perceptual s...