HCJ4 - Seminar 1

Freud

Psychoanalysis replaced hypnosis. Freud thought that if a patient talked about his/her problems, it would make them think about the things that they had previously suppressed. Freud encouraged patients to freak out - scream out a problem. Oasis song 'Go Let It Out' - any connection?

Freud said that humans are always unhappy due to being divided (alienated - Marx?). He claimed that we are not actually in control of what we are doing, but that we are being controlled. For example, I am not writing this blog post of my own accord, I am actually being controlled and that is what is making me do it. We don't make our own decisions and the worst part is that we have no idea that we are being controlled.

Freud extended this to everyday decisions. If we choose to wear a certain colour t shirt, we are actually doing it for a certain reason, maybe we wear yellow to look happy or black to give the impression that we are sad or even depressed.

Freud's psychoanalysis therapy worked on the premise that everyone has deep lying thoughts and feelings, the methods of therapy that Freud advocated would make those feelings come out, A patient would 'freak out'. Oasis song 'Go Let It Out' - any connection?


Husserl

Husserl was similar to Freud in that he devoted his life to a single project that would be the first scientific study of the human mind.

He focused on mathematics and his habitation theory was on the concept of numbers. His first book 'Philosophy of Arithemetic' sought to explain our numerical concepts by identifying the mental acts that are our psychological origins e.g. plurality was supposed to derive from a process of 'collective combination' which groups many items together.

Husserl was heavily criticised, but maintained a distinction between logic and psychology. He saw that philosophy could be linked to psychology and not logic. This is the opposite to how Frege saw things, he took the side of logic.

Husserl's phenomenology aimed to study the immediate data of consciousness, without reference to the extra mental world. For example, the intentionality of an experience is the same whether it is in a dream or not. If I see a unicorn in a dream, the intentionality of my thought is the same, regardless of the fact that unicorns don't exist.


Heidegger

He said that the first task of phenomenology was to study the concept of being. Heidegger came up with a new vocab for philosophy and one of those words was 'Dasein' which means 'being there'. Dasein is relative to the perceiver and his/her Dasein is personal to the individual e.g. doing DIY might be someones Dasein, but a total bore to another person, who's Dasein might be playing video games.

A Dasein is an activity that the person who is doing it is so wrapped up in the activity that it becomes the only thing in the entire world that matters to them, they can 'zone out' of everything and  focus on their Dasein. Being in your Dasein doesn't make existential pain go away, but it fades away slowly e.g. the person doing DIY will be so focused on the task he/she is doing that existence seems to have disappeared. If there was infinite time, there would be infinite boredom because according to Heidegger, time is boredom. If you are not absorbed in a task, you will become utterly bored.


Satre

Satre's pre war essays are detailed studies in the philosophy of mind in the phenomenological mould. Satre criticised Husserl in that he hadn't taken the phenomenological reduction far enough. Satre disagreed with Husserl's accepting that Cartesian ego (aware of its own thoughts and capable of disembodied existence) as a datum of consciousness. Satre said that when we are absorbed in what we are doing, we have not thought of ourselves and we only make the self an object when reflecting on the situation. The self lies outside of consciousness and therefore belongs to the transcendent world (a world of the superior. It goes beyond normal limits).

Satre showed that the perception that in imagination we are surveying the contents of an interior mental world is false. Satre said that we are imagining extra-mental objects, not internal images. An example is if we imagine a real person but who is absent, We are creating an object in the world when what we imagine doesn't exist.

According to Satre, emotions are misconcieved if we think of them as passive internal feelings. If we hate someone, we actually percieve them as hateful. Satre also used depression to explain a 'magical transformation' of the situations we are in. He said that depression 'casts a spell' on the world to make every effort to cope seem pointless.

Being, for Satre, is what precedes and underlies all the different kinds of things we encounter in consciousness. We sort things into classes depending on our interests and as instruments for our purposes. If we strip away all the distinctions, we're left with pure being. Being in itself - l'en soi. This is 'without reason, without cause, without necessity'.

Satre expanded a theme of Heidegger's. English philosophers laughed at 'nothing' noths' but Satre expanded on it to give it some significance. When consciousness articulates the world, it does so y means of negation. Satre uses the example of the concept of red. He divides the world into red and non-red. An example given in PMW is of chairs and tables, we must divide chairs into two groups - chairs and not-tables and therefore tables and not-chairs. Satre says that 'the being by which nothingness comes into the world must be its own nothingness'.

Another of Satre's ideas comes from Heidegger. For most objects essence precedes existence but Satre said in his book 'Exitenialism and Humanism', "there is at least one being whose existence comes before his essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is man". Human freedom precedes the essence of man. Humans don't need to follow a set life path. Satre says that human freedom creates a fissure in the world of objects. The life of an individual is not determined in advance, neither by a creator nor by necessitating causes nor by absolute moral laws. We can't escape the necessity to choose though. Satre also talked about 'bad faith', this is when we are aware of our freedom but strive to reduce ourselves to mere objects.

The alternative attitude is to accept our freedom and accept responsibility for our actions. Satre says that there are psychical limits, but we will adapt our desires depending on the situations that we find ourselves in.

Satre introduced the idea of 'being-for-others-, this is the way in which we are presented to others and are observed by them; We become nothing more than an object for them - maybe of envy or contempt.