A Commentary on Pokropski's Functionalist Reading of Husserlian Phenomenology

摘要

In his recent study, Pokropski argues that Dreyfus’s famous (or infamous) cognitivist readingof Husserl’s theory of mind is partly misleading, specifically, as a strong computationalism. Thestrong computationalist reading of Husserl, according to Pokropski (2020, p. 871), holds that(1) the theory of noema is a sort of adumbration of contemporary computationalism, such asFodor’s representational theory of mind (RTM); (2) this mean, however, that the noema functionsas a mediatory entity (just as Fodor’s mental representations); finally, (3) the noema (or mentalrepresentations) do not require a mind’s physical realization. Pokropski follows McIntyre in arguingthat the strong computationalist reading of Husserl’s phenomenology is implausible. In this regard,Pokropski’s arguments reflect the on-going polemic in the literature (e.g., Drummond, 1990, 2012;Zahavi, 2004, 2017; Szanto, 2012; P?otka, 2017). Yet, Pokropski’s original idea and his key insighthere is to develop an alternative functionalist reading of Husserl’s phenomenology. He holdsthat Husserl applies an explanatory strategy of decomposition which resembles the method offunctionalism. To show this, Pokropski analyzes Husserl’s project of phenomenological psychologywhich seems to address these claims. In the end, he argues that the project allows a non-reductivenaturalization of phenomenology.