Husserlian horizons, cognitive affordances and motivating reasons for action
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Husserlian horizons, cognitive affordances and motivating reasons for action Marta Jorba 1 # Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract According to Husserl’s phenomenology, the intentional horizon is a general structure of experience. However, its characterisation beyond perceptual experience has not been explored yet. This paper aims, first, to fill this gap by arguing that there is a viable notion of cognitive horizon that presents features that are analogous to features of the perceptual horizon. Secondly, it proposes to characterise a specific structure of the cognitive horizon—that which presents possibilities for action—as a cognitive affordance. Cognitive affordances present cognitive elements as opportunities for mental action (i.e., a problem affording trying to solve it, a thought affording calculating, an idea affording reflection). Thirdly, it argues that postulating cognitive affordances helps to unfold a rational dimension of thinking by conceiving of them as motivating reasons for action, something that in turn provides an argument for the experienced character of cognitive affordances. Keywords Experience . Horizon . Thinking . Cognition . Affordance . Temporality . Action
. Phenomenology The notion of horizon has received attention within the phenomenological tradition in philosophy, specifically in the work of Edmund Husserl on perceptual experience. While the idea of a perceptual horizon is well examined in the phenomenological corpus, there is no detailed and systematic examination of its applicability to thinking. As we will see, this can be seen as a quite surprising fact, given the parallelism that one can draw between both domains and the relevant implications that such an application may have. In this paper I explore the prospects of the extension of the notion of horizon to thinking, after carefully reviewing the main features of the perceptual horizon as it appears in the work of Husserl (Section 1). I will argue that the Husserlian framework provides useful tools to describe a cognitive horizon, although certain relevant
* Marta Jorba [email protected]
1
University of the Basque Country, C/Justo Vélez de Elorriaga 1, 01006 Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain
M. Jorba
differences have to be highlighted (Section 2). After this application, I propose to characterise a specific structure of the cognitive horizon—that which presents possibilities for action—as a cognitive affordance, also contributing to the ecological psychology literature (Section 3). Finally, I argue that postulating cognitive affordances helps to unfold a rational dimension of thinking by characterise them as motivating reasons for action, which in turn provides an argument for the experienced character of cognitive affordances (Section 4). This paper contributes to Husserlian phenomenology and to Gibsonian ecological psychology, also connecting them to philosophy of action. The resulting picture thus can be said to contribute to these three usually unrelated domains of inquiry.
1 Perceptual horizon The notion of horizon first app
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