Phenomenology of Activity – Basics, Irreducibility, Typology and Unity

有些事情只是碰巧发生在我们身上，而有些事情是我们主动带来的。从这个意义上说，人类自我理解的一个重要部分似乎包含了这样一种观点，即我们有能力积极干预世界的方式，以实现我们的目标和目的。在这样做的过程中，我们自己的行为是如此的亲密，以至于我们很少注意到它们，并倾向于认为它们是理所当然的。然而，正在进行的哲学讨论表明，积极的本质并不明显。此外，当代心灵哲学和行动理论的辩论，经常受到自然主义/唯物主义的简化和功能主义版本的影响，长期以来都假设人类能动性可以不参考主体的第一人称能动性经验而被理解。与这种趋势相反，这个项目的目标是以体验活动（或者换句话说，活动现象学）为出发点。除非认真考虑能动性的现象性维度，否则关于行动的哲学理论就有将其最初的积极性质边缘化的危险。根据该项目的一个激励思想，以这种方式有偏见的理论对如何评估人类自由和道德责任具有严重且经常有问题的影响。这就是为什么彻底澄清和捍卫体验活动的项目具有高度的哲学重要性。因此，该项目的总体目标是探索活跃的体验，并详细呈现其哲学成果和含义。一个中心论点是，经验活动相当于一种不可简化的、多样的、普遍的现象意识形式，以各种方式表现出有意的“在世界的存在”。虽然该项目本质上主要是系统的，并希望为围绕“代理现象学”和“行动主义”的高度专题研究做出贡献，但它也旨在通过借鉴所谓的“早期现象学运动”（约1900-1927年）中被忽视的作家提出的方法论工具和丰富的概念资源来丰富当代辩论。虽然已经存在着对特定类型的现象性活动的显著描述，但仍然缺少尝试系统地分类这些不同类型及其构成方面并探索它们之间的相互联系和关系的建议。这是设想的项目将开始的地方。它将分三步进行：首先，讨论关于活动现象学的方法和概念问题；第二，我将捍卫这样一种观点，即经验活动是真实的，不可简化为其他现象特征；第三，对活动的基本类型进行了分类和定性。最后，问题是在这些不同类型的代理之间是否存在（现象上的）统一。

While some things merely happen to us, some are brought actively into being by us. In this sense, an essential part of human self-understanding seems to entail the idea that we are capable to intervene actively in the way of the world in order to realize our goals and purposes. In doing so, typically, our own actions are so intimately given to us that we seldom pay attention to them and tend to take them for granted. However, ongoing discussions in philosophy show that the nature of being active is anything but obvious. Furthermore, contemporary debates in philosophy of mind and action theory, often influenced by reductive and functionalistic versions of naturalism/materialism, have assumed for a long time that human agency can be understood without reference to the subject’s first-personal agentive experience. In contrast to this trend, the goal of this project is to take experiential activity (or, in other words, the phenomenology of activity) as its starting point. Unless the phenomenal dimension of agency is taken seriously into account, philosophical theories of action run the risk of marginalizing its originally active nature. According to one of the motivating ideas of the project, theories that are biased in this way have serious and often problematic implications for how human freedom and moral responsibility are assessed. This is why the project of a thoroughgoing clarification and defence of experiential activity is of high philosophical importance. Thus, the project’s overall aim is to explore the experience of being active and to present in detail its philosophical fruitfulness and implications. One central thesis is that experiential activity amounts to an irreducible, multifarious and pervasive form of phenomenal consciousness manifesting itself in various ways of intentional “Being-in-the-World”. While the project is primarily systematic in nature and wants to contribute to highly topical research surrounding the “phenomenology of agency” and "enactivism", it also aims at enriching contemporary debates by drawing from the methodological tools and rich conceptual resources proposed by neglected writers belonging to the so-called “early phenomenological movement” (ca. 1900-1927). Although there do already exist notable accounts of particular types of phenomenal activity, what is still missing are proposals that try to systematically classify these various types and their constitutive aspects and to explore their interconnections and relations towards one another. This is where the envisaged project will start. It will proceed in three steps: first, methodological and conceptual issues regarding the phenomenology of activity are addressed; second, I will defend the idea that experiential activity is real and irreducible to other phenomenal traits; third, a classification and characterization of basic types of activity is developed. At the end, it is asked whether there is a (phenomenal) unity across these various types of agency.