iMagination: The Friendly Ghost (Ed Reno, New York City)

Pity poor imagination. Or iMagination, as a Puckish Steve Jobs might have called it had he been a practitioner in the contemporary philosophy of mind.

The gravamen of the Phlakit Brothers' MoMo presentation on July 4, 2016 at the Tiyatrom at Alte-Jakob-Straße 12 in Berlin? Working in tandem with sensibility and affectivity, it is iMagination which does all of the heavy lifting for what has traditionally been regarded as cognition and thinking.

Yet iMagination is the Rodney Dangerfield of most current philosophy of mind.  It doesn’t get the respect it deserves. It is Martha in the kitchen of the mind doing much of the work while Mary is out in the behavioral front room regaling her claque with talk about System1/System 2, other meta-representational theories of cognition, the recursiveness of language, and the Higher Order Awareness (HOA) theory of consciousness.

Grant analytical philosophy of mind, cognitive science, neural networking, and wet and reductively minded neurophysiology these Archimedes levers, and it’s all over but the too-clever-by-half dispositionalization of any remaining shards of occurrent consciousness.

The Phlakit Brothers think – more accurately iMagine; but we won’t yet insist upon diction reform – that much of mainstream analytic philosophy of mind, which has long since overwhelmed the German academy, is basically engaged in adding epicycles to its various Ptolemaic theories of consciousness and the mental.  It is simply not in that many meaningful ways adding insights to the achievements of those who have tilled the fields of consciousness and intentionality before.

The Phenomenologists?

They have many of the resources, both methodological, and systematic, which would allow them tickle out Hans Christian Andersen moments at the expense of the  analytic hegemon.  But phenomenologists have often run scared, not wanting, it would seem, to be thought to be ascientific.

They have been altogether too skittish about their own Kantian and, especially, Heideggerian roots, having lost sight, in particular, of the Kantian vision, as explicated by Heidegger, that cognition is iMagination All the Way Down (IAWD).

The Phlakit Brothers will phenomenologically, analytically, dialectically, and with as lite as possible a dollop of transcendentality, argue that IAWD naturalistically solves many 2500 year old conundrums in philosophy -- a least at 30,000 feet (10,000 metres when going from TXL to JFK), which is arguably the most that should be expected of philosophy.  Ask Wolfgang Sohst if you don’t believe us.

Gordian Knots untied, or at least loosened up for the philosophical accountants to further unravel?

• The problem of universals
• The ontogenetic and phylogenetic origins – or non-origins – of language
• Thinking as iMagination caught linguistic™
• Naturalism and the mind-body problem

And, yes, when asked:

• IAWD is the mobile App which also makes the coffee

The Phlakit Brothers will come to the presentation armed with phenomenological, systematic, and historical artillery, and are hoping for vigorous engagement.

All are encouraged to come similarly armed themselves. Since we’re expecting seasoned MoMoistas, no specific readings are presupposed. Your most important resource will be your wits and spirit of inquiry.

And by wits we mean your iMagination.

Though, if you want to cheat a bit on some deep background to what we will be discussing, you could do worse than to carefully audit this YouTube video.

The Phlakit Brothers
Peter Lupario
North Haverhill, New Hampshire

Ed Reno
Berlin, Germany

This lecture will be given in English. Ed will be personally present, Peter will join us via Skype directly from New Hampshire, USA.

Download here additional / preparatory material for the lecture: