1st Edition
Paolo Bozzi’s Experimental Phenomenology
This anthology translates eighteen papers by Italian philosopher and experimental psychologist Paolo Bozzi (1930-2003), bringing his distinctive and influential ideas to an English-speaking audience for the first time. The papers cover a range of methodological and experimental questions concerning the phenomenology of perception and their theoretical implications, with each one followed by commentary from leading international experts.
In his laboratory work, Bozzi investigated visual and auditory perception, such as our responses to pendular motion and bodies in freefall, afterimages, transparency effects, and grouping effects in dot lattices and among sounds (musical notes). Reflecting on the results of his enquiries against the background of traditional approaches to experimentation in these fields, Bozzi took a unique realist stance that challenges accepted approaches to perception, arguing that experimental phenomenology is neither a science of the perceptual process nor a science of the appearances; it is a science of how things are.
The writings collected here offer an important resource for psychologists of perception and philosophers, as well as for researchers in cognitive science.
Part I
1. Experimental Phenomenology
Translated and commented by Ivana Bianchi
2. On some paradoxes of current perceptual theories
Commented by Sergei Gepshtein
3. Phenomenal experience, epistemic experience and psychological experience. Notes towards an epistemology of the phenomenological experimental method.
Translated by Richard Davies and commented by Maurizio Ferraris
Part II
4. The stream of consciousness, or the events under observation
Translated by Achille Varzi and commented by Richard Davies
5. Untimely meditations on the relation between self and non-self
Translated by Alessio Moretti and commented by Robert Kelly and Barry Smith
6. Logical analysis of the psychophysical (L-R) scheme
Translated by Richard Davies and commented by Francesco Orilia and Michele Paolini Paoletti
7. Five varieties of stimulus error
Translated and commented by Roberto Casati
8. Seeing As
Translated and commented by Kevin Mulligan
Part III
9. Phenomenological descriptions and physical-geometrical descriptions
Translated and commented by Ugo Savardi
10. Interobservation as a method for experimental phenomenology
Translated and commented by Michael Kubovy
Part IV
11. Phenomenological analysis of pendular harmonic motion & the conditions for "natural" motion along incline
Translated by Paola Bressan and Paolo Gaudiano and commented by Marco Bertamini.
12. A new factor of perceptual grouping: demonstration in terms of pure experimental phenomenology.
Translated and commented by Luigi Burigana
13. Two factors of unification for musical notes: closeness in time and closeness in tone.
Translated by Luisa Zecchinelli and Richard Davies and commented by Luisa Zecchinelli
14. Observations on some cases of phenomenal transparency obtained with line drawings
Translated by Sergio Cesare Masin and commented by Daniele Zavagno
15. Original observations on certain characteristics of afterimages
Translated by Tiziano Agostini and commented by Tiziano Agostini and Alessandra Galmonte
16. Tertiary Qualities
Translated and commented by Ian Verstegen and Carlo Maria Fossaluzza
AFTERTHOUGHTS
17. Experimental Phenomenology: a Historical Profile.
Commented by Alan Costall
18. What is still living and what has died of the Gestalt approach to the analysis of perception. Commented by Johan Wagemans
Biography
Ivana Bianchi was a close collaborator of Paolo Bozzi in his last years and is Associate Professor of General Psychology, University of Macerata, Italy.
Richard Davies teaches theoretical philosophy at the University of Bergamo, Italy. He previously held positions at Trinity College, University of Cambridge, UK.
‘Bozzi was an original whose thinking did not observe conventional boundaries. The same may be said of this collection of elegant original essays inspired by Bozzi’s writings. It offers the reader the prospect of a rich and challenging intellectual feast.’ William Epstein, Emeritus Professor, University of Wisconsin, USA
‘Paolo Bozzi was an unusual and original psychologist and philosopher, who developed a distinctive picture of the psychology and the phenomenology of perception, in particular in its connection to the philosophical question of realism. Yet his work is not as widely known as it should be. This volume of his essays, supplemented by commentaries by contemporary experts, is an invaluable resource, and will surely help in giving Bozzi’s work the wider recognition it deserves.’ Tim Crane, Professor of Philosophy, Central European University, Hungary
