Professor Kenneth Liberman, University of Oregon, Eugene, USA will be delivering a seminar titled “What Can the Human Sciences Contribute to Phenomenology?”

Abstract:

What phenomenological details can investigations by human scientists provide to classical phenomenological inquiries regarding sense-constitution, the production of objective knowledge, and the reflexivity of mundane understanding? Problems of constitutional phenomenology are summarized and specifications are provided regarding ways to study intersubjective events. After a review of some quandaries suggested by an examination of Husserl, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, Schutz,  Gurwitsch, Garfinkel, and Adorno, two demonstrations of social phenomenologically inspired human studies – the playing of games with rules and the objective determination of flavors by coffee tasters – are presented using video data in order to identify and describe some of the local details of sense organization that the human sciences can provide to phenomenological researchers.

About the Speaker:

Kenneth Liberman is Hans Christian Anderson Visiting Professor at Southern Denmark University,Professor Emeritus at the University of Oregon, and Visiting Professor at Sera Jey Monastic University in India. He was Fulbright Senior Professor at the University of Mysore. He has authored seventy academic articles and eight books, including Dialectical Practice in Tibetan Philosophical Culture (Rowman & Littlefield), The Panchen Lama’s Debate Between Wisdom and the Reifying Habit (Motilal Banarsidass), and More Studies in Ethnomethodology (SUNY Press), which won the American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Book Award. His specialization is social phenomenology and ethnomethodology.