Episode #100: talkPOPc at galerie Jilská14: Philosophers Dena Shottenkirk and Martin Nitsche: the Bridge between Continental and Analytic Philosophy

talkPOPc's Podcast

Gallery Conversations: talkPOPc at galerie Jilská 14, Prague
Artist and talkPOPc Founder Dr. Dena Shottenkirk speaks w/ Resident Philosopher Dr. Martin Nitsche on the Bridge between Continental and Analytic Philosophy
0 - 2:09: Shottenkirk: introduction of talkPOPc's radical reforming of both art and philosophy in order to emphasize the communal role of conversation.
2:10 - 3:39: Bridging Analytic and Continental philosophy
3:40 - 5:49: the importance of conversation in making this bridge
5:50 - 9:38: Shottenkirk asks Martin Nitsche about his book "Methodical Precedence of Intertwining: An Introduction to a Transitive-topological Phenomenology", where Nitsche writes on Husserl's refusal to have a clear divide between the subject and the object. Nitsche explains it is Husserl's argument against Brentano's reliance on Descartes. Husserl wanted to do a philosophy of holistic experience.
9:39 -10:11: Shottenkirk asks if anyone connects Husserl to William James? Nitsche says Husserl himself did. Shottenkirk notes that the connection is obvious.
10:12 - 12:00: Shottenkirk discusses gist perception which gives both objective and subjective information, arguing that the error of empiricism is a model of the object coming to the passive subject.
12:05 -12:59: Nitsche talks about using the Merleau-Ponty notion of intertwining where there is no division of subject and object; even though we can speak of us being here and being separate from the world, it is secondary and not the root of perception.
13:00 -13:48: Shottenkirk notes that perception has, at its root, the marriage of object and subject. The problem is how we explain experience and perception with these two married things at the beginning. There has to be a fluidity. That is also talkPOPc: a fluidity of things.
13:50 -15:21: Nitsche discusses Husserl's notion of phenomenological reduction; it is not solipsistic. It is re-transiting the attention to a new domain, focusing on the intertwining of subject and object; refocusing on the gist. (Here we have a merging of the analytic philosophy notion of gist perception with the continental notion of topological intertwining)

15:25 -19:40: The notion of reduction, with Nitsche introducing the notion of orientation - it is in favor of a more layered notion of experience, which is closer to the artist's experience.
19:15 - 21:59: Nitsche, by using the example of touch, talks about avoiding the solipsism of orientation: when we touch our finger to our other hand we are not just subject/object.
22:00 - 24:00: Shottenkirk notes that "restriction" is not "elimination". In vision science, semantic/high-level features are strictly different from low-level features. But that view tracks the objects out there, which is a problem. If one doesn't completely divide low-level from high-level, then one can experience those low-level things as not part of a strict object/subject divide. So, when we have the experience of finger going into the hand, it is an experience even though it's not named. The range of things experienced are way larger than the things that are named. Nitsche agrees.
24:01 - 28:00: Shottenkirk defines topology in general, with Nitsche then talking about topology in phenomenology. A picture of the world that is transforming. Philosophy is topology. Meaning is that thing that is always being constructed on the fly.
28:10 - 29:53: Shottenkirk: Let's bring it back to art. Once function that art is the way we understand the world - it provides for those topological transitions: this thing can suddenly mean that thing. I'm doing the same thing, but I'

Support the show

Twitter: @talkpopc
Instagram: @talkpopc