Volume 2 (2001): Issue 1 (April 2001)

The discrimination between two points of view, or perspectives, in respect to consciousness, one on the first-person other on the third-person, deals with two concepts of consciousness- respectively, phenomenal consciousness and intentional consciousness (sections 1 and 2). I will accept, generally, this idea. However, I will argue that are not two, but three kinds of consciousness and typ of experience, making my point introducing the concept of different characters of experience (section 3). These characters are ‘experience’, ‘signification’ and ‘reference/object’, and when all of them occur I say that we have an intentional experience. If it lacks the last one, we have a meaningful experience, but without reference. Finally, if the only occurrence is ‘experience’, then the type of experience we live is a meaningless or mute experience. This ‘taxonomy’ allows classifying a perceptum as an intentional experience, a quale as a meaningful experience and a sense datum as a mute experience. On the other hand, it represents, as I claim, an approach much more clear, than those usually appears, to the question ‘what qualia really are? ‘ (sections 4 e 5). Moreover: it makes possible talk about objectivity of qualia, an objectivity without object (section 6).

Every philosophy has a conceptualisation which demarcares it and defines a net of signification, even in the field of filiation or proximity relations. Ricœur’s hermeneutics is admittedly close to Gadamer’s hermeneutics, due to the aim of integrating and rectifying it and to its identical or equivalent conceptualisation (in some cases). My topic concerns the difference between the two hermeneutics, which mainly emerges through the relevance attached to dialogue. The chief question I ask is whether that difference is insignificant and sporadic or, in contrast, is determinant to the description of Ricœur’s hermeneutics, which would mark it out against Gadamer’s. The former establishes a link between dialogue and oralism, which allow us a coherent understanding of not only his opposition to romantic hermeneutics, but also the development of his epistemological project. By analysing these matters we will, therefore, realise the consistency of the hermeneutic paradigm put forward by Ricœur, as well as the progressively clear cut between the two hermeneutical models.