Video 7: How do we encounter the world?

• Phenomenology: Edmund Husserl
• Our focus should be simply on experience, what appears (phenomena), not on theory-laden conditioning: culture provides us with expectations of what we experience
• Consciousness is always directed toward or about something (intentionality)
• The meaning (noema) of experience is that which is structured, interpreted, and anticipated
• The Lebenswelt (life-world) is the world we understand we are in--for example, a technological environment
• "The World," by contrast, includes multiple perspectives
 
• Phenomenology: Martin Heidegger
• Our task is to understand not only consciousness but also the world in which we are conscious: that is, we must ask what it means to relate to or "be in" the world
• Every day we deal with the world in activities: we are beings-in-the-world; this distinguishes us from the way objects are related scientifically or objectively
• Scientific knowledge is nice but secondary. Human caring (Sorge) is practical engagement, conditioned by our determination; it characterizes authenticity

• Existentialism
• Authenticity requires that we take a stand through action. Meaning depends on our attending to or caring about being.  When our care about being is not directed toward any thing in particular, we experience anxiety