Matt E. M. Bower

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If you are interested in private, one-on-one tutoring, please email me at membower@gmail.com or visit my Wyzant pofile.

About Me

I am currently Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at Texas State University.  I completed my doctoral work in philosophy at the University of Memphis (2013) and earned by bachelors' degree, also in philosophy, from Beloit College (2007).

My area of specialization is post-Kantian European philosophy, especially as it bears on topics in philosophy of mind and perception.  I have published several articles about Husserl's genetic phenomenology, some attempting to explain Husserl's method and theoretical ambitions in doing genetic phenomenology and others examining its relation to developmental psychology and as a way to understand the embededness of intersubjectivity in perceptual experience.

I have also published articles exploring the phenomenology of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas insofar as it provides resources supporting non-representational theories of perceptual experience, both of the radically enactive/embodied variety and the naive realist variety.   Recently my attention has turned to better understanding the perspectival character of perceptual experience (e.g., as manifest in perceptual constancy phenomena) with the aim of developing a phenomenological alternative to the idea, both as developed by classical phenomenologists like Husserl and contemporary philosophers of perception like Alva Noë, that perceptual experience contains something like "empty intentions."

A variety of thoughts are presently beginning to crystallize in my mind about the systematic value of theories of perceptual experience in classical phenomenologists' project of developing a transcendental philosophy and about how those efforts compare with Kant's transcendental idealism and subsequent developments in German idealism (especially Hegel's idealism), partly as seen through the lens of the Sellarsian critique of the "myth of the given."

Journal Articles

• Bower, M. (forthcoming). “Genetic phenomenology.” In Encyclopedia of Phenomenology, N. de Warren and T. Toadvine (eds.). Dordrecht: Springer.

• Bower, M. (2023).  "Sociality and the minimal self: On Dan Zahavi’s 'Group‐identification, collectivism, and perspectival autonomy.'"  The Southern Journal of Philosophy 61, pp. 78-85.

• Bower, M. (2023).  "Phenomenological reduction and the nature of perceptual experience."  Husserl Studies 39(2), pp. 161-178.

• Bower, M. (2021).  “Do we visually experience objects’ occluded parts?”  Canadian Journal of Philosophy 51(4), 239-255.  https://doi.org/10.1017/can.2021.22

• Bower, M. (2021).  “Is perception inadequate? Husserl's case for non-sensory objectual phenomenology in perception.”  European Journal of Philosophy 30(2), 755-777.  https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12705

• Bower (2020), "Husserl on hallucination: A conjunctive reading," Journal of the History of Philosophy 58(3), 549-579.

• Bower (2019), "Daubert's naive realist challenge to Husserl," Grazer philosophische Studien 96, 211-243.

• Bower, M. and B. Fischer (2018), "Categorical desires and the badness of animal death," Journal of Value Inquiry 52(1), 97-111.

• Bower (2017), "Levinas's philosophy of perception," Southern Journal of Philosophy 55(4), 383-414.

• Bower (2017), "Husserl on perception: A non-representationalism that nearly was," European Journal of Philosophy 25(4), 1768-1790.

• Bower (2015), "Developing open intersubjectivity," Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences

• Bower (2015), "Genetic phenomenology, cognitive development, and the embodied/extended mind," Journal of Consciousness Studies

• Bower (2015), "Husserl's concept of the Vorwelt and the possible annihilation of the world," Research in Phenomenology

• Bower (2014), "Affectively driven perception, Toward a non-representational phenomenology," Husserl Studies

• Bower (2014), "Husserl's motivation and method for phenomenological reconstruction," Continental Philosophy Review

• Bower (2014), "Husserl's theory of instincts as a theory of affection," Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology

• Gallagher and Bower (2014), "Making enactivism even more embodied," AVANT

• Bower and Gallagher (2013), "Bodily affects as prenoetic elements in enactive perception," Phenomenology and Mind

Book Chapters

• Bower (2019), "Finding a way into genetic phenomenology," The Subject(s) of Phenomenology, I. Apostolescu (eds.) (Dordrecht: Springer), pp. 185-200.

• Bower (2016), "Radicalizing the phenomenology of basic minds with Levinas and Merleau-Ponty," Biology and Subjectivity: Contributions to a Non-Reductive Neuroscience, J. Murillo, M. Garcia-valdecasas, and N. Barrett (eds.) (Dordrecht: Springer)

Drafts

• Bower, "Against Inadequacy"

• Bower, "Another Look at Husserl’s Treatment of the Thing in Itself"

Edited Volumes

• Phenomenology and Mind, Volume 6, Mind, Habits, and Social Reality

Book Reviews

• Bower (2016), Review of Ferrarello (2015), Husserl's Ethics and Practical Intentionality

• Bower (2015), Review of Jensen and Moran (eds) (2013), The Phenomenology of Embodied Intersubjectivity, reviewed for Husserl Studies

Commentary

• Bower (2015), "Do we need a metaphysics for perception?"  Open Peer Commentary on Werner (2015), "Toward a PL-Metaphysics of Perception," Constructivist Foundations

Dissertation

• Bower (2013), The Birth of the World: An Exploration in Husserl's Genetic Phenomenology, completed at the University of Memphis under the supervision of S. Gallagher, S. Luft (external reader), T. Nenon (chair), K. Saghafi, and D. Tollefsen

Translations

• Patočka, J. (2015), "Epochē and reduction: Some observations" (trans. M. Bower), Asubjective Phenomenology: Jan Patočka’s Project in the Broader Context of His Work, L. Učník, I. Chvatík, and A. Williams (eds.) (Nordhausen: Traugott Bautz)

• Patočka, J. (2015), “Husserl’s subjectivism and the call for an asubjective phenomenology”  (trans. M. Bower), I. Chvatik, M. Bower, and K. Maly (Trans.).  Asubjective Phenomenology: Jan Patočka’s Project in the Broader Context of His Work (pp. 41-53).  L. Učník, I. Chvatík, and A. Williams (eds.) (Nordhausen: Traugott Bautz)

• Plessner, H. (2013), "The objectivity of the senses" (trans. M. Bower), Phenomenology and Mind 4, pp. 16-27