The Phenomenological Fallacy and Sartre's Illusion of Immanence: Analytic Philosophy of Mind and Phenomenology Against Mental Reification

Abstract

Throughout the history of analytic philosophy the notion of the 'phenomenological falla-cy' originally formulated by Place, has been used to criticize reification of the mental. Although this fallacy was originally not used to criticize the phenomenological tradition, it has popped up recently in debates between analytic philosophers and phenomenologists. However, a study of the history of both traditions reveals that a polemical notion similar, if not identical, to the phenome-nological fallacy can be found within the phenomenological tradition, namely Sartre's 'illusion of immanence'. In this article, I will explicate these two polemical notions and place them in the context of their respective traditions. This will reveal that both notions must be understood as criticism of a certain form of representationalism I will call 'dual-world representationalism'. This deep-rooted similarity between analytic philosophy of mind and phenomenology, in turn, sheds a new light on current discussions between the two traditions. On a final note, I compare the criticism to the views of Metzinger, a contemporary analytic philosopher who uses the phenomenological fallacy to accuse his adversaries.