Differences between the philosophy of Claus Janew and the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl

Edmund Husserl's phenomenological descriptions* show many similarities to my own considerations, for example, when he speaks of a "halo," a "horizon of mental processes" (awareness), or a "central point of unity" (neutral center point). Nevertheless, he does not consistently take the omnipresence of the center-periphery structure further to the infinitesimality structure.

Circumscription and the Center: Determinacy, Objectivity, and Authored Choice

This paper develops a unified structural account of perceptual consciousness, awareness, objectivity, and free will. The core proposal is that any determinate episode instantiates an i-structure: a nested center–horizon organization generated by circumscriptions, understood as the reciprocal integration of differences into a whole. The “center” is a limit-like unity-role by which the whole is determinately one; the “horizon” is the structured field of co-implicated possibilities, constraints, background, and anticipations. I argue that the phenomenological center–horizon pattern can be treated, under a restricted transcendental move, as a condition on determinacy itself, provided one adopts a determinacy-for stance in a metaphysical sense: determinacy is inseparable from the space of possible determinations within systems of discrimination and interaction. Consciousness and awareness are then distinguished as emphases within i-structure: consciousness is stabilized thematic unity, whereas awareness is explicit openness of horizon and depth. Objectivity is characterized as communicatively stabilized approximation whose normativity lies in robustness under widening and deepening practices of determination. Finally, decision episodes are analyzed via identity- and affordance-determinacy, a crossing phase, and authored resolution. Compatibilists and libertarians share this structural target and differ primarily on the metaphysical reading of the openness in that shared structure.

Structural Libertarianism and the Veridicality of the “Up-to-Me” Experience: Psychophysical Openness, Authored Indeterminacy, and Residual Luck

This paper defends a libertarian account of free will grounded in the phenomenological structure of live decision episodes. Such episodes instantiate an i-structure, a center–periphery organization in which a focal node represents the decision situation as a whole and a periphery represents alternatives, reasons, and constraints. There is an “up-to-me” region in which the situation’s identity is fixed while what will be done remains open. I argue that the best interpretation of this up-to-me phenomenology, when taken as serious evidence about agency, is global metaphysical openness: even given the total state of the world and the total laws at a time, more than one future action is nomically possible. I make this explicit through a strengthened Psychophysical Openness Thesis (POT): psychophysical laws are probabilistic and sensitive to i-structures, constraining and biasing outcomes without deterministically fixing them. I then define authored indeterminacy as underdetermined settling whose explanatory stopping point is the agent’s reasons-integrating act rather than an independent chancemaker. Luck objections are addressed by conceding that global libertarianism entails irreducible bruteness and chance within the agent while arguing that responsibility does not require eliminating chance but locating irreducible settling within the agent’s evaluative act.

Center, Horizon, and “Taking a Stand”: A Phenomenological Map of Decision Episodes

This paper offers a phenomenological description of conscious decision episodes in which agents experience themselves as facing a live choice and “taking a stand.” It also argues that such a description supplies a structural supplement to existing accounts of decision and self-commitment, especially Moran’s account of avowal and Chang’s account of hard choices. Moran shows why deciding is not merely reporting an antecedent psychological fact; Chang shows why some choices are not settled by the balance of given reasons and may involve will-based reasons. What both accounts leave underdescribed, I argue, is how an agent can encounter a practical question as already determinate enough to be this decision now while the outcome remains open enough to require commitment. Drawing on Husserl’s object–horizon structure, Gurwitsch’s theme/field/margin, and James’s focus/fringe, I describe such episodes as instantiating an i-structure: a center–horizon pattern whose focal node gathers “this situation” as a unified whole while its horizon encodes considerations, constraints, and possibilities. I distinguish two gradients across this structure: identity-determinacy, concerning how settled “what this is” is, and affordance-determinacy, concerning how settled “what I can still do” is. Their divergence marks a crossing phase, whose resolution I call authored resolution: a commitment experienced as my doing, neither mandated by reasons alone nor random or alien.

Objecthood as Alternation: Dynamic Existence and the Infinitesimal Center

This paper develops a phenomenological ontology of objecthood centered on alternation. Existing accounts of horizonality, embodiment, affordance, Gestalt organization, and sensorimotor availability have shown that objects are given through profiled and transformable modes of access rather than as complete self-present units. The remaining problem is how such transformations become transformations of one object rather than a succession of appearances or a loose plurality of capacities. I argue that objecthood requires alternation: returnable transition among distinguishable phases. Such transitions condense around what I call an infinitesimal center: the unity-function through which a differentiated manifold is gathered as one object. The phenomenological thesis is that an object appears as one only through structured alternation within and between standpoints. The ontological thesis is that objecthood, as objecthood, is best understood as dynamic relational individuation rather than static self-presence. The resulting view, dynamic existence, accepts the realist force of object-resistance while rejecting static givenness as an explanation of object-unity. Objectivity is not viewlessness, but stabilized transposability among standpoints.