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UCD School of Philosophy

Scoil na Fealsúnachta UCD

Rasmus Thybo Jensen

Teaching and Visiting Research Fellow

Tel: (01) 7168130
Office: D519
Office Hours: Tuesdays, 2-4pm
Email:  rasmus.jensen@ucd.ie

Current Research

I came to UCD in September 2009 as a Postdoctoral Research Assistant attached to the IRCHSS-funded research project “The Phenomenology of Subjectivity and Consciousness” (Principal Investigator Professor Dermot Moran). From the 1st of September 2010 I began a two-year postdoctoral fellowship funded by a grant from The Danish Council for Independent Research (Humanities) and based at the Department for Media, Cognition and Communication (Philosophy Section), University of Copenhagen. The first semester of this fellowship I will spend as a visiting researcher at the UCD School of Philosophy. The new project is focused on issues in the philosophy of perception and in particular on issues concerning the relation between perception and judgment. Two guiding questions are: can we do justice to the phenomenology of perception if we claim that the content of perception is propositional and/or conceptual?; can we regard perception as both a natural phenomenon and as, at least in the case of mature human beings, intrinsically involving conceptual capacities? Parallel with these investigations I also pursue analogous questions concerning the possible involvement of conceptual capacities in our natural capacity to move. Part of the central motivation behind this project is the hypothesis that we can get a better grip on central issues in the philosophy of perception and action by exploiting the works of classical phenomenologists such as Husserl and Merleau-Ponty and by bringing these works into contact with critics of scientific naturalism within the analytical tradition such as John McDowell and Jennifer Hornsby.

Education

  • 1998: Bachelor Degree (BA) in Philosophy with an elective one-year module in Anthropology, University of Copenhagen
  • 2004: Cand.mag. Degree [M.A.] in Philosophy, University of Copenhagen
  • 2009: PhD Degree in Philosophy, University of Copenhagen
    Dissertion: “Perception and Action – an analogical approach”
    Supervisors: Professor Finn Collin and Professor Dan Zahavi.
    Evaluation Commitee: Associate Professor Klemens Kappel (University of Copenhagen), Associate Professor Thomas Schwartz Wentzer (University of Aarhus) and Professor Shaun Gallagher (University of Central Florida). 

Areas of specialization
The phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, the philosophy of John McDowell, Philosophy of Perception and Action.

Areas of competence

Phenomenology, Philosophy of mind

Other research and teaching interests 

The relation between Phenomenology, Philosophy of Mind and the Cognitive Sciences, Virtue ethics, Practical Rationality, Self-consciousness and Self-knowledge

Employment History

    • 1999-2000: Instructor, Theoretical  Philosophy, BA-level, University of Copenhagen. 2005-2008: Ph.D.-student, Philosophy Section, Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, Department of Philosophy, University of Copenhagen. Funded by the Danish Research Council for Culture and Communication.
    • 2009-2010: Postdoctoral Research Assistant, School of Philosophy, University College Dublin (IRCHSS-funded research project “The Phenomenology of Consciousness and Subjectivity”, Principal Investigator Professor Dermot Moran)
    • 2010 (Autumn): Teaching Fellow, School of Philosophy, University College Dublin.
    • 2010-to date: Postdoctoral Researcher, Department for Media, Cognition and Communication (Philosophy Section), University of Copenhagen. 2010: Two-year Individual Postdoctoral Grant from The Danish Council for Independent Research, Humanities.

Studies and research abroad

  • 1998-1999:  Visiting MA-student at Institut für Philosophie, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany.
  • 2000: Two months research-visit at the Archives Husserl, École Normale Supérieur, Paris, France. Funded by Association Scientifique Franco-Danoise.
  • 2005: Visiting Student Researcher at UC Berkeley, California, USA. 
  • 2010: Visiting Postdoctoral Researcher, School of Philosophy, University College Dublin, Ireland

Academic Scholarships and Awards

  • 2005-08 PhD Scholarship, The Danish Research Council for the Humanities
  • 2006: Winner of Philosophy Poster Price at the 10th Gathering of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, Oxford. Committee: Daniel Dennett (Chair), Ned Block, Alva Noë and Robert van Gulick.

Teaching experience

  • 1999-2000: Instructor in Theoretical Philosophy at BA level, Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, Philosophy Section.
  • 2006: ‘Intentionality of Action’. MA Course, Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, Philosophy Section.
  • 2009 (Autumn): Tutor, Philosophy of Language, (Level 3), School of Philosophy, University College Dublin.
  • 2010 (Autumn): ‘Mind and Knowledge: McDowell and his Critics”, MA Course, School of Philosophy, University College Dublin.

Publications in peer reviewed journals

  • 2009: “Motor intentionality and the case of Schneider” in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, special edition: Dimiensions of bodily subjectivity, eds. Legrand D., Grünbaum T. And Krueger J. Volume 8, Number 3 / September 2009.

Translations

  • “Bevidsthedens Fænomenologi”, Translation from the English (The Phenomenological Mind, S. Gallagher and D. Zahavi, Routledge 2007), Gyldendal. Forthcoming.

Conference Contributions

  • 2010: “A Disjunctivist Conception of Bodily Movements?”, Joint Session of the Mind Association and the Aristotelian Society, UCD, Dublin, Ireland.
  • 2010: “Intentional Action and Motor Intentionality”, Workshop “Embodied Subjectivity”, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, Ireland.
  • 2010: “Is Spatial Awareness in Action Conceptual?”, 8th Annual Conference of The Nordic Society for Phenomenology, Södertörn University College, Stockholm, Sweden.
  • 2010: “McDowell and Merleau-Ponty on Perceptual Intentionality”, Annual Meeting of the Danish Philosophical Society, The Danish University of Education, Copenhagen. Denmark.
  • 2010: “McDowell and Merleau-Ponty on Perceptual Intentionality”, Workshop “Intentionality”, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, Ireland.
  • 2009: “Embodied conceptualism, McDowell and Merleau-Ponty on perception”, 7th Annual Conference of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology, Tampere, Finland .
  • 2008: “A disjunctivism of bodily movement”, 6th Annual Conference of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology, Kaunas, Lithuania.
  • 2007: “Oneself as an agent as no other”, 5th Annual Conference of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology, Copenhagen, Denmark.
  • 2006: “Motor intentionality and the case of Schneider”, 9th International Conference on Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology, Leiden, Holland.
  • 2006: ”Is motor intentionality beyond Reason?”,  “Situated Cognition: Perspectives from Phenomenology and Science, Durham, UK.
  • 2006:“Does motor intentionality carry us beyond reasons?”, 4th Annual Conference of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology, Reykjavik, Iceland.
  • 2005: “Merleau-Ponty’s critique of the separation of psychology and phenomenology”, 3rd Annual Conference of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology, Bergen, Norway.
  • 2004: “How does Merleau-Ponty build his case on the case of Schneider?”, 2nd Annual Conference of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology, Stockholm, Sweden.

Other activities

  • 2000-2001: Co-editor of the student magazine for philosophy at the University of Copenhagen.
  • 2007: Planner of parallel sessions at the 5th Annual Conference of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology, Copenhagen, Denmark.
  • 2010: Co-organizer of the IRCHSS-funded workshop “Intentionality”, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, Ireland.
  • 2010: Co-organizer of the IRCHSS-funded workshop “Empathy and Intersubjectivity”, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, Ireland.
  • 2010: Co-organizer of the IRCHSS-funded workshop “Embodied Subjectivity”, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, Ireland.