Edward Lenzo Visiting Assistant Professor, Philosophy |
Education
Ph.D., University of Memphis
M.A., Colorado State University
B.A., Rutgers University
Teaching Interests
I believe that philosophy can help us to understand the world, ourselves, and other people. As an undergraduate, philosophy allowed me to better express myself and build meaningful, intentional connections. Philosophy asks us not to pursue a knowledge divorced from ethics, but a wisdom concerned with the Good. I strive to foster a philosophical desire for understanding and the good in my students.
I teach classes in Metaphysics and Epistemology – the philosophical studies of Being and Knowing – Philosophy of Mind, broadly construed, and Biomedical Ethics. I am interested in what is known as the problem of other minds: how are we ever justified in our claims about other people? In what ways can we best understand one another, and what are some of the obstacles to interpersonal understanding? This is not strictly an epistemological question – a question about knowledge, belief, or justification – but also an ethical one. Our understanding of one another depends in part on the ethical relationships that hold between us. Biomedical Ethics is one area in which our understanding of human nature, knowledge, self and other are put to use in the achievement of ethical ends.
Research, Scholarship or Creative/Artistic Interests
While I am primarily interested in the problem of other minds, more precisely I am interested in interpersonal understanding across difference: how is it that we can understand another person who is apparently very different from oneself? This question opens onto an entire field of inquiry, which includes questions concerning cognition, emotion, embodiment and responsibility. My major influences are Edmund Husserl, widely regarded as the “father of phenomenology”, and Emmanuel Levinas, one of Husserl’s students and critics. I use the work of these (and other) thinkers to engage with the Philosophy of Mind broadly construed to include Philosophy of Cognitive Science and Psychopathology.
I am especially interested in structural accounts of conscious experience in the context of psychopathology phenomena, such as depression and schizophrenia, and the foundations of such accounts. I think that determining the ways that we can understand ourselves and others in these contexts is not only crucial to knowledge but will also help us to better address the suffering and alienation that often accompanies pathology phenomena.