Dr Heath Williams

PhD
Lecturer

  • Biography

    After discovering philosophy at Notre Dame in 2001, I completed my undergrad at Murdoch in 2014 and my PhD at the UWA in 2018. During my PhD I spent time at the Centre for Subjectivity Research in Copenhagen. I have worked at several universities in Perth and was also as a postdoc at Sun-yat Sen University in Zhuhai, China.

    I have broad research interests. I have historically focused on Husserl and intersubjectivity. My PhD addressed the relation between phenomenological empathy and mirror-neuron based embodied simulation. I am interested in the many faces of phenomenology, including its intersection with the Catholic intellectual tradition, contemporary cognitive science, analytic philosophy, and qualitative psychology. Other interests include philosophy of psychology and of mind, especially the hard-problem of consciousness and the contemporary resurgence of panpsychism. I have recently edited and contributed to a special issue of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences that reassess the relationship between phenomenology and explanation.

    I am a passionate educator/scholar who genuinely enjoys learning and teaching and is always interested in embarking on new projects or taking on research supervision (should time permit!). In my spare time I enjoy hiking, triathlons, Vivaldi, and mid 90’s hip-hop.

  • Teaching Areas

    • Philosophy of mind.
    • Phenomenology.
    • Philosophy of the human person.
    • Metaphysics.
    • Epistemology.
    • Philosophy of religion.
    • Contemporary Philosophy.

  • Research Expertise and Supervision

    • Phenomenology
    • Edmund Husserl
    • Empirical psychology
    • Philosophy of the human person
    • Analytic philosophy of mind
    • Consciousness
    • Panpsychism
    • Explanation

  • Journal Articles and Proceedings

    • Williams, H. (2016). The Directness of Empathy. Phenomenological Studies, 1(1), 193-216. doi:10.2143/EPH.1.0.3188848
    • Williams, H. (2016). Husserlian phenomenological description and the problem of describing intersubjectivity. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23(7-8), 254-277.
    • Williams, H. (2017). Explicating the Key Notions of Copresence and Verification in Relation to Husserl’s Use of the Term Direct to Describe Empathy. Human Studies, 40(2), 157-174. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-016-9414-4
    • Williams, H. (2018). Revisiting mirror-neuron based embodied simulation Mind and Matter, 16(2), 213-236.
    • Williams, H. (2019). The Relation between Husserl’s Phenomenological Account of Imaginative Empathy and High-level Simulation, and How to Solve the Problem of the Generalizability of Empathy. 96(4), 596. doi:https://doi.org/10.1163/18756735-000087
    • Williams, H. (2020a). Analytic Phenomenology (or “What It Is Like”) vs. Husserlian Phenomenology. 15(3), 427-450. doi:10.3868/s030-009-020-0025-9
    • Williams, H. (2020b). Challenging Ingarden’s 'Radical' Distinction Between the Real and the Literary. Horizon, 9(2), 703-728.
    • Williams, H. (2020c). Husserl and the personal level of explanation. Human Studies.
    • Williams, H. (2020d). Husserlian empathy and embodied simulation. Theory & Psychology, 0959354320966640. doi:10.1177/0959354320966640
    • Williams, H. (2021a). Is Husserl guilty of Sellars’ myth of the sensory given. Synthese, 199(3), 6371-6389. doi:10.1007/s11229-021-03073-z
    • Williams, H. (2021b). The meaning of “Phenomenology”: Qualitative and philosophical phenomenological research methods. The Qualitative Report, 26(2), 366-385.
    • Williams, H. (2022). The unbearable lightness of the personal, explanatory level. Phenomenology and the cognitive sciences.
    • Williams, H., & Byrne, T. (2022). Husserl’s theory of scientific explanation: A Bolzanian inspired unificationist account. Husserl Studies, 38(2), 107-127.
    • Williams, H., & Shani, I. (Forthcoming). The Incoherence Challenge for Subject Combination: An Analytic Assessment. Inquiry.

  • Conference Papers

    • Rumours of the death of micropanpsychism have been greatly exaggerated (or have they?). Panpsychism workshop, 2022.
    • Uncoupling phenomenology from the Personal Level.
    • International Workshop: Reassessing the Relationship Between Explanation and Phenomenology, 2021
    • The Relationship Between Qualitative and Philosophical Phenomenology
    • Phenomenology and the Human Sciences Conference, 2021
    • The Relationship Between Qualitative and Philosophical Phenomenology
    • The Qualitative Report Annual Conference, 2021
    • The relationship between Donald Davidson and Husserl on the Personal Level of Explanation
    • Paper presented at the SYSU Phenomenology Workshop, 2020
    • Is Husserl a Conceptualist?
    • Paper presented at the Time, Object and Memory Conference, 2020
    • The Personal Level and Phenomenology.
    • Paper presented at West Australian Philosophy Symposium, 2019
    • Could Mother Teresa Empathise with Hitler?
    • Paper presented at the Australasian Association for Continental Philosophy, UWA, 2018
    • The Generalisability, Elasticity, and Limits of Empathy.
    • Paper presented at the Limina Conference, UWA, 2017
    • Some Refinements to the Concept of Awareness of Consciousness
    • Paper presented at the Australasian Postgraduate Association of Philosophy Conference, Canberra, 2016
    • The Directness of Empathy, and Some Resulting Consequences for the Relationship Between Phenomenological and Empirical Psychologies.
    • Paper presented at the Summer School at the Centre for Subjectivity Research, Copenhagen, 2016
    • Problems Concerning the Method of Husserlian Phenomenological Description
    • Paper presented at the international Organization of Phenomenological Organizations, 2015
    • The Personal/Subpersonal Distinction and its Relation to Phenomenology
    • Paper presented at the Association of Australasian Philosophy Conference at Macquarie University, 2015
    • Phenomenological Description and the Ancient Greek Concept of Enargeia
    • Presented at the Murdoch Colloquium at Murdoch University. Winner of Award for Best Student Paper, 2014
    • Kierkegaard and Contemporary Filmic Representations of Don Giovanni
    • Paper presented at the Kierkegaard & the World Conference at Deakin University, 2013

  • Professional Affiliations

    • Convenor of The Indo-Pacific Mind and Metaphysics Research Group.
    • Organiser of the International Workshop on Phenomenology and Explanation and a work
    • Organiser of Prospects and Perils for the Combination Problem conference.
    • Reviewer for Journal of Consciousness Studies, Journal for the British Society for Phenomenology, Erkentnnis, Mind and Matter.

  • Awards

    • Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Chinese Universities grant
    • Research Grant from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation
    • Travel Grant from the Australasian Association of Philosophy
    • Travel Grant from the Australasian Postgraduate Society
    • Travel Grant from the Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy
    • Best Postgraduate Paper in the Humanities at UWA for 2017
    • Postgraduate Publication Award for the Faculty of Arts 2017
    • Best Student Paper at the 2014 Murdoch Colloquium