You continually mistake the limits of your understanding, for those of others. That’s why I stopped interacting with you a few months ago - oh, that, and you telling me I’m full of shit - a policy I will now resume.

nothing exists without the mind — Janus

As I’ve patiently explained many times, I do not say that nothing exists without the mind. I say that without the mind, there can be neither existence nor non-existence. The idea that the universe ceases to exist outside of any mind is simply imagining its non-existence. That too is a mental representation.

The error that I’m pointing to, is taking the mind-independence assumed by naturalism as a metaphysical axiom or a statement about the actual nature of reality. That’s where the actual confusion lies. What reality is outside the purview of an observer is precisely what Kant means by the ‘in itself’. It is not nothing, but it is also not anything. (Although @Banno has a grain of truth in pointing out that really nothing can be said of it, it is nevertheless required to sometimes point out what it is that nothing can be said about. )

…the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. — Bryan Magee, Schopenhauer’s Philosophy

The US Speaker, Mike Johnson, is a young Earth creationist, holding that the Earth is about 6000 years — jorndoe

He should tell Trump there’s no use drilling for oil, then.

Thought I’d mention this given how common it is for westerners to associate “detachment” to utter unconcern, including relative to the welfare of other beings in general. — javra

Excellent point! I have noticed in Mahāyāna Buddhism, there is a lovely expression, that emptiness and compassion are like the two wings of a bird - that realisation of emptiness leads to detachment, but that detachment without compassion (Karuṇā) is meaningless.

And of course, it is true that objectivity is vital, in many areas of life and many disciplines.

He doesn't say it's a really hard problem? That leads to the natural reading that it is an especially hard problem. — Manuel

It's an especially hard problem for the generally-accepted forms of scientific naturalism, as they assume at the outset that whatever is real must be tractable in objective terms. The whole essay is a rhetorical argument against those assumptions.

Interestingly, in another thread, we're discussing Husserl's critique of naturalism, which actually says something rather similar.

In contrast to the outlook of naturalism, Husserl believed all knowledge, all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all. Consciousness should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world at all, since consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place. For Husserl it is not that consciousness creates the world in any ontological sense—this would be a subjective idealism, itself a consequence of a certain naturalising tendency whereby consciousness is cause and the world its effect—but rather that the world is opened up, made meaningful, or disclosed through consciousness. The world is inconceivable apart from consciousness. Treating consciousness as part of the world, reifying consciousness, is precisely to ignore consciousness’s foundational, disclosive role. — Routledge Introduction to Phenomenology

. His aspiration was to objectivity and ideality, but then why shut himself up in subjectivity? Husserl himself in "The Origin of Geometry" gives us the tools to get out of the enclosure when he speaks of ideality as something constituted by repetition and reactivation through tradition. T — JuanZu

I have the feeling that you’re incorrect in this analysis although I’m not well versed enough in Husserl to put my finger on why. Perhaps you might consider glancing at the IEP Phenomenological Reduction article I mentioned above and find something in that which you consider to provide an example of where Husserl goes wrong with the epochē?

I’d like to differentiate myself from the thread owner. And the so-called ‘step too far’ you keep accusing of me is nothing of the kind. It is plainly impossible to consider any sense of time without a scale or units of duration in mind. What time might be, or indeed anything might be, in the absence of any mind whatever, can a fortiori never be known.

perhaps form misunderstanding Kant... — Banno

My understanding is not that time doesn't exist, but that it has an ineluctably subjective aspect. Meaning that the reality of time is not solely objective but is in some basic sense subject-dependent. Whereas, as I'm discussing in another thread, we're accustomed to regarding only what is objective as fully real. What is subjective is usually relegated to the personal.

It (i.e. time) needs human mind to exist. Are we being extreme idealists here? — Corvus

My view is that this is not extreme.

I should add that I can't claim to have reached any plateau of serene detachment, although I do see the point.

I would prefer to say that scientific concepts are themselves qualitative ( mass, motion, energy,’etc), and what characterizes them as leaving out what you call the subjective dimension is that these are peculiar kinds of qualities. — Joshs

I see your point, but in the context of Galilean physics, the emphasis was certainly on the measurable attributes of bodies and its delineation from Aristotelian notions of purpose and teleology. Hence the wrangling in American philosophy about 'qualia' as the qualitative attributes of being.

Rather than aiming for detachment, one should do the opposite and immerse oneself as intricately as possible in the contextually shifting meanings that affective attunement to the world discloses. — Joshs

What would 'immersing yourself' mean in practice? I interpret detachment more in line with what is taught in mindfulness-awareness training - that you are very much aware of the swirl of feelings, sensations and thoughts, without becoming carried into them or away by them. An analogy often given is the 'lotus effect' whereby water forms droplets on the leaf surface rather than the leaf becoming saturated by them. As quoted in the OP, ‘Detachment is not that you should own nothing, but that nothing should own you.’

The Virtue of Detachment

As seen above, a scientific orientation often leads us to assume that objectivity is the sole criterion for what is real. This approach seeks to arrive at a view from which the subject is bracketed out or excluded, focusing exclusively on the primary and measurable attributes of objects and forces. In this framework, the subjective is relegated to derivative status. However, in so doing, scientific objectivity also excludes the qualitative dimension of existence — the reality of Being. This exclusion lies at the heart of the hard problem of consciousness, which is inextricably linked with the Cartesian divide. Scientific objectivity seeks to transcend the personal, but it does so at the cost of denying the reality of the subject¹⁰.

Since ancient times, both Eastern and Western philosophies have prized detachment as a virtue. It shares many characteristics with scientific objectivity but with a crucial difference. While both aim to transcend personal biases and arrive at an understanding of what is truly so, philosophical detachment seeks its goal through the transcendence of the ego, rather than by bracketing out the subjective altogether

To understand this distinction, we must first differentiate the subjective from the merely personal. The subjective refers to the structures of experience through which reality is disclosed to consciousness. In an important sense, all sentient beings are subjects of experience. Subjectivity — or perhaps we could coin the term ‘subject-hood’ — encompasses the shared and foundational aspects of perception and understanding, as explored by phenomenology. The personal, by contrast, pertains to the idiosyncratic desires, biases, and attachments of a specific individual. Philosophical detachment requires rising above, or seeing through, these personal inclinations, but not through denying or suppressing the entire category of subjective understanding.

Skeptics and Stoics

Husserl’s epochē has precursors in ancient philosophy. In ancient skepticism, particularly as practiced by Pyrrho of Elis, epochē refers to the suspension of judgment. It is the act of withholding assent to any belief or claim due to the insufficiency of evidence to determine its truth or falsity. By suspending judgment, Pyrrho and his followers sought to achieve ataraxia (tranquility) and freedom from conflicting emotions by recognizing the limitations of human knowledge and the potential for conflict in clinging to opinions. This pursuit of ataraxia — freedom from conflicting emotions and attachment to opinions — echoes the Stoic ideal of apatheia, which we now turn to examine.

Stoic philosophy, which is enjoying a cultural resurgence, is built on the foundation of apatheia — not mere indifference or callousness, but a state of calm equanimity that comes from freedom from irrational or extreme emotions (mood swings, in today’s language). The Stoics believed that apatheia was the essential quality of the sage, unperturbed by events and indifferent to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. ‘Detachment,’ said one ancient worthy, ‘is not that you should own nothing, but that nothing should own you.’

The famous Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, a work that has been continuously in print since the advent of printing, exemplifies this philosophy. In it, Marcus Aurelius recommends avoiding indulgence in sensory pleasures, a form of ‘skilled action’ that frees us from the pangs and pleasures of existence. He claims that the only way we can be harmed by others is to allow emotionality to hold sway over us. Like other Stoics, Marcus Aurelius believed that an orderly and rational nature, or logos, permeates and guides the universe. Living in harmony with this logos, through rationality and temperance, allows one to rise above the individual inclinations of what might be deemed ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ as well as external circumstances such as fame and wealth. In cultivating these qualities, the Stoic sage enjoys equanimity and imperturbability in the midst of life’s troubles.

As Marcus Aurelius succinctly puts it:

You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength. (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book VI, 8)

Through these shared themes of epochē and ataraxia we can trace a lineage of detachment — from the ancient skeptics, to the Stoics, to phenomenology — each offering a path to seeing beyond the limitations of subjective opinion.

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10. Subject of David Chalmer’s famous 1996 essay, Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness.

Again, amazing. The depth and nuances are quite remarkable, as also the apparent self-awareness ('I suspect....')

(I've been getting help with redesigning my technical writer website. I've dubbed ChatGPT 'Chuck' (it liked that!) and I reach out to Chuck for all of the minutaie of CSS and WordPress among other things. It enables me to do so much more than previously. I mention it on the site, saying the 'A' in 'AI' should be for 'Augmented Intelligence', because that's what it does.)

I await mention of Husserl's bracketing, or epoche. — tim wood

There's a book-length article on IEP, The Phenomenological Reduction. I'm still going through it but it's a dense and rich entry. The passage I'll mention in this context is under the heading, The Epochē:

Husserl’s insight is that we live our lives in what he terms a “captivation-in-an-acceptedness;” that is to say, we live our lives in an unquestioning sort of way by being wholly taken up in the unbroken belief-performance of our customary life in the world. We take for granted our bodies, the culture, gravity, our everyday language, logic and a myriad other facets of our existence. All of this together is present to every individual in every moment and makes up what Fink terms “human immanence”; everyone accepts it and this acceptance is what keeps us in captivity. The epochē is a procedure whereby we no longer accept it. Hence, Fink notes in Sixth Cartesian Meditation: “This self consciousness develops in that the onlooker that comes to himself in the epochē reduces ‘bracketed’ human immanence by explicit inquiry back behind the acceptednesses in self-apperception that hold regarding humanness, that is, regarding one’s belonging to the world; and thus he lays bare transcendental experiential life and the transcendental having of the world” (p.40). Husserl has referred to this variously as “bracketing” or “putting out of action” but it boils down to the same thing, we must somehow come to see ourselves as no longer of this world, where “this world” means to capture all that we currently accept.

...Here it is important to realize two things: the first is that withdrawal of belief in the world is not a denial of the world. It should not be considered that the abstention of belief in the world’s existence is the same as the denial of its existence; indeed, the whole point of the epochē is that it is neither an affirmation nor a denial in the existence of the world. — IEP

I was struck by something I read in a wikipedia entry on the Buddhist teaching of 'two truths' (conventional and transcendental):

By and large, Kaccāyana, this world is supported by a polarity, that of existence and non-existence. But when one sees the origination of the world as it actually is with right discernment, "non-existence" with reference to the world does not occur to one. When one sees the cessation of the world as it actually is with right discernment, "existence" with reference to the world does not occur to one. — The Kaccāyana Sutta

This is is making an essentially similar point; because here 'the world' is not the objective physical cosmos, but the totality of experience, or in other words, the world as it exists in experience (another Wikipedia entry discusses the resonances between Husserl and Buddhist philosophy.)

Personally, I think this is a far more practical line of enquiry than the metaphysics of objects or quantity, because it is grounded in the real nature of existence, not in grappling with abstract concepts.

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Husserl’s insight is that we live our lives in what he terms a “captivation-in-an-acceptedness" — IEP

Which sounds awfully like habituation, doesn't it? I bought a book over Christmas on exactly this topic, Look Again, although I have a habit of buying self-improvement books and then not reading them. :yikes:

whereas I'm inclined to grant the subject a kind of ontological primacy.

An utterly formless, structureless flow of change. — Joshs

That would be what is traditionally called chaos, would it not?

I’m personally very impressed by Jamie Raskin - I thought he was a stand-out during Comer’s ridiculous kangaroo court hearings about Biden’s supposed corruption (oh, the irony). But Raskin lacks gravitas, or at least it doesn’t convey it very well on the screen, which is where it counts nowadays. Chuck Schumer does his best but again doesn’t have the heft.

But something to bear in mind, is that DJT is making an enormous number of enemies. Who in the intelligence community or defence is likely to support him, after the way he’s denigrated them? He’s trying to replace everyone with MAGA loyalists, but how many are there, really? For every MAGA fanatic there must be half a dozen disenfranchised careerists who bear him only animosity. If push really came to shove and it comes down to ordering troops in against protestors…….

Nice to know ;-)

I don't understand what the issue is — Apustimelogist

I understand your perplexity. What drew me to philosophy was the quest for enlightenment. This is something that is often said to be 'spiritual' but that actually is a very over-used word and not especially helpful due to its rather Victorian connotations. Suffice to say that I've always had the intuition that there's something deeply the matter with the consensus understanding of the nature of existence. There is some vital insight that is missing or generally not appreciated or understood. For many, that need is addressed by religion, but I wasn't able to accept the answers provided by the religion I was brought up in (Anglican, although I retain elements of it.) I think philosophy proper, too, addresses this sense, albeit in a much more rigorous way. But if you go back to the figure of Socrates, he was, in his own way, a seeker of enlightenment, not that he would ever make direct pronouncements on where that lay. But I always felt that his emphasis on self-knowledge, and the characterisation of Socrates given as he faced his own death (in The Apology and also in The Phaedo) makes him a seminal figure in philosophical spirituality.

I think, overall, European philosophy and existentialism share more of that orientation than does English-speaking academic philosophy. Phenomenology was the wellspring of a great deal of that. I'll also acknowledge that this kind of philosophical spirituality is in the minority on the Forum.

A relevant essay might be Thomas Nagel's Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament. Nagel defines 'religion' as

the idea that there is some kind of all-encompassing mind or spiritual principle in addition to the minds of individual human beings and other creatures – and that this mind or spirit is the foundation of the existence of the universe, of the natural order, of value, and of our existence, nature, and purpose. The aspect of religious belief I am talking about is belief in such a conception of the universe, and the incorporation of that belief into one’s conception of oneself and one’s life.

Nagel is a professed atheist, and an analytical philosopher, but he does at least grasp the sense of what those like myself feel is missing in secular philosophy.

All that said, you may well still not see what the issue is, but I hope that clarifies a little what I think it is.

First of all, you are an excellent writer. — Fire Ologist

Thank you :pray:

Phenomenology can focus on the glass itself, which represents the subject, and is simultaneously colored by the “out there” as it vaguely reflects your own face on the inside of the window pane - the subjective imposed on the objective, in one simultaneous view. — Fire Ologist

That’s not quite it. The allegory of ‘me looking out the window’ is the self-awareness of the act of looking. A reflection of oneself in a pane of glass is not itself first-person - it is not a subject. That’s the key point. Remember, what this is addressing is the omission or exclusion of the subject so as to derive a view which is hoped to be, if not completely objective, then as near to it as possible.

I would be astonished if consciousness as a phenomenon didn't turn out to be biological, and capable of scientific explanation. Subjectivity -- what it's like to be conscious -- may be a different matter. — J

Suffice to say here that the reason I start with the ‘Cartesian division’ is to highlight the way in which modern science and also culture simply assumes the ‘self-other’ or ‘self-world’ division. That in itself is a kind of implicit stance or way of being in the world, fundamental to the modern mindset. Modern thought has been completely world-changing in its sweep, but Chalmers is saying, ahem, pardon me, but what about 'consciousness'? (by which I think he actually means 'being'.) Hence my often-quoted reference to Bernstein's 'Cartesian Anxiety'. There's a section devoted to that in The Embodied Mind.

The authors see the 'Cartesian Anxiety' as a fundamental tension in modern thought that arises from the legacy of Descartes' dualism ('the Cartesian division). This anxiety stems from the fear that if knowledge cannot be grounded on an absolute, objective foundation, then we are left with relativism, where knowledge can never be secure. The authors argue that this dichotomy—between a fully objective reality independent of our perception and a world where everything is merely a projection of the mind—is itself a false problem, one that has trapped Western epistemology in an unresolved crisis.

Their alternative is grounded in enactive cognition, which dissolves this anxiety by showing that knowledge is neither an objective grasp of an external reality nor a purely subjective construction. Instead it is an embodied process that arises through our interaction with the world. Cognition, in this framework, is not about representing a pre-given reality but about bringing forth a world through lived experience and structural coupling with the environment. This challenges the Cartesian assumption that knowledge must be either a mirror of reality or a complete fabrication of the mind.

The authors draw from Buddhist philosophy to support this perspective, particularly the idea of dependent origination, which suggests that there is no fixed, independent reality separate from our cognitive engagement ('everything arises due to causes and conditions'). The enactive, embodied approach to knowing moves beyond the paralysis of Cartesian Anxiety and recognizes that meaning emerges through our dynamic interactions rather than being imposed from an external or internal source.

However, in response to @Joshs remarks above, I'll note that the Buddhist principles in the book provide a normative dimension to the practice of enactivism which is often absent in contemporary approaches. Buddhism pursues a transformative insight, which has resonances with Husserl's epochē (which is made especially clear in the IEP article on the Phenomenological Reduction). This transformative element provides a kind of 'pole star' that differentiates it from moral relativism but without falling into dogmatism.

Thanks. Depressing reading. I really understand the hostility towards 'woke culture' - the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) is about the only free-to-air TV I watch. Their news bulletins are excruciatingly 'woke', invariably airing social justice and identity politics in the main broadcast every evening. I also understand the hostility towards 'cultural Marxism' in the Universities. But the 'cure' these kinds of people is offering are far, far worse than what they see as the disease. And besides, Donald J. Trump has no allegiance to any ideology whatever - he's only interest is self-interest, but all these reactionaries have hitched their wagon to his star, and besides, most of it is sheer lust for power, masquerading as some kind of righteous quest to correct social ills. They're all stinking hypocrites as far as I'm concerned.

Kill the program and gains may evaporate. — BC

I know, from what little I've read, the ripple effects of Musk 'feeding USAID through the woodchipper' are going to affect entire countries. As I said already, it's the opposite of philanthropy - it's large-scale misanthropy, again masquerading as ideological correctness ('stamping out waste and fraud'.)

Do you hold the view that America will be a Christian nationalist dictatorship before the end of this year? — Tom Storm

If they’re not, it won’t be through lack of trying.

And the part of the US who don't want this and oppose this will just sit there and take it? That's just lazy. — Christoffer

There are some protests starting to appear but it’s going to take a lot more than protests. The Democrats don’t have a clear leader.

We’re getting there…..

Some of the consequences of the USAID shutdown

Here’s the wreckage as of Feb. 14, as compiled by the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition.


At least 11,500 Americans and 54,575 foreigners have lost their jobs. Nearly $1 billion in payments for work already done has been frozen. Nearly $500 million in food is sitting in ports, ships and warehouses. In Syria, a country struggling to recover from chaos, food and other support for nearly 900,000 people has been suspended. In West Africa, 3.4 million people in 11 countries have lost drug treatment for deadly tropical diseases. At least 328,000 HIV-positive people in 25 countries aren’t getting lifesaving drugs. — WaPo

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/02/21/usaid-trump-freeze-marocco-foreign-aid/


(I recall, but can’t re-find, a remark by a Republican, dismissing concern, along the lines of ‘some kid crying because he didn’t get his milk bottle’.)

Caritas Internationalis, which coordinates Catholic relief services, was even blunter. Alistair Dutton, the group’s secretary general, said in a Feb. 10 statement from Rome: “Stopping USAID abruptly will kill millions of people and condemn hundreds of millions more to lives of dehumanizing poverty. This is an inhumane affront to people’s God-given human dignity, that will cause immense suffering.”

I do often notice a general deficiency of wonder both in myself and among others, although at least I wonder why.

What with Trump wanting to sack the whole CIA and most of the FBI, while spouting Russian propaganda - well, let’s just say, his security detail will have their work cut out.

Bear in mind many of Trump’s actions directly contravene what would have been Republican policy before he took over. Marco Rubio used to lambast Obama for not being tough enough against Putin. Now he’s completely capitulating to Trump’s adulation of him. That’s only one example and there are many more. So Congress has entirely abdicated any responsibility to try and restrain him.

In other words, how resilient is the Republic of the USA? In your opinion? — kazan

Not resilient enough in my view. Trump is methodically dismantling and dissolving independent agencies and actors and replacing them with party apparatchiks and people who will swear loyalty to him over the Constitution. He is acting so brazenly and with such reckless haste that the judicial system cannot keep pace. He’s also now protected by the Supreme Court guarantee of immunity for all official acts by a President. You may remember he said on the campaign trail, vote for me in 2024, you won’t have to vote again. He walked it back later but I think he really meant it. We are watching a right wing takeover of the American Republic.

No wonder Husserl expressed admiration for Buddhist principles. But I think more germane to the theme of ‘seeing truly’ are the opening sentences of the IEP article:

There is an experience in which it is possible for us to come to the world with no knowledge or preconceptions in hand; it is the experience of astonishment. The “knowing” we have in this experience stands in stark contrast to the “knowing” we have in our everyday lives, where we come to the world with theory and “knowledge” in hand, our minds already made up before we ever engage the world. However, in the experience of astonishment, our everyday “knowing,” when compared to the “knowing” that we experience in astonishment, is shown up as a pale epistemological imposter and is reduced to mere opinion by comparison.

‘Wisdom begins with wonder’ comes to mind.

What we’re witnessing is the dismantling of the American Republic and the instigation of a one-party state. Plain as day.

Phenomenology shows us that the ‘outside’ is already an idealization constituted within transcendental consciousness. In other words, the very distinction between outside and inside is an artifact of the naive thinking of the natural attitude. — Joshs

I’d agree with that. The example of ‘looking out the window’ was simply to make a distinction between naturalism, which only considers what is seen, and phenomenology, which also takes into account the act of looking.

If I understand the aim of your OP correctly, you’re trying to get to the bottom of the relation between subject and world — Joshs

I very much appreciate your remarks. But what motivated the essay is the sense that objectivity, what is objectively the case, is the sole criterion of truth. That whatever really exists is ‘out there somewhere’ as the saying goes. I think that will become clearer in the following sections.

By understanding what an object is for a bacterium… — Joshs

We will have a much better grasp of the nature of cognition generally, agree. But to me the principle subject matter of philosophy is the human condition.

Is there more to the nature of things than this? — Joshs

Whatever that might be may not be made subject to propositional knowledge, which already is a matter of implicit consensus, but it may be a subject of insight which is conveyed symbolically or by gesture or in art. Besides, this is where I feel that Husserl’s ‘wesen’ (essence) is significant. Granted they’re not self-existent platonic forms, but they’re still an underlying reality in some important sense, that are not grasped by objectivism. (I will come back to that.)

Whether I exist to subjectively experience it is irrelevant to the fact that the objective notions and proofs can be taken, learned, and concluded in the same way by any being with the necessary minimal intelligence. — Philosophim

‘Any being’ presumably meaning a ‘human being’, in that so far as we know, we are the only beings with such capabilities.

We do not have truth, we have knowledge. — Philosophim

Knowledge is not truth. — Philosophim

Those are rather sweeping statements. As it happens, I do believe that the grasp of, insight into, what is truly so is attainable and is the proper subject for philosophical contemplation.



Further to the distinction between the structures of subjectivity and the merely personal, a snippet from the IEP article on Phenomenological Reduction (a very detailed and deep article, I will add, and one I’m still absorbing)

Thus, it is by means of the epochē and reduction proper that the human ‘I’ becomes distinguished from the constituting ‘I’; it is by abandoning our acceptance of the world that we are enabled to see it as captivating and hold it as a theme. It is from this perspective that the phenomenologist is able to see the world without the framework of science or the psychological assumptions of the individual. — IEP

The same distinction I made between the subjective and the merely personal.

Thanks all for the very constructive feedback, I’m away from desk for today look forward to further remarks and criticisms.

Part 2 | Phenomenology Rescues the Subject


Phenomenology, a transformative philosophical movement that emerged in the early 20th century, seeks disciplined insight into the nature of lived experience by returning to ‘the things themselves’— referring to the direct experience of phenomena as they appear to the subject, rather than through their abstract, symbolic representation in thought. Founder Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) realised that the starting point for philosophy is not analysis of the objective world ‘out there,’ which is properly the role of natural science, but insight into the ways in which this world is disclosed to consciousness through paying close attention to the nature of experience, moment by moment. Husserl saw that rather than being a passive recipient of external data, the mind actively participates in the process of knowing shaped by underlying structures of consciousness. Through the method of the epochē, or ‘phenomenological reduction,’ Husserl reveals how these structures shape not only experience but the very foundation of our understanding of the nature of existence.

In contrast to the outlook of naturalism, Husserl believed all knowledge, all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all. Consciousness should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world, since consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place. For Husserl it is not that consciousness creates the world in any ontological sense… but rather that the world is opened up, made meaningful, or disclosed through consciousness. The world is inconceivable apart from consciousness. Treating consciousness as part of the world, reifying consciousness, is precisely to ignore consciousness’s foundational, disclosive role. For this reason, all natural science is naive about its point of departure, for Husserl. Since consciousness is presupposed in all science and knowledge, then the proper approach to the study of consciousness itself must be a transcendental one — one which… focuses on the conditions for the possibility of knowledge.⁷

Husserl showed that every judgment about the world, even those based on scientific observation, depends on interpretive acts, must be understood as constituents of the ‘lifeworld’ (Lebenswelt)⁸, the domain of immediate experience that underlies theoretical abstractions, which had been previously ignored by an over-emphasis on the objective. The Lebenswelt is where objectivity and subjectivity interact — it is the shared foundation that makes objective inquiry possible. Husserl, in effect, had realised anew the role of the scientist in the pursuit of scientific knowledge.

This insight reframes the question of ‘things as they truly are.’ If all experience is mediated by consciousness, then objectivity itself is always bound to the structures of subjectivity. Far from being an impediment, the subject is implicit in any coherent philosophy⁹.

To clarify this distinction, consider the act of looking out a window. Naturalism concerns itself with what you can see outside: the objects, events, and phenomena unfolding in the world. It aims to describe these with precision and detachment, focusing solely on their objective characteristics. Phenomenology, by contrast, is like studying the act of looking itself: the awareness of the scene, the structures of perception, and the way the world is disclosed to you as a subject. While naturalism investigates the external landscape, phenomenology turns the lens inward, asking how that landscape appears to and is interpreted by the observer. So it is characterised by a certain kind of detached self-awareness. This shift in focus introduces a self-awareness that naturalism, in its strict adherence to objective fact, often neglects.

Husserl’s phenomenology was to become the wellspring for many later developments in European philosophy, in particular that of Martin Heidegger and other existentialists. But it hardly need be said that Husserl was not the first or only philosopher of the first–person experience. For that, we can look back into the annals of philosophical spirituality. (That will be the subject of Part 3.)

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7. Routledge, Introduction to Phenomenology, p139

8. The term Lebenswelt, translated as ‘lifeworld,’ refers to the pre-theoretical, lived world of everyday experience. For Husserl, this is the foundation upon which all scientific and objective knowledge is built. The Lebenswelt encompasses the cultural, historical, and experiential context in which phenomena appear to us and is often taken for granted or overlooked in the pursuit of abstract objectivity. A related concept is the Umwelt, introduced by biologist Jakob von Uexküll, which describes the subjective world as experienced by an organism, shaped by its unique sensory and perceptual capacities. Both terms emphasize that our experience of reality is always mediated by our cognitive and sensory structures, situating objective knowledge within a broader subjective context.

9. This was made abundantly clear by the ‘observer problem’ of quantum physics.

Additional references:

The Phenomenological Reduction IEP

Key Ideas in Phenomenology: The Natural Attitude

Kuhn’s paradigmatic model does not rely on personal perspective in the sense of a subjective representation of reality. — Joshs

Also wanted to add - yes, of course you're right about that. It was carelessly expressed on my part. But he does insist on the primacy of scientific paradigms, which are in some important sense, conceptual constructions.

Subjectivity — or perhaps we could coin the term ‘subject-hood’ — encompasses the shared and foundational aspects of perception and understanding, as explored by phenomenology. The personal, by contrast, pertains to the idiosyncratic desires, biases, and attachments of a specific individual.

It is difficult for me to understand this. Isn't it some kind of a big mind or trascendental ego? By the way, The essential structures of a transcendental ego are essential because they are discovered in an eidetic reduction of psychology. In such a case we are talking about an essence that belongs to every human being. But there is a continuity with what I am saying: the reduction is the product of an imaginary variation (method of phenomenology). It is a process that leads us to a repetition, finding this structure in all people, don't you think? It is something that we discover as repetition through a neutralization (imaginary variation).

This is too deep in fenomenology, you can ignore me. — JuanZu

I think you're on the right track in one way. The reason I introduced the distinction between the 'merely personal' and the 'subjective', is because of the way that the latter gets dismissed as being the former. What I meant was, Western culture has principled respect for the individual as 'freedom of conscience' - but at the same time, principles which are not objectively verifiable are treated as being subjective or personal, which kind of trivialises them. So yes, I'm pointing to something like the transcendental ego of Kant and Husserl. You get that right.

But I don't know if you're on the right track with the phenomenological reduction. I'm not expert at that subject, but it is not at all to do with repetition or the socialisation of belief. However, I will postpone responding to that, because Part 2, which I might as well go ahead and post soon, because it is already being anticipated in the commentary, will explicitly bring in phenomenology.

The current subject of many animated philosophical debates is whether we humans are able to see ‘things as they truly are’. At issue are the perennial philosophical questions: What is real? and How can we come to know it? These are questions fundamental to philosophy and science alike.
— Wayfarer

Certainly we are able to see things as they truly are. There is no way the world is ‘in itself’ The world shows itself to us in our practical engagements with it. This world that we are already deeply and directly in touch with is the only world that will ever matter to us. — Joshs

Consider an allegory. Three men are viewing a parcel of land. One is a real-estate developer, one an agriculturalist, and one a geological surveyor. They all have different uses for that land, and would all develop it in different ways, with very different consequences. If what that land is, is entirely determined by the use it is eventually put to, does that mean the land itself has no reality independently of those uses?

Of course, this is only an allegory, but it raises the question: do these different perspectives fully exhaust the nature of what the land is? Or is there something more to it?

There needs to be a concrete conclusion, even if it is provisional — Leontiskos

Think of this part as the introduction. It is the statement of the issue. The ensuing sections will look at various ways to address it.

If there is, in fact, a state of affairs prior to any mind apprehending it, then that would be 'natural'. For that reason 'objectivity' seems to be a concept which could only apply to consensus. — AmadeusD

This was discussed in another thread, Why is Nature True? What is 'natural' turns out to be quite a difficult thing to nail down

Objectivity only exists if a subject exists to promulgate it. But that which is being objectivized may exist (have independent reality) without subjective explanation/inquiry and hence without objective explanation.

Maybe too simplified? — kazan

It’s certainly one aspect of it.

Good points.

The theorem transcends and become "objective" by repetition and neutralization of particular genesis. — JuanZu

So if I understand you correctly, you're saying that objectivity isn’t just about consensus, but about how an insight is tested, repeated, and confirmed across different contexts until its original, subjective or cultural genesis is no longer relevant. In that sense, objectivity emerges when a claim is validated to the point that it 'transcends' individual perspectives and particular origins. Would you say this is close to what you mean?

When two persons perform the same proof of the theorem both are neutralized and it can no longer be said that they are the raison d'être of the theorem. — JuanZu

I think it's a mistaken notion of 'subjectivity'. Subjectivity doesn't only pertain to what is specific to a single individual. Later in the essay I distinguish the subjective from the personal:

we must... differentiate the subjective from the merely personal. The subjective refers to the structures of experience through which reality is disclosed to consciousness. In an important sense, all sentient beings are subjects of experience. Subjectivity — or perhaps we could coin the term ‘subject-hood’ — encompasses the shared and foundational aspects of perception and understanding, as explored by phenomenology. The personal, by contrast, pertains to the idiosyncratic desires, biases, and attachments of a specific individual.

This development, with Trump openly supporting Putin, is by far the most serious international and foreign policy crisis since 9/11.

I guess you prefer that ideology to such an extent that you can't even listen to eyewitness testimony. — Leontiskos

Your self description. One radical anti-vaxxers word. You're trolling, over and out.