‘I experience through my body therefore I am.” — Tom Storm
As I understand it, phenomenology is non-committal on questions of metaphysics or ontology. It takes the self and world at their word; how it all seems is to be unearthed and examined with a richly metaphorical eye, prior to any metaphysical commitments based on this or that assumption about the nature of reality. — Janus
it cannot be explained where it goes when it isn’t, re: deep sleep — Mww
Edit: Also, M-P is easily among my favorite prose stylists in philosophy. Reading him makes one feel aerial. — StreetlightX
At the very least the book's negative results, it's 'dispatching', as you say, of what M-P calls 'empiricism' and 'intellectualism', are timeless contributions. — StreetlightX
I'm grateful that Nagel took his stand to defend the fact of subjectivity in those dark times. But I don't think mere acknowledgement of the subjective character of experience should be threatening to anyone with reasonable expectations about the "completeness" of philosophical "explanation". Perhaps many reductive physicalists have unreasonable expectations about theoretical completeness. So does Nagel, as evidenced by his commitment to an egregiously inflated conception of the principle of sufficient reason in his more recent Mind and Cosmos.Ever since Thomas Nagel wrote his influential essay What is it Like to Be a Bat (1974), many philosophers and associated hangers on have been preoccupied with understanding phenomenal consciousness as physicalism’s potential coup de grâce. — Tom Storm
I suppose some phenomenologists get carried away with their brackets. Cartesians make theoretical mountains from molehills of conceivability. Too many modern philosophers treat phenomena, appearances, experiences, sense-data, or "ideas" like streams of disembodied pictures floating through a void or through our heads. Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of perception seems a valuable correction to such biases in the philosophical tradition, in emphasizing the originally integrated character of phenomena. We do not find ourselves in experience as immaterial minds enjoying a picture show. We find ourselves as "embodied subjects" living in a world among others.I’d be interested to hear what members thoughts are about what an understanding of phenomenology can bring to the hoary mind/body question. And can the hard problem of consciousness be restated coherently by the phenomenological approach?
Looking over some writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, (much of whose project seems to have been a protracted swing dance with Descartes) it appears he believes that the issue of dualism can be dissolved by a recasting the cogito as, ‘I experience through my body therefore I am.”
But does this accomplish much more than change the language without altering the problem? — Tom Storm
I just posted in another thread about phenomenology. And as I've already said in my post there, it is not an argument, but a declaration. It doesn't try to connect to any basis of the claim. It's the self and consciousness and the experience. But no effort given to defend it.But I am unclear how transformative this really is and whether it might not also be a pathway to some additional befuddlement. — Tom Storm
I suppose you're right to suggest that such work may also serve as a "pathway to some additional befuddlement". Are there any canonical works in philosophy that aren't attended by that risk? — Cabbage Farmer
Personally, I don't find much philosophical interest in the mind/body problem or in the hard problem of consciousness. If you do think there's a lot of value in such discourses, I expect it's unlikely that any sort of phenomenology is going to provide arguments that "solve" those problems for you. But I do think there's a tendency for work like Merleau-Ponty's to attract some readers who are fascinated by the "possibilities" suggested by such traditional problems, and occasionally to draw them toward more moderate philosophical views. McDowell's Mind and World is another such flycatcher, discharged from squarely within the contemporary Anglophone tradition. — Cabbage Farmer
Why assume that meat like us can achieve an "explanation of everything" integrated in the manner of the formal sciences? As a humble skeptic, it seems to me that philosophy is deranged by such far-flung assumptions. — Cabbage Farmer
It's okay if it sounds self-involved indulgence. But I was speaking in terms of a philosophical argument.makes it sound like self-involved indulgence. — Tom Storm
I hope I wasn't out of line. — Tom Storm
For you, is M-P an enhancement of Husserl's work or a heretical adaptation of it? — Tom Storm
But phenomenology is another thing. If one wants to speak of experiences and consciousness, I need more than enumeration of subjective descriptions. I want to be able to say, so we have this, what now? Where is the challenge to this? Everyone has it. — Caldwell
Phenomenology is just as much about objectivity and intersubjectivity and the way they are inextricably bound together with subjectivity such that no science can escape the fact that its grounding and condition of possibility leads empiricism back to phenomenology. — Joshs
Phenomenology as metaphysics and ontology: Heidegger presents something similar, with the addition of historicity and hermeneutics. Do you think Heidegger's critique of Husserl for neglecting the two Aitches is sound?
And what about Merleau-Ponty's correction of Heidegger's (and Husserl's?) neglect of the b — Janus
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