Phenomenology may well study 'you looking out of the window', but what consigns it to the lesser status it suffers is not that, it's the fact that the corpus of information is derives from that study is completely ephemeral, having no anchor of 'fit-to-world' to hold it. — Isaac

Sure, the phenomenological perspective is useless for scientific purposes. But one's own experience is all that a person has, and all that is or can be relevant to a person.
Even when one contemplates the words of others (whatever those words may be about), it still comes down to one's own experience of those words.

Sure, the phenomenological perspective is useless for scientific purposes. But one's own experience is all that a person has, and all that is or can be relevant to a person. — baker

No one doubts that but the question remains, so what? To what extent do we want to amplify or diminish this curiosity.

I do wonder how one does phenomenology with any kind of rigour and if anyone can provide an example of a benefit it provides in more specific terms. — Tom Storm

It's pretty much what practice according to Early Buddhism is about.
See this article, for example: https://pathpress.org/notes-on-meditation/

No one doubts that but the question remains, so what? To what extent do we want to amplify or diminish this curiosity. — Tom Storm

On the contrary, how could one not be interested in this private experience and how could one not explore it?

Thank you for the passages.

Not the point at issue. Nobody disputes that modern engineering is a marvellous thing, but it’s applicability to the problems of philosophy is another matter. — Wayfarer

Perfect example. Engineering is not applicable to the problems of philosophy. No-one's going to disagree there. Nothing in that means that alternative approaches are applicable. You can't support the applicability of any branch or approach in philosophy by saying that alternatives to it are not applicable.

Not sure how you can study yourself looking out the window unless it means reflecting on your subjective experience of your experience (sorry for the gratuitous repetition). Introspection, I guess. — Tom Storm

Yeah, I think that's true. But the data you have to hand is always only your recollection of the experience, not the experience itself, and that recollection will be pre-filtered by what you expect it to be, which in turn will be influenced by the type of analysis you believe in. so you're not really gathering data so much as fabricating it in the form you expect from scraps.

one's own experience is all that a person has, and all that is or can be relevant to a person. — baker

True, but again 'all we have' is not sufficient to demonstrate that a study has a corpus of usefully shareable information either.

Engineering is not applicable to the problems of philosophy. No-one's going to disagree there. Nothing in that means that alternative approaches are applicable. — Isaac

‘It’s neither an engineering problem, nor a problem of any other kind!'

There's a passage I sometimes refer to. I was going to post it earlier in this thread, or some other thread, and now can't remember if I have, but it's relevant. It has to do with the problem that is introduced BY the 'modern scientific approach', which wants to detemine the objective truth of things as they are in themselves, irrespective of one's opinion, perspective or view. This it does by introducing the notion of the quantitative dimension of the primary objects of analysis - mass, velocity, distribution, density, position, and so on. It holds that the objects of analysis are in some fundamental sense self-existent, or mind-independent (which means more or less the same). That is why I referred to naturalism as being 'that which you see out the window'. It is also why physics became paradigmatic, not only for science, but for knowledge generally - hence, 'physicalism', the contention that what is physical is real. I believe, @Tom Storm, this is the paradigm you default to - hence your references to the 'evidential basis' for your beliefs. Of course, you are far from alone there, it's probably the view of the majority.

However it became clear to some philosophers that there is something fundamental which is missed by the 'subject-object' relationship invoked by physics (not least because of a conceptual issue in physics itself). This is because at the outset, modern physics leaves out, or brackets out, the observing subject, so as to derive as purely objective a view as possible of the observed object, the so-called 'view from nowhere'. The problem is, as phenomenology saw, that we are in fact not outside or, or separate to, reality as a whole. We're separate from this or that aspect of reality, from the micro- to the cosmic level. But ultimately we're not outside of or apart from reality as such. This is the import of Husserl's concept of lebensworld and umwelt, that we live in a 'meaning world', not a world of objects per se.

It is this sense of otherness or separateness or outsideness that lead to what philosopher Richard Bernstein has referred to as 'the Cartesian anxiety'.

Cartesian anxiety refers to the notion that, since René Descartes posited his influential form of body-mind dualism, Western civilization has suffered from a longing for ontological certainty, or feeling that scientific methods, and especially the study of the world as a thing separate from ourselves, should be able to lead us to a firm and unchanging knowledge of ourselves and the world around us. The term is named after Descartes because of his well-known emphasis on "mind" as different from "body", "self" as different from "other".

Richard J. Bernstein coined the term in his 1983 book Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis.

You've literally just repeated, for the third time now, the exact deception I originally posted about. That entire post demonstrates (quite admirably) how science does not account for certain qualitative values.

It does nothing whatsoever toward demonstrating that any alternative study does account for those values. (As opposed to it simply claiming to do so).

If the claim of scientism (that science does indeed account for them) is dismissed, then a claim alone is clearly insufficient ground to believe any study does so satisfactorily.

I have this great metal detector. Nothing else can detect metal like this thing! And I think it shows beyond doubt that the only things worth collecting are metal things. If you believe otherwise, it's up to you to prove it!

one's own experience is all that a person has, and all that is or can be relevant to a person.
— baker

True, but again 'all we have' is not sufficient to demonstrate that a study has a corpus of usefully shareable information either. — Isaac

Why would one want to do such a study?

Here I'm assuming you're talking about what is usually understood as "scientific study", and the topic are personal/private experiences.

It does nothing whatsoever toward demonstrating that any alternative study does account for those values. (As opposed to it simply claiming to do so).

If the claim of scientism (that science does indeed account for them) is dismissed, then a claim alone is clearly insufficient ground to believe any study does so satisfactorily. — Isaac

As with all studies, one interested in a particular field of study has to play by the rules of said field.
This is true whether we're talking about the field of what is usually understood as "scientific study" or whether we're talking about what is usually understood as "spiritual study".
Staying within the domain of one field, one will not see the merit of other fields, nor be able to study them.

You've literally just repeated, for the third time now, the exact deception I originally posted about. That entire post demonstrates (quite admirably) how science does not account for certain qualitative values.

It does nothing whatsoever toward demonstrating that any alternative study does account for those values. (As opposed to it simply claiming to do so). — Isaac

Yes, it's a claim. A claim made by relatively small, highly specialized groups of people. If one wishes to test those claims, one has to become a member of said highly specialized group of people and play by their rules. (Just like one has to earn some degree and other credentials in science (ie. become a member of the group called "scientists") if one wishes to properly understand the claims that science makes and to test them.)

If the claim of scientism (that science does indeed account for them) is dismissed, then a claim alone is clearly insufficient ground to believe any study does so satisfactorily.

This is an inescapable problem that applies to every field of study when observed by an outsider.

Which field of study does satisfactorily address the question "What is green?" Chemistry or linguistics? Or maybe physics? Psychology?

Here I'm assuming you're talking about what is usually understood as "scientific study", and the topic are personal/private experiences. — baker

No. I was referring to any non-scientific investigation.

As with all studies, one interested in a particular field of study has to play by the rules of said field.
This is true whether we're talking about the field of what is usually understood as "scientific study" or whether we're talking about what is usually understood as "spiritual study".
Staying within the domain of one field, one will not see the merit of other fields, nor be able to study them. — baker

I think that's true to an extent. My comments here were aimed at non-scientists (in the main), so the critique would still apply. If one needs to be embedded in Buddhist practice to be able to judge what it can and cannot discover, then we should expect to hear about the limits of neuroscience only from actual neuroscientists. Alternatively, if layman can say what neuroscience can't account for it seems one-sided to say the least to claim that I'd have to practice religion to be able to comment on what it can't account for.

This is an inescapable problem that applies to every field of study when observed by an outsider. — baker

Yep. This is basically the point I was making. "science doesn't account for..." can either be treated as a lay claim (in which case we can make no lesser claim of any other field without full knowledge of it's content), or it can be treated as an expert claim, in which case it should only come from someone who is an expert in the field concerned.

As such, the claim here, oft repeated, that science does not account for X in the way that religion/phenomenology/woo does, can only come from a Buddhist neuroscientist!

Naturalism is the study of 'what you see out the window'. Phenomenology is the study of 'you looking out the window'. — Wayfarer

No, this is a common misapprension of phenomenology as introspection into an inner subjective realm. It is an accurate depiction of the everyday use of the term phenomenological, but philosophical phenomenology after Husserl is about the replacement of naturalism’s assumption of a ‘subject looking’ vs ‘objects out the window’ binary with a different binary:subject and object are mutually created and recreated in each moment of experience.
Phenomenology redefines the nature of ‘what is out the window’ just as much as it redefines the subjective aspect of the relation to the world. Husserl spends as much time on the constitution of the real , the empirically objective and the socially constituted interpersonal realm he does on the subjective side.

What differentiates naturalism (and appeals to those who - perhaps excessively - idolise it), is that the corpus of information it yields about it's object of study is readily shared, without (by and large), the person holding that information having very much impact on it. If an engineer says a car works, it probably works no less for me than it does for you.


Phenomenology may well study 'you looking out of the window', but what consigns it to the lesser status it suffers is not that, it's the fact that the corpus of information is derives from that study is completely ephemeral, having no anchor of 'fit-to-world' to hold it. — Isaac

What differentiates naturalism is its presupposition that the person holding a meaning can define it as ‘information’, which presumes that the person holding it “ does. to have much impact on it “. That’s the classic realist trope, the supposed independence of the real world information from the subject that apprehends it.

What consigns it to lessor status is that it is more difficult to grasp. Nevertheless , as I have mentioned to you before , phenomenology is only one of a growing list of branches of philosophy which are being joined by psychological approaches which abandon representational realism.

As far as ‘ anchor of fit to world, surprisingly , a reciprocal anchor of fit extending from subject tot world and world to subject can actually be a more pragmatically useful sort of anchor of fit than the representational realist version.

If I send you a box of Oreos, will you read Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception? If after reading it you still feel the same about phenomenology at least you’ll have a better sense of what’s being compared here

Phenomenology redefines the nature of ‘what is out the window’ just as much as it redefines the subjective aspect of the relation to the world. Husserl spends as much time on the constitution of the real , the empirically objective and the socially constituted interpersonal realm he does on the subjective side. — Joshs

Josh, that sounds good but what does it actually mean? Can someone provide a basic example of phenomenology at work looking out a window or doing something interesting? Vague articulations of subject-object and the observing subject aren't really useful to me unless we can see what the contribution of this perspective might be.

hence, 'physicalism', the contention that what is physical is real. I believe, Tom Storm, this is the paradigm you default to - hence your references to the 'evidential basis' for your beliefs. Of course, you are far from alone there, it's probably the view of the majority. — Wayfarer

I'm sure glad I'm not alone in this - in my shopping for ideas so far in life it seems the most useful approach based on both personal experience and human continuity. But I am interested in what people believe and why.

Josh, that sounds good but what does it actually mean? Can someone provide a basic example of phenomenology at work looking out a window or doing something interesting? Vague articulations of subject-object and the observing subject aren't really useful to me unless we can see what the contribution of this perspective might be. — Tom Storm

I know is you’d like something f you can wrap your hands around, but its a real bitch to provide a summary, at least for me. The best I can think of at the moment is a description of how Husserl comes up with the notion of a real spatial object. That may give us at least a starting point.

Edmund Husserl, the founder of modern phenomenological philosophy, attempted to chart a course between realism and idealism by grounding all experience in perception and grounding perception in structures of intentionality in which the subjective and objective aspects(what he called the noetic and noematic poles) are inextricably dependent on each other and inseparable. He was very much influenced in his project by the work of Franz Brentano, but went beyond Brentano's notion of inentionality by abandoning Brrentano's naturalism.

One of the key aspects of Husserl's approach was his explanation of the origin of spatial objects. Rather than defining an object in terms of its self-subsistence over time with its properties and attributes, he believed such entities to be , not fictions, but idealities. That is to say, what we , in a naive naturalist attitude, point to as this 'real' table in front of us, is the constantly changing product of a process of progressive constitution in consciousness. The real object is in fact an idealization.This process begins at the most primordial level with what he called primal impressions, which we can imagine as the simplest whiffs of sensation(these he calls actual, rather than real. Actual impressions only appear once in time as what they are. When we see something like a table, all that we actually perceive in front of us is an impoverished, contingent partial sense experience.

We fill in the rest of experience in two ways. Al experience implies a temporal structure of retention, primal impression and protention. Each moment presents us with a new sensation, th4 retained memory of the just preceding sensation and anticipation of what is to come. We retain the memory of previous experiences with the 'same' object and those memories become fused with the current aspect of it. A the same time, we protend forward, anticipating aspects of the object that are not yet there for us, based on prior experience with it. For example, we only see the front of the table, but anticipate as an empty horizon, its sides, and this empty anticipation joins with the current view and the memory of previous views to form a complex fused totality. Perception constantly is motivated , that is tends toward toward the fulfillment of the experience of the object as integrated singularity, as this same' table'.

Thus , through a process of progress adumbration of partial views, we constitute what we call and object. It must be added that not just the sens of sight, but all other sense modalities can come into play in constituting the object. And most importantly, there is no experience of an object without kineshthetic sensation of our voluntary movement in relation to the thing seen. Intrinsic to what the object means as object is our knowing how its appearance will change when we move our head in a certain way, or our eyes , or when we touch it. The object is what it is for us in relation to the way we know we can change its appearance relative to our interactions with it.

In sum, what the naive realist calls an external object of perception, Husserl treats as a relative product of constant but regilated changing correlated modes of givenness and adumbrations composed of retentions and protentions. The 'thing' is a tentative , evolving achievement of memory , anticipation and voluntary movement.

From this vantage, attempting to explain this constituting process in psychophysiological terms by reducing it to the language of naive realism is an attempt to explain the constituting on the basis of the constituted. The synthetic structure of temporal constitution is irreducible to 'physical' terms. On the contrary, it is the 'physicai' that rests on a complex constitutive subjective process that is ignored in the naive attitude.

I have this great metal detector. Nothing else can detect metal like this thing! And I think it shows beyond doubt that the only things worth collecting are metal things. If you believe otherwise, it's up to you to prove it! — Wayfarer

Nice metaphor. If all you are looking for is X then an X detector is all you will need. Of course in life it is pretty easy to show the guy with the X detector that there are also Y's and Z's of value which can't be found this way. For me the issue is not so much in the nature of a limited approach but in the quality of any evidence or reasons for taking up an alternative approach.

Thanks for this I will need an hour to think it through. Do you practice this? Can you maybe provide a vignette of it at work? Dot points?

I’ll try. You could say I practice it, in that it low behind all of my thinking. Where it really comes in handy is in psychotherapy. Two of my favorite clinical psychologists, George Kelly and Eugene Gendlin, used phenomenological ways of thinking in their approaches to clients.

I think the most profound aspect of their part poaches is i. thei integration of affect, feeling, emotion and mood on the one hand and cognition, rationality and intentionality on the other. This split is really at the heart of the ‘hard problem,

Thanks. I can see how it can provide a model for consideration but I can't se e how it actually works. I have known of film critics who practiced a phenomenological approach to their craft but generally they have been wankers (if you'll forgive the harsh judgment).

I imagine like existentialism the word has numerous applications.

You mention psychotherapy - are you a psychologist or talking about in treatment experiences?

I was a counselor years ago, but since then I have been writing and publishing in psychology and philosophy, with a focus on the relationship. between affect and cognition.

https://independent.academia.edu/JoshSoffer

Wow. You've been busy. Against Theory of Mind Accounts of Autism looks very interesting.

The problem is, as phenomenology saw, that we are in fact not outside or, or separate to, reality as a whole. We're separate from this or that aspect of reality, from the micro- to the cosmic level. But ultimately we're not outside of or apart from reality as such. This is the import of Husserl's concept of lebensworld and umwelt, that we live in a 'meaning world', not a world of objects per se. — Wayfarer

I've thought about this in different ways for many years, and always asked myself how does it assist us and where does it take us? All knowledge is tentative and subject to observer bias and is held in place by a broader cultural presuppositions and personal psychological factors. True. Any method of understanding/apprehending the world has limits or conceits. But some models (to me anyway) have more deficits than others. Living in a 'meaning world' is just another model complete with concerns - which we can dig up later if we need to.

The various critiques of methodological naturalism always reminds me of a cute bit of doggerel I used to see up on the wall in a cake shop:

As you ramble on through life, Brother, Whatever be your goal, Keep your eye upon the doughnut, And not upon the hole.

That is to say, what we, in a naive naturalist attitude, point to as this 'real' table in front of us, is the constantly changing product of a process of progressive constitution in consciousness. — Joshs

This aspect of Husserl's thought has a lot in common with Buddhist philosophy. It is the basis of śūnyatā, the emptiness of objects of perception, 'emptiness' meaning 'lack of intrinsic existence'.

Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception — Joshs

I tried to read this but couldn't make any headway. The only insights I've been able to glean about him are from articles and abstracts.

I've thought about this in different ways for many years, and always asked myself how does it assist us and where does it take us? — Tom Storm

I think that sense of anxiety - angst, in German philosophy - has to be strong enough to motivate you. Today's world is a safe space if we want to cushion ourselves against it. I think one of the reasons that philosophy from earlier times was so vivid and dramatic, is because life was much harder then.

All knowledge is tentative and subject to observer bias and is held in place by a broader cultural presuppositions and personal psychological factors. — Tom Storm

Plato set the bar for knowledge very high. I wonder how much of what we think we know would clear that bar. As I said, I think modern culture creates a safe space for delusion. A lot of what people believe is real, incontravertible, is ephemeral and insubstantial. But it's very hard to perceive that in a culture in which illusion is amplified.

But this is the role of philosophy - to examine what we think we know and to show its insufficiencies. I confess i don't feel I've been able to accomplish anything of note, although understanding this is itself an accomplishment of sorts.


//actually I sometimes think about the chapter on Nietszche in Russell's History of Western Philosophy. It features an imaginary dialogue between Nietszche and the Buddha on suffering. I think Russell makes his feelings clear, and I generally agree with them.//

Excellent responses, W. Re Russell I remember this. Did Russell understand or 'get' Nietzsche? I was never quite sure, since I don't get him.

Plato set the bar for knowledge very high. I wonder how much of what we think we know would clear that bar. As I said, I think modern culture creates a safe space for delusion. A lot of what people believe is real, incontravertible, is ephemeral and insubstantial. But it's very hard to perceive that in a culture in which illusion is amplified. — Wayfarer

I think this is true up to a point but this is pretty general and would be better understood (not that I am advocating we do this now) through specific examples. I'm not crazy about your term 'safe space for delusion' as it sounds a bit Dawkins. But I get your drift - perhaps only too well. I understand you're a Platonist of sorts and this position always intrigues me. I don't think mainstream (if there is such a thing left) Western culture amplifies much of substance right now except marketing clichés and appeals to emotion. Science may be amplified in parts of academe but the average person I suspect knows only a little more about science then they do about psychophysical parallelism. Are we entitled to views we can't justify? Maybe this is called being human.

Not that you need to hear this from me, but generally I find your approach to these matters (shall we call it, The Nature of Reality?) balanced and prudent and I know you're stated somewhere that you approach philosophy with a kind of conservatism, despite, from where I am sitting, some more reformist tendencies.

Aw shucks.... :yikes: ....nice of you to say so.....

I have read the whole thread up to this point. One element that hasn't been pointed out yet is that Nietzsche does have a method for locating causes as rigorous as many "scientific" models he criticizes. In The Genealogy of Morals, one set of conditions binds the alternatives to it. Changes happen but they are also new expressions of what happened before. Finding this ground is not like consulting a map before taking a trip. It is not like a lot of things. But the necessity it refers to is not optional. It is a claim upon lived experience. Nietzsche challenges anybody to disagree.

The dialectic opposing this approach is voiced by thinkers like Leo Strauss who charge Nietzsche with being an "historicist" rather than someone who recognizes the "discovery of nature." In that context, the issue is not about phenomena as such but what can be included as phenomena.

"Who is that person behind the curtain?" - Dorothy