In Husserl you will also find an explicit critique of idealism — Joshs

Where in Husserl's writings would you look for that?

Phenomenology is actually incorporated into some Dharmic religions. — baker

See this article.

In Husserl you will also find an explicit critique of idealism
— Joshs

Where in Husserl's writings would you look for that? — Wayfarer

This is from Crisis of European Sciences:

“One has expected the same objectivity from psychol­ogy as from physics, and because of this a psychology in the full and actual sense has been quite impossible; for an objectivity after the fashion of natural science is downright absurd when applied to the soul, to subjectivity, whether as individual subjec­tivity, individual person, and individual life or as communally
historical subjectivity, as social subjectivity in the broadest sense.

This is the ultimate sense of the objection that one must
make to the philosophies of all times—with the exception of the philosophy of idealism, which of course failed in its method: that it was not able to overcome the naturalistic objectivism which was from the beginning and always remained a very natural temptation. As I said, only idealism, in all its forms, attempts to lay hold of subjectivity as subjectivity and to do justice to the fact that the world is never given to the subject and the communities of subjects in any other way than as the subjec­tively relative valid world with particular experiential content and as a world which, in and through subjectivity, takes on ever new transformations of meaning; and that even the apodictically persisting conviction of one and the same world, exhibiting itself
subjectively in changing ways, is a conviction motivated purely within subjectivity, a conviction whose sense—the world itself, the actually existing world—never surpasses the subjectivity that brings it about. But idealism was always too quick with its theories and for the most part could not free itself from hidden objectivistic presuppositions; or else, as speculative idealism, it
passed over the task of interrogating, concretely and analyti­cally, actual subjectivity, i.e., subjectivity as having the actual phenomenal world in intuitive validity—which, properly under­stood, is nothing other than carrying out the phenomenological reduction and putting transcendental phenomenology into ac­tion.”

:up: Great topic and excellent description; very eloquent and purposeful! :up:

I have well established views on the subject of mind-body but little knowledge on the subject of Phenomenology. This is maybe the right moment and an opportunity to study it! I will then come back here! :smile:

:up: It's not really a dismissal of idealism, so much as a sympathetic critique, I would have thought. But, thanks for the reference, appreciated.

See this article. — Wayfarer

Actually, it's the ideas about what Western culture and Westerners are like that I find more peculiar.
On the one hand, we have folk wisdom sayings like "People see what they want to see" and disagreement is expressed in terms of "there is something wrong with you". While on the other hand, it is assumed there is a real world "out there" and that beings and objects have "inherent nature", each their own.

An interesting distinction to draw out would be the one between phenomenology and solipsism. In what ways is phenomenology like solipsism and in what ways is it not.



As for your article: At a major Buddhist online forum, there used to be a main section of the forum called "Buddhist phenomenology" (or something similar, it had the word "phenomenology" in it, but it's since been renamed). There is a circle of Buddhists very knowledgeable of phenomenology.


For a puthujjana the world exists. He can perceive things in that world, see them appear and disappear, he can see them changing. A puthujjana can also affect his surroundings and modify things according to own preferences, pursue the desirable experiences and avoid the undesirable ones—the puthujjana is involved. This ‘involvement’ with things represents the very core of the puthujjana‘s ‘experience as a whole’. Most people spend the majority of their lives obliviously absorbed in it, taking the course of ‘involvement’ for granted.[1]

It needs to be understood that these ‘objects’, which the puthujjana is fundamentally involved with, are things which his experience is inseparable from, for the simple virtue of being his experience of those things. For this reason we have to broaden the meaning of the term ‘things’, from usually denominating ‘objects’ in one’s surroundings, to include any experience whatsoever that arises and can be discerned internally or externally (whether it is ‘objects’, ‘tools’, emotions’ or ‘thoughts’). In that way the term ‘things’ would correspond to what is meant by Pāli term ‘dhamma’. Thus, the experience of the puthujjana’s everyday world, his possessions, his desires and fears, anxieties and happiness are all things or phenomena. All these phenomena are completely unknown in their nature. This is why it is crucial for a puthujjana to recognize that a nature of a thing exists. This existence is not ‘in’ the world of the objects that are ready-to-hand, not ‘in’ his mind, not even between the two—but, a thing exists as an experience. Strictly speaking that’s all that can be truthfully said, without resorting to presupposed theories, inductive observations and explanations of the experience—the only thing that a puthujjana can know for certain is that ‘there is an experience’.

https://pathpress.org/appearance-and-existence/

:ok: Thanks, very interesting page and site. I will take some time to try and absorb that. :pray:

Saying the mind is a phenomenon has the advantage that no explanations for it are required. No need for a materialistic approach (calling it an illusion), no need for quantum mechanics, no need for invoking a holistic approach explaining it as a consequence of interaction, no need of any system of knowledge to embed it in to explain it. It takes the mind at face-value. To understand the mind, the phenomenological approach doesn't need such explanations. Thoughts and feelings are not framed within explanatory schemes about it.

For giving usefull aid to people with mental problems, an understanding is obviously required. And it's here that the PA is most usefull as one is not hindered by explanatory schemes to explain it.

What use is an approach which views the mind as an illusion emerging from complicated neural activity in the brain (an approach which might be an illusion itself), what use is this approach to a depressed person (and I can tell by experience that it's an be an all-consuming feeling, almost paralyzing even)? Is the person involved in need of an explanation of the mind?

Explanation isn't tantamount to understanding. Trying to solve the depression by giving medicines based on the materialistic approach, explaining depression as a disturbance of a balance of neurotransmitters between neurons and re-uptake of them, might have a value, like any materialistic approach to the feeling might have (cutting neuronal connections, administering drugs to get in a Prosacious state of mind, or even lobotomy), though there is no understanding involved. Just the observation that there is a depression, and that this can go away by intervening with it in the ways mentioned.

Now, this might be helpful to some. But the approach takes away the broader space in which the depression finds itself, and there are many complaints of patients that the depression even gets worse. I know for a fact that it did in my case. Luckily, in my case, the depression has evaporated by itself. Lobotomy might have done the trick, but I have the feeling my whole brain would had to be lobotomized from itself.

Phenomenology tries to understand from within. It's an attempt to understand from where the depression comes (and I use the depression here generically), an attempt to find the origins, and to free people from these origins or make them aware of them.

On this base, understanding a depression like in phenomenology, understanding the phenomenon from within and looking at its origins, people can be made aware of it and act accordingly.

Now this might overlook the true nature of a depression, as materialists or whoever tries to explain the mind in an explanatory scheme. For the people experiencing the depression this approach will not be very useful. Maybe temporary measures can help and give relief. It didn't in my case but it could.

An explanatory approach might be useful thus. There is no understanding though about the feeling of the depression, like it is impossible to know how it is to be a rat. But people (and animals, for that matter) have mental phenomena in common, and as such an understanding can be achieved. Trying to find out where a mental phenomenon originates is a powerful approach in dealing with mental disorders, and the materialistic approach usually is an attempt to look at a mental phenomenon as an independent state which can be analyzed and explained from the outside and can be altered or "dissolved" on the base of the analysis and the explanatory scheme. There is no attempt to an internal understanding and usually there is no attempt made to place the phenomenon in a broader context like the world in which the mental phenomena are embedded, which in the particular case of a depression might be indispensable.

(Re: Phenomenology and the Mind Body Question)
:up: Great topic and excellent description; very eloquent and purposeful! :up:
— Alkis Piskas

Thank you!! :smile:

:up: Thanks AP. It's been an interesting ride so far.

Good.