I say it's controversial because it challenges realism, which is the ingrained tendency of the natural outlook — Quixodian
From a phenomenological perspective, in everyday life, we see the objects of our experience such as physical objects, other people, and even ideas as simply real and straightforwardly existent. In other words, they are “just there.” We don’t question their existence; we view them as facts.
When we leave our house in the morning, we take the objects we see around us as simply real, factual things—this tree, neighboring buildings, cars, etcetera. This attitude or perspective, which is usually unrecognized as a perspective, Edmund Husserl terms the “natural attitude” or the “natural theoretical attitude.”
When Husserl uses the word “natural” to describe this attitude, he doesn’t mean that it is “good” (or bad), he means simply that this way of seeing reflects an “everyday” or “ordinary” way of being-in-the-world. When I see the world within this natural attitude, I am solely aware of what is factually present to me. My surrounding world, viewed naturally, is the familiar world, the domain of my everyday life. Why is this a problem?
Quite the contrary, I post materials and ideas from many different sources in support of idealist points of view, and for more than ten years, your only response has been to shoot them down. — Quixodian
My theory is that secular culture works very hard to normalise this attitude, and to discourage anything that calls it into question. And as a staunch defender of secular values and common-sense realism, you feel duty bound to follow suit. Fair comment? — Quixodian
It is part a problem of terminology. On the one hand, a wavelength of 420nm is a different colour to a wavelength of 470nm, but on the other hand, even though we can distinguish them, we perceive them both as the single colour blue. — RussellA
Well, the fossil record tells us they did, and if the Universe is older than the human race then it follows that it existed prior to us and our points of view. — Janus
It seems to me that we living human beings now, when we think of the time before human cognition, can only project the-world-for-us in a way that doesn't exactly make sense. — plaque flag
That’s getting close to what I’ve been trying to say. It’s the tendency to forget that ‘scientific realism’ still relies on an implicitly human perspective. — Quixodian
(Which is very much something Husserl was saying, isn’t it?) — Quixodian
We carried out the last series of our deliberations chiefly with respect to the physical thing pertaining to the sensuous imaginatio and did not take due notice of the physical thing as determined by physics, for which the sensuously appearing (the perceptually given) physical thing is said to function as a “mere appearance,” perhaps even as something “merely subjective.”
Nevertheless it is already implicit in the sense of our earlier statements that this mere subjectivity ought not to be confused (as it is so frequently) with a subjectivity such as characterizes mental processes, as though the perceived physical things, with respect to their perceptual qualities, and as though these qualities themselves were mental processes.
Not can it be the true opinion of scientific investigators of Nature (particularly if we keep, not to their pronouncements, but to the sense of their method) that the appearing physical thing is an illusion or a faulty picture of the “true” physical thing as determined by physics. Likewise the statement that the determinations of the appearance are signs of the true determinations is misleading.
Are we then allowed to say, in accordance with the “realism” which is very widely accepted: The actually perceived (and, in the primary sense, appearing) should, for its part, be regarded as an appearance of, or an instinctive basis for, inferring something else, intrinsically foreign to it and separated from it? May we say that, theoretically considered, this something else should be accepted as a reality, completely unknown by acquaintance, which must be assumed hypothetically in order to explain the course of mental appearance- processes, <accepted> as a hidden cause of these appearances characterizable only indirectly and analogically by mathematical concepts?
Already, on the basis of our general presentations (which will be greatly deepened and undergo continual confirmation by our further analyses), it becomes evident that such theories are possible only as long as one avoids seriously fixing one’s eyes on, and scientifically exploring, the sense of a physical thing-datum and, therefore, of “any physical thing whatever,” a sense implicit in experience’s own essence — the sense which functions as the absolute norm for all rational discourse about physical things. If anything runs counter to that sense it is countersensical in the strictest signification of the word; and that, without doubt, is true of all epistemological theories of the type indicated.
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The perceived physical thing itself is always and necessarily precisely the thing which the physicist explores and scientifically determines following the method of physics. — Husserl
So my argument is not that the universe doesn’t exist sans perspective, but that any meaningful sense of existence entails a perspective, so it’s a mistake to take it as an invariant truth, as a truly ‘observer-independent reality’. — Quixodian
The scientific image (and arguably the philosophical image) is intentionally independent of any contingent human being. That's it's job. To be the truth, not just your truth or mine. — plaque flag
I am made of ghosts and mud — plaque flag
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul — Gen2:7
…..our deliberations….did not take due notice of the physical thing as determined by physics….for which…. (the perceptually given) physical thing (…) is said to function as a “mere appearance,” perhaps even as something “merely subjective.”…. — Husserl
Are we then allowed to say…..(the) actually perceived…..should….be regarded as an appearance of…..something else, intrinsically foreign to it and separated from it? May we say that, theoretically considered, this something else should be accepted as a reality, completely unknown by acquaintance, which must be assumed hypothetically in order to explain the course of mental appearance- processes? — Husserl
…..such theories are possible only as long as one avoids seriously fixing one’s eyes on, and scientifically exploring, the sense of a physical thing-datum and, therefore, of “any physical thing whatever,” a sense implicit in experience’s own essence, the sense which functions as the absolute norm for all rational discourse about physical things. — Husserl
————-The perceived physical thing itself is always and necessarily precisely the thing which the physicist explores and scientifically determines following the method of physics. — Husserl
So when you say 'the truth, not just yours or mine', that's what I mean when I refer to THE mind, not your or my mind. You and I are examples or instantiations of the cultural- and species mind. Individuation is an attribute of only the very topmost level of that mind. But that is the mind which the world is not independent of or apart from - not your mind or mine, but THE mind. It's almost like 'mind at large' but it's important not to objectify or reify it. — Quixodian
The rational or theoretical assimilation and dissolution of the God who is other-worldly to religion, and hence not given to it as an object, is the speculative philosophy.
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The essence of speculative philosophy is nothing other than the rationalised, realised, actualised essence of God. The speculative philosophy is the true, consistent, rational theology.
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The proof of the proposition that the divine essence is the essence of reason or intelligence lies in the fact that the determinations or qualities of God, in so far as they are rational or intelligible and not determinations of sensuousness or imagination, are, in fact, qualities of reason.
“God is the infinite being or the being without any limitations whatsoever.” But what cannot be a limit or boundary on God can also not be a limit or boundary on reason. If, for example, God is elevated above all limitations of sensuousness, so, too, is reason. He who cannot conceive of any entity except as sensuous, that is, he whose reason is limited by sensuousness, can only have a God who is limited by sensuousness. Reason, which conceives God as an infinite being, conceives, in point of fact, its own infinity in God.
Are we then allowed to say…..(the) actually perceived…..should….be regarded as…. intrinsically foreign to it…. — Husserl
“What makes itself known here — by being made known in intentional unities pertaining to mental processes of consciousness — is obviously something essentially transcendent. According to all this it is clear that even the higher transcendency characterizing the physical thing as determined by physics does not signify reaching out beyond the world which is for consciousness, or for every Ego functioning as a cognizing subject.”
-Husserl — plaque flag
I see. When I read your remark about not needing a genesis hypothesis, I was reminded of Laplace's well-known rejoinder that his mathematical Science intentionally avoided any supernatural theories*1. Hence, my questions about alternative theories of origins --- other than "it is what it is". In the year 1784, Laplace could reasonably assume that the logical structure of the material world just exists eternally, with no need for an origin story. But today, our sky-watching scientists have inadvertently reopened the original can of worms, with their mathematical evidence for a time with no time or space --- nothing to measure. Thus, raising philosophical "why?" questions, where Laplace only saw practical "how?" questions.I'm afraid that explaining the existence of the world is quite beyond my capacity. But do consider the Buddhist approach, which doesn't begin with the origin of everything, but with the origin of suffering (dukkha). — Quixodian
Husserl justifies the noumena Kant prohibits, by assigning a different quality and domain to transcendental logic. — Mww
We know nothing of a world apart from the one given to our timebinding cultural flesh, though this same flesh can daydream about pure ur-matter or pure fleshless subjectivity, forgetting itself as a condition of possibility for that daydream — plaque flag
Yes. We humans reify our own subjective perspective with the noun label "Self". Since the Self exists invisibly & implicitly inside a vehicle of mud matter, we have no cause to worry about its substance or provenance : the Self is simply Me, and always has been. Moreover, my embodiment is known directly via internal perception (proprioception -- the sense of self-ownership).Subjectivity is meaningless apart from embodiment in an environment. — plaque flag
I guess I reject scientific realism if understood in terms of a truly independent object. I challenge it as semantically troubled. — plaque flag
I agree. — Janus
We humans reify our own subjective perspective with the noun label "Self". Since the Self exists invisibly & implicitly inside a vehicle of mud matter, we have no cause to worry about its substance or provenance : the Self is simply Me, and always has been. — Gnomon
Morally, the immaterial sensing Self is more important than the animated body, but since the essence is dependent upon the substance, we have no alternative to treating Body & Self as a unique composite entity : matter/life, brain/mind. — Gnomon
Which reflects back on that age-old dilemma….the body is certainly necessary, but it is not itself sufficient for such subjectivity. What is given to the cultural flesh is useless without that which has the capacity to do something with it, and even if cultural flesh is merely a euphemism for the brain, the knowledge how regarding subjectivity, is still as missing as it ever was. — Mww
our subjectivity only makes sense if understood as localized in world-encompassed flesh. — plaque flag
I can only aspire not to be stupid about it…. — Janus
Is anything real ? — plaque flag
Are you really (earnestly) claiming that human bodies experiencing the world aren't real ? — plaque flag
Human bodies are real;
Experience is a condition of an intelligent subject;
The body is not an intelligent subject;
Bodies do not experience. — Mww
Poetically expressed. But I'm not sure what you are implying. "Graveleaping ghost" sounds like reincarnation. I've seen that notion portrayed fictionally in movies : for example a man's soul gets transplanted into a woman's body, and has to learn to deal (comically) with the different physicality of its new host. But I'm not aware of any real-world souls escaping the flesh prison, and taking up residence in some other soul's body. Such ideas make amusing fiction & fantasy, but is there a factual basis? Is my soulful dog the new body of an expired blues musician? If so, how would I know?But (to be fair), the timebinding cultural aspect of the self, largely its linguistic aspect, is a graveleaping ghost. Metaphorically speaking, this or that individual body is its temporary host. — plaque flag
Of course cultural immortality is a common way to speak of a writer's or artist's mind, as incarnated in objective forms, continuing to "live-on" in the minds of other embodied souls. — Gnomon
But such an unexperienced "life" may be cold comfort to the dead or disembodied soul, with no sensory organs plugged into the non-self system. — Gnomon
I'd say the subject is just a person, a total human being. — plaque flag
So I'll concede that, strictly speaking, bodies do not experience. — plaque flag
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