That's an interesting question regarding whether phenomenology should be counted as science. Husserl's 'back to the things' seems to echo the sciences' methodological focus on the things being investigated, while bracketing what might seem imaginatively or intuitively obvious about the natures of things.

I think science deals with things as they appear to us, so we are always there in science, and it cannot tell us about any imagined "absolute" nature of anything. We are obviously capable of thinking that things have absolute existences and natures, completely independent of us, what those existences and natures might be is something completely inaccessible to us. We might even question whether the idea is even coherent.

Phenomenology does not investigate the nature of the things themselves as they appear to us, but rather attempts to investigate the nature of the appearing itself. I think it follows that there cannot be the kind of strict intersubjective corroboration, which is possible in science, but there can be intersubjective assent to, or dissent from, its findings in the form of 'yes, that's how it seems to me" or 'no, that is not how it seems to me'.

Science is naturalistic in that it brackets the question of the supernatural for methodological reasons, and that works...spectacularly well. So, it is not that science has a blind spot regarding the metaphysical or the role of the subject, but that those questions are irrelevant to its most effective methodologies.

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FWIW, I defer to current usage, so that my suggestion that Husserl is a scientist is a metaphor.

Phenomenology does not investigate the nature of the things themselves as they appear to us, but rather attempts to investigate the nature of the appearing itself. — Janus

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True, but as some kind of quasi-Hegelian direct realist, I claim that things just are the way they appear to us. To be sure, we can make mistakes, but this ability of ours to make mistakes need not lead to a dualism that puts the subject behind a veil of incorrigible sensation and conception. (I'm not saying that you are floating dualism, but just defending my direct pluralistic realism that features promises and puppies as equally real and meaningful in the semantic-inferential nexus of interdependent entities ---my warm holist ontological blanket, untorn and continuous. @180 Proof shared this link with me once, and it seems to get thing right : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plane_of_immanence .)

The part that resonates for me is:
Mind may no longer be conceived as a self-contained field, substantially differentiated from body (dualism), nor as the primary condition of unilateral subjective mediation of external objects or events (idealism). Thus, all real distinctions (mind and body, God and matter, interiority and exteriority, etc.) are collapsed or flattened into an even consistency or plane, namely immanence itself, that is, immanence without opposition.

I take this in terms of the structuralist insights that entities (including concepts) are semantically interdependent. For instance, watch old cartoons and see how dogs, cats, and mice are all related. I tell you what a cat is in terms of dogs (from which it flees) and mice (which it chases.) We have all the famous dyads too of course. Nothing can be plucked out and keep its meaning.

I think it follows that there cannot be the kind of strict intersubjective corroboration, which is possible in science, but there can be intersubjective assent to, or dissent from, its findings in the form of 'yes, that's how it seems to me" or 'no, that is not how it seems to me'. — Janus

Excellent point. If you look at Popper on basic statements, you'll find people just agreeing to take certain statements as given. The rubber meets the road where embodied subjects to whom the world is given simply assent that this or that claim needs (for now) no further justification. So it's not just phenomenology. I think in general a rational community always argues from currently uncontroversial statements toward or against others that are controversial.

Every test of a theory, whether resulting in its corroboration or falsification, must stop at some basic statement or other which we decide to accept. If we do not come to any decision, and do not accept some basic statement or other, then the test will have led nowhere.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/#BasiStatFalsConv

Related point : my suspicion is that science largely shines (for most) by the reflected light of technology that just works. A crude power-worshipping pragmatism is the working attitude of, well, all of us maybe in our typical sub-scientific mode. I'm not trying to pose as above it. I'm ambivalent. But this makes the uselessly pretentiously rational-critical philosopher a fool in the eyes of the world. Bacon said knowledge is power (so [only] power is knowledge.)

I don't believe we are disagreeing at all. I also think things are just the way they appear (and can appear, with the augmentations of our senses afforded by equipment like telescopes, microscopes, spectroscopes, colliders and so forth).

Those "things" of the senses are of a collaborative nature; they exist as affects between what appears to us as the body and what appears to us as its environment, replete with other bodies, animate and inanimate, photons and other phenomena.

Thanks for the link; I'll check it out.

My suspicion is that science largely shines (for most) by the reflected light of technology that just works. A crude power-worshipping pragmatism is the working attitude of, well, all of us maybe in our typical sub-scientific mode. I'm not trying to pose as above it. I'm ambivalent. — plaque flag

I agree, our faith in science is based on its technological applications. But then there is a basic observational aspect of science which is just an amplification of our ordinary observations of the world. For example, "It is raining", "water flows downhill" and countless other everyday observations which can be definitively corroborated or falsified.

I'm ambivalent about science too, though, if it morphs into a scientism that claims that everything about animals and humans can be empirically determined. For me it's back to the noumenal, 'the ultimate nature of things cannot be determined"; metaphysics cannot be a science.

Nonetheless I think all these pursuits, science, phenomenology, metaphysics, have things to tell us about ourselves and the world around us.

I also think things are just the way they appear (and can appear, with the augmentations of our senses afforded by equipment like telescopes, microscopes, spectroscopes, colliders and so forth). — Janus

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It sounds like I can ride into town for the gunfight with another direct realist, which is great.

Those "things" of the senses are of a collaborative nature; they exist as affects between what appears to us as the body and what appears to us as its environment, replete with other bodies, animate and inanimate, photons and other phenomena. — Janus

I like to think that the transcendent subject is basically just the human species. No humans means no world in any way that we can talk about without confusion. But any particular human is dispensable. Like data moving from server to serve, timebinding flame from candle to candle. But we can't say that the species-subject simply creates the world, for this would not be a subject and (in my view) we wouldn't know what we were talking about. Hence an irreducible entanglement. The environment that. 'appears to us' is indeed an environment. What the species [ clearly ] is just reality itself. Which is not to say that we ever conquer the depths of reality or obtain perfect clarity. It's just that we always already have at least blurry access to the real.

Right, we don't create the world, we construct it from pre-cognitive influences we cannot become conscious of. So, we are more like demiurges than creator gods, writ small.

I like to think that the transcendent subject is basically just the human species. — plaque flag

I like this idea; I think it's right on the mark. A disembodied transcendental subject cannot evolve or be affected by anything. If we think about the in itself, the "precognitive influences" I mentioned, as utterly changeless, then we have a huge, insurmountable problem' how to understand how a world of unimaginable diversity and constant change could emerge from an utterly amorphous changelessness.
We can't know the in itself, even if only by stipulation, but I believe we can think more or less coherently and plausibly about it.

But it does presuppose naturalism, does it not?

I don’t know if it’s humanly possible, as you mentioned. It does seem like the best we have, but even the best makes some very basic assumptions. — Mikie

I see the naturalism of science as being methodologically necessary. I mean it just really cannot take metaphysics into account; it can only work with what can be observed, and the ways, mathematical and logical, we have of reasoning about what is observed as well as our capacity to create imaginative scenarios that can be worked up into testable hypotheses.

But then there is a basic observational aspect of science which is just an amplification of our ordinary observations of the world. For example, "It is raining", "water flows downhill" and countless other everyday observations which can be definitively corroborated or falsified. — Janus

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Right, and Husserl would include our basic categorial intuition, extending the given beyond mere sensation (or something like that.) As Popper saw, all scientific theories include universals. They permeate our experience.

I'm ambivalent about science too, though, if it morphs into a scientism that claims that everything about animals and humans can be empirically determined. — Janus

Just for clarity, I love science and am trying to carefully aim only at scientism. I'd call problematic conceptions of empiricism an aspect of scientism. In an important sense, Husserl is an exemplar of genuine empiricism. To be sure, the nature or essence of experience is contested. Which means that the essence of science (really identical, in my view, with rationality) is contested.

Perhaps I'm just trying to point out a complacency that accepts dazzling tech as a substitute for a coherent ontology. And I don't even want to judge it from a place of resentful self-righteousness. I want to sketch it as an important part of the situation.

We can't know the in itself, even if only by stipulation, but I believe we can think more or less coherently and plausibly about it. — Janus

We may differ a bit on this issue. To me the in-itself is something like the 'reflection' of a worldless-subject. It's a limiting concept like the worldless subject that, for my money, isn't worth the trouble.

But there is an encompassing world that is 'other' than us in an important if not absolute sense.

We can't know the in itself, even if only by stipulation, but I believe we can think more or less coherently and plausibly about it. — Janus

I prefer to think about the finitude of our knowledge in terms of the 'depth' of the lifeworld. Everything is 'horizonal.' (Horizon, background, the sense of more around the corner or over the hill.) Even the moment has retension and protension. Time itself is smeared. Even the everyday spatial object 'transcends' our always-finite viewing of it. We are never finished seeing it. There is always another perspective. Then physics can endlessly clarify the details of how a chair exists, etc. But all along the objects of the lifeworld are real. They are just not 'finally' given. It's a 'flat' or singlelayer ontology but it's foggy with depth. So we have the proper sense in it of our fallibility -of a world that is 'infinite' in relation to us as individuals.

We may differ a bit on this issue. To me the in-itself is something like the 'reflection' of a worldless-subject. It's a limiting concept like the worldless subject that, for my money, isn't worth the trouble. — plaque flag

In the sense that we cannot really do anything with the 'in-itself', I agree. I also agree that when we try to imagine the existence of the world prior to humans we project our (necessarily) anthropomorphic cognitions. On other hand I think it is implausible in the extreme to think that the prehuman world did not exist or that its existence was "human-shaped", even though we are unable to think its existence in prehuman terms (obviously).

For me the importance of the in-itself and the noumenal consists in its sustaining the realization that existence is, no matter how familiar it may seem, ultimately ineluctably mysterious. It is this that allows for, as Kant argued, faith, and I also think it allows for all kinds of wonderful metaphysical speculations, which seem to me just fine provided they are not taken too seriously. It seems to me there is also the humour of absurdity in this ineluctable mystery of existence—and to me that is enriching despite, or perhaps better, just because of, its indeterminability.

The abandonment of belief in what is merely imagined and what seems merely intuitively "right" with no other supporting evidence seems to be the essential element of scientific method . . . — Janus

I wouldn't be too sure about the "abandonment" in actual practice . . . . down deep scientists have ideas they hope will be substantiated by experiment or shown to be wrong. Preferably the former. They are, by and large, human and hope to get there first. On the other hand pure curiosity can be a driving force.

I also agree that when we try to imagine the existence of the world prior to humans we project our (necessarily) anthropomorphic cognitions. — Janus

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On other hand I think it is implausible in the extreme to think that the prehuman world did not exist or that its existence was "human-shaped", even though we are unable to think its existence in prehuman terms (obviously). — Janus

I can relate. It's like a glitch. I still think that as 'serious' ontologists whose discourse refuses to cut corners for practical or political reasons (dazzled by the glory of technology perhaps) --- and not as physicists or geologists who accept the fictional independence of their models from their modelling --- the best thing to do is confess that we can't say anything sensible here, that we can't give a meaning to our signs.

I admit though that the Meillassoux's 'ancestral realm' is tricky, and I can understand someone taking another side on this issue.

For others who didn't see this link yet:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Meillassoux

For me the importance of the in-itself and the noumenal consists in its sustaining the realization that existence is, no matter how familiar it may seem, ultimately ineluctably mysterious. — Janus

We agree on the ineradicable mystery of the world. I love this quote:

The fact that the philosopher claims to speak in the very name of the naïve evidence of the world, that he refrains from adding any­ thing to it, that he limits himself to drawing out all its conse­quences, does not excuse him; on the contrary he dispossesses [humanity] only the more completely, inviting it to think of itself as an enigma.

This is the way things are and nobody can do anything about it. It is at the same time true that the world is what we see and that, nonetheless, we must learn to see it— first in the sense that we must match this vision with knowledge, take possession of it, say what we and what seeing are, act therefore as if we knew nothing about it, as if here we still had everything to learn. But philosophy is not a lexicon, it is not concerned with “word-meanings,” it does not seek a verbal substitute for the world we see, it does not transform it into something said, it does not install itself in the order of the said or of the written as does the logician in the proposition, the poet in the word, or the musician in the music. It is the things themselves, from the depths of their silence, that it wishes to bring to expression. If the philosopher questions, and hence feigns ignorance of the world and of the vision of the world which are operative and take form contin­ually within him, he does so precisely in order to make them speak, because he believes in them and expects from them all his future science. The questioning here is not a beginning of nega­tion, a perhaps put in the place of being. It is for philosophy the only way to conform itself with the vision we have in fact, to correspond with what, in that vision, provides for thought, with the paradoxes of which that vision is made, the only way to adjust itself to those figured enigmas, the thing and the world, whose massive being and truth teem with incompossible details. — The Visible and the Invisible

It is this that allows for, as Kant argued, faith, and I also think it allows for all kinds of wonderful metaphysical speculations, which seem to me just fine provided they are not taken too seriously. — Janus

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Sure. We are ludic primates, and I love us for it. Schlegel's notion of irony is beautiful. Fits more in my Dramaturgical Ontology thread, but oh well.

“Philosophy is the true home of irony, which might be defined as logical beauty,” Schlegel writes in Lyceumfragment 42: “for wherever men are philosophizing in spoken or written dialogues, and provided they are not entirely systematic, irony ought to be produced and postulated.” The task of a literary work with respect to irony is, while presenting an inherently limited perspective, nonetheless to open up the possibility of the infinity of other perspectives: “Irony is, as it were, the demonstration [epideixis] of infinity, of universality, of the feeling for the universe” (KA 18.128); irony is the “clear consciousness of eternal agility, of an infinitely teeming chaos” (Ideas 69). A literary work can do this, much as Schlegel’s Lucinde had, by presenting within its scope a range of possible alternate plots or by mimicking the parabasis in which the comic playwright interposed himself within the drama itself or the role of the Italian buffo or clown (Lyceumfragment 42) who disrupts the spectator’s narrative illusion. (Some of the more striking examples of such moments of ironic interposition in the works of Schlegel’s literary contemporaries can be found in the comedies of Tieck—where, as Szondi (1986) argues, it is not merely the actor or playwright who “steps out” of his usual role, but in some sense the very role itself.)
...
For Schlegel “every proof is infinitely perfectible” (KA XVIII, 518, #9), and the task of philosophy is not one of searching to find an unconditioned first principle but rather one of engaging in an (essentially coherentist) process of infinite progression and approximation.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schlegel/#RomTur

I wouldn't be too sure about the "abandonment" in actual practice . . . . down deep scientists have ideas they hope will be substantiated by experiment or shown to be wrong. Preferably the former. They are, by and large, human and hope to get there first. On the other hand pure curiosity can be a driving force. — jgill

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I take the honor of subjecting oneself to peer review is not so unlike that of the brave soldier that shows up for battle. We don't like our pet theories busted to pieces, but we end up with better theories in the long run if we subject ourselves to criticism. We keep eachother a little less dishonest.

Interesting bit of terminology - advocates for string theory and related multi-verse conjectures are often scornful of the insistence that speculative science ought to be subject in principle to validation or falsification by observation or experiment. They devised a slang word for those insisting on such criteria - the popperazi :grin: — Quixodian

I like Pigliucci's description "mathematically informed metaphysics." Suggesting the intimate relationship between science and metaphysics, as I've considered elsewhere. I think the description is a propos.

Perhaps the scientific method can be partly described as a from of shared instrumental phenomenology with predictive power.

It is not pure phenomenology - just because you experience something, that is unlikely to simply be accepted as science. However if many people experience the same thing, and it can be methodologically ordered into a theory that explains the shared experiences, we see the start of what we might call science. If we then use instruments to record whatever it is that we experience, it becomes even more likely to be accepted as science. If this theory can be used to accurately make predictions (eg in experiments), then it comes even closer to what is accepted as mainstream science.

But the bone of contention is ‘is it science’?

.
We definitely value predictive power, but I'd say that semantic robustness (an intensely developed clarity) is another genuine value that can't be quantified.

People can talk to one another and get a sense of others' development in this dimension on this or that topic, so it's not entirely subjective. It's just messier than physics. Like Husserl, I was a math guy before I got into phenomenology. We all learned the math without bothering to talk about what it all meant. Which statements were justified was clear enough, but what those statements really meant was hardly addressed. Ontology is so squishy and 'just opinion,' right ? [Ah but that's an ontological claim...]

In my view, Husserl was reacting to the groundlessness of science of his day. It was impressive and successful in some sense, but it was 'floating' semantically. What did it mean ? So he looked into the deepest and most foundational nature of logic and conceptuality. This project in itself is like the essence of philosophy as a kind of science of science. For Husserl, and for any genuine philosophy, conceptuality is not subjective. My act of thinking about numbers is mine, but the numbers have a sort of independence, if not perhaps from all human cognition of them, at least from any particular human's cognition of them. I note that Popper eventually postulated his World 2 and his World 3, which is not so far off.

Well, if fits the model of the "new science" which I describe as emerging, ie. it is theoretical modeling. Certainly a complex-cohesive model that can exist and be used to model dynamic systems is, in a sense, a kind of empirical entity. But it needs to be reaching towards points of actual correspondence (empirical verification), otherwise its just poeisis, art. If you've seen my other thread on science as metaphysics you know I think these mutually condition. I would say, per Pigliucci per Popper, string theory is more of the nature of a "metaphysical research project" that may become fully scientific eventually.

edit: I did a little digging into quantum computer simulations of string theory and this popped out to me:

Here we comment on possible implications from this work, combined with quantum
Church-Turing Thesis. The quantum Church-Turing Thesis states that any physical
process that happens in the real world could be simulated in a quantum computer. We
could write it in a more formal way: Any calculation that cannot be done efficiently by
a quantum circuit cannot be done efficiently by any physical system consistent with the
laws of physics.

In other words, if a theoretical model can not be efficiently simulated via quantum computer then it cannot be efficiently realized in the real world. One hypothesis then could be that, the more efficiently a theoretical model can be quantum-computer simulated, the more likely that model is to be reflective of reality. If we are dealing with "large scale theories" whose points of correspondence are nothing less than the parameters of reality, establishing what counts as confirmatory evidence might be...complicated. Perhaps the model is its own best evidence, based on this hypothesis?

Simulating Superstring Theory on a Quantum Computer

We definitely value predictive power, but I'd say that semantic robustness (an intensely developed clarity) is another genuine value that can't be quantified. — plaque flag

Agreed, semantic robustness is valued in science.

People can talk to one another and get a sense of others' development in this dimension on this or that topic, so it's not entirely subjective. It's just messier than physics. Like Husserl, I was a math guy before I got into phenomenology. We all learned the math without bothering to talk about what it all meant. Which statements were justified was clear enough, but what those statements really meant was hardly addressed. Ontology is so squishy and 'just opinion,' right ? [Ah but that's an ontological claim...] — plaque flag

Where I see a divide between phenomenology and science is in the method. Science (I would say all sciences) requires a level of methodological robustness that is not required by phenomenology.

You can talk to people in a mall about experience and write a book about it in free form, and this book may be well received in phenomenology circles. But you will find it harder to get that published in a scientific journal. However if you set up a questionnaire that you asked a selected representative sample in the mall, where in addition to verbose answers they also rated parts of their experience on a numerical scale, you are likely to find it easier to get that published in a scientific journal. It would also help if you performed a statistical analysis of the responses.

There is also a rationalist approach to science that in places contrasts with phenomenology. Take the Einstein quote:

"You put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity."

I would say experientially there is truth to that. However if he had published that as part of a scientific theory on time, it would certainly not have been accepted as science.

So while I think there is a large phenomenological aspect to science, I think there are important differences too.

Where I see a divide between phenomenology and science is in the method. Science (I would say all sciences) requires a level of methodological robustness that is not required by phenomenology. — PhilosophyRunner

Phenomenology is obsessively methodical, though. I'm talking about Husserl and early Heidegger. Obsessively methodical.

You can talk to people in a mall about experience and write a book about it in free form, and this book may be well received in phenomenology circles. — PhilosophyRunner

I really don't personally mind if you are sold on the wonders of phenomenology, but such a statement suggests that you haven't much looked into it. Correct me if I am wrong, and I don't intend to be rude.

However if you set up a questionnaire that you asked a selected representative sample in the mall, where in addition to verbose answers they also rated parts of their experience on a numerical scale, you are likely to find it easier to get that published in a scientific journal. It would also help if you performed a statistical analysis of the responses. — PhilosophyRunner

Sure. I happen to be trained in statistics. But you are arguing the trivial claim that Husserl, for instance, is not understood as a natural scientist. No one disputes that.

A phenomenologist, though, might ask what the hell a p-value actually means. I don't mean its fairly clear technical meaning, which I understand better than most, but its larger meaning in relation to the world as a whole ---its place in the lifeworld. As Russell put it, math is the game where we never know and don't even care what we are talking about. Except I'm not a logicist, or a formalist. Intuition plays an important role, even if 'diagrams' and numerals are necessary supplements.

Agreed, semantic robustness is valued in science. — PhilosophyRunner

Just to be clear, I'm not pissing on science. I love science.

But I've got some experience with math and physics (went to school for that kind of thing, also computer science), and to me it seemed that people all too readily settled for a very 'local' semantics. It's presumably because of the specialization of knowledge. Everyone is afraid perhaps to speak outside their little yard. The positivist boogey man will get them ?

I like to think that the transcendent subject is basically just the human species. No humans means no world in any way that we can talk about without confusion. But any particular human is dispensable. Like data moving from server to serve, timebinding flame from candle to candle. But we can't say that the species-subject simply creates the world, for this would not be a subject and (in my view) we wouldn't know what we were talking about. Hence an irreducible entanglement. — plaque flag

Nicely put. I'd say the species itself is similarly entangled with the biosphere, etc. ie. That there is tiered entanglement from most to least animate (correlating with the conditions of being law-governed versus free).

Nicely put. I'd say the species itself is similarly entangled with the biosphere, etc. ie. That there is tiered entanglement from most to least animate (correlating with the conditions of being law-governed versus free). — Pantagruel

Thanks ! All this entanglement is another way to say holism perhaps.

By 'free' do you mean normative reason-giving entities like us ? I'm a fan of Brandom. I tend to understand freedom in terms of timebinding responsibility for the coherence of deeds which include speech acts. The responsible subject ( the rational agent ) is very much temporally stretched. Did you ever look at Flatland ? The author used space, but it occurs to me now how eerily temporal humans are relative to other creatures we're aware of. We are spheres among circles if time is spatialized.

By 'free' do you mean normative reason-giving entities like us ? I'm a fan of Brandom. I tend to understand freedom in terms of timebinding responsibility for the coherence of deeds which include speech acts. The responsible subject ( the rational agent ) is very much temporally stretched. Did you ever look at Flatland ? The author used space, but it occurs to me now how eerily temporal humans are relative to other creatures we're aware of. We are spheres among circles if time is spatialized. — plaque flag

Yes, precisely that meaning of free. Regarding our 'eerie temporality', I have lately been speculating on the forum whether consciousness might not actually exist - ie. have a "size" - in the temporal dimension, versus just traversing time.

(edit, just reading this: This monadic being is therefore not contained in the simple present....but rather encompasses the totality of all aspects of life, the present, past, and future... Cassirer, Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms)

I haven't heard of Brandom. I have a rather love-hate relationship with linguistics. I think it has its place, but more as a supporting player, something which can be usefully invoked to clarify particular issues with particular inquiries. But I find it becomes unwieldy as a primary theme. Probably just a matter of personal taste.