Husserl's Phenomenology

the phenomenology is the name of a movement inaugurated by Edmund Husserl and continued by his followers Lister Authority had discovered a new field for philosophy feel opened a collaborative investigation and research extending indefinitely into the future phenomenology is a school like the scholastic schools of the Middle Ages or the DAR Shawna's in early Indian philosophy phenomenologist place great stock and what justo said but they do not hesitate to disagree with him when they think he has misunderstood something additionally since who so changed his mind on certain things which is only to say that he never stopped thinking there's disagreement among phenomenologist as to what his final thoughts were on certain matters but all phenomenologist recognized that whose halls project was to free philosophy as far as possible from contestable presuppositions in order to achieve insights that are incontestable and additionally ground the positive sciences mathematics and even logic in indubitable evidence phenomenology has this distinctive methodological principle a commitment to describe what is present the consciousness or the mind just as it is present to the consciousness what is present the consciousness our phenomenon a phenomena in the broad sense include both the world as it presents itself and the operations of the mind that is perceiving remembering fantasizing judging willing and so forth as they present themselves or as we actually experience them these mental acts are phenomena - phenomena - as our bodily sensations including tactile sensations of various sorts among them the sensation of resistance we meet and encountering bodies that are not our own this commitment of phenomenology to describe what is present to consciousness initially takes precedence over and ultimately ends up replacing any attempt to explain what is present the consciousness that is any attempt to account for consciousness in terms of unseen causes whether these unseen causes are construed as material or intelligible or even divine at the outset of his philosophical venture the phenomenologist is determined not account for the more evident by appeal to the less evident aristotle had warned against this against counting for things this way and later philosophers with varying degrees of success took Aristotle's warning to heart but whose role was the first philosopher to understate them undertake a methodological and systematic attempt to avoid explaining the evident by appeal to the non evident in what follows I shall speak only of some aspects of Rousseau's phenomenology but this will be difficult enough he published his first major work the philosophy of arithmetic in 1891 and he continued publishing major works into the late 1930s he died in 1939 at the age of 79 he left behind a mountain of notes unpublished lectures manuscripts and varying degrees of completion in addition to his published works the scope of his literary output rivals that of Thomas Aquinas who strong was always writing he seems to have thought directly on the paper and not only the changes mind there's considerable disagreement as to what he changed his mind about so to move beyond his most general claims and to do so within the compass of a lecture requires a lot of interprets into the selection not everyone attempting to interpret who solves project would select the themes to emphasize that I've selected for example I shall have little to say in this lecture about the crisis of European Sciences but I shall have more than little to say about transcendental phenomenology now the foundational act of his systematic attempt to avoid explain the evidence by appeal to the non evident who sorrow calls the phenomenological reduction he pointed out that a fundamental characteristic of the attitude we take toward the world in everyday life and in the positive sciences as well is that it exists quite independently of our consciousness object he called this attitude tellingly the natural attitude without without initially calling the natural attitude into question that is without initially doubting whether the world exists independently of our consciousness of it much less initially dying denying that it does who sorrow claim that we could methodologically suspend this attitude temporarily though not permanently the natural attitude is not only the point of departure from which we move into phenomenology by way of the phenomenological reduction it is also the point returned at the end of the day when we cease phenomenology zhing and occupy ourselves once again with the ordinary concerns of life when we engage the phenomenological reduction we place our natural belief in the independent existence of the world in brackets this act of bracketing who saw also called the epic a from the Greek word Apeco which means to check the whole back from to refrain from in the up okay the phenomenologist refrains from holds back from checks himself against positing the independent existence of the world the echo fok has the effect not only of reducing the world to pure phenomenon but of reducing the ego performing the reduction to an ego that can no longer be construed as existing within the world we should return to this aspect of the phenomenological reduction later on for the time being I know only that according to WHO Searle the appearance of things to the mind after performance of the phenomenological reduction is not essentially different from their appearance before it however their presumed existence as things independent of consciousness ceases to be a theme it should be obvious that the phenomenological reduction systematically precludes both any attempt to say what the world is like when we're not conscious of it and in any attempt to say what lies behind the world as it presents itself by refraining from speaking of non phenomenal so to speak extra mental things which are after all not accessible to description we're kept from trying to explain the phenomenal in terms of the non phenomenal and are thereby kept on task and so among other things the phenomenologist does not appeal to any of the positive scientists such as neurology or empirical psychology to account for consciousness for its acts and objects but one might object doesn't a merely descriptive account of things yield only trivial results not at all huh Cyril would respond for a genuine description of phenomena requires us to attend not only to particular features but the common features as well the things present themselves the consciousness has had in common thinkers the feature excuse me indeed an adequate description of phenomena might take note might involve taking note of such things as forms in even intuiting essences I'm getting ahead of myself several centuries before who sera Descartes had argued that the human mind has direct unmediated awareness only of its own contents he construed the mind as a kind of container a closed domain of interior tea it has been called and he considered it to be composed of acts acts of thinking in a very broad sense of thinking and of ideas namely what the acts of thinking were immediately related to their carts orientation was adopted by successors who parted ways from each other in opposite directions according to the more conservative group the group that includes Descartes himself and law Leibniz and with some important qualifications can't the ideas we have in our mind represent clearly or confusedly things outside the mind these some ideas do this whereas others fictitious ideas most obviously do not the thinkers who took this view had the difficult task of accounting for exactly how representation happens how to distinguish between ideas that represent independently existing things and ideas that do not and how to distinguish among the former between ideas that represent things exactly as they are and ideas that represent them only confusedly these thinkers also had the monumentally difficult task of accounting for how we can think of the thing that an idea represents without thereby turning that thing into an idea as well according to the more radical of descartes successors such as Bartley and Hume ideas do not and cannot represent things outside the mind in order for to say for example that the idea you have of a cap represents represents a real cap you have to think of a real cap as though it were not an idea but on the Cartesian supposition that the mind is a closed domain of an interior you can neither perceive nor think of real caps but only of ideas of caps whatever we think about is by virtue of that very fact and idea and so we cannot consistently think of an extra mental reality that the idea is supposedly represent though we uncritically assume that we can do this we can think that ideas represent other ideas to be sure but we cannot think they represent ideas that are not ideas that is we can't do that consistently whatever we think of whether we call it extra mental or not as by virtue of our very act of thinking and ID humor who is considered to be the most radical rigorous and uncompromising of descartes successors puts it this way those very sensations which enter the by the eye or ear are the true objects I shall call indifferently objects of perception what any common man means by a cap or shoe or stone or any other impression conveyed to him by the senses in quote what Hume calls here indifferently an object or a perception is what Descartes called an idea Humes radicalization of Descartes consists in Cartesian ideas of identifying things with ideas there's no difference between a cap and the idea of a cap a shoe and the idea of a shoe and so forth as humid which is present of the senses is with us the real body in tis - these are interrupted in images we ascribe a perfect identity the theory originating with Descartes that the mind has direct and unmediated access only to its own ideas then has two versions a representational version and a non representational version the different positions taken by the inherence that these two versions were explored by the phenomenologist here in garbage according to garbage irresolvable difficulties inherent in both difficult versions led to a decisive modification of Descartes claim the mind has direct and immediate access only to its own contents the modification was accomplished by the Austral who was supposed to a call phenomenology not without some justification the secret longing of modern philosophies gribbit shows here shows where the fault line in humans account occurs according to Hume ideas drift onto the stage that is the mind then drift off it never to return each individual and temporarily unique act of thinking is paired with an equally individual and temporally unique idea or complex of ideas in Descartes not Plato's sense of ideal an individual act of thinking let's say thinking of my cap to stick with Humes example and succeeded by another act of thinking say thinking of my shoe they may think at the end of my cap this is now a new act of thinking it is not numerically a dental the act of thinking that preceded the act of thinking about my shoe in this sequence we had three temporally distinct and hence non identical acts thinking of my cap then thinking of my shoe then thinking of my cap again the first and third acts of thinking are separated by the second act but what about the objects thought about the ideas in the Cartesian sense according to him the idea is share the destiny of the acts they're correlated with there are then three ideas in our sequence as well as three acts the cap thought thought about before the shoe is thought about is not the same as the cap thought about after the shoe is thought about it should be obvious that for Hume just as an object of perception such as a cap does not transcend the temporality that characterizes the acts of perceiving it so also a universal or class say the species horse does not transcend the temporal reality of the acts of thinking about it and the same holds for a proposition say proposition 1:5 in Euclid the base angles Manasa Lee's triangle are equal or a fact of history such as Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo in 1815 on Humes account individual objects of perception caps use electrons and universals as well and propositions of every kind are as temporally successive vanishing and multiple as the acts of thinking about them if I thought about proposition 1:5 yesterday or even a few seconds ago and I think about yet so to speak again there is with this new act of thinking a new idea thought about a new proposition 1:5 very much like the one I thought about earlier to be sure but not strictly strictly speaking identify with it solely mortals the problem with this account is gergich makes amply clear is that it fails to clarify exactly where our allegedly mistaken consciousness of identity comes from to stay with a cap example whether the cap thought about the second time is identical that cap thought about the first time it is surely experienced that is it presents itself to consciousness as identical it is this very consciousness of identity even if construed by humans of false consciousness that Hume has difficulty accounting for given the all-engulfing temporality that characterizes consciousness as he conceives it the consciousness of identity occurs in perception as well in thinking look cap close my eyes and try to remember what I just saw then look at the cap again the cap presents itself to my conscious as consciousness as one of the same cat over against three temporally distinct acts of considering considering it first looking at it then just remembering it then looking at it again even in the case of a continuous and uninterrupted perceiving of the cap I'm conscious of the temporality of this ongoing act of procedure not of the temporality of the cap to be sure I can argue that the cap itself is caught up in the flow of time that the cap just like the perceiving of it is in continuous motion that is slowly decomposing but this motion is typically unnoticed in ordinary perception the cap presents itself to consciousness as identical over time as one in the same cap presenting itself both temporally discrete and successive and the temporary continuous acts of consciousness and even more so doesn't a temporal object of thought say the species and species horse organ Euclid's proposition 1:5 present itself as a tentacle over time and is thereby transcending the temporality of the acts continuous or successive of thinking about it I'm aware of the temporality of my reflecting on Euclid's proposition 1/5 but I'm unaware of any temper ality in the theorem that the proposition purports to demonstrate when I think about proposition 1/5 tomorrow it will present itself to my mind is the same proposition I thought about the day even if I think about it in a new way say more less confusedly than before and the same thing strikingly is true of a false proposition say the proposition that the base angles of a triangle that if the base angles of a triangle are equal the lines attending them are unequal this false proposition the relationship that it expresses that is retains its identity over time I can after all set out to refute this claim on several different occasions the attempted refutation succeed one another in time but the proposition asserting the false relationship does not succeed itself in time along with the attempted reputations it is an incontestable that were conscious of identity over time and again we're talking here now the identity of something existing apart from consciousness maybe none of these things are really identical but the phenomenon that the port is the proposition most definitely retains its identity over time whether or not it was originally constituted by geometric geometrician geometrician at some point in the past or on the contrary discovered by geometrician at some point in the past now what is responsible for the consciousness of identity Hume needless to say cannot answer that our consciousness of the ideas identity over time is that due to the identity over time of the actual thing that it represents presumes ideas do not represent and even with a nonhuman version of consciousness even with a version that we find in Descartes and others according to ideas do represent things the question remains as to how the idea and not the thing that supposedly represents gets experienced as identical there are two ways out of this problem one way would be to abandon cartesianism all together and say that we think not solely of the contents of our own mind but of an extra mental order of things that transcends the temporal flow of our mental acts this is not the path that who Stroh takes rather than trying to return to the outside so to speak he looks further inside what he claims to see is that the mind thinks of an intramental order of things more precisely an order of things intrinsic to consciousness in this order acts of consciousness or imminent and temporal they successfully come to be impasse the way the objects of consciousness however are not imminent without with in time but transcended consciousness then has both an imminent temporal and real pole and correlated with this bowl not at all identical to it i transcendent a temporal and ideal pole what the one pole the temporal pole the axon consists of the acts of consciousness the other one the objects consciousness is precisely this correlation of imminence and transcendence where the latter has no reference at all to God or to anything else that's supposed to exist behind or outside consciousness just like eminence transcendence is then a dimension of consciousness itself whether there is another kind of transcendence and extra mental transcendence as initially presented as a question that lies outside the phenomenologist sphere of concern in a son when the phenomenological reduction is performed when belief in the independent existence of the world is suspended we are pochi Hume not left simply with a you know dimensional temporal flow of mental events an important distinction remains is the distinction between acts of thinking on the one hand and what is thought about the other the first class the middle axis role calls for the general name no Lacy's that's no aces in the sinking and that's on your handout if you want to refer to it the second class the immediate objects of these mental acts he calls know ain't matter or no aim in the singular again these are objects present to consciousness the knowing the the feature definitive of mental acts whereby they're related to objects whose roles call whose role calls intentionality every mental act intends an object our use of the English word intent is much narrower than the German equivalent Aeschylus or uses it when we say we intend something there's something intended is usually expressed in the infinitive expresses a kind of plan and I intend to eat out tonight and planning or aiming at doing something is indeed one kind of intending but whose role uses the word more broadly every mental act intends and it intends an object to see the lectern is to intend that electron in the mode of seeing to remember the lectern is to intend it in the mode of remembering to fantasize about election the election electrum for example imagine it suddenly bursting into flames is to intend electron in the mode of fantasizing and so forth these two fundamental and incontestable features of mental acts of no aces are there are temporalities and their intentionality a common mistake that frequently turns up in superficial criticisms of phenomenology is the restriction of the intentionality of mental acts to their having objects or to their being of or about objects this is important to be sure but something else of equal importance is involved in intentionality to grasp it and we've already caught sight of it we need to turn our attention from the no ACS to their coordinate no emitter to an indefinite number of no ACS there corresponds one in the same no aim for example the lectern as it appears to you right now as one in the same letter you can close your eyes open them again and one in the same left can get scenic that's how it presents itself to consciousness and if you do not move your head it presents itself after you close your eyes and open them again exactly as it did before that is self identify to be sure this lectern might undergo some change or other when your eyes are closed it is not one might argue really the same lectern even if it appears to be the same lectern but because we're limiting our description of how things present themselves within the strictures of the phenomenological reduction we present from what might be really happening independently of consciousness as a phenomenon the legend presents itself at least typically does protect present itself and it most certainly can present itself as one in the same over and against multiple seeing's of it which are again temporally distinguishable from one another just by blinking the eyes moreover when you close your eyes and try to remember what the lecture electro electron looked like you are intending though now in the mode of remembering the identical electrum that you were just a moment actually seeing so we have one in the same no aim are coordinated not just with multiple no Lacy's in the mode of seeing but with multiple no aces of different kinds the way in which a single Noah is coordinated with multiple no aces the way in which the Noma is intent no Aimie is intended as transcending the temporal succession of no aces is the specific and much too frequently overlooked way in which a metal act has an object and here I have to make an important distinction that I have so far suppressed rather misleadingly in the interest of simplifying things the no way must not exactly the lectern rather it is the lectern as it presents itself if I rotate the lecture in a bit you intend still in the mode of seeing a new knowing collector now present itself I can't do it in a new way a new aspect of the lectern comes into view so we have not just multiple no aces of the same kind and different kinds coordinated with one no anal we have multiple no ammeter as well and each of these no amateur are coordinated with multiple no aces are the same in of different kinds I've given no Amos a a perceptual name knowing with electron as it presents itself to your site right now as a way of so to speak referring to other no ammeter when I rotate the lectern or if you move your head there's a smooth seamless flow of no imita into one another electron regarded from the perspective of chief by the phenomenological reduction turns out to be nothing more or less than a system of interconnected no ammeter the electron is not simply identical with any one of its pneumatic presentations for the electron as it is intended the no Aimie is not simply identical with electron that isn't that is intended there are more aspects to the left and then present themselves in any single active intending so we must again distinguish between the thing that is perceived and the thing as it is perceived which is but one aspect of the proceed thing or more generally between the thing that is intended and the thing as it is intended or again between the thing is a system of no amateur and an individual normal since the thing can always reveal aspects or no ammeter not yet intended the thing is the complex system of its nomadic presentations as complex as no ammeter has a somewhat ideal character the aspects under which a thing presents itself the mind to the mind which include even its relation to other things can never be exhausted phenomenology then as a descriptive venture carried out under the strictures of a phenomenological reduction becomes an infinite task but one in which very real progress can made and not only the know i'ma talk about the no aces as well can be described as well for they to or phenomenon when we focus our attention on things and their multiple aspects there are no limit oh we intend straightforwardly when we focus our attention on no aces or metal ax ax we intend reflectively we're capable of intending in both ways whereas current speaks as though a shift to logic where as caught shift speaks as though logic and judgment in general is a function of a Faculty of the mind independent OGG though related to the Faculty of the mind that gives us sensations who saw attempts to ground logic and all its laws in a more primordial pre predicative for temporal essentially sensing awareness negation for example as a concept founded on an unfulfilled perceptual anticipation one expects such-and-such to appear when turning an object around or moving around it and this expectation or anticipation is usually fulfilled but sometimes fulfillment fails to occur the expected such-and-such fails to appear this failure of something to appear as it was anticipated to appear is what first gives rise according to WHO soil to the logical concept of not similarly the law of reiterative identity that a proposition remains identical to itself in multiple reiterations is found on the identity of the perceptual noma no Aimie over against multiple no aces that perceptually intended from these two primordial logical concepts both grounded and pre predicated for sexual experience the laws of non-contradiction in the excluded middle can be quickly derived since these laws are logically equivalent to the principle of reiterative identity that is the principle that a proposition Holy's implies itself the identity of the no Enma construed as the immediate object of thought over and against the temporary discrete or temporary continuous acts of intending it can be expressed in a proposition a being as object of thought is what it is this proposition can also be expressed negatively no being is what it is not or a being cannot both have a certain property and not have it at the same time and in the same respect this proposition in its positive form as the principle of identity and in its negative form as the principle of non-contradiction there's the fundamental law of logic which is to say that it is the fundamental law of reason and it gives rise to further loss of logic indeed to a whole system of logic the identity of the object of thought over time is that which makes reason possible determines reasons activity and gives reason the privilege of being the Canon of truth in the case of all propositions or declarative assertions all such assertions must as a minimum conformed loss of logic without the identity of a proposition of a time there could be no such thing as reasonable so what happens if one denies the principle non contradiction you know this is on maybe the back of your handout and want to follow this using some symbols but I try to define them that is expressed the denial of the principle non contradiction in the symbology of proposition of logic where P and Q represent any well-formed propositions true or false you may choose where the dot represents and where the V represents or and where the tilde represents not consider the following demonstration first step I'm going to assume P and not P that is I'm going to assume the contradictory of the principle of non-contradiction I'm going to assume that something can be true and not true exactly in the same way and at the same time from one I can simplify that is if the whole conjunction P and not P is true each of the two contract conjuncts is true taken by itself in three that's Pete reads p or q and that's from two by addition if P is true then the disjunction P or Q is also true even if Q taken by itself is false for example either George Washington was the first president of the United States or the moon is made of green cheese the whole compound proposition is true even though one of the disjunct is false all that is needed in a disjunction unlike a conjunction is for one of the two dis junks to be true for not P I start that and I got that from one just as I got P and step two from one 5q this comes from three and four by disjunctive syllogism and now try to explain that if one proposition in the disjunction is false then the other must be true and my disjunction was P or Q and number three in Step four said P was false therefore it follows that you must be true in our present example either P or Q must be true otherwise otherwise the disjunction would not be true and we have shown that it follows from the initial proposition P and not P which of the sake of this reductio ad absurdum we are assuming to be true what this proof shows is that if any proposition P and it's contradictory not P are both true then any proposition you like Q follows of necessity but suppose Q as a known falsehood for example the know Amma is never intended as identical over and against different and successive occurring the Lacy's well if you prefer something less technical this what about this false proposition everyone in this room knows my maternal grandmother's maiden name both these propositions in any other proposition known to be false must also be true if the Princip non-contradiction is denied and that means that the denial of the principle of contradictions is now denial with any meaningful distinction between truth and falsity and that's nonsensical for it know that there are things we do not know and we know that this is true and not false logicians condense the argument we just considered and call it by the name of positive absurdity if both P and not P then Q again regardless of what propositions P and Q might be taking this representing logic is well grounded and how sorts conception of the normal helps us see this now we can consider a given phenomenon no more logic and now we can consider a given phenomenon not as actual but it's possible nearly this change of considering an actual phenomenon is merely possible initiates what Thoreau calls the aid etiquette reduction reducing and thought something actual to something possible then freely varying it allows other related possibilities to present themselves to the mind who still thinks that in surveying these varied possibilities certain invariant features come to the for these invariant features are the essences of the phenomena under consideration for example we see that no matter how much we consider the possible ways of perceiving color such perceiving is always bound up with the proceeding the spatial extension to take an example that you may recall from Amino the play lets me know we see that it pertains to the essence of perceiving we see that it pertains to the essence of the perceiving of color the spatial extension is perceived as well but the reverse is not true since though we can surely perceive spatial configuration through sight we can also proceed in special configurations through touch and this tactile perceiving is not bound up with the perception of color does not then pertain to the essence of proceeding spatial and content extension that our caller be perceived as well in this free variation the aid edit reduction we have as who saw puts it intuitive in essence maybe not a very important one but an essence nonetheless the example of color perception is a simple woman I could take a much more complex phenomenon the act of judgment for example my judge electron is in this room and then consider this actual judgment as possible change the subject around to come up with a false judgement an elephant is in this room as I vary the act of judgment I discover that it pertains to the essence of judgment that it has a certain structure with subjects and predicates of various kinds I also come to see that proposition propositional structures are diverse as with categorical hypothetical and disjunctive proposition Zen is universal particular and individual propositions this free variation again what who Cyril calls the a dedication happens all the time in thought by regarding an actual phenomenon is possible then to freely vary it in order to see what is essential to it and move from a particular individual or token to a universal type this is one of the ways in which human reason works and it works this way because we can consider the actual as possible I'm not here arguing that the possible is a wider scope than the actual in reality so no quick victory over Spinoza here but the possible is most definitely a wider scope than the actual and thought for otherwise thinking is distinct from simple perceiving could not take place we would not be able to think of universals classes or types we would not be able to consider individuals as tokens of types and of course we would not be able to think of what might have happened but didn't and so forth I have argued elsewhere that the concept of the possible as being of wider scope than the actual is necessarily employed by practical reason by practical reason most obviously in the case of deliberation we could do this with such-and-such a likely outcome or we could do that instead with a quite different likely outcome what we learn from Chris halls treatment of the eidetic reduction is that the concept of it is that the concept of the possible as being a wider scope the actual is necessarily employed by speculative reason most obviously we experiences of actual individuals lead us to think that there could be others like it even if in fact there aren't but less I be misunderstood here I have to add that our employment of the concept of the possible as being of wider scope than the actual does not prove the existence of free will or anything like that it only shows that the concept of possibility is resident in reason itself we do not need to engage in phenomenology to perform the eidetic reduction cases of course quite different with the phenomenological reduction we saw that because commitment to description rather than explanation phenomenology is at its foundation that is from the phenomenological reduction is performed presupposition lists at least to the extent that thinking about presuppositions is humanly possible we now see that at its height that is in the a debt Achra duction phenomenology allows for the intuition of essences phenomenology according to Corrales philosophy at its most rigorous and at its least Sisyphean incontestable progress can be made disclosing with precision the noetic an automatic articulation of consciousness for example but you might object phenomenology as science not of the world as it really is but only of the world as it presents itself to consciousness truth phenomenology of science only of a reduced world not the so-called real world but the to the subjection who slow plays his trump card in our ordinary experience and even in science we have the world before us only as it presents itself to consciousness we saw I was supposed to have said once not even God can think of the world other than as it presents itself to consciousness so the world that phenomenology considers is indeed a reduced world but it is the non reduced world the world that has taken for granted in the natural attitude that turns out to be problematic though we live in this attitude almost all of the time a world existing all together independently are but not correlated with consciousness as a world we cannot think about except by virtue that's being the correlative consciousness who Cyril speaks of Kant's thing in itself as absurd the natural attitude the natural attitude is not for those who are just problematic it is consoling in itself is the view that there's something that lies outside consciousness and somehow responsible for a world existing excuse me the natural attitude is not focused all just problematic it is he says a prejudice because the world is always there when you intend it whether in perception of thought or in thought we infer that it is always there even when we do not intend it what is the basis for this inference what which constitutes the natural attitude one might think that the inference is justified by the fact that material objects often bump into us and sometimes cause us pain this does not justify the inference because the experience of being bumped into and of being pain their bio phenomena to this experience a phenomenon to this experience does not occur independently of consciousness if we're to infer that something exists independently of consciousness we need to base it on something other than tactile sensations and scientific experience again one might say that we infer the independent existence the world and the fact that it is always there there perhaps but where who throw will require the world is there precisely on the nomadic pole of consciousness and nowhere else now the following question probably occurred to you in my summary account of intentionality where did the know a matter that the know a season 10 come from that is no a sees as acts of consciousness are intrinsic to consciousness no big problem there but the no amateur sure who says that consciousness is this noetic nomadic correlation of intentionality the where's proceeding can be construed as part of consciousness what about the perceived well take the cap again under the phenomenological reduction the cap is seen from 1 and the cap s it is seen from one angle as annoying as this seen from another angle is another no Enma and all these no ammeter as I said flows smoothly into one another if I turn the cap residence and repeat the cap that is seen is the system of the Northeast no imita each of which is the cap as seen from one particular angle in each of which can in principle be correlated with an indefinite number of acts of seeing but to now I make a bit more explicit something I touched on earlier the cap as it is seen right now is given to consciousness differently from how it is given when it is remembered and you close your eyes let's say that is you look at the cap annoying where's present the consciousness next you close your eyes which I invite you to do and you in a broad sense of the word remember the cap the same cap that you saw though it is not present as deadly as before first it was present as seen now it is present as remembered so we have a new one mini distinction different from both the one mini distinction between Noah and Nueces and from the one mini distinction between things one complex whole of no amitié and the many no image are considered separately in serie autumn as the members of this whole of this whole in the new one mini distinction we consider the difference between the knowing or present the sight and the name of present of memory or the no amyl retained something in them to be the same though there are so to speak given the consciousness differently this new one many distinction is between the one automatic nucleus or no ematic sense as it is called and the many nomadic characters have given us the nomadic nucleus is what is common to the no Enma given first insight and then given in memory or an anticipation fantasy and so forth without this nucleus of identity we would not be able to remember the cap that we have just seen to be sure we do not actually see the cab when we remember it that is precisely the cause there's a difference between the characters have given this that is given insight and given in memory it is however part of the very sense of remembering that one is remembering just what one has earlier seen heard or otherwise perceived well thought about fantasized about and so forth now regarding this very expression pneumatic characters of givenness what exactly is doing the giving in the case of Conte the empirical manifold in a sense data come from without the data are given to the mind by the thing in itself which is not itself given but her Cyril has problems with constant itself his criticism is not the familiar one that Kant claims that the thing in itself is unknowable and then applying categories to it right and left claims to know that it exists that it is a spatial a temple needing to know that is somehow a cause of appearances costars criticism which is also Hegel's criticism is that the thing in itself is not just unknowable but for reasons we have already seen unthinkable whatever the mind thinks even when it thinks about us something as a so-called limit case whatever the mind thinks about is present to the mind it is just by virtue of being thought of not in itself but you know more precisely for consciousness so for her Cyril no super mental thing in itself underlying necessity or X the unknown can ever be conceived as giving the no amateur to the mind more precisely as giving the data to the know a sees that intend them to the question where are the know even to come from who Searles answers the know a sees give the know a matter to themselves how does this happen according to coaster all there is on the noetic pole of the noetic nor manic polarity not not on the nomadic pole but on the noetic pole where the Nueces are a kind of stuff out of which the know a sees constitute no ammeter this role calls this stuff Hellenic data the world Hellenic names originally unformed character of stuff of this stuff and data indicates its givenness but to repeat the data are not given from without by a thing in itself or by God or anything else they're just they are bound up with an oasis the high leduc data or what the noah sees go to work on have originally to give themselves no ammeter whose role calls no a cease meaning bestowing acts or sense bestowing acts the no a cease do not bestow meaning on the noah meter as is sometimes said quite the opposite the Noah is the meaning the sense of what is intended just as it is intended the Noah is what is meant that the noise that's what is meant is not the material of the Mint's meaningless towing act but the product of this act the highlighting data is the material now if I want to make an interjection before I go to the concluding part about something that who saw in liberal education he's a particularly important philosopher for st. John's I think Priya attempts to validate the operation of reason and make sense of the concept of truth even of the truth or as people say these days dog truth and he thinks he can do these things without any theological presuppositions at all and without any theological implications which are quite understandably viewed by some with suspicion at a school dedicated to liberal and not religious education but without well grounded confidence in the operation of reason and in the concept of God truth there is no possible assent from the cave of opinion into the light of knowledge without this well-rounded confidence liberal education becomes a little more than an exercise in something like spelunking that is moving from one cave of opinion to another while celebrating how variously the world man's place in its ultimate cause causes a constitution appear and diverse so-called cultures and at different historical epochs and there's a further reason why host or is an important figure for st. John's and for any institution that tries to recapture the ideal of liberal education classically conceived for who soil recognizes the primacy of what he calls the life world over scientific especially modern mathematical scientific accounts of the world for such accounts presuppose the life world the life world's the world in which we move ourselves around in the modern scientists lives in the life for all and moreover conducts his experiments in it but he does so by resolutely abstracting from the concept of purpose of Telos and yet the life world is permeated by teleology everything we deliberately do including engaging in science we do for some purpose or or another mmm came to the room for a purpose and I'm reading the lecture for a purpose not look at my watch for purpose almost everything we do back Thomas Aquinas says everything that we do that we don't do accidentally we do for some purpose the modern scientists abstracts from purpose which he misunderstands is a merely subjective construct though science itself aims at at a loss at a loss of understanding modern science then to the extent that it abstracts and the concept of purpose cannot understand itself this is one of the core defects that contribute to what us all calls the crisis of the European scientists the other court effect that modern science does not address its what who stroke was the Enigma of the intelligibility of the world does the world just fortuitously happen to be written or rather than write itself in the language of mathematics and is it just random mutations in the brains of apes that have enabled man to develop within his own mind mathematical principles with what's the mathematical world out there just happens marbeth to correspond why is the world intelligible at all there's a theological answer of course the intelligible world and the finite intellect of man marvelously correspond because both of the creatures of an F net intellect this is not an answer that most scientists are attracted to into the refrain so they refrain from asking the question what is the source of world's intelligibility but who Cyril attempts to answer it without appealing again to theology of any sort modern science is astonishingly impressed it and telling us what things are made of but without any warrant whatsoever it assumes that what things are made of is what they are if I ask you what a pencil is you will naturally say something to write with and you will naturally say if asked what a glass is then it is something for holding liquids if the scientist says instead that a pencil is really just wood rubber and graphite and that a class is really silicon dioxide molded into a cylindrical shape then though he tells us quite impressed we what a principal and glass are made of nevertheless does not tell us what they really are for he methodologically refrains from speaking of purposes and yet again the life world is permeated by purposes who soil has enormous respect for the achievements of modern science no small part of this project consists in the attempt to rescue science from relativism of every sort including especially certain forms of historicism but to do this he has to ground science firmly in the live world and disclose it's an essential limitations along with its incontestable achievements the phenomenological interpretation of modern science justifies science by understanding it more deeply than it understands itself such a deep and understanding of science should in my opinion be one of the primary goals of a liberal education now who saw all the subject that remains after the phenomenological reduction transcendental subjectivity this name can be applied to consciousness as a whole that is to the whole noetic nor matic correlation but the cost of the primacy that hood all gives to the no ACS over the no ammeter a primacy that by the way not all of his followers accept transmittal subjectivity more properly names the noetic side of the noetic nomadic correlation it should be clear by now that what initially appeared appeared as a merely methodological apparently innocent suspension suspension of the natural attitude is laden with massive consequences we have to return to the natural attitude even after engaging in phenomenological investigations we have to think plan and talk and in science even speculate about the world as though or more than a correlate of our consciousness as natural science does all the time but after having engaged in phenomenological investigations the natural attitude will never feel quite the same as it did before for who Cyril not only philosophy but all serious and rigorous speculation about the nature of things has to take place within the phenomenological reduction though I said at the beginning of my talk that who sir all changed his mind on important matters which should not be surprising given the vast areas that his orientation opened up for investigation he did rather at late in life put his a promoter on a short but lawful essay in defense of phenomenology this defense was written by organ think a student in the system of whose roles who had a close with his teachers thought Layton host life in reading through her sauce correspondence one hears him say again and again the person to whom is writing however sympathetic to phenomena phenomenology this person understands him to be himself to be has not quite grasped the four important phenomenological reduction I would be greatly surprised to find her soil saying this to think certainly not after his reading of thinks essay the title of this say essay is the phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl and contemporary criticism the criticism that think is responding to as of neo-kantian provenance and the course of his response think ends up making some rather startling claims one cannot dismiss these claims as inventions of thinks extrapolation said justo would not have approved of since well Saul himself writes in a preface to thinks essay quote I have carefully read through this essay and I'm happy to be able to state that it contains no sentence which I could not completely accept as my own or openly acknowledged as my own conviction in a lot of this unqualified endorsement by Lister all the latest rule let us consider some of things formulations will take quote the best basic question of phenomenology excuse me quote the basic question phenomenology is in the process of raising raising can be formulated as that concerning the origin of the world think repeats this formulation several times in his essay one might think partly on the basis of some of course our own earlier formulations that think is only referring to how things in the world get their meaning for us but think contrasting phenomenology with neocon T and criticism rights whereas criticisms problematic comes to rest with the interpretation of the meaning of beings phenomenology sees its decisive problem the question concerning the origin of the world in quote the sentence corrects a possible misunderstanding of westeros ideas which think repeatedly insists is a provisional introductory one-sided and necessarily flawed presentation of phenomenology phenomenology is not just concerned with meaning but with origin all being albeit in an unprecedented fashion according to think all pre phenomenological attempts to account for the origin of the world whether from the perspective of theology or that of a non theological metaphysics or from natural science are compromised by an inadequate examination of the terrain in which these attempts have played themselves out quote another quote from think the form was the problem of the origin of the world assumes in theology and speculative philosophy does not serve as the motivation for phenomenologist basic question phenomenology rejects both as both as being mundane forms of the authentic problems of origin forms which it recognizes as being only symbolic anticipations of its own basic question within the strictures of the phenomenological reduction the thought of a being that is separate from the transform transfer no subjectivity in its accomplishment whether its conceived as God as thinking itself whereas primary primordial matter is impossible such a so-called being is not conceivable without contradiction it is conceivable within the natural attitude to be sure but again for her all the natural attitude is an insufficiently examined attitude that sufficient examination exposes a prejudice since for for all we cannot coherently think of such a beings existing independently of consciousness we cannot coherently think of ourselves as receding data than its supposedly that stuff outside consciousness it gives us I note in this connection there's a capital and majority and expression the given world an expression that is sometimes employed modestly by those who want to stress the limits of their theoretical concern in particular their infusible to engage in highfalutin metaphysics or theology but the very formulation the gibbon world expressly implies that the world is given by something either beyond or beneath the world by a giver outside consciousness for her own transmittal subjectivity gives itself the world by virtue of constituting it not out of data received without but to repeat out of data intrinsic to the noetic pole of the noetic nomadic correlation that is consciousness to those who might be inclined to say that phenomenology is just a branch of psychology albeit operating under some rather strange rather strange methodological premise think contrast the two is false developed as a positive science psychology moves from the start within the self explication of human experience as being only receptive and impotent phenomenology on the other hand cannot in principle distinguish between the simple givenness of that which is accepted and to something which might be independent from it not quote having made this point Fink appears to contradict himself when he writes a few lines later that phenomenologist does not involve a denial of the existence of things independent of human knowledge to stand to understand what he is saying here and why the contradiction is only apparent we have to consider the word human which thinks significantly places in italics what is man considered from the perspective of phenomenology according to think stand quote standing within the belief in the world first of all signifies the position of man within the belief in the world that is man is the subject who accepts the world and included with this himself as man in his life of meaning well in quote continue for all human attitudes remain in principle within the natural attitude all human attitudes remain in principle within the natural attitude indeed quote existing within the belief in the world and leaving oneself to be a man or one in the same in man then is defined by his acceptance of the world as an independently existing entity the natural attitude and which man lives is one of captivity a natural attitude has a cave-like character indeed well as long as we exist within the natural attitude the problem of philosophy the problem of philosophy is inaccessible being shot off from the dimension of the transcendental belongs to the essence of the present within the world which transcends the natural attitude and by the way talks he spoke of being shut off from the dimension of the transcendental not of the transcendent there's no transcendent beyond consciousness but consciousness has a transcendental function whereby according to phenomenology its constitutive of the world thing does not use the expression in prison lightly here and he reverts to it a few pages later we are in the natural attitude imprisoned and engrossed within it so that we are not at all able to dismiss it without breaking out of it completely the phenomenological reduction is just this breakthrough in quote through the up ok that is the suspension of belief and the independent existence of the world man as such becomes trans Zenden quote as the persistent and radical deactivation of the belief in the world the fok is the disconnecting of the de belief belief in the human performer at least I'll read that again as the persistent and radical deactivation of belief in the world the fok is the disconnecting of the belief and the human performer beliefs it is in fact quote the most extreme striving for theoretical self surmounting of man unquote the self surmounting that is achieved by the phenomenological reduction which reduces the world of pure phenomenon with its independent existence bracket out of consideration entails a transcendental reduction which reduces men to transmittal subjectivity with all that is specifically human bracketed out of consideration consciousness accepted of course man as such is left behind when the phenomenological reduction is performed now justice there's a question that Plato's Republic raises but does not clearly answer as to exactly how a man first gets out of the cave there's an analogous question as to how men first gets out of the natural attitude how can a man perform an act that enables him to transcend his humanity gasping to understand it the reduction which brackets the natural attitude out of consideration is obviously a possibility contained within the natural attitude but what gives rise to it thinks answer is striking the reduction is its own presupposition the reduction then seems to be self caused but since it is not eternal as God or even as Spinoza de su a God or nature supposed to do to be the reduction must bring itself about on its own or but ex nihilo the reduction grounds itself not eternally but at a certain point in time to repeat the reduction is its own presupposition in quote for phenomenology the reduction is the free act parts of laws these considerations allow for a more exact characterization of constitution the constitution of the world well quote from think if we can no longer interpret this transcendent transcendental life as being receptive his true character still remains indeterminate its constitutive interpretation identifies at first as creation no matter how harsh or dr. Mehra this addition of the essence of Constitution as a productive creation may sound it at least indicates the opposite to the receptive character the requirement of something existing in itself of the antic antic and mundane psychical life of experience so he's not that uncomfortable with speaking of transmittal subjectivity is created it's at least better than saying it's receptive I think to avoid a misunderstanding that the word creation could give rise to think at once adds parenthetically that Constitution signifies neither receptive nor productive relation and he is earlier disowned the language of creation and product but this disowning has to be interpreted in the context of his criticism of the mundane character of theology what is inappropriate about the term creation is not that it would endow transmittal subjectivity with too much responsibility for what it constitutes but with too little responsibility for at least some relatively primitive theological conceptions of creation the creatures thought to be once created capable standing on its own and without any further assistance from the Creator we have found such an understanding and the watchmaker conception God makes the clock winds it up and steps back to let it run on its own the world constituted by transmittal subjectivity does not want to constituted run on its own its essence remains an ongoing intentional existence product of transmittal subjectivity toward the end of this essay think raises and answers the question to which is for essay is repeated to given rise who is man therefore the absolute not at all but neither is the absolute of transcendent reality beyond man and not could encompass a separation in distinguishing them is as false as their direct equation in place of a transcendent relation between man and world ground we must pause the transcendental relation which does not overlook lens world infinitude frailty and impotence but which comprehends it as a constituted meaning thereby taking it back into the infinite essence of spirit unquote if you relieved to hear that man is not the absolute after all don't unfasten your seat belts just yet we must not forget that man exists only within the natural attitude man as such is certainly not the ad but then repeat man as such as overcome in the reduction things question then can be reformed and re-entered is transcendental subjectivity therefore the absolute yes it is transcendental subjectivity is not beyond man as God at least the biblical God is typically understood to be on the contrary transmittal subjectivity is itself the infinite essence of spirit but you might wonder can the transcendentally reduce subject having overcome humanity per se in the reduction reenter the life world that has become a man again surely can and he must but he does so at the expense of having to be silent while in the natural attitude about the true nature of things mainly they're being systems of no way no time there is for all no such thing as a genuine non phenomenological philosophy non phenomenological philosophy is officiated at its core he thinks by captivity to the prejudices that shaped the natural attitude there's no return to the natural attitude for philosophy or even for any kind of rigorous inquire the phenomenologist returns to the natural attitude that's built in now exposed prejudices about what really exists out there and how it in some strange way gives rise to consciousness is one more thing in the world along with stars rocks plants and animals clocks carpets and chairs but the phenomenologist returns to the natural attitude not to philosophize by the essence about the essence of things but to go shopping get ready for dinner play softball or take a nap what you might want to do so I'm going to stop here

Channel: Philosophy Overdose

Views: 16,644

Rating: 4.8014183 out of 5

Keywords: Philosophy, Phenomenology, History of Philosophy, Husserl, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Modern Philosophy, Consciousness, Idealism, Transcendental Idealism, Subjectivity, Subject-Object, Berkeley, Cartesian

Id: 3m_3oXbm48o

Length: 58min 29sec (3509 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 11 2018