• Joshs
    5.2k
    Edmund Husserl, the founder of modern phenomenological philosophy, attempted to chart a course between realism and idealism by grounding all experience in perception and grounding perception in structures of intentionality in which the subjective and objective aspects(what he called the noetic and noematic poles) are inextricably dependent on each other and inseparable. He was very much influenced in his project by the work of Franz Brentano, but went beyond Brentano's notion of inentionality by abandoning Brrentano's naturalism.

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

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

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

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

    From this vantage, attempting to explain this constituting process in psychophysiological terms by reducing it to the language of naive realism is an attempt to explain the constituting on the basis of the constituted. The synthetic structure of temporal constitution is irreducible to 'physical' terms. On the contrary, it is the 'physicai' that rests on a complex constitutive subjective process that is ignored in the naive attitude.
  • Eee
    159
    From this vantage, attempting to explain this constituting process in psychophysiological terms by reducing it to the language of naive realism is an attempt to explain the constituting on the basis of the constituted. The synthetic structure of temporal constitution is irreducible to 'physical' terms. On the contrary, it is the 'physicai' that rests on a complex constitutive subjective process that is ignored in the naive attitude.Joshs

    Excellent post. But what we do make of the brain? This constituted object is also constituting.
  • OmniscientNihilist
    171


    reality is color, sound, feeling, taste, smell

    how do you get an object from that?

    you dont

    you group certain qualia together in the mind and call it an object. but the object doesnt actually exist in reality or the mind. its just a word for a function

    i solved the problem without having to write a big essay
  • fresco
    577
    What seems to be missing in Husserl's account is the 'language factor'...i.e. the social dimension in which shared concepts of 'things' are acquired.This is one of the points of difference pursued by Heidegger who ended up with the extreme position of "Language speaks the Man".
  • I like sushi
    4.3k
    He certainly brings it up, but Heidegger was definitively the one who ran down that road full steam ahead.

    Husserl’s primary aim was to create a ‘subjective science’ for use in investigating ‘consciousness’ and was wholly opposed to psychologism. Keep in mind he started from a mathematical/logical grounding - he began by looking at the foundations of logic.
  • Joshs
    5.2k
    Wouldn't it be nice if philosophy were this easy. Then we could put it in fortune cookies. Seriously though, do the qualia represent physical data of the world independent of the perceiver? Are there more or less correct ways to organize these qualia in the mind to mirror the external world? Neither of these are true of Husserlian primal impressions. They function very differently than qualia, which are proxies for Kantian intuitions.
  • Joshs
    5.2k
    That was my omission. Husserl makes a distinction between a lower stratum of constitution, in which I form 'real' objects out of syntheses purely of my own actual perceptions, retentions and protentions(that's the stratum I described in the OP), and a higher stratum in which my language interactions with others in an interpersonal world contribute to my actual perceptions of sensate experience. It is out of this interpersonal nexus that empirical objects , the basis of science, are constituted. Even though I (and others in my world) don't actually experience every aspect of such inter-personally constituted objects , we fuse into our own perception what we only indirectly aperceive from others. Through such interpersonal correlation, we assume these objects to be the same for everyone. Logical and mathematical idealities are made possible through this interpersonal objectivizing that gives us the 'identical' object for all.
  • Joshs
    5.2k
    what we do make of the brain? This constituted object is also constituting.Eee

    Good question. Of course, couldn't one ask the same question of Kant's categories? Husserl was well aware of the chicken and egg difficulties inherent in his thesis.

    The sequence would seem to be circular. The lowest stratum of constitution of a world is that of basic spatial objects, and from this level we then constitute what Husserl calls my animate organism(my body, which is both object to me and perceiving subjectivity, as I can demonstrate when my one hand touches the other and each is at one moment the perceiving subject and in the next moment the perceived object). At a higher stratum of constitution I emerge as intentional cognizer and member of a cultural-scientific community, Husserl recognizes that the intentional stratum is dependent on the material body, which is necessary but not sufficient for it.

    IF this is the case, how can Husserl claim the primordial structure of temporal synthesis (retention primal impression protention) as more fundamental than that of the body if phenomenology is articulated in language for a languaged community , which is a higher order intentional stratum? How can the lower order(the physical brain and body) be grounded via the higher constituted order? I think Husserl;s answer would be that although it is necessary to articulate phenomenology's primordial structures via the higher stratum, nevertheless what it points to is not a founded but a founding level.

    Put differently, we cannot ground retention-impression-protention in brain physiology because the latter is a relative and contingent empirical formulation but the former is not. Temporal synthesis is not a psychological system but a philosophical a priori. Scientists can change their models of brain function as much as they like but this should have no effect on the phenomenological a priori of temporal synthesis underlying any and all constitution of spatial objects as well as interpersonally constituted products like particular empirical scientific models , throughout their changes.
  • OmniscientNihilist
    171
    Wouldn't it be nice if philosophy were this easy. Then we could put it in fortune cookies.Joshs

    “If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.”

    ― Albert Einstein
  • I like sushi
    4.3k
    A simpler way to think of this is by paying attention to what Transcendental Reduction means. The ‘transcendent’ is the sensible experience - what we call ‘existent’ - and investigating how come to view ‘existence’.

    For many they take the term ‘transcendent’ to mean some kind of ‘beyond sensible experience’ yet in this category of philosophical jargon it’s pretty much the exact opposite bring proposed with the harder ‘realist’ perspective being the view we’re ‘reducing down’.

    A six year old could understand this. ‘Mature’ minds are generally more conditioned and closed off - plus they generally don’t like being told their view isn’t the only view there is.
  • Isaac
    10.3k
    A six year old could understand this.I like sushi

    As luck would have it, I happen to have ready access to just such a child right now in the form of a nephew (7). I'm afraid the response was "What?".
  • I like sushi
    4.3k
    Try reading Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity to him next and see how that goes. Neither I, nor Einstein, would use the exact same language in explaining to a six year old as we would to someone with fully developed language that is capable of abstraction - six year olds are quite limited (they’ve only relatively recently learnt how to connect two abstract concepts).
  • Eee
    159
    Good question. Of course, couldn't one ask the same question of Kant's categories? Husserl was well aware of the chicken and egg difficulties inherent in his thesis.

    The sequence would seem to be circular.
    Joshs

    That's how I see it, circular, like a Mobius strip perhaps.
  • Joshs
    5.2k
    Show him a Picasso first. He'll have better luck with that. Or one of Trump's tweets.
  • Eee
    159
    Put differently, we cannot ground retention-impression-protention in brain physiology because the latter is a relative and contingent empirical formulation but the former is not. Temporal synthesis is not a psychological system but a philosophical a priori.Joshs

    Husserl's theory depends, it seems, on his possessing the German language, which evolved for many years before it found its way to Husserl. He has to talk to himself in terms of 'protension' for instance. He needs to find words and call them the result of his investigation. So even if we find Husserl convincing to some degree, I don't see how we can do so without also being aware of ourselves as member of some community on a planet that orbited the sun before humans were aware of it.

    Scientists can change their models of brain function as much as they like but this should have no effect on the phenomenological a priori of temporal synthesis underlying any and all constitution of spatial objects as well as interpersonally constituted products like particular empirical scientific models , throughout their changes.Joshs

    Husserl seems to assume the discovery of a fixed structure. What does it take to fix this structure and protect it from time? And to what degree does this depend on a realm of meaning independent of any particular language-as-vehicle? If perfect translation remains permanently possible, then philosophy as theology wins. Pure, timeless, exact, indestructible meaning, accessible 'behind' the time-tormented words, words, words...
  • I like sushi
    4.3k
    I think I mentioned above Husserl’s concern/aim. It was to establish firmer grounds for logic (or rather look to see what the grounds are) - upon which ALL scientific and human pursuits stem from.

    He quite literally says the aim is to something like a ‘subjective science of consciousness’ in direct opposition to psychologism. Historically philosophy has shifted from metaphysical to the epistemic, to philosophy of language, back to the epistemic, an I guess many would argue it’s generally at play in the sphere of metaphysics again (certainly in regards to ontology, but I don’t quite think people take the teleological seriously unless we focus our intent on political/ethical matters).
  • Eee
    159
    think I mentioned above Husserl’s concern/aim. It was to establish firmer grounds for logic (or rather look to see what the grounds are) - upon which ALL scientific and human pursuits stem from.

    He quite literally says the aim is to something like a ‘subjective science of consciousness’ in direct opposition to psychologism
    I like sushi

    That sounds like what I remember. I studied him some but not as much as others. I've spent more time with Heidegger and Derrida.

    If it helps, I'm curious lately about the relationship of time and knowledge. If a science of consciousness is possible, that seems to require that consciousness have a fixed nature or an essence. I think we experience certain basic intuitions as timeless. But how do we know? Perhaps an argument can be made that we just can't help such an assumption. ----which, funny enough, imposes or finds an essence in consciousness --that it can't help projecting necessary (eternal) structures.

    I guess this connects to that thread about whether the problem of induction applies to math (and the breakdown of the analytic/synthetic distinction.) How do we know that the Pythagorean theorem is eternally true? Every time we have checked the proof (maybe one just based on moving around shapes) it made sense to us. So we expect it to always make sense to us in the future, and to every possible human being in the future. But is there really such a gulf between that and certain empirical expectations?
  • I like sushi
    4.3k
    Time is always a thorn in our side. Husserl certainly wasn’t attempting to look at the physical aspect of ‘time’, but to come to a better appreciation (‘adumbration’) of consciousness in regards to time as an aspect of experience - with little to no concern of the physicality of time.

    It is certainly a jumble of jargon trying to navigate this and from what Husserl himself says about having a deep suspicion (almost to the point of disregard) about anything called a ‘conclusion’. The phenomenological investigation - as Husserl appears to mark out - isn’t something that actively searches in the belief of a final conclusion much as physics isn’t about the belief in one formula to describe the universe, yet the mathematical models certainly play out ‘as if’ there is an ‘answer’.

    The biggest problem I see in understanding Husserl - for myself and in others - is the inclination to parcel him into this or that category when he effectively picked up on several points of those before him and set up an historically ‘different’ approach to anything within his generation (at least as far as I can tell). Then there is the digression from his position to where Heidegger went and, as you mention, others too like Derrida - neither of whom seem to do much more than appropriate everything he says to some strange twisted ‘philosophy of language’ that was welcomed by religious/artistic individuals in an almost clandestine manner.

    That said I have certainly found some of what both Derrida and Heidegger say to be useful, be it negatively or positively, in regards to looking at Husserl’s work - which remained a growing work that he actively worked on and changed over time adding to the obtuse nature of an already atypical line of investigation (‘subjectivity’).

    I don’t regard Husserl as either an ‘idealist’ or a ‘realist’. He was a ‘phenomenologist’, which is had to accept as ‘neither’ of the others yet not in ‘opposition’ to them. Even if you don’t agree this perspective works just coming to terms with it in order to say so makes you question just that little bit further prior to dismissing it out of hand.

    I was quite struck recently by how the shadow of Nietzsche runs through the fringes of his ideas - but I’m likely reading something into that point as I’ve looked reasonably closely at some of Nietzsche’s stuff.
  • waarala
    97


    Husserl's theory depends, it seems, on his possessing the German language, which evolved for many years before it found its way to Husserl. He has to talk to himself in terms of 'protension' for instance. He needs to find words and call them the result of his investigation. So even if we find Husserl convincing to some degree, I don't see how we can do so without also being aware of ourselves as member of some community on a planet that orbited the sun before humans were aware of it.Eee

    These (protention, retention) are actually fairly "ungerman" terms derived from the Latin. Compare with Heidegger's temporal terms like Gewesenheit, Zu-künftigkeit, presence as Anwesenheit etc., words that entail deeper or more adequate philosophical meanings (at least according to Heidegger). Heidegger thought that the German (and the ancient Greek) language is the most suitable vehicle for the essential philosophical expressions. In German language with prepositions like zu, an etc one can add certain dynamic, spatial or other "philosophically intended" "polysemic" meaning to the words (I am not a native speaker of the German). And Heidegger highly respected certain basic ideas of Husserl.
  • Eee
    159

    Thanks for the background. And I do like Heidegger. But I don't see much of a response to my post. Perhaps you can share what you think on the points raised?
  • Eee
    159
    to some strange twisted ‘philosophy of language’ that was welcomed by religious/artistic individuals in an almost clandestine manner.I like sushi

    This caught my eye. I agree that artsy-mystical types can embrace Derrida-inspired linguistic philosophy as a flight from science. But I also think that Derrida offers an anti-theology that strikes at its very core (pure, timeless 'meaning.')

    It is certainly a jumble of jargon trying to navigate this and from what Husserl himself says about having a deep suspicion (almost to the point of disregard) about anything called a ‘conclusion’.I like sushi

    Yeah, I have the impression that Husserl was always still in progress. He strikes me as having a great character. He's a noble, likable soul, it seems to me.

    What do we make of this?

    Like all scepticism, all irrationalism, the Humean sort cancels itself out. Astounding as Hume's genius is, it is the more regrettable that a correspondingly great philosophical ethos is not joined with it. This is evident in the fact that Hume takes care, throughout his whole presentation, blandly to disguise or interpret as harmless his absurd results, though he does paint a picture (in the final chapter of Volume I of the Treatise) of the immense embarrassment in which the consistent theoretical philosopher gets involved. Instead of taking up the struggle against absurdity, instead of unmasking those supposedly obvious views upon which this sensationalism, and psychologism in general, rests, in order to penetrate to a coherent self-understanding and a genuine theory of knowledge, he remains in the comfortable and very impressive role of academic scepticism. Through this attitude he has become the father of a still effective, unhealthy positivism which hedges before philosophical abysses, or covers them over on the surface, and comforts itself with the successes of the positive sciences and their psychologistic elucidation. — Husserl
    https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/husserl.htm

    I relate to his disaste for an "unhealthy positivism which hedges before philosophical abysses, or covers them over on the surface, and comforts itself with the successes of the positive sciences and their psychologistic elucidation." For me it's into the abyss. And I think Derrida, for instance, tries that.
  • Eee
    159
    I don’t regard Husserl as either an ‘idealist’ or a ‘realist’. He was a ‘phenomenologist’, which is had to accept as ‘neither’ of the others yet not in ‘opposition’ to them.I like sushi

    I grasp that. And, to be clear, I think Husserl is great. I hope to study more of him, but the years pass swiftly. And Derrida speaks to me lately, in spite of features that are off-putting.

    I was quite struck recently by how the shadow of Nietzsche runs through the fringes of his ideas - but I’m likely reading something into that point as I’ve looked reasonably closely at some of Nietzsche’s stuff.I like sushi

    Husserl was also aware of Stirner. Any radical self-consciousness has a certain edge. In my studies of Derrida, I read about Eugene Fink, who seems to have developed the quasi-mystical potential of Husserl.
  • Eee
    159


    Here's another quote.

    The difference between empirical and transcendental subjectivity remained unavoidable; yet just as unavoidable, but also incomprehensible, was their identity. I myself, as transcendental ego, "constitute" the world, and at the same time, as soul, I am a human ego in the world. The understanding which prescribes its law to the world is my transcendental understanding, and it forms me, too, according to these laws; yet it is my - the philosopher's - psychic faculty. Can the ego which posits itself, of which Fichte speaks, be anything other than Fichte's own? If this is supposed to be not an actual absurdity but a paradox that can be resolved, what other method could help us achieve clarity than the interrogation of our inner experience and an analysis carried out within its framework? If one is to speak of a transcendental "consciousness in general," if I, this singular, individual ego, cannot be the bearer of the nature-constituting understanding, must I not ask how I can have, beyond my individual self-consciousness, a general, a transcendental intersubjective consciousness? The consciousness of intersubjectivity, then, must become a transcendental problem; but again, it is not apparent how it can become that except through an interrogation of myself, [one that appeals to] inner experience, i.e., in order to discover the manners of consciousness through which I attain and have others and a fellow mankind in general, and in order to understand the fact that I can distinguish, in myself between myself and others and can confer upon them the sense of being "of my kind." — Husserl
    https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/husserl2.htm

    This is great quote, rich with ideas. To me all of this points to what it means to be in a language. We know that individual humans are mortal, that 'consciousness' depends on a living, fragile brain. And yet this 'consciousness' is much like a voice. And this voice speaks an 'intersubjective' language, which makes a 'subjective' interrogation possible in the first place.

    Taken as an intelligible (geistig) or an abstract being, that is, regarded neither as human nor as sensuous, but rather as one that is an object for and accessible only to reason or intelligence, God qua God is nothing but the essence of reason itself. .. The proof of the proposition that the divine essence is the essence of reason or intelligence lies in the fact that the determinations or qualities of God, in so far as they are rational or intelligible and not determinations of sensuousness or imagination, are, in fact, qualities of reason.
    — Feuerbach
    https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/future/future0.htm

    In other words, language or reason is 'God.' It's all quite messy, because intersubjective language is strangely grounded in particular mortal bodies. If we look in a mirror, we see a singular ape gazing back at us. But as we talk to ourselves we use a language that is not our own.

    [T]he I, the self in general, which especially since the beginning of the Christian era, has ruled the world and has thought of itself as the only spirit that exists at all [must be] cast down from its royal throne. — Feuerbach

    Our attachment to the single subject (which is not without its reasons) tends to (IMO) lead us by the nose away from our embedded-ness or distrbutedness across the community, possessed as we are by its language (even largely created as selves by this inherited language.) At the same time, we value objectivity and altruism. So we know without knowing how connected we are, but philosophy has still had a love affair with the lonely ego. But this makes sense, since philosophy often erupts as religions die, and therefore within a pluralism that throws us back on private 'spiritual' resources.

    Anyway, this suggests a problem with trying to ground science on the intuitions of a subject. The subject itself is constituted, unless we insist on fixing that subject according to the mere limits of a human body, which misses precisely what is essentially human in us --our participation in language.
  • Eee
    159

    Here's another quote from Husserl that touches on our discussion.
    According to our clarifications, the ultimate self-understanding here allows us to say: in my naïve selfconsciousness as a human being knowing himself to be living in the world, for whom the world is the totality of what for him is valid as existing, I am blind to the immense transcendental dimension of problems. This dimension is in a hidden [realm of] anonymity. In truth, of course, I am a transcendental ego, but I am not conscious of this; being in a particular attitude, the natural attitude, I am completely given over to the object-poles, completely bound by interests and tasks which are exclusively directed toward them. I can, however, carry out the transcendental reorientation - in which transcendental universality opens itself up - and then I understand the one-sided, closed, natural attitude as a particular transcendental attitude, as one of a certain habitual one-sidedness of the whole life of interest. I now have, as a new horizon of interest, the whole of constituting life and accomplishment with all its correlations - a new, infinite scientific realm - if I engage in the appropriate systematic work. In this reorientation our tasks are exclusively transcendental; all natural data and accomplishments acquire a transcendental meaning, and within the transcendental horizon they impose completely new sorts of transcendental tasks. Thus, as a human being and a human soul, I first become a theme for psychophysics and psychology; but then in a new and higher dimension I become a transcendental theme. Indeed, I soon become aware that all the opinions I have about myself arise out of self-apperceptions, out of experiences and judgments which I - reflexively directed toward myself - have arrived at and have synthetically combined with other apperceptions of my being taken over from other subjects through my contact with them. My ever new self-apperceptions are thus continuing acquisitions of my accomplishments in the unity of my self-objectification; proceeding on in this unity, they have become habitual acquisitions, or they become such ever anew. I can investigate transcendentally this total accomplishment of which I myself, as the "ego," am the ultimate ego-pole, and I can pursue its intentional structure of meaning and validity.

    By contrast, as a psychologist I set myself the task of knowing myself as the ego already made part of the world, objectified with a particular real meaning, mundanised, so to speak - concretely speaking, the soul - the task of knowing myself precisely in the manner of objective, naturally mundane knowledge (in the broadest sense), myself as a human being among things, among other human beings, animals, etc. Thus we understand that in fact an indissoluble inner alliance obtains between psychology and transcendental philosophy. But from this perspective we can also foresee that there must be a way whereby a concretely executed psychology could lead to a transcendental philosophy. By anticipation, one can say: If I myself effect the transcendental attitude as a way of lifting myself above all world - apperceptions and my human self-apperception, purely for the purpose of studying the transcendental accomplishment in and through which I "have" the world, then I must also find this accomplishment again, later, in a psychological internal analysis - though in this case it would have passed again into an apperception, i.e., it would be apperceived as something belonging to the real soul as related in reality to the real living body.
    — Husserl

    On one hand I'm the transcendental subject, which is to say being itself. I am the world entire, or its frame or stage or the light that reveals it.

    On the other hand, 'I' am the 'dream' inside a particular object in this world, a particular skull.

    I can focus 'through' either perspective, but (it seems) never forget my dual nature for long.
  • Eee
    159
    I was quite struck recently by how the shadow of Nietzsche runs through the fringes of his ideas - but I’m likely reading something into that point as I’ve looked reasonably closely at some of Nietzsche’s stuff.I like sushi

    I find the shadow of Nietzsche in this quote.

    All of modern philosophy, in the original sense of a universal ultimately grounding science, is, according to our presentation, at least since Kant and Hume, a single struggle between two ideas of science: the idea of an objectivistic philosophy on the ground of the pre-given world and the idea of a philosophy on the ground of absolute, transcendental subjectivity - the latter being something completely new and strange historically, breaking through in Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. Psychology is constantly involved in this great process of development, involved, as we have seen, in different ways; indeed, psychology is the truly decisive field. It is this precisely because, though it has a different attitude and is under the guidance of a different task, its subject matter is universal subjectivity, which in its actualities and possibilities is one. — Husserl

    If 'psychology is the truly decisive field,' then I think Nietzsche is decisive psychologist. The 'pre-given' world is structured by 'lies' (false but useful identities).
  • I like sushi
    4.3k
    I guess I meant that where Husserl ‘side-stepped’ the dichotomy held to for centuries Nietzsche created - and tried to articulate the framework of solution to - a dichotomy of ‘morality’ (probably not the best way to articulate what I mean but it’ll do for now).

    Even though they are in completely different fields of play I’ve found their approaches similar in respect to how they worked with huge ‘divisions’ philosophy - I’d say this was also the reason that characters like Descartes and Kant have such prominence even up to today. That said I think both Nietzsche and Husserl merely laid down the ‘beginnings’ of something rather than causing a huge stir anything like either Descartes or Kant. In time I imagine they will be seen more and more as a force in the shaping of philosophical thought (Nietzsche already is and perhaps I’m wrong about Husserl - he’s not insignificant though).

    Anyway, we’re digressing.
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