That's the spirit, and really not that remote from what I want to convey. — Wayfarer

Probably our differences lie more in the conceptual details—about what can be counted as knowledge and what faith. Other than I've always thought we are not so far apart.

The emergence of organic life marks the beginning of a rudimentary form of awareness. Unlike inanimate matter, living organisms actively maintain themselves, preserving their internal organization while remaining distinct from their environment. This self-maintenance, or autopoiesis, introduces a basic subject-object relationship, where the organism differentiates itself from the "other" that surrounds it. Crucially, this perspective departs from a strictly materialist account, which often focuses solely on physical processes. Instead, it recognizes the primacy of relational dynamics and the concept of "otherness" as foundational to life. Hans Jonas and Evan Thompson highlight this, emphasizing that life is characterized by its orientation toward, and interaction with, the world, laying the groundwork for more developed forms of awareness and cognition. But the point is, it is relational from the get-go.

I've found an extract from Husserl's Critique of Naturalism, copied from the Routledge Introduction to Phenomenology. I was sent that as a .pdf a long time ago, early days on the other Forum, and reading this excerpt, I realise that it comprises most of what I know about Husserl, and also most or all of my own 'critique of naturalism'.

The critique of naturalism

Soon after writing the Logical Investigations, as we have seen, Husserl came to the view that his earlier researches had not completely escaped naturalism. After that Husserl constantly set his face against naturalism, but his most cogent critique is to be found in his 1911 essay, Philosophy as a Rigorous Science. Husserl thinks that all traditional philosophy, including Descartes and Kant, had treated consciousness as something having a completely natural being, a mere part of nature, and a dependent or epiphenomenal part at that. Even Kant had misunderstood transcendental psychology as a psychology. Husserl regards naturalism both as the dominant theoretical outlook of his age and also as deeply embedded in our ordinary assumptions about the world surrounding us. In other words, our pre-theoretical engagement with the world has an inbuilt bias towards naive naturalism. This is fine in our ordinary practices in the world, but when naturalism is elevated into an all-encompassing theoretical outlook, it actually becomes far removed from the natural attitude and in fact grossly distorts it. Husserl’s critique of naturalism is that it is a distorted conception of the fruits of scientific method which in itself is not inextricably wedded to a naturalist construal.

Husserl’s conception of naturalism relates to his understanding of the projects of John Locke, David Hume, and J.S. Mill, as well as nineteenth century positivists, especially Comte and Mach. Naturalism is the view that every phenomenon ultimately is encompassed within, and explained by, the laws of nature; everything real belongs to physical nature or is reducible to it. There are of course many varieties of naturalism, but Husserl’s own account in his 1911 essay more or less correctly summarises the naturalistic outlook:

"Thus the naturalist…sees only nature, and primarily physical nature. Whatever is, is either itself physical, belonging to the unified totality of physical nature, or it is, in fact, psychical, but then merely as a variable dependent on the physical, at best a secondary “parallel accomplishment”. Whatever is belongs to psychophysical nature, which is to say that it is univocally determined by rigid laws."

As naturalism has again become a very central concept primarily in contemporary analytic philosophy, largely due to W.V.O. Quine’s call for a naturalised epistemology, it is worth taking time here to elucidate further Husserl’s conception of naturalism. Indeed, precisely this effort to treat consciousness as part of the natural world is at the basis of many recent studies of consciousness, for example the work of Daniel Dennett or Patricia Churchland. Compare Husserl’s definition with that of David Armstrong for example:

"Naturalism I define as the doctrine that reality consists of nothing but a single all-embracing spatio-temporal system."

In Philosophy as a Rigorous Science, Husserl explicitly identifies and criticises the tendency of all forms of naturalism to seek the naturalisation of consciousness and of all ideas and norms. Naturalism as a theory involves a certain ‘philosophical absolutising’ of the scientific view of the world (Ideas I § 55); “it is a bad theory regarding a good procedure”. Certain characteristic methodological devices of the sciences, chiefly idealisation and objectification, have been misunderstood such that their objects are thought to yield the natural world as it is in itself, for example that nature is treated as a closed system of physical entities obeying laws, and everything else is squeezed out and treated as psychical, possibly even epiphenomenal. Indeed, a new science of psychology, with laws modelled on the mechanical laws of the physical domain, was then brought in to investigate this carved off subdomain, but it was guilty of reifying consciousness and examining it naively. Husserl constantly points out that such a division of the world into physical and psychical makes no sense. For Husserl, naturalism is not just only partial or limited in its explanation of the world, it is in fact self-refuting, because it has collapsed all value and normativity into merely physical or psychical occurrences, precisely the same kind of error made by psychologism when it sought to explain the normativity of logic in terms of actual, occurrent psychological states and the empirical laws governing them. The whole picture is absurd or ‘counter-sensical’ in that it denies the reality of consciousness and yet is based on assuming the existence of consciousness to give rise to the picture in the first place (Ideas I § 55). Or as Husserl says in the 1911 essay: “It is the absurdity of naturalizing something whose essence excludes the kind of being that nature has."

In contrast to the outlook of naturalism, Husserl believed all knowledge, all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all. Consciousness should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world at all, since consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place. For Husserl it is not that consciousness creates the world in any ontological sense—this would be a subjective idealism, itself a consequence of a certain naturalising tendency whereby consciousness is cause and the world its effect—but rather that the world is opened up, made meaningful, or disclosed through consciousness. The world is inconceivable apart from consciousness. Treating consciousness as part of the world, reifying consciousness, is precisely to ignore consciousness’s foundational, disclosive role. — Routledge Introduction to Phenomenology, p139

@Relativist - note the reference to D M Armstrong.

:up: I think I am in agreement with your general thesis - the world is 'created' by our cognitive apparatus, our minds. We are the ones who provide the perspective and a series of contingent interfaces. Which is why for me it seems problematic to provide any totalising claims about meaning or transcendence. Is it coherent to suggest that we can get behind the contingent product of experience? If it is all an act of constructivism, then so is the notion of transcendence. Thoughts?

So, there's two parts to your observation. One being agreement with the general idea of cognitivism or constructivism, but the second being about 'totalising claims about meaning'. I think that can only be a reference to claims about what is beyond or outside the domain of naturalism, which suggests the supernatural, hence 'woo' in today's lexicon.

Here I'm drawn to a Buddhist perspective (and there are Buddhist references in the original post.) The awareness of the world-creating activities of mind is actually the salient point of vipassana, insight meditation. The Dhammapada begins with a line something like 'our life is the creation of our mind'. Throughout the early Buddhist texts, the point that is repeated over and over is awareness of and insight into the chain of dependent origination which gives rise to conditioned consciousness. In this context, It's not so much a matter of 'getting behind' those patterns, as of seeing through them - which is an arduous discipline.

There is an unequivocal statement in the Suttas 'there is that which is unconditioned, that which is unmade, that which is unfabricated' (ref). But in Buddhism, that is not a matter of faith, like 'faith in God' in the West, but one of insight. It does require faith, in that one has to have faith in it in order to take on such a discipline. But Buddhism is generally critical of dogmatic views (dṛṣṭi) one way or the other. That is why mindfulness is compared with the Husserlian epochē, 'bare awareness' of the qualities of consciousness. The connection between Buddhism and phenomenology is quite well documented nowadays. There's a wiki entry on Husserl's readings of Buddhism.

Regrettably the usual reaction is 'oh, you mean religion'. An attitude that I think is very much a product of our specific cultural history and what religion means to us. The answer has to be yes and no - religious in some respects, but not in others, as it has been defined very specifically as to what is included and what isn't, in Western cultural history.

I think that can only be a reference to claims about what is beyond or outside the domain of naturalism, which suggests the supernatural, hence 'woo' in today's lexicon. — Wayfarer

Well, I'm not going to call woo on this. I'm just working through the ideas. I guess my point, at the risk of repetition, is that in a sense, the act of positing transcendence—whether it be metaphysical, epistemic, or existential—may be just another layer of the constructivist project, a narrative that we generate rather than an actual escape from our contingent realities. Yet, there’s a paradox here: the very recognition of our cognitive limitations seems to point to a desire to grasp something beyond them. Does this suggest an innate tension in human thought, or is it simply a reflection of the inherent constraints of our perspectival existence?

Throughout the early Buddhist texts, the point that is repeated over and over is awareness of and insight into the chain of dependent origination which gives rise to conditioned consciousness. In this context, It's not so much a matter of 'getting behind' those patterns, as of seeing through them - which is an arduous discipline. — Wayfarer

Yes, that's my understanding as well, though I come at it from a much less theorised perspective. It strikes me that nearly every other post here delves into the idea of uncovering the deeper reality behind reality we inhabit. It’s fascinating how often discussions circle back to the notion that humans dwell on the surface of something and that there are ways to dive beneath.

Yet, there’s a paradox here: the very recognition of our cognitive limitations seems to point to a desire to grasp something beyond them. Does this suggest an innate tension in human thought, or is it simply a reflection of the inherent constraints of our perspectival existence? — Tom Storm

The former. The 'world-knot'. My feeling is that due to the 'instinctive naturalism' that Husserl calls out in the post above, we've not only lost the connection to 'the unconditioned' but we've forgotten that we've forgotten. Heidegger's 'forgetfulness of being'. Phenomenology and existentialism are both concerned with that.

(There's a well-known anecdote about Heidegger, that one day a colleague found him reading D T Suzuki (who at the time was lecturing at Columbia University and was well-known in the academic world.) Heidegger looked somewhat abashed, but said, 'if I understand this man correctly, this is what I have been trying to say in all my writings'. Of course it would be overly simplistic to say that he was in any meaningful way Buddhist or would adopt Buddhism. But I think both sources have a sense of the existential crisis of modernity. )

Yet, there’s a paradox here: the very recognition of our cognitive limitations seems to point to a desire to grasp something beyond them. Does this suggest an innate tension in human thought, or is it simply a reflection of the inherent constraints of our perspectival existence? — Tom Storm

Like they say, follow the money.

If you look at why in particular someone wants to "grasp something beyond" themselves, the motivations are mundane. People are looking for money, power, health, and when they can't get them, they feel "at the end of their wits". This is a recognition of one's cognitive limitations. But it's all for mundane purposes, not because of some profound yearning for "something more" or "beyond".

It seems to me that full-blown constructivism is not a plausible hypothesis, given that experience shows us unequivocally we and even some animals see the same things in the environment. We see the bees seeing the flowers just as we do, but apparently, they can see colours we cannot.

The element of truth in it is that the way we see things, not what we see, is conditioned by the nature of our sensory setups.

We can only guess at the cause and significance of the common human propensity to think transcendence. What is undeniably true is that altered states of consciousness are possible, both via chemical interventions and certain practices.

My feeling is that due to the 'instinctive naturalism' that Husserl calls out in the post above, we've not only lost the connection to 'the unconditioned' but we've forgotten that we've forgotten. Heidegger's 'forgetfulness of being'. Phenomenology and existentialism are both concerned with that. — Wayfarer

Note you say "my feeling". This is why I always say it is a matter of affect, of feeling, of faith. We cannot help living by faith. Philosophy itself in its metaphysical dimension is faith through and through. Even aesthetics and ethics cannot be sciences in the sense of "objective science".

He clearly states it. The fact that we all share many common elements of experience is not an argument against constructivism, because it simply means that we overall construct the world in the same way.

Constantly interpreting these questions as an ‘appeal to faith’ doesn’t do justice to them. Husserl was committed to a scientific approach.

It seems to me that full-blown constructivism is not a plausible hypothesis, given that experience shows us unequivocally we and even some animals see the same things in the environment. We see the bees seeing the flowers just as we do, but apparently, they can see colours we cannot. — Janus

This is a fair comment. But I wouldn't argue that humans do not share some similar points of reference to animals. It's just that the meaning of what we see is clearly different and located in cultural and linguistic practices, which animals certainly don't share. Once we step away from bees and flowers and consider how we make sense of our environment and how we derive values and meaning, it's another world entirely.

He clearly states it. The fact that we all share many common elements of experience is not an argument against constructivism, because it simply means that we overall construct the world in the same way.
Constantly interpreting these questions as an ‘appeal to faith’ doesn’t do justice to them. Husserl was committed to a scientific approach. — Wayfarer

The fact that we and the animals all share the same world and see the same things at the same times and places shows that what we perceive is not only determined by the mind but is also constrained by the physical nature of the senses and what is "out there".

Constructivism applies to the ways in which we see things but not to what we see. The only way around that for any mind only constructivist thesis would be that all minds are somehow connected. If there are not things which are seen by all (albeit in different ways when it comes to interspecies comparisons) then how else to explain the fact that we will agree on the exact details of what is perceived?

The questions are matters of faith because there is no possibility of logical proof or empirical confirmation regarding the question of whether the world is fundamentally physical or mental. So we choose the view that seems most plausible to us individually, or else it may even come down to what we each want to believe for various reasons.

The fact that we and the animals all share the same world and see the same things at the same times and places shows that what we perceive is not only determined by the mind but is also constrained by the physical nature of the senses and what is "out there". — Janus

I don't think constructivism denies that, nor do I in the OP - as I said I acknowledge there are objects unseen by any eye. I think you're still seeing both constructivism and idealism as stating that reality is 'all in the mind'.

Contructivism's core idea is that knowledge is a construction created by the mind, based on experience and prior knowledge, which provides the conceptual framework into which experience is incorporated. Radical constructivism stays neutral about the mind-independent world. It says, "We can't know reality as it is; we only know how we construct it."

It's more concerned with how we learn, think, and know than about making metaphysical claims. It is applied to fields such as education, cognitive science, and systems theory. "Reality is like a map you create as you navigate a territory—you can't claim the map is the territory itself." But the important thing to note is that it is largely epistemological, concerned with knowledge.

Analytical idealism accepts these premisses, but then goes a step further in proposing a metaphysic in which reality is mental in nature.

But as said in the OP, my main focus is not proposing a substantial metaphysics. In some way, my own approach is more aligned with constructivism. But they're both opposed to metaphysical realism. But it doesn’t mean dismissing reality or saying 'reality doesn't exist' —it's that both constructivism and phenomenological idealism recognize the importance of subjective experience as a fundamental structure of experienced reality. And it's just this subjective element which is 'bracketed out' by objectivism. The critique of metaphysical realism (drawing from Kant) is that it fails to notice how the mind actively structures reality through establishing conditions of subjective experience. Realism assumes that the world is 'just so' independent of the observer, yet overlooks how much of what we take as real is mediated by this subjective structuring process.

Which is exactly what the passage about Husserl states:

Certain characteristic methodological devices of the sciences, chiefly idealisation and objectification, have been misunderstood such that their objects are thought to yield the natural world as it is in itself, for example that nature is treated as a closed system of physical entities obeying laws, and everything else is squeezed out and treated as psychical, possibly even epiphenomenal — Routledge Introduction to Phenomenology, p139

.

So this is not a 'matter of faith', and I think the reason you keep saying that over and over again is because you're not seeing the point.

(Incidentally the above info about constructivism was gleaned from Constructivist Foundations. Information about analytical idealism can be found on Essentia Foundation.)

Incidentally I am seeing how this 'mind creates world' meme is proliferating on the Internet right now. In various substack and medium feeds, plus Aeon and Big Think there are articles on it practically every day, some thought-provoking and sober, some entirely ridiculous.

I don't think constructivism denies that, nor do I in the OP - as I said I acknowledge there are objects unseen by any eye. — Wayfarer

That is not the question, though—the question is whether there are is anything independent of the mind, which determines what we see—the things we refer to as "objects"—and in affective interaction with our sensory setups, how we see them.

Contructivism's core idea is that knowledge is a construction created by the mind, based on experience and prior knowledge, which provides the conceptual framework into which experience is incorporated. — Wayfarer

You seem to be conflating knowledge with what we have knowledge of. I guess it depends on what you mean by "knowledge". Knowledge by aquainatance can be equated with bare perception, but discursive knowledge also incorporates judgement regarding what is perceived.

Radical constructivism stays neutral about the mind-independent world. It says, "We can't know reality as it is; we only know how we construct it." — Wayfarer

The truly radical position would be to admit that we cannot be certain about whether perception tells us anything about how things are in themselves because we have no way of comparing. We cannot be aware of the process of the coming-to-be-of-the-world-for-us. It simply appears, and we cannot "get behind" our perceptual experience to investigate what is really going on. We can only use our perception and prior knowledge to study our organs of perception and build a hopefully ever more coherent picture of how they function. That picture should be consistent and cohere with the rest of our scientific knowledge. It is the total body of coherent and consistent scientific knowledge that lends credibility to hypotheses, but we can never be certain.

So this is not a 'matter of faith', and I think the reason you keep saying that over and over again is because you're not seeing the point. — Wayfarer

LOL, it's not that I don't see the point, but that I disagree, and that is the point which you seem to be incapable of seeing. Have you considered the possibility that you may have a scotoma?

Incidentally I am seeing how this 'mind creates world' meme is proliferating on the Internet right now. In various substack and medium feeds, there are articles on it practically every day, some thought-provoking and sober, some entirely ridiculous. — Wayfarer

The problem I see with that, as with any unconsidered and simplistic meme, is that it may lead to a radical relativism and contribute to the post-truth chaos which seems to be growing every day.