Something from the SEP entry on Michel Henry that resonates with me: — Wayfarer

Yeah, I find myself leaning toward this thinking because I, too, like, Henry, am a radical phenomenologist. The phenomenology of absolute self-affection brings the world of encounter right to immediacy of perceptual contact with things (meaning everything, form simple objects to thoughts, feelings). What stands between me and this presence? Nothing; nothing but, as Buddhists say, my attachments. But it is not the presence that becomes so intimately disclosed; it is myself, that is, when one makes the move away from the implicit hold of language and experience that are "always already" there in every glance, there is a transcendental "behind" the perception-of-everydayness that is allowed to step forward and the world is now seen as if for the first time. I think this is the where Buddhism takes one: to release our essential existence from a "world".

If you can sit there watching as the sun goes down, and understand what it was like for the ancient mind to believe the sun is a God, then you are close to Henry and radical phenomenology, I think. Of course, nothing is lost. You still know about fusion and whatever physics you are aware of. Nor do you become childlike (though I have read accounts of Zen monks talking to trees, screaming at them) or ancient minded. Rather, something has affirmed itself from "behind" this familiar world which is elusive to analysis. But it is as if all this time one has been ignoring, as Kierkegaard put it, that one exists, and suddenly there are, and you know you exist, and existence is radically Other than anything else because everything else belongs to the very familiarity one has to drop in order to understand.

Rather, something has affirmed itself from "behind" this familiar world which is elusive to analysis. — Astrophel

My analysis (and it is analytic as distinct from mystical or symbolic) is that in the pre-modern world, we humans didn't have the same sense of 'otherness' as we now have. John Vervaeke (who's lectures I'm listening to and which I recommend) says there is a sense of participatory knowing in the pre-modern world, which he distinguishes from propositional knowing (see here. And notice here I"m using 'other' in a different sense to the way you've put it.)

Participatory knowing is the knowledge of how to act or to be in relation with the environment, as distinct from 'knowing about' (propositional knowledge) or know how (procedural knowledge). It is knowing through active engagement within specific contexts or environments (or in the case of religious ritual, with the Cosmos as a whole, per Mircea Eliade). Participatory knowing shapes and is shaped by the interaction between the person and the environment, influencing one’s identity and sense of belonging. Vervaeke associates it with the 'flow state' and a heightened sense of unity (being one with.)

This sense has been massively disrupted by the 'modern' state in which the individual ego is an isolated agent cast into an unknowing and uncaring Cosmos from which he or she is estranged, an alien, an outsider. So healing from that or overcoming it, is more than a matter of propositional knowing, but discovery of a different way of being. Which I think is expressed in phenomenology and existentialism in a non-religious way. But the point is, overcoming that sense of otherness or disconnection from the world is profoundly liberating in some fundamental way. I *think* this is what you're driving at.

Participatory knowing shapes and is shaped by the interaction between the person and the cosmos, influencing one’s identity and sense of belonging. Vervaeke associates it with the 'flow state' and a heightened sense of unity (being one with.) — Wayfarer

I don't think I am convinced that this counts as knowing as such and is likely to be a symbolic connection or relationship emerging from contingent beliefs systems. Something doesn't have to be true for us to experince catharsis or other psychological satisfactions from it (ask any novelist).

But the point is, overcoming that sense of otherness or disconnection from the world is profoundly liberating in some fundamental way. — Wayfarer

I'm sympathetic of the idea of overcoming a sense of otherness or disconnection and that this can feel liberating, but it might be worth considering alternatives to framing the experience in such binary terms as 'connected vs. disconnected' or 'otherness vs. unity.' We could also think in terms of degrees, layers, or even shifting perspectives. For instance, rather than aiming to dissolve otherness, we could explore the tension between connection and separation and how we might understand ourselves and the world better through this interplay. Personally I don't usually look at the world as 'other' or as 'unity' I tend to suspend or bracket my judgement and am reasonably happy with ambivalence and paradox - rigid categories seem unnecessary.

I have been a particularly interested in Joshs contributions and am often intrigued and/or sympathetic to the frames he brings here via post-structuralism and phenomenology. I have enjoyed bits of Evan Thompson's and Lee Braver's work.

But I have never pretended to be a philosopher or to have spent much time reading philosophy. In previous years philosophy didn’t capture my imagination. In the 1980's I read a lot of works available at the Theosophical Society, where I often hung out. I have no problem with Henry’s ‘duplicity of appearing’ as referenced. But I am not someone for whom the idea of god resonates. Whether that’s Paul Tillich’s ground of being or Alvin Plantinga’s theistic personalism. — Tom Storm

For me, it is the simplicity of philosophical issues that are striking. I put the question above: ever hear of a physicist studying, Jupiter's moon's or carbon dating or whatever, who decides to begin the study with an account of the perceptual act the produces basic data? No. This is extraordinary. Such neglect is unthinkable in science, like neglecting the sun in the study of moon light. One looks at, around, all over this simple question and it becomes very clear that according to science, such data being about a world is impossible. This point is, nothing really could be more simple, but it is entirely ignored.

Of course we know why it is ignored. Because to study perception itself requires perception. It is impossible to study empirically. Literally impossible. But this changes nothing in terms of the impossible "distance" that remains between claims about the world, and what those claims are "about".

Evan Thompson? Again, simplicity. Is it even possible for value, or affectivity or pathos, the pain of a sprained ankle, say, to occur without agency, one that is commensurate with the experience? Just a question. Momentous yet simple.

Perfectly well.

Personally I don't usually look at the world as 'other' or as 'unity' — Tom Storm

Sure. I had more in mind the passage I quoted from Michel Henry:

the line separating culture from “barbarism” is crossed when science is transformed into scientific ideology, i.e. when the Galilean principle is made into an ontological claim according to which ultimate reality is given only through the objectively measurable and quantifiable.

In that perspective the separation between subject and object is hard and fast, so much so that it actually becomes invisible as 'the blind spot'.

Is it even possible for value, or affectivity or pathos, the pain of a sprained ankle, say, to occur without agency, one that is commensurate with the experience? Just a question. — Astrophel

I’m not sure. Those experiences may not be unified under a single foundational principle. Experience is interesting but contested space. I don’t have the expertise to determine what it means. But I do consider that values and emotions are products of contingent factors and seem to exist in relation to other factors - a web of interactions. What is at the centre? Is there even a centre? The problem with ideas like this is that they flow readily and may not connect to anything…

It’s called the subjective unity of experience. Meaning that, if you sprain your ankle, and you’r not paraplegic or anaesthetised, you don’t need to be informed of that by a third party.

Sure, but as I say, I don't think this is simple or clear. And we are also talking about values and emotion (I guess pathos was a repetition?).

Actually, going back to that post of @Astrophel’s you’re responding to:

I put the question above: ever hear of a physicist studying, Jupiter's moon's or carbon dating or whatever, who decides to begin the study with an account of the perceptual act the produces basic data? No. This is extraordinary. Such neglect is unthinkable in science, like neglecting the sun in the study of moon light. One looks at, around, all over this simple question and it becomes very clear that according to science, such data being about a world is impossible. This point is, nothing really could be more simple, but it is entirely ignored.

Of course we know why it is ignored. Because to study perception itself requires perception. It is impossible to study empirically. Literally impossible. But this changes nothing in terms of the impossible "distance" that remains between claims about the world, and what those claims are "about".

Evan Thompson…? — Astrophel

It’s fortuitous that Thompson’s name is mentioned in particular, because he’s the co-author of a book which explores the very fact that this post was about, namely, The Blind Spot. From an essay on that subject by another of the co-authors, Marcello Gleiser:

Our scientific worldview has gotten stuck in an impossible contradiction, making our present crisis fundamentally a crisis of meaning. On the one hand, science appears to make human life seem ultimately insignificant. The grand narratives of cosmology and evolution present us as a tiny contingent accident in a vast indifferent Universe. On the other hand, science repeatedly shows us that our human situation is inescapable when we search for objective truth because we cannot step outside our human form and attain a God’s-eye view of reality.

Cosmology tells us that we can know the Universe and its origin only from our inside position, not from the outside. We live within a causal bubble of information — the distance light traveled since the Big Bang — and we cannot know what lies outside. Quantum physics suggests that the nature of subatomic matter cannot be separated from our methods of questioning and investigating it. In biology, the origin and nature of life and sentience remain a mystery despite marvelous advances in genetics, molecular evolution, and developmental biology. Ultimately, we cannot forgo relying on our own experience of being alive when we seek to comprehend the phenomenon of life. Cognitive neuroscience drives the point home by indicating that we cannot fully fathom consciousness without experiencing it from within.

All of these reflections are variations on a single point: that while scientific method assumes the separateness of the knower from the object of knowledge, at some point, this breaks down, because reality is not something we’re outside of.

All throughout the book that this essay is about, the seminal influence of Husserl and Merleau Ponty is continuously referred to. Because it is in them, that the importance of self-awareness within science itself becomes manifest.

And notice that Gleiser ties this directly to the ‘meaning crisis’ - which is rooted in that sense of ‘otherness’ or ‘outside-ness’ that I was referring to above.

Yes, and I'm more than sympathetic to Evan's thesis and also the equally fascinating Michel Bitbol.

I love Bitbol! Learned about him from @Pierre-Normand and have listened to some of his lectures.

My analysis (and it is analytic as distinct from mystical or symbolic) is that in the pre-modern world, we humans didn't have the same sense of 'otherness' as we now have. John Vervaeke (who's lectures I'm listening to and which I recommend) says there is a sense of participatory knowing in the pre-modern world, which he distinguishes from propositional knowing (see here. And notice here I"m using 'other' in a different sense to the way you've put it.) — Wayfarer

Yes, and you do well note the "different sense, here.

First, just to remind: Verbaeke seems to be suggesting that this otherness is derivative of propositional knowing, One has to ask, is affectivity derivative? To smell, taste, feel, suffer, delight, and to THINK--are these derivative of the reflective act that recognizes them to be what they are? See, this is close to where Henry is. Such a question is NOT an inquiry into an historical sequence of befores and afters. Here at the primordial level of awareness is uncovered in the entire experience of events as a singularity, as thought, feeling, perception are not categorically divided, are outside of time. (Heidegger's analysis of time in B&T to find another way of conceiving this impossible unity. H doesn't talk about the transcendental finality as I think he should [but then ask Joshs for more on this. or perhaps read in Being and Time starting with section 64 and onward. tough to read, but worth the trouble] but the analysis is deeply insightful. Ecstatic time, time that cannot be conceived sequentially, is the only resolution of time's foundational analytic. All roads lead to a non sequential transcendental genesis of all things, as all things are given in phenomenological time). This may sound like a digression, but I only want to say that this "other" is not an historical event and not derivative. It is "discovered," as one discovers things in an observational analytic, like a geologist observing rocks and minerals, IN awareness as such, historical and otherwise derivative accounts aside.

Participatory knowing is the knowledge of how to act or to be in relation with the environment, as distinct from 'knowing about' (propositional knowledge) or know how (procedural knowledge). It is knowing through active engagement within specific contexts or environments (or in the case of religious ritual, with the Cosmos as a whole, per Mircea Eliade). Participatory knowing shapes and is shaped by the interaction between the person and the environment, influencing one’s identity and sense of belonging. Vervaeke associates it with the 'flow state' and a heightened sense of unity (being one with.)

This sense has been massively disrupted by the 'modern' state in which the individual ego is an isolated agent cast into an unknowing and uncaring Cosmos from which he or she is estranged, an alien, an outsider. So healing from that or overcoming it, is more than a matter of propositional knowing, but discovery of a different way of being. Which I think is expressed in phenomenology and existentialism in a non-religious way. But the point is, overcoming that sense of otherness or disconnection from the world is profoundly liberating in some fundamental way. I *think* this is what you're driving at. — Wayfarer

But now, more directly to your idea: of course, to "know" these, rather than to merely experience their existence, like a cat or a lizard, brings in the issue of propositional knowledge, but then all eyes are on what this is. Forget about pre-modern, and now consider pre-language. The cow sees better grass on the other side of the stream, then crosses over to get it. Did the cow think propositionally? No, but the essential structure of the conditional propositional form seems to be there: no explicit if....then; but a proto-conditional and prepropositional if ...then would be in place because the pragmatic situation itself is inherently conditional. The "recognition" that the grass can be obtained by moving legs in a certain way and direction has the basic propositional conditional form.

The point is that propositional knowledge is embedded in participatory knowing, the latter (conceived here as an historical stage of sequential development) cannot be conceived free of the structure of thought as we know it. And therefore, the "other" that eventually makes its way into awareness (again, conceiving of this whole affair outside of Henry and phenomenology) cannot be conceived as appearing with the propositional and therefore derivative of the propositional. Speaking like this, it seems better to say, this other has a much more ancient existence. Perhaps measured in geological time. Dinosaurs?? Trilobites?

’m not sure. Those experiences may not be unified under a single foundational principle. Experience is interesting but contested space. I don’t have the expertise to determine what it means. But I do consider that values and emotions are products of contingent factors and seem to exist in relation to other factors - a web of interactions. What is at the centre? Is there even a centre? The problem with ideas like this is that they flow readily and may not connect to anything… — Tom Storm

But this connectivity is just the problem.

Put it like this: If you were to ask a geologist about some sedimentary rock, and were given a story about what caused it to be what it is, there would be a first assumption as to what it IS that this story is about. And also, if told how useful the rock for building something or as a weapon, the same first assumption would be there, that about what it IS that is being discussed. Asked about this, the geologist, or whoever, would then proceed to describe the rock and all of its features. The evolutionary history, the pragmatism, really makes no sense unless you have something that is in need of analysis in the first place. This is the way science works. It doesn't deal in fantasy. It begins with the basic descriptive givenness, from color and weight, to molecular structure and other descriptions in particle physics. You have to have what is there, in front of your observing, analyzing eyes. The "contested space" you talk about is there, of course, for science has its slow paradigmatic movement toward greater insight, but this goes with greater observation, as with the telescope of the microscope and observation deals with, of course, the content of what is given.

Contested space has its limits. Does modus ponens have contested space? Yes and no, I think is the answer. though logic cannot be imagined to be at fault in the way it shows itself, we know that the language in play through which modus ponens has its expression (symbolic or otherwise) can be imagined to be at fault, simply because language is historical and contingent, and the necessity "behind" the language construction is never really expressed, remains "hidden". Anything taken AS in language is conditioned or qualified by being taken AS (this on my lap, I take AS a cat). So how does one get beyond contested space? And on to true absolute certainty? (Important to keep in mind that a construction like "true absolute certainty" is is a language construct. nd such things can cause more trouble that they are worth.) One has to step out of language. Of course, one has be IN language as one does this, for language is always already there.

Which is not hard to do. Stick your finger in a fire. Nothing at all of language in this. One is not interpreting pain to be what it is as I interpret this cat to be a cat, because while the pain certainly can be talked about, the pain itself stands apart from this, and the same could be true of this cat if I allowed myself to "center" (your term) on the non language dimensions of the presence of this "cat", rather than the usual thoughts that attend thinking about the cat.

So there are two kinds of "centering" here. One is the usual, and this is contingent: it depends on what you are talking about, the context of the meaning of the situation, and this could be a scientific context where cats have genus and species, and so on, or a practical context--did I feed the cat? Or maybe the cat is a comfort, an alarm for intruders, whatever. The sec ond kind of centering is on the presence of the cat, as presence. Much easier to conceive that of a scorched finger: the pain so intense, pulls all attention from explanatory contexts and is allowed to stand as it own nonlinguistic context, if you will. When you have the pain stare at it, and ask what it IS, you are asking a question of phenomenology, and I argue, you have entered "the religious". Can you question pain as such? It is beyond foolish to do so, more foolish than to question the essential non-logical intuition of causality or modus ponens, simply because pain is IMPORTANT, a non contingent importance, you know, NOT important because of some deadline, or some other matter that is important because of some other matter (and the centering gets moved around, reconceived). This is phenomenological importance, importance IN the givenness of the pain.

So the "value and emptions" you speak of are now understood very differently. They come "uncentered" in language, because language really has no center: it has "centerS" but centered in the essential fabric of the world, so to speak. This is where religion begins being meaningful, that is, the examination of religion, as it is delivered from the many "centered" talks, now finds its "real" ground in the importance of pure phenomenality of pain, delight and the value dimension of out existence.

I said that affectivity cannot be conceived apart from agency. This requires further work.

I get it. You would like Vervaeke’s work, I think. He talks a lot about the ‘salience landscape’ and ‘relevance realisation’, which both apply to your cow analogy. Of course the human situation is vastly elaborated by our cognitive abilities but in some respects the same dynamics apply. (Vervaeke's podcast series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, comprises 52 lectures, though, so trying to explain his concepts in forum posts is challenging to say the least.)

Such a question is NOT an inquiry into an historical sequence of befores and afters. — Astrophel

I can see that, but my research has been very much shaped around the history of ideas, about understanding how philosophical themes emerge and change over time and in response to, as well as shaping, social and cultural circumstances. The book I read immediately before undergrad philosophy was Russell's history of Western Philosophy which, for its many shortcomings, does a good job at weaving the historical analysis. But I sense, reading your posts, you're much better read in recent Western philosophy and phenomenology than I am.

Heidegger's analysis of time in B&T to find another way of conceiving this impossible unity. — Astrophel

I've yet to tackle Being and Time and may never get to it. But I think perhaps there's some similarity to the Bergson-Einstein debate on objective vs 'lived' time.

Russell's history of Western Philosophy — Wayfarer

If it is just a description of what was said and by whom , I suppose Russell can't do much harm. Informative, like an encyclopedia. But if he laces it with opinion, that is another story. Russell is to philosophy what popular religion is to living and breathing: keeps the faithful appeased, but really, has nothing to say about the world.

Bergson-Einstein debate on objective vs 'lived' time — Wayfarer

Consider Henry's possible answer to this.

What we need to understand is what Kafka implies when he writes: “With each mouthful of the visible, an invisible mouthful is proffered us, with each visible article of clothing an invisible article
of clothing.

I've yet to tackle Being and Time and may never get to it. But I think perhaps there's some similarity to the Bergson-Einstein debate on objective vs 'lived' time. — Wayfarer

Well, the latter comes first, no? It is presupposed by the former, and therefore philosophically important and the latter is just physics. Objective time belongs to "vulgar" everydayness, Heidegger would say. Not that he is being insulting at all. We are all everyday people. But If the question of philosophy faces this everydayness, there is a radically different analysis to consider.
I vaguely remember Einstein winning that debate, and it was at the end of Bergson's career. Einstein said some unkind things about philosophy. I very much doubt he had read much, though I know he read Kant at thirteen or so. Ridiculous.

There's an Evan Thompson article on Bergson-Einstein Clock Time Contra Lived Time. No, that debate didn't end Bergson's career, although it didn't do him a lot of good. Bergson's day passed, whereas Einstein's discoveries helped define our age, but I still believe, going on what Thompson says, that Bergson makes a crucial point, and one about which Einstein was mistaken.

As for suffering, vulgar time and mouthfuls proffered: suffering is an illusion because it is pain made to linger by mouthfuls proffered through vulgar time.