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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 3
- Thread starter Gene Steinberg
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S
smcder
Guest
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/harder.htm
This paper should answer all the outstanding issues re: consciousness.
What should we talk about next?
This paper should answer all the outstanding issues re: consciousness.
What should we talk about next?
Last edited by a moderator:
XI
In the land of the lemon trees, yellow and yellow were
Yellow-blue, yellow-green, pungent with citron-sap,
Dangling and spangling, the mic-mac of mocking birds.
In the land of the elm trees, wandering mariners
Looked on big women, whose ruddy-ripe images
Wreathed round and round the round wreath of autumn.
They rolled their r’s, there, in the land of the citrons.
In the land of big mariners, the words they spoke
Were mere brown clods, mere catching weeds of talk.
When the mariners came to the land of the lemon trees,
At last, in that blond atmosphere, bronzed hard,
They said, “We are back once more in the land of the elm trees,
But folded over, turned round.” It was the same,
Except for the adjectives, an alteration
Of words that was a change of nature, more
Than the difference that clouds make over a town.
The countrymen were changed and each constant thing.
Their dark-colored words had redescribed the citrons.
An Ordinary Evening in New Haven — Wallace Stevens
.
In the land of the lemon trees, yellow and yellow were
Yellow-blue, yellow-green, pungent with citron-sap,
Dangling and spangling, the mic-mac of mocking birds.
In the land of the elm trees, wandering mariners
Looked on big women, whose ruddy-ripe images
Wreathed round and round the round wreath of autumn.
They rolled their r’s, there, in the land of the citrons.
In the land of big mariners, the words they spoke
Were mere brown clods, mere catching weeds of talk.
When the mariners came to the land of the lemon trees,
At last, in that blond atmosphere, bronzed hard,
They said, “We are back once more in the land of the elm trees,
But folded over, turned round.” It was the same,
Except for the adjectives, an alteration
Of words that was a change of nature, more
Than the difference that clouds make over a town.
The countrymen were changed and each constant thing.
Their dark-colored words had redescribed the citrons.
An Ordinary Evening in New Haven — Wallace Stevens
.
Holiday in Reality
I
It was something to see that their white was different,
Sharp as white paint in the January sun;
Something to feel that they needed another yellow,
Less Aix than Stockholm, hardly a yellow at all,
A vibrancy not to be taken for granted, from
A sun in an almost colorless, cold heaven.
They had known that there was not even a common speech,
Palabra of a common man who did not exist.
Why should they not know they had everything of their own
As each had a particular woman and her touch?
After all, they knew that to be real each had
To find for himself his earth, his sky, his sea.
And the words for them and the colors that they possessed.
It was impossible to breathe at Durand-Ruel’s.
II
The flowering Judas grows from the belly or not at all.
The breast is covered with violets. It is a green leaf.
Spring is umbilical or else it is not spring.
Spring is the truth of spring or nothing, a waste, a fake.
These trees and their argentines, their dark-spiced branches,
Grow out of the spirit or they are fantastic dust.
The bud of the apple is desire, the down-falling gold,
The catbird’s gobble in the morning half-awake—
These are real only if I make them so. Whistle
For me, grow green for me and, as you whistle and grow green,
Intangible arrows quiver and stick in the skin
And I taste at the root of the tongue the unreal of what is real.
Wallace Stevens
I
It was something to see that their white was different,
Sharp as white paint in the January sun;
Something to feel that they needed another yellow,
Less Aix than Stockholm, hardly a yellow at all,
A vibrancy not to be taken for granted, from
A sun in an almost colorless, cold heaven.
They had known that there was not even a common speech,
Palabra of a common man who did not exist.
Why should they not know they had everything of their own
As each had a particular woman and her touch?
After all, they knew that to be real each had
To find for himself his earth, his sky, his sea.
And the words for them and the colors that they possessed.
It was impossible to breathe at Durand-Ruel’s.
II
The flowering Judas grows from the belly or not at all.
The breast is covered with violets. It is a green leaf.
Spring is umbilical or else it is not spring.
Spring is the truth of spring or nothing, a waste, a fake.
These trees and their argentines, their dark-spiced branches,
Grow out of the spirit or they are fantastic dust.
The bud of the apple is desire, the down-falling gold,
The catbird’s gobble in the morning half-awake—
These are real only if I make them so. Whistle
For me, grow green for me and, as you whistle and grow green,
Intangible arrows quiver and stick in the skin
And I taste at the root of the tongue the unreal of what is real.
Wallace Stevens
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
It seems that the greater scientific and philosophic communities agree that there are no models which fully account for consciousness. As a microcosm, we here at the PC also find that we have no models which explain consciousness, though some of us have preferences for certain approaches.
One "problem" I see is that people conceive of the phenomena of consciousness differently, and thus the solution/explanation they seek will differ accordingly.
For instance, @smcder, you seem to be searching for an explanation/solution that explains a consciousness that has causal influence over matter (a la free will and PSI). If someone proposes a theory/model that does not address these facets of consciousness (as some conceive it) then some will reject this model out of hand.
My post above was an effort to define the phenomenon that we are discussing here in this thread, or at least the define what each of us is looking for a model to explain. So that when a model/theory is proposed and/or discussed, we can all be clear about whether it considers certain facets of consciousness that some of us want it to.
So for example, some may feel strongly that consciousness cannot be constituted of information because they can't see how information might have causal influence over matter. Without making this perceived problem known, others may be left confused as to why a model is being rejected. Or someone may strongly that consciousness is natural, and therefore any models which do not account consciousness via natural processes will be rejected.
We all have different conceptions of what consciousness is, ergo we're all looking for different explanations.
S
smcder
Guest
Excellent! Just trying to figure out what you wanted in response ...
How about a grid?
For instance, @@smcder, you seem to be searching for an explanation/solution that explains a consciousness that has causal influence over matter (a la free will and PSI). If someone proposes a theory/model that doesnot address these facets of consciousness (as some conceive it) then some will reject this model out of hand.
Noooo ... that would be backwards of me, wouldn't it?
Once again - I'm an advocate for evidence or information that, as far as I can tell, has been gathered and published in a scientific manner. My concern is that if that evidence isn't addressed, either in a theory or before hand (otherwise accounted for) then someone would be theorizing without taking all of that information into account.
So, I am an advocate for the evidence being examined ... not for any particular explanation. It could well be that we can explain away or otherwise dismiss the evidence - but it seems to me, we could have to dismiss a lot of evidence for mainstream social sciences as well and possibly physical sciences.
Does that make sense? I want to make sure because you and Pharoah both seem to be confused about my position.
Esthétique du Mal (1944)
XV
The greatest poverty is not to live
In a physical world, to feel that one's desire
Is too difficult to tell from despair. Perhaps,
After death, the non-physical people, in paradise,
Itself non-physical, may, by chance, observe
The green corn gleaming and experience
The minor of what we feel. The adventurer
In humanity has not conceived of a race
Completely physical in a physical world.
The green corn gleams and the metaphysicals
Lie sprawling in majors of the August heat,
The rotund emotions, paradise unknown.
This is the thesis scrivened in delight,
The reverberating psalm, the right chorale.
One might have thought of sight, but who could think
Of what it sees, for all the ill it sees?
Speech found the ear, for all the evil sound,
But the dark italics it could not propound,
And out of what one sees and hears and out
Of what one feels, who could have thought to make
So many selves, so many sensuous worlds,
As if the air, the mid-day air, was swarming
With the metaphysical changes that occur
Merely in living as and where we live.
Wallace Stevens
XV
The greatest poverty is not to live
In a physical world, to feel that one's desire
Is too difficult to tell from despair. Perhaps,
After death, the non-physical people, in paradise,
Itself non-physical, may, by chance, observe
The green corn gleaming and experience
The minor of what we feel. The adventurer
In humanity has not conceived of a race
Completely physical in a physical world.
The green corn gleams and the metaphysicals
Lie sprawling in majors of the August heat,
The rotund emotions, paradise unknown.
This is the thesis scrivened in delight,
The reverberating psalm, the right chorale.
One might have thought of sight, but who could think
Of what it sees, for all the ill it sees?
Speech found the ear, for all the evil sound,
But the dark italics it could not propound,
And out of what one sees and hears and out
Of what one feels, who could have thought to make
So many selves, so many sensuous worlds,
As if the air, the mid-day air, was swarming
With the metaphysical changes that occur
Merely in living as and where we live.
Wallace Stevens
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A helpful gloss on that extract from Stevens:
Christopher Merwin, "At the Limits of Thinking:
Heidegger’s early critique of representationalism and metaphysics"
Extract:
"What is at stake for Heidegger is that in positing an unconditioned “ground” of reason and its relation to knowledge, we are already in the mode of establishing the world through ideas. These ideas become the unconditioned transcendental totality specifically related to the appearance of the being of beings as they appear to humans. It is ultimately this appearance which Dasein represents to itself as an idea and thus comes to stand in as an unconditioned totality. From Heidegger’s perspective this is problematic because this establishes a notion of truth as the correspondence of a being to the idea or representation of being."
At the Limits of Thinking: Heidegger’s early critique of representationalism and metaphysics | Christopher Merwin - Academia.edu
Christopher Merwin, "At the Limits of Thinking:
Heidegger’s early critique of representationalism and metaphysics"
Extract:
"What is at stake for Heidegger is that in positing an unconditioned “ground” of reason and its relation to knowledge, we are already in the mode of establishing the world through ideas. These ideas become the unconditioned transcendental totality specifically related to the appearance of the being of beings as they appear to humans. It is ultimately this appearance which Dasein represents to itself as an idea and thus comes to stand in as an unconditioned totality. From Heidegger’s perspective this is problematic because this establishes a notion of truth as the correspondence of a being to the idea or representation of being."
At the Limits of Thinking: Heidegger’s early critique of representationalism and metaphysics | Christopher Merwin - Academia.edu
Large Red Man Reading
There were ghosts that returned to earth to hear his phrases,
As he sat there reading, aloud, the great blue tabulae.
They were those from the wilderness of stars that had expected more.
There were those that returned to hear him read from the poem of life,
Of the pans above the stove, the pots on the table, the tulips among them.
They were those that would have wept to step barefoot into reality,
That would have wept and been happy, have shivered in the frost
And cried out to feel it again, have run fingers over leaves
And against the most coiled thorn, have seized on what was ugly
And laughed, as he sat there reading, from out of the purple tabulae,
The outlines of being and its expressings, the syllables of its law:
Poesis, poesis, the literal characters, the vatic lines,
Which in those ears and in those thin, those spended hearts,
Took on color, took on shape and the size of things as they are
And spoke the feeling for them, which was what they had lacked.
Wallace Stevens
There were ghosts that returned to earth to hear his phrases,
As he sat there reading, aloud, the great blue tabulae.
They were those from the wilderness of stars that had expected more.
There were those that returned to hear him read from the poem of life,
Of the pans above the stove, the pots on the table, the tulips among them.
They were those that would have wept to step barefoot into reality,
That would have wept and been happy, have shivered in the frost
And cried out to feel it again, have run fingers over leaves
And against the most coiled thorn, have seized on what was ugly
And laughed, as he sat there reading, from out of the purple tabulae,
The outlines of being and its expressings, the syllables of its law:
Poesis, poesis, the literal characters, the vatic lines,
Which in those ears and in those thin, those spended hearts,
Took on color, took on shape and the size of things as they are
And spoke the feeling for them, which was what they had lacked.
Wallace Stevens
One more poem for today, which I posted within a very good discussion we were having here in March of last year, at this link:
Consciousness and the Paranormal | Page 56 | The Paracast Community Forums
Consciousness and the Paranormal | Page 56 | The Paracast Community Forums
"Because we expect supervenience theses to be explainable, it is hard for us to rest content with a supervenience thesis if we do not see what would explain why it is true. If it is claimed, for instance, that moral properties supervene on non-moral properties, we expect there to be an explanation of why this is so. Appeals to unexplainable supervenience theses can thus seem to be mystery mongering.
3.8 Tallying Up
Supervenience gives us less than some philosophers have thought. Even logically or metaphysically necessary supervenience is compatible with there being no B-properties that entail any A-properties. Supervenience is not itself explanatory, and does not guarantee that the A-properties either reduce to or ontologically depend upon the B-properties. It might provide a way to capture the thought that A-properties or facts are not a further ontological commitment over and above the B-properties or facts, but this is controversial. At heart, all a supervenience claim says is that A-properties covary with B-properties. Nevertheless, as we shall see in Section 5, supervenience has a variety of philosophical uses.
Another argument by appeal to a FIST ["McLaughlin (1984, 1995) calls this style of argumentation ‘argument by appeal to a false implied supervenience thesis’"] is Chalmers' appeal to the (putative) metaphysical possibility of zombies (see Section 3.1 and Section 5.4). This is intended to show that phenomenal properties do not metaphysically supervene on, and thus do not reduce to, physical properties. This line of argument is available even though physicalists have not yet proposed any such reduction. If it succeeds, then the project of reducing phenomenal properties to physical properties is doomed to failure."
Supervenience (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/supervenience/#3.3
3.8 Tallying Up
Supervenience gives us less than some philosophers have thought. Even logically or metaphysically necessary supervenience is compatible with there being no B-properties that entail any A-properties. Supervenience is not itself explanatory, and does not guarantee that the A-properties either reduce to or ontologically depend upon the B-properties. It might provide a way to capture the thought that A-properties or facts are not a further ontological commitment over and above the B-properties or facts, but this is controversial. At heart, all a supervenience claim says is that A-properties covary with B-properties. Nevertheless, as we shall see in Section 5, supervenience has a variety of philosophical uses.
Another argument by appeal to a FIST ["McLaughlin (1984, 1995) calls this style of argumentation ‘argument by appeal to a false implied supervenience thesis’"] is Chalmers' appeal to the (putative) metaphysical possibility of zombies (see Section 3.1 and Section 5.4). This is intended to show that phenomenal properties do not metaphysically supervene on, and thus do not reduce to, physical properties. This line of argument is available even though physicalists have not yet proposed any such reduction. If it succeeds, then the project of reducing phenomenal properties to physical properties is doomed to failure."
Supervenience (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/supervenience/#3.3
It seems we have two choices at this point then. One (1) is to give up our concerted effort to understand what consciousness is. The other (2) is to recognize the extent to which our current 'conceptions' of what consciousness is rely on preconceptions/presuppositions about (a) the nature of 'nature', and (b) the nature of our relationship with nature.
If we choose (2), it seems obvious to me that we need to explore -- i.e., read to the point of comprehending -- the several conceptions of both nature and consciousness that we are bringing to this discussion.
The Dove in the Belly
The whole of appearance is a toy. For this,
The dove in the belly builds his nest and coos,
Selah, tempestuous bird. How is it that
The rivers shine and hold their mirrors up,
Like excellence collecting excellence?
How is it that the wooden trees stand up
And live and heap their panniers of green
And hold them round the sultry day? Why should
These mountains being high be, also, bright,
Fetched up with snow that never falls to earth?
And this great esplanade of corn, miles wide,
Is something wished for made effectual
And something more. And the people in costumes,
Though poor, though raggeder than ruin, have that
Within them right for terraces—oh, brave salut!
Deep dove, placate you in your hiddenness.
WALLACE STEVENS
The whole of appearance is a toy. For this,
The dove in the belly builds his nest and coos,
Selah, tempestuous bird. How is it that
The rivers shine and hold their mirrors up,
Like excellence collecting excellence?
How is it that the wooden trees stand up
And live and heap their panniers of green
And hold them round the sultry day? Why should
These mountains being high be, also, bright,
Fetched up with snow that never falls to earth?
And this great esplanade of corn, miles wide,
Is something wished for made effectual
And something more. And the people in costumes,
Though poor, though raggeder than ruin, have that
Within them right for terraces—oh, brave salut!
Deep dove, placate you in your hiddenness.
WALLACE STEVENS
from a post by Soupie last March, with new responses:
I'm not seeing how "the magic, mystery, and majesty of the wonder of being" were "destroyed by self-awareness that the self is distinct from the rest of nature." If you still take this point of view, would you explain how self-awareness {consciousness} destroys "the wonder of being"? How could 'the wonder of being' be contemplated or appreciated without the existence of consciousness and mind?
I agree that self-awareness, when it first rises to the level of consciousness in reflective thought, can produce a level of anxiety. I experienced that myself, as I've described. But that anxiety is temporary as one becomes accustomed to the presence of the several levels of consciousness we naturally possess -- both continual prereflective experience in/of the surrounding world and reflection upon that experience.
But now that you've raised the issue of a possible ongoing state of anxiety arising from the recognition of one's self-awareness you've got me wondering if this core recognition might not be responsible for some acute forms of anxiety that produce permanent conditions of anxiety neurosis in some people.
The sentence I've bolded indicates that you think it is anxiety conditions that provoke the desire to achieve a state or sense of "the oneness of reality," but while that could be the case for some individuals I strongly doubt that it applies to and accounts for the whole history of Eastern thought and practices (primarily meditation). For one thing, many people experience a sudden -- unlooked-for -- influx of the sense of the oneness of reality (sometimes referred to as an "oceanic feeling"). We might take some time to explore experiences of that type and what has been speculated to be their source. Somewhere there is a website that collects accounts of various 'extraordinary' or 'anomalous' experiences had and reported by scientists, if I recall correctly, that challenged their conceptions of reality in significant ways. I'll try to find the link to it.
You also wrote in that post of last March:
Your either/or misses the explanation from phenomenology: qualia exist in embodied awareness and consciousness. Reflective consciousness (mind) remembers and takes note of qualia as aspects of one's experience. Qualia are not "produced by the mind" in the sense that you, with Tononi, have thought. I realize that you wish to believe they are because that would support Tononi's IIT theory (at least pre-IIT.3). But IIT merely claimed this to be so without proving it, and Tononi's IIT.3 clearly begins to draw a distinction between consciousness and information-processing in computer substrates.
EXTRACTED from https://www.theparacast.com/forum/threads/consciousness-and-the-paranormal.14383/page-56#post-188834
I'm not seeing how "the magic, mystery, and majesty of the wonder of being" were "destroyed by self-awareness that the self is distinct from the rest of nature." If you still take this point of view, would you explain how self-awareness {consciousness} destroys "the wonder of being"? How could 'the wonder of being' be contemplated or appreciated without the existence of consciousness and mind?
I agree that self-awareness, when it first rises to the level of consciousness in reflective thought, can produce a level of anxiety. I experienced that myself, as I've described. But that anxiety is temporary as one becomes accustomed to the presence of the several levels of consciousness we naturally possess -- both continual prereflective experience in/of the surrounding world and reflection upon that experience.
But now that you've raised the issue of a possible ongoing state of anxiety arising from the recognition of one's self-awareness you've got me wondering if this core recognition might not be responsible for some acute forms of anxiety that produce permanent conditions of anxiety neurosis in some people.
The sentence I've bolded indicates that you think it is anxiety conditions that provoke the desire to achieve a state or sense of "the oneness of reality," but while that could be the case for some individuals I strongly doubt that it applies to and accounts for the whole history of Eastern thought and practices (primarily meditation). For one thing, many people experience a sudden -- unlooked-for -- influx of the sense of the oneness of reality (sometimes referred to as an "oceanic feeling"). We might take some time to explore experiences of that type and what has been speculated to be their source. Somewhere there is a website that collects accounts of various 'extraordinary' or 'anomalous' experiences had and reported by scientists, if I recall correctly, that challenged their conceptions of reality in significant ways. I'll try to find the link to it.
You also wrote in that post of last March:
Your either/or misses the explanation from phenomenology: qualia exist in embodied awareness and consciousness. Reflective consciousness (mind) remembers and takes note of qualia as aspects of one's experience. Qualia are not "produced by the mind" in the sense that you, with Tononi, have thought. I realize that you wish to believe they are because that would support Tononi's IIT theory (at least pre-IIT.3). But IIT merely claimed this to be so without proving it, and Tononi's IIT.3 clearly begins to draw a distinction between consciousness and information-processing in computer substrates.
EXTRACTED from https://www.theparacast.com/forum/threads/consciousness-and-the-paranormal.14383/page-56#post-188834
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One more poem by the phenomenological poet Wallace Stevens which makes a pair with the Dove in the Belly poem above. He was also interested in the nature of awareness and consciousness in animals.
The Dove in Spring
Brooder, brooder, deep beneath its walls–
A small howling of the dove
Makes something of the little there,
The little and the dark, and that
In which it is and that in which
It is established. There the dove
Makes this small howling, like a thought
That howls in the mind or like a man
Who keeps seeking out his identity
In that which is and is established…It howls
Of the great sizes of an outer bush
And the great misery of the doubt of it,
Of stripes of silver that are strips
Like slits across a space, a place
And state of being large and light.
There is this bubbling before the sun,
This howling at one’s ear, too far
For daylight and too near for sleep.
The Dove in Spring
Brooder, brooder, deep beneath its walls–
A small howling of the dove
Makes something of the little there,
The little and the dark, and that
In which it is and that in which
It is established. There the dove
Makes this small howling, like a thought
That howls in the mind or like a man
Who keeps seeking out his identity
In that which is and is established…It howls
Of the great sizes of an outer bush
And the great misery of the doubt of it,
Of stripes of silver that are strips
Like slits across a space, a place
And state of being large and light.
There is this bubbling before the sun,
This howling at one’s ear, too far
For daylight and too near for sleep.
"These modes of description can't so... we need more understanding of objectivity: we need different modes of description that nobody has worked out yet."
I just came across this post in reviewing Part 3 of the thread to date and need to ask: are you then building your HCT theory on the expectation that someone will in time provide "different modes of description" needed to support your theory? Where [in what discipline] are you looking for these 'different modes of description' at this point since you seem to have rejected Varela's developmental systems theory and also Tononi's integrated information theory?
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Steve and I have been having a separate dialogue on some of the issues up in the air in this stage of the thread and he has suggested that I post this comment of mine from that dialogue:
I recall one koan, vaguely, to the effect of a question: 'how can the mind work upon the mind without an immense confusion?'
I have no recollection where I read it or who might have spoken it. I think it came from a Buddhist source, perhaps in Zen Buddhism.
The other thing I think plagues us in this discussion is taking as foundational there being an absolute distinction to be made between matter and mind. This has been an issue for Soupie from the beginning, as I see it, and I think it also conditions what Pharoah is able to think. [in both cases, they seem to feel the need for a physical account in which matter must be explanatory, in which mind must somehow be fully accounted for by matter or by physical information originating in matter]
I think we have to put that so-called distinction/duality in brackets and then approach again what we experience, which is the ground of all our thinking {even the thinking of those who do not accept that experience is the ground of all thinking}, and which recognition demonstrates to us that our thinking incorporates both subjective and objective poles of 'reality' -- two origins or streams flowing into [mingling in] consciousness/mind that cannot be completely separated or reduced to a single one of those streams. At least not while we live as embodied consciousnesses.
I recall one koan, vaguely, to the effect of a question: 'how can the mind work upon the mind without an immense confusion?'
I have no recollection where I read it or who might have spoken it. I think it came from a Buddhist source, perhaps in Zen Buddhism.
The other thing I think plagues us in this discussion is taking as foundational there being an absolute distinction to be made between matter and mind. This has been an issue for Soupie from the beginning, as I see it, and I think it also conditions what Pharoah is able to think. [in both cases, they seem to feel the need for a physical account in which matter must be explanatory, in which mind must somehow be fully accounted for by matter or by physical information originating in matter]
I think we have to put that so-called distinction/duality in brackets and then approach again what we experience, which is the ground of all our thinking {even the thinking of those who do not accept that experience is the ground of all thinking}, and which recognition demonstrates to us that our thinking incorporates both subjective and objective poles of 'reality' -- two origins or streams flowing into [mingling in] consciousness/mind that cannot be completely separated or reduced to a single one of those streams. At least not while we live as embodied consciousnesses.
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Randall
J. Randall Murphy
I would imagine that's all pretty much the same rationale ( above ) that those who created HTML used. That and that in the beginning they were restricted to fewer colors.
BTW: Chalmers' "Hard Problem of Consciousness" was hashed out rather extensively elsewhere on the forum. The model is rhetorically incoherent. It's not easy to see why. Consequently, it makes for an challenging mental exercise, but beyond that, it seems to have little relevance to the problem of understanding consciousness.
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Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
S
smcder
Guest
This is helpful I think to understanding the phenomenological critique of naturalism:
http://researchrepository.ucd.ie/bitstream/handle/10197/4318/Moran_Lets_Look_at_it_Objectively_Philosophy_2013 (3).pdf?sequence=4
Or to hear his wonderful accent:
One reason to watch the video is the q&a session at the end
Abstract
In recent years there have been attempts to integrate first-person phenomenology into naturalistic science. Traditionally, however, Husserlian phenomenology has been resolutely anti-naturalist. Husserl identified naturalism as the dominant tendency of twentieth-century science and philosophy and he regarded it as an essentially self-refuting doctrine.
Naturalism is a point of view or attitude (a reification of the natural attitude into the naturalistic attitude) that does not know that it is an attitude. For phenomenology, naturalism is objectivism. But phenomenology maintains that objectivity is constituted through the intentional activity of cooperating subjects. Understanding the role of cooperating subjects in producing the experience of the one, shared, objective world keeps phenomenology committed to a resolutely anti-naturalist (or ‘transcendental’) philosophy.
http://researchrepository.ucd.ie/bitstream/handle/10197/4318/Moran_Lets_Look_at_it_Objectively_Philosophy_2013 (3).pdf?sequence=4
Or to hear his wonderful accent:
One reason to watch the video is the q&a session at the end
Abstract
In recent years there have been attempts to integrate first-person phenomenology into naturalistic science. Traditionally, however, Husserlian phenomenology has been resolutely anti-naturalist. Husserl identified naturalism as the dominant tendency of twentieth-century science and philosophy and he regarded it as an essentially self-refuting doctrine.
Naturalism is a point of view or attitude (a reification of the natural attitude into the naturalistic attitude) that does not know that it is an attitude. For phenomenology, naturalism is objectivism. But phenomenology maintains that objectivity is constituted through the intentional activity of cooperating subjects. Understanding the role of cooperating subjects in producing the experience of the one, shared, objective world keeps phenomenology committed to a resolutely anti-naturalist (or ‘transcendental’) philosophy.
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