Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 8

[Constance]

I see it now or saw it early this morning on my phone ... at work now, will try to pull it up here in a bit. Is there information on what animals might look like on Mars, i.e. taking into account gravity, atmosphere, etc? Would be sophisticated guesswork I guess - but that might help evaluate.

Dimitar Sasselov, the Harvard astrophist whose presentation I cited several months ago from the 2007 Edge summer symposium "Life: What a Concept," offers insights into how life arises from a long chain of interactions in complex chemistry and goes on to speculate about evolutionary convergence possible on planets similar to ours. Here's the link to his written presentation (also available on video):

Dimitar D. Sasselov | Edge.org

I recommend reading the whole of it for the avenue it opens to our contemplating panspermia in general and specifically the likelihood of evolutionary convergence in life on planets similar to our own. Mars is generally recognized as likely to have been similar to our planet in its chemical and biological make-up and thus in the evolution of life there, but at periods of time earlier than our planet's known evolution of life.

The visual images returned from several sites on Mars by the rovers the US has sent there (primarily Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity) provide evidence of former life forms similar to Earth's in the often eroded sculptural representations of both human and animal species on the Mars surface, and as well in the buildings still visible on the surface amid the ruins of others structures. Scientists have reasoned that at some time in the past, after one or more environmentally damaging events, intelligent races on Mars, if they evolved*, have relocated for the most part to lava tubes beneath the surface. Images returned from Opportunity and especially Curiosity provide visual evidence of a variety of humanoid species still living on Mars and photographed during mid-day, when the Sun's light is strongest and the temperatures are considerably warmer than they are during the nights. It has been speculated by Mars researchers outside of NASA/JPL that the many humanoid beings and some 'lower' beings visible in those images might 'take the sun' at midday in order to absorb Vitamin D, and also to visit the scenes of past cultures and civilizations on Mars, for human types are often captured doing just that in groups and even families with children. It's also clear in some of these images that some intelligent and creative members of extant human-like species continue to produce artworks -- especially sculptures -- in areas near their entrances to the Martian underground. In such areas, entrances leading into hillsides and also downward on flat terrain are unmistakable, sometimes decorated with artefacts that appear to be relics of earlier periods of time on Mars.

I've been studying these JPL-released images, both in raw form and as enhanced with light, contrast, and other adjustments available in ordinary photo editing software, and in improved versions of those technologies, for about a year now. It is an absorbing subject. I personally still only use the basic photo editing technology available to me in Windows Live Photo Gallery, but long-time researchers of these images, which I study every day, use the more advanced technologies and bring out deeper information available in the raw images.

My general impression at this point (actually a conviction by now) is that there are indeed living species of various kinds on Mars today and that these are strikingly similar to species we know on earth.

*re ongoing evolution on Mars, it does appear that human-looking species visible in the Mars images are probably all smaller than average humans, and that some are considerably smaller, the latter producing small dwelling-places for their time spent on the surface.

The possible arthropod I discovered in the image I posted was invisible in the light-enhanced raw image I was studying until the point at which I made some adjustments in color temperature, tint, and saturation, when the possible critter suddenly appeared and, as I mentioned, startled me. It might be the case that there is no critter there but only an optical illusion of a critter, that what is 'there' in the image is only the rough side of a broken rock. But to me this looks like a biological creature that, if it were on earth, would be classified among the various arthropods known so far on earth, which is why I want to share the photo with an entymologist specializing in such species on earth. The elements that persuade me that it might be such a creature include its spots [similar, as I said earlier, to several large snakes I've seen in a few Mars images, including one image that included a whole such snake and a short distance away one that had been cut up in pieces]. Its curious bodily characteristics [fleshy at what appears to be its forward end and segmented at the rear] combine characteristics that may or may not occur together in similar earth species (though it seems to me that the anatomy of such insects as dragonflies combine a solid thorax with a segmented abdomen/tail.

{from a page on dragonfly anatomy:

"Abdomen
The abdomen always has ten segments. Segments 1 and 2 appear to be integrated into the thorax and are sometimes difficult to tell from the thorax. To find a particular segment, it is usually best to start with segment 10, far out at the tip, and count backwards. Because of its segmented nature, the abdomen is very flexible and is able to arch up or down (but not side to side). Learn to count abdomen segments as many of our descriptions are based on them.The male abdomen is often narrower (“waisted”) at segment 3, whereas the female abdomen is almost always more robust."}

The possible critter in my photo also has suggestions of legs, a few of them stretched out and more visible thought others are barely visible.

Finally, I've seen insects and also small amphibians on earth that apparently seek safety by aligning themselves with other structures in the environment, often structures [leaves, twigs] that also provide camouflage. If my critter is like these, it might be clinging to the side of a rock that provides the protection of camouflage.

On the other hand, perhaps there's no critter there after all. There's no way to be sure until we send biologists to Mars, which would be okay with me as opposed to sending oil drillers, for example, or worse: terraformers seeking to provide a new colony for humans, who tend to take territory from one another without asking for permission from the natives.

 

[Constance]

Addendum: re "gravity, atmosphere, etc.," I guess you were asking if living species could possibly exist in the current environment of Mars. No one knows (or if they do they're not sharing that information with the public yet). It seems to me that, given the extremophiles discovered on earth in conditions unlivable by most forms of earth life, it's apparent that some species of life have evolved to be capable of sustaining such conditions. Adaptation is continual in the evolution of species, and that could be why we see 'very little people' in Mars images obtained today: they might be a product of adaptation similar to the dinosaurs' radical reduction in size over long periods of time since their 'extinction', perpetuating their essential genetic codes into a radically changed environment.

 

[Randall]

I'm not clear about the proposed nature of "contentless awareness" or the texts that develop this idea. Can you clarify this idea for me and cite the authors who propose and/or examine it, adding perhaps your own experiences of what you might think of as 'contentless awareness' reached in your own meditative practice? I think it is the phenomenological recognition of the reality of 'prereflective awareness' that we still need to explore in this thread ...

A thorough exploration you have obviously done! In my usual way I've attempted to distill the issue down to something short and sweet that we can relate to in a single sentence: If phenomenology is largely about our relationship to perceptual phenomena, then perhaps we can look at "contentless awareness" and "prereflective awareness", as an awareness of the absence of phenomenal content. BTW @smcder, you're no longer on my ignore list. Thank you for your recent likes. I hope we can continue constructively.

 

[smcder]

A thorough exploration you have obviously done! In my usual way I've attempted to distill the issue down to something short and sweet that we can relate to in a single sentence: If phenomenology is largely about our relationship to perceptual phenomena, then perhaps we can look at "contentless awareness" and "prereflective awareness", as an awareness of the absence of phenomenal content. BTW @smcder, you're no longer on my ignore list. Thank you for your recent likes. I hope we can continue constructively.

Maybe you meant @Soupie ?

I don't remember "Like"ing any of your recent posts ... and I went to my profile activity page and don't show any recent likes there either.

 

[smcder]

Dimitar Sasselov, the Harvard astrophist whose presentation I cited several months ago from the 2007 Edge summer symposium "Life: What a Concept," offers insights into how life arises from a long chain of interactions in complex chemistry and goes on to speculate about evolutionary convergence possible on planets similar to ours. Here's the link to his written presentation (also available on video):

Dimitar D. Sasselov | Edge.org

I recommend reading the whole of it for the avenue it opens to our contemplating panspermia in general and specifically the likelihood of evolutionary convergence in life on planets similar to our own. Mars is generally recognized as likely to have been similar to our planet in its chemical and biological make-up and thus in the evolution of life there, but at periods of time earlier than our planet's known evolution of life.

The visual images returned from several sites on Mars by the rovers the US has sent there (primarily Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity) provide evidence of former life forms similar to Earth's in the often eroded sculptural representations of both human and animal species on the Mars surface, and as well in the buildings still visible on the surface amid the ruins of others structures. Scientists have reasoned that at some time in the past, after one or more environmentally damaging events, intelligent races on Mars, if they evolved*, have relocated for the most part to lava tubes beneath the surface. Images returned from Opportunity and especially Curiosity provide visual evidence of a variety of humanoid species still living on Mars and photographed during mid-day, when the Sun's light is strongest and the temperatures are considerably warmer than they are during the nights. It has been speculated by Mars researchers outside of NASA/JPL that the many humanoid beings and some 'lower' beings visible in those images might 'take the sun' at midday in order to absorb Vitamin D, and also to visit the scenes of past cultures and civilizations on Mars, for human types are often captured doing just that in groups and even families with children. It's also clear in some of these images that some intelligent and creative members of extant human-like species continue to produce artworks -- especially sculptures -- in areas near their entrances to the Martian underground. In such areas, entrances leading into hillsides and also downward on flat terrain are unmistakable, sometimes decorated with artefacts that appear to be relics of earlier periods of time on Mars.

I've been studying these JPL-released images, both in raw form and as enhanced with light, contrast, and other adjustments available in ordinary photo editing software, and in improved versions of those technologies, for about a year now. It is an absorbing subject. I personally still only use the basic photo editing technology available to me in Windows Live Photo Gallery, but long-time researchers of these images, which I study every day, use the more advanced technologies and bring out deeper information available in the raw images.

My general impression at this point (actually a conviction by now) is that there are indeed living species of various kinds on Mars today and that these are strikingly similar to species we know on earth.

*re ongoing evolution on Mars, it does appear that human-looking species visible in the Mars images are probably all smaller than average humans, and that some are considerably smaller, the latter producing small dwelling-places for their time spent on the surface.

The possible arthropod I discovered in the image I posted was invisible in the light-enhanced raw image I was studying until the point at which I made some adjustments in color temperature, tint, and saturation, when the possible critter suddenly appeared and, as I mentioned, startled me. It might be the case that there is no critter there but only an optical illusion of a critter, that what is 'there' in the image is only the rough side of a broken rock. But to me this looks like a biological creature that, if it were on earth, would be classified among the various arthropods known so far on earth, which is why I want to share the photo with an entymologist specializing in such species on earth. The elements that persuade me that it might be such a creature include its spots [similar, as I said earlier, to several large snakes I've seen in a few Mars images, including one image that included a whole such snake and a short distance away one that had been cut up in pieces]. Its curious bodily characteristics [fleshy at what appears to be its forward end and segmented at the rear] combine characteristics that may or may not occur together in similar earth species (though it seems to me that the anatomy of such insects as dragonflies combine a solid thorax with a segmented abdomen/tail.

{from a page on dragonfly anatomy:

"Abdomen
The abdomen always has ten segments. Segments 1 and 2 appear to be integrated into the thorax and are sometimes difficult to tell from the thorax. To find a particular segment, it is usually best to start with segment 10, far out at the tip, and count backwards. Because of its segmented nature, the abdomen is very flexible and is able to arch up or down (but not side to side). Learn to count abdomen segments as many of our descriptions are based on them.The male abdomen is often narrower (“waisted”) at segment 3, whereas the female abdomen is almost always more robust."}

The possible critter in my photo also has suggestions of legs, a few of them stretched out and more visible thought others are barely visible.

Finally, I've seen insects and also small amphibians on earth that apparently seek safety by aligning themselves with other structures in the environment, often structures [leaves, twigs] that also provide camouflage. If my critter is like these, it might be clinging to the side of a rock that provides the protection of camouflage.

On the other hand, perhaps there's no critter there after all. There's no way to be sure until we send biologists to Mars, which would be okay with me as opposed to sending oil drillers, for example, or worse: terraformers seeking to provide a new colony for humans, who tend to take territory from one another without asking for permission from the natives.

Fascinating ... the last paragraph reminds me of Ray Bradbury's stories - many of them collected in The Martian Chronicles:

"Dark They Were and Golden Eyed" is a paradigm example. "Here There Be Tygers" is not set on Mars, but dealing with a planetary intelligence's response to human invasion.

 

[smcder]

Addendum: re "gravity, atmosphere, etc.," I guess you were asking if living species could possibly exist in the current environment of Mars. No one knows (or if they do they're not sharing that information with the public yet). It seems to me that, given the extremophiles discovered on earth in conditions unlivable by most forms of earth life, it's apparent that some species of life have evolved to be capable of sustaining such conditions. Adaptation is continual in the evolution of species, and that could be why we see 'very little people' in Mars images obtained today: they might be a product of adaptation similar to the dinosaurs' radical reduction in size over long periods of time since their 'extinction', perpetuating their essential genetic codes into a radically changed environment.

A fascinating study ... I admire your poly-curiousity and the diversity of your interests. Have you thought about writing a book on this subject?

I was wondering if someone had done a speculative "bestiary" for Mars ... had looked at the conditions and raw materials and speculated on just what anatomy and physiology might thrive there ... I think there was may be a book by Carl Sagan ... maybe something in the Cosmos series where they speculate on life forms in the galaxy ... "Encyclopedia Galactica" something like that maybe ,,, and there were two television series ... I think both available on YouTube "Alien Planet" or a similar title that speculates about life on other planets and "The Future is Wild" that speculates about future life here on our planet. Not anything rigorous but indicates the genre ... speculative xeon-biology I guess.

What do you think of Elon Musk's plan to put a colony on Mars? If I'm right Boeing responded to his announcement saying they would get there first -

 

[smcder]

@Constance you wrote:

"I'm not clear about the proposed nature of "contentless awareness" or the texts that develop this idea. Can you clarify this idea for me and cite the authors who propose and/or examine it, adding perhaps your own experiences of what you might think of as 'contentless awareness' reached in your own meditative practice?"

I tried to type a response to this ... but it's difficult to sort out my thoughts ... I can point back to the places in the thread where we discussed this ... but I think I may need a better understanding of pre-reflective self consciousness first. Bear with me as I read the article you posted.

 

[smcder]

The SEP article also gives some interesting points of agreement and dis-agreement between analytic and continental philosophy:

When Hume, in a famous passage in A Treatise of Human Nature, declares that he cannot find a self when he searches his experiences, but finds only particular perceptions or feelings (Hume 1739),

• it could be argued that he overlooks something in his analysis, namely the specific givenness of his own experiences.

Indeed, he was looking only among his own experiences, and seemingly recognized them as his own, and could do so only on the basis of that immediate self-awareness that he seemed to miss. As C.O. Evans puts it: “[F]rom the fact that the self is not an object of experience it does not follow that it is non-experiential” (Evans 1970, 145). Accordingly, we should not think of the self, in this most basic sense, as a substance, or as some kind of ineffable transcendental precondition, or as a social construct that gets generated through time; rather it is an integral part of conscious life, with an immediate experiential character.

 

[smcder]

One advantage of the phenomenological view is that it is capable of accounting for some degree of diachronic unity, without actually having to posit the self as a separate entity over and above the stream of consciousness (see the discussion of time-consciousness in section 3 below). Although we live through a number of different experiences, the experiencing itself remains a constant in regard to whose experience it is. This is not accounted for by a substantial self or a mental theater.

• There is no pure or empty field of consciousness upon which the concrete experiences subsequently make their entry. The field of experiencing is nothing apart from the specific experiences.

Yet we are naturally inclined to distinguish the strict singularity of an experience from the continuous stream of changing experiences. What remains constant and consistent across these changes is the sense of ownership constituted by pre-reflective self-awareness. Only a being with this sense of ownership or minenesscould go on to form concepts about herself, consider her own aims, ideals, and aspirations as her own, construct stories about herself, and plan and execute actions for which she will take responsibility.

As I understand it, phenomenology stands against the idealism and intellectualism of earlier philosophy ... this is the reference to "pure or empty field of consciousness" - that would be a point to look at in comparison with Buddhist phenomenology ... or claims of "contentless awareness" ... a point to keep in mind is that this came as a later development in Buddhism as the Buddha himself, it is claimed was very pragmatic and only concerned with the elimination of "suffering" and famously took no stance on a long list of philosophical questions ... Nargajuna and later Buddhist philosophers developed what we might think of as Buddhist phenomenology.

 

[smcder]

@Constance

smcder 2.) what would a state of confusion be about? there is consciousness there ... but what is it exactly that one is aware of when in a confused state? What is the phenomenology of confusion?

@Constance replied:
That's a good question. It arises prominently in investigations of 'perception' that are limited to visual perception of isolated things {often two-dimensional drawings} in which ambiguity is intentionally embedded, such as the Necker Cube. At a deeper level, these experiments reveal that perception is a struggle for comprehension of the shape, structure, and nature of perceived things. In actual lived experience in and of the 'world' in which a living being is embedded {its immediate, local, environing 'world'} things are encountered within 'situations' -- gestalts -- that are sensed before they become visually and otherwise perceived in the evolution of species.

For Dreyfus, I gather, the ambiguity encountered in lived experiences in the three/four-dimensional world {as distinguished from drawings of ambiguous 'things' presented in lab settings} is resolved by the body itself in its direct interactions with and 'grasps' on things. But the body is not closed up within itself; it senses the qualities that impinge upon it within its environing situation, even in the autopoietic state of being exhibited in primordial single-celled organisms as first demonstrated by Maturana and Varela. It is from this sense of 'being-in-a-world'/being-in-a-situation, that evolving species of life develop pre-reflective consciousness in their encounters with things in their 'worlds' and are motivated to achieve a 'grasp' on the things presented in their environment. Such development clearly involves more than a simply visual encounter. It involves multiple senses of the environment, primarily the sense of touch but also additional bodily senses to the extent to which these have evolved in various species that demonstrate both primarily 'affectivity' and then 'seeking behavior' = enabled action.

ETA: It's important to add that in our own experience as human beings we continue to experience our being and the being of the 'world' we live in pre-reflectivity as well as reflectively.

I'm thinking in terms of a state of confusion ... which might be pathological ... or it might be well within normal range of experiences ... I had an incident maybe a year or so ago when I went into work and was simply disoriented ... I can't recreate the state but it was global ... I was confused about everything so it would be hard to point to what the state was about ... it was momentary and there was an "aura" afterward which was a more acute awareness of the state but I was no longer confused ... no one noticed anything so there was no outward sign, it was immediate, momentary and global - something like the pervasive effect deja vu can have or a very brief version of a fugue state or if one has an epiphany, there is a sudden global reconfiguring - at the peak of such a state there is no loss of awareness but it also seems it would be hard to say what such a state is "about". That probably has no implications for the statement that all conscious states are about something but rather may be a limit case that delineates this statement.

And Yes! - the idea that the body is not closed up within itself ... is continuous with the environment, we are the environment - Heidegger opened up that sense for me - and Dreyfus commentary on AI - in contrast with GOFAI's "object oriented ontology" - we are in the world with all of what comes with it "ready to hand" and so GOFAI was never going to succeed ... and Dreyfus' critique continues to be effective.

 

[smcder]

As a reflecting subject, I never fully coincide with myself. When I reflect, there is always something about my experience which will evade my reflective grasp: the very reflective moment itself.

As Merleau-Ponty puts it, our temporal existence is both a condition for and an obstacle to our self-comprehension. Temporality contains an internal fracture that permits us to return to our past experiences in order to investigate them reflectively, but this very fracture also prevents us from fully coinciding with ourselves. There will always remain a difference between the lived and the understood (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 76, 397, 399, 460). Self-consciousness provides us with the sense that we are always already in play. This leads some phenomenologists to note that we are born (or “thrown” into the world) and not self-generated. We are caught up in a life that is in excess of our full comprehension (Heidegger 1986). There is always something about ourselves that we cannot fully capture in self-conscious reflection.

I will say that in meditation on thinking or on thoughts in which you can get to the point of sensing a thought arising and know what the thought is about without having the thought, without letting it fully form ... you can see this rupture, this sense of "thrown-ness" acutely (for me) whereas the everyday awareness is something like what you notice when you try to become aware of walking - it's seen as an exercise in controlled falling forward ...

 

[smcder]

A thorough exploration you have obviously done! In my usual way I've attempted to distill the issue down to something short and sweet that we can relate to in a single sentence: If phenomenology is largely about our relationship to perceptual phenomena, then perhaps we can look at "contentless awareness" and "prereflective awareness", as an awareness of the absence of phenomenal content. BTW @smcder, you're no longer on my ignore list. Thank you for your recent likes. I hope we can continue constructively.

If phenomenology is largely about our relationship to perceptual phenomena, then perhaps we can look at "contentless awareness" and "prereflective awareness", as an awareness of the absence of phenomenal content.

@Constance - I'm not sure this is the correct understanding of "pre-reflective awareness"? (or "contentless awareness" either)

 

[smcder]

A thorough exploration you have obviously done! In my usual way I've attempted to distill the issue down to something short and sweet that we can relate to in a single sentence: If phenomenology is largely about our relationship to perceptual phenomena, then perhaps we can look at "contentless awareness" and "prereflective awareness", as an awareness of the absence of phenomenal content. BTW @smcder, you're no longer on my ignore list. Thank you for your recent likes. I hope we can continue constructively.

from Blackwell's

P hilosophy of mind, modern E uropean philosophy Sartre's term for a crucial kind of human consciousness. Our consciousness is always directed upon some object of which we are aware. This is the Cartesian or reflective cogito. But this consciousness is itself accompanied by a consciousness that we are aware. Sartre called this second-order awareness, which is consciousness directed upon consciousness, pre-reflective cogito. This consciousness, which always passes without being reflected upon, makes reflection possible. The pre-reflective cogito is the condition of the reflective cogito. On Sartre's view of intentionality , therefore, consciousness operates on two levels at once.

• Sartre's account of consciousness led to his rejection of Freud 's notion of the unconscious.

A major task of Sartre's philosophy was to give a descriptive account of the pre-reflective cogito. “I believe that I have demonstrated that the first condition of all reflection is a pre-reflective cogito. This cogito, to be sure, does not posit an object; it remains within consciousness. But it is nonetheless homologous with the reflective cogito since it appears as the first necessity for non-reflective consciousness to be seen by itself.” Sartre, Being and Nothingness ...

is this the same as saying "an awareness of the absence of phenomenal content"? Pre-reflective consciousness could not be said to be absent phenomenal content, I don't think.

 

[smcder]

Looks like I'm going to have to add Danish to my list of languages!

Simon Høffding in The New York Times – University of Copenhagen

 

[smcder]

A thorough exploration you have obviously done! In my usual way I've attempted to distill the issue down to something short and sweet that we can relate to in a single sentence: If phenomenology is largely about our relationship to perceptual phenomena, then perhaps we can look at "contentless awareness" and "prereflective awareness", as an awareness of the absence of phenomenal content. BTW @smcder, you're no longer on my ignore list. Thank you for your recent likes. I hope we can continue constructively.

Or even ...

"If phenomenology is largely about our relationship to perceptual phenomena ..." not sure that's adequate ... it's probably not exactly wrong ... but it's maybe such a broad generalization that it's more suited for a beginning discussion ... I had a look at the Simple Wikipedia entry for phenomenology and I feel like it even probably goes further ... even the regular Wikipedia and SEP are probably just beginning points ... @Constance has brought phenomenology into this thread for the past several years at a consistently different level ... so I think if we want to contribute to that discussion in a meaningful way, we really do need to read the source material.

I would say I'm finally barely past a beginner's level as I haven't paid sustained attention to the materials or tried to take shortcuts - some of the original writings are very dense but maybe they are an acquired taste and everywhere I look those who have a grasp of phenomenology seem to be well schooled in the original texts - summation or distillation is not adequate ... fortunately, it is all there in the thread(s), I think a pretty fair understanding could be had just from following @Constance writing's and links - she has certainly pointed us to the major works!

 

[smcder]

Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions.

Phenomenology as a discipline is distinct from but related to other key disciplines in philosophy, such as ontology, epistemology, logic, and ethics. Phenomenology has been practiced in various guises for centuries, but it came into its own in the early 20th century in the works of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and others. Phenomenological issues of intentionality, consciousness, qualia, and first-person perspective have been prominent in recent philosophy of mind.

- SEP entry (2013)

 

[Randall]

Maybe you meant @Soupie ? I don't remember "Like"ing any of your recent posts ... and I went to my profile activity page and don't show any recent likes there either.

The December 13, 2016, post you liked was recent to me. Anyway, it's not important that you remember. I'm just hoping we can have a smoother discussion and wanted to extend some good will.

 

[smcder]

Or even ...

"If phenomenology is largely about our relationship to perceptual phenomena ..." not sure that's adequate ... it's probably not exactly wrong ... but it's maybe such a broad generalization that it's more suited for a beginning discussion ... I had a look at the Simple Wikipedia entry for phenomenology and I feel like it even probably goes further ... even the regular Wikipedia and SEP are probably just beginning points ... @Constance has brought phenomenology into this thread for the past several years at a consistently different level ... so I think if we want to contribute to that discussion in a meaningful way, we really do need to read the source material.

I would say I'm finally barely past a beginner's level as I haven't paid sustained attention to the materials or tried to take shortcuts - some of the original writings are very dense but maybe they are an acquired taste and everywhere I look those who have a grasp of phenomenology seem to be well schooled in the original texts - summation or distillation is not adequate ... fortunately, it is all there in the thread(s), I think a pretty fair understanding could be had just from following @Constance writing's and links - she has certainly pointed us to the major works!

In other words a "usual" approach is fine at the beginning of a discussion and may be useful at certain junctures further along but it is no substitute for actual knowledge of the subject and familiarity with the specific readings at hand.

 

[Randall]

Or even ...

"If phenomenology is largely about our relationship to perceptual phenomena ..." not sure that's adequate ...

I think it's adequate in the sense that whatever one considers the phenomena of phenomenology to be, it is something that is perceived in some way, otherwise it would be irrelevant because we would not experience it. So an extensive examination of what perceptions are involved and who thinks this or that about them and whether or not they qualify isn't relevant to the point. The idea was to illustrate the concepts in a way that might better facilitate a common understanding.

Imagine a Venn diagram with two circles. Whatever one's position is on the phenomena of phenomenology, it can be taken and put inside one circle, and whatever ones position is on consciousness, it can be put inside another circle. Where the circles overlap we have phenomenological content. Hypothetically the circles do not have to overlap, in which case we can look at consciousness as "contentless". It seems to be the goal of some kinds of meditation to attain this state. I had hoped this idea would to bring the issue into sharper focus without all the extra baggage. It works for me, so I thought maybe it might help others.

 

[smcder]

@Soupie i haven't listened to this yet but his stuff is always good ...