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[Hereandnow]

GE Morton wrote
What phenomenology is trying to do, as far as I can see, is discover and characterize the ding an sich, Kant's noumena, which he argues (convincingly, to my mind) is impossible. Is that a fair characterization of the aim of phenomenology? If it is, then phenomenology is a fool's errand.

This comment, and what follows in your response, is, by my thinking, the most interesting there is in philosophy. Husserl wanted little to do with Kant's noumena. His "thing itself" is not Kant's "thing in itself." This latter is strictly prohibited for meaningful thought...yet he thinks about it because he feels he simply has to say something. It's out of time and space (our intuition of these) and no sense can be made, lest one fall into a dialectic illusion. No, Husserl is not about this. He is about the presence before one when one does the phenomenological reduction. The "thing itself" rises before one out once what is truly there is distilled out of the clutter of knowledge claims. To "observe" the world phenomenologically, one encounters what is there, REALLY there, apart from the divergent and presuppositions that would otherwise own it.

Phenomenology is a broad field of divergent thought itself, regardless of Husserl's claim. There is a long list of thinking and I certainly have not read them all. I like Levinas, Henry, Blanchot, Nancy; I like the French. I like Derida, too, given the little I've read. I like him because he takes Heidegger to a radical and logical conclusion. Heidegger rejects Husserl's strong claim ( a great book on just this is Caputo's Radical Hermeneutics) claiming the latter is like walking on water in the interpretative settledness, and Husserl ends up defeating himself": for it is he who talks on about how laden phenomena are with eidetic content, and, as you say, there is no way out of this to make any claim about the Real beyond idea.

There is another paper that defends Husserl: Husserl's thing itself is not meant as an absolute, but is just a measure of what belongs to the object as an object rather than extraneous theory. I'd have to look for it.

As to a fools' errand, not sure why. Philosophy is what it is.

Not clear there whether you're attributing that view to Kant or Husserl, but that is precisely Kant's claim . . . correction --- Kant does not CLAIM there is an external world forever out of our reach, but that there is one is an assumption we can't do without.

Phenomenologists are all post Kantians in that they take very seriously the idea that thought and intuitions (very difficult to say, but intuitions in my thinking are what ever an analysis yields when the eidetic part is removed. to me, this is a challenging part of te distinctions between phnomenologists themselves. But this is for another discussion) constitute an object, whether it is talk about intentionality or totality (Levinas) or presence at hand (Heidegger) or pragmatics (Dewey, Rorty, close to Heidegger, I think, on this. BUT: Rorty is explicitly NOT a phenomenologist, because he refutes it in The Mirror of Nature. On the other hand, his is clearly in Wittgenstein and Heidegger's world).

As to the external world, noumena, there is a lot about this regarding his idealism and the way he was taken up in subsequent philosophy. They say, those that went the way of phenomenology emphasized the ideality of things; and those who went to analytic philosophy emphasized the prohibition on meaningful talk beyond empirical (and analytic? there is that paper by Quine, the Two Dogmas that attacks the distinction. I'd have to read it again).

Of course, read the Transcendental Dialectic and it is plain to see the explicit prohibition on such talk. Externality of this kind is nonsense. Again, on the other hand, there are those who say this is misleading: really briefly: this world is existentially imbued with transcendence. As with all ideas, we certainly DID invent the language to conceive it, but prior to language's hold or reduction to language, it has a "presence" that is not invented. This kind of thinking is behind a lot of objections to the attempt to confine meaningful talk to science and empiricism.

What you are calling an eidetic perception or dimension looks to me to be identical with Kant's sensory intuitions. If you see some difference, can you articulate it? When those intuitions are combined with concepts (the "unity of apperception") we know as much about the thing before us as we will ever know. Asking what the thing "really" is, which assumes that there is something more to be learned or understood about the thing is an idle question, the fool's errand mentioned above.

It's not me, of course, but Husserl, paraphrased from his Ideas I. to see the difference between, say Husserl and Kant, you would have to look at his lengthy dissertation on noesis, noema, hyle, the eidetic reduction; I have a paper, Husserl’s Reductions and the Role They Play in His Phenomenology by DAGFINN FØLLESDA, which lays this out with clarity that helps with Ideas. But you read Ideas I and you see clear as day, this is Kant behind this. Obviously. And if you read Heidegger or Sartre you see clear as day, this is Kierkegaard's Concept of Anxiety! They are ALL connected.

But the fool's errand? Is Being and Time a fool's errand? Was Kant's Critique? Or Levinas' Totality and Infinity? You could say yes, but then, we would have a lot to talk about.

But to speak generally, it is one of the most extraordinary insights one can have, when the structure of experience is laid bare, and one takes the matter as far as one can (see Fink's Sixth Cartesian Meditation), to see that there is no foundation to our Being-in-the-world of the kind so sought after and frankly assumed. This taking the rug out from under basic assumptions OPENS assumptive space foundationally. The familiar idea of science and its authority presiding over the basic meaning of all things becomes undone, if one has the mentality to see it.

A mystical turn indeed. There can be no suspension "of all ready assumptions." You may be able to recognize and suspend some particular assumption, but only by relying upon other assumptions. The only way to suspend all assumptions is to lapse into unconsciousness, or die. Typically those alternative assumptions involve some sort of non-cognitive mysticism.

That IS the issue! The charge against Husserl has been that there is no innocent eye (this belongs to Goodman, the myth of the innocent eye), and it's all interpretation. In the ever deferential world of Derrida, wandering through Kafka's Castle is the best it ever gets! Kant said as much in his account of imagination in the Transcendental Deduction, Husserl said in his Ideas (see specifically his predelineation in the analysis of intentionality) and elsewhere (he thereby defeats himself, says Derrida). Of course, Heidegger is all over this.

But then there is Kierkegaard and his progeny. This takes a special focus on rather abstruse thinking. I will only explore it if you're interested.

It is addressed to the extent that it is rationally, cogently, testably addressible. A proffered ontology which does not rest on empirical evidence and testable theories is mysticism, with no explanatory power or practical application.

Philosophy is apriori analysis, no explanatory power begs the question, cogency certainly applies to phenomenology without question, "testable" begs the question (Consider that thought itself is in the operation of thinking nothing short of testable theories about the world confirmed or denied). Kant was not an empirical theorist at all. He acknowledge thought, judgment, analyzed these for their structure in form, logic, apriority. All of what he said was apriori analysis: taking what is given and looking to what is presupposed by it, what must be the case given that we have experiences of such and such kind. Heidegger the same.

I agree. But you don't seem to appreciate the implications of that, i.e., that those empirical observations and theories about thought are the best we can ever do. (Which does not rule out replacing current theory with a better one).

No, not EMPIRICAL observations and theories. The matter goes to how we conceive of a human being at the most basic level. This is NOT empirical science, for as Heidegger and others have shown us, empirical thought is just one part of human dasein, and a foundational account is to be about all there is in the horizon of experience; empirical science is actually a minor part of this, a useful part, like tying my shoes properly, though often on a larger scale. What steps forward is not Wittgensteinian facts or states of affairs at all! It is the affect of your existence, the caring, the meaning the ethics/metaethics, value/metavalue matters, the dramatic unfolding of human tragedies and blisses. Logic, Wittgenstein told us int he Tractatus, is the framework of thought. As facts, the world possesses nothing at all of the ethical, the aesthetic. One needs to look very closely at this: what is there in the facts, empirical or otherwise that makes them at all important? Nothing. to take empirical science as a foundational view is patently absurd.
Our Being here is a factual presence in that it can be put into propositional form, truth value assigned. But just because propositional form encompasses all knowledge possibilities, it does not thereby reduce us to that. This is the rationalist's fallacy.

[GE Morton]

Moral stances are subjective. They can vary not only from culture to culture but from individual to individual.

Yes indeed. Vernacular moralities are, for the most part, indeed expressions of feelings and dispositions --- largely culturally induced --- are idiosyncratic and subjective.

There are no (objectively) correct or incorrect, true or false, etc. moral stances.

Well, that is a non sequitur, and false. 1000 years ago everyone's beliefs about the structure of the universe, the causes of diseases, the origins of species, etc., were similarly idiosyncratic, culturally conditioned, and subjective. But it wasn't true then that there were no objectively correct explanations for those phenomena, and it isn't true now of morality.

Moral stances are ways that people feel about behavior--whether they feel that it's acceptable behavior to engage in systemic homicide, etc. There are no correct/incorrect answers there. There are just different ways that different people feel about such things.

There are certainly different ways people feel about things. But how people feel has nothing to do with whether a moral theory, principle, or judgment is sound and rationally defensible, any more than feelings have anything to do with the soundness of the theory of relativity.

[Terrapin Station]

But it wasn't true then that there were no objectively correct explanations for those phenomena, and it isn't true now of morality.

Explanations aren't the issue. There are no mind-independent moral principles, stances, etc.

There are certainly different ways people feel about things. But how people feel has nothing to do with whether a moral theory, principle, or judgment is sound

They can't be sound in the standard logical sense because moral premises can't be true.

and rationally defensible

That's simply a matter of mind-dependent persuasion, due to sharing dispositions, etc.

[Atla]

The familiar idea of science and its authority presiding over the basic meaning of all things becomes undone, if one has the mentality to see it.

Don't you mean that back in the early 20th century, the mechanistic, dead, clockwork universe, which was supposed to be observer-independent in every concievable way, was the only worldview that was to be taken seriously!
Because almost no one takes the above picture too seriously anymore, some of it was refuted by science itself, and there was a big retreat towards mere instrumentalism. Maybe that's why I don't understand your critique.

[Tecolote]

Hello,

First post here, after taking a few moments to skim this thread. I recently saw a picture which showed an interesting juxtaposition of past scientific thinkers and (famous) recent ones. I realize that these are cherry-picked, but it could make for an interesting start on the historiography of philosophy in science.

Anecdotally speaking, I worked a trade job for a few years in which I was able to listen to audiobooks all day. I discovered LibriVox, a site where volunteers read public domain books and upload their readings as MP3s which can be downloaded for free. Writing styles change over decades and centuries, but, after having listened to so many public domain books (as well as reading quite a few), I'm absolutely convinced that historians, philosophers, and theologians of the past were much deeper thinkers than those of today, with the most precipitous decline in deep thought depth coming after WWII.

Anyway, I decided to post the quotes in the picture I mentioned because posting the picture seemed, somehow, gauche. Here they are:

Past:

Heisenberg

I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.

“My mind was formed by studying philosophy, Plato and that sort of thing.”

Einstein

I fully agree with you about the significance and educational value of methodology as well as history and philosophy of science. So many people today, and even professional scientists, seem to me like someone who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge f the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insights is, in my opinion, the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth

Schrödinger

The plurality that we perceive is only an appearance; it is not real. Vedantic philosophy... has sought to clarify it by a number of analogies, one of the most attractive being the many-faceted crystal which, while showing hundreds of little pictures of what is in reality a single existent object, does not really multiply that object.

Bohr

I consider those developments in physics during the last decades which have shown how problematical such concepts as objective and subjective are, a great liberation of thought.

There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about Nature.

Modern

Dawkins

“I mean it as a compliment when I say that you could almost define a philosopher as someone who won't take common sense for an answer.”

'By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.'

Lawrence Krauss

Philosophy is a field that, unfortunately, reminds me of that old Woody Allen joke, ‘those that can’t do, teach, and those that can’t teach, teach gym.’ And the worst part of philosophy is the philosophy of science; the only people, as far as I can tell, that read work by philosophers of science are the other philosophers of science. It has no impact on physics what so ever. They have every right to feel threatened, because science progresses and philosophy doesn’t.

Bill Nye

The idea that reality is not real, or that what you sense and feel is not authentic… is something I'm very skeptical of”

Neil Degrasse Tyson

(Philosophy) can really mess you up.

My concern here is that the philosophers believe they are actually asking deep questions about nature. And to the scientist it’s, what are you doing? Why are you concerning yourself with the meaning of meaning?

[Faustus5]

The familiar idea of science and its authority presiding over the basic meaning of all things becomes undone, if one has the mentality to see it.

There is nothing to be "undone" as no serious thinker has ever, in the entire history of Western philosophy, claimed that science presides over the basic meaning of all things.

Your entire thread is based upon an absurd straw man.

[Gertie]

HAN

Thanks for clarifying some areas of agreement in your reply. We can put those basics aside now, and hopefully you'll continue bear with me as I plod through this.

So what is your problem with that approach to human nature? Where do you draw the line on explanations which arise in the world we share, and why? Presumably you accept what we call gravity tells us something real about the world, and you accept evolution tells us something real about why our bodies are the way they are - so why draw the line at what evolution tells us about why we are the way we are mentally?

Simple. Empirical scientific thinking is NOT foundational ontology... Even if you have an a sound empirical theory about the nature of conscious thought, a neurologist's or a psychologist's, you are still not examining the nature of thought itself.

Well we can describe the ''nature of conscious thought'' itself in different ways. Lets go through some.


I agree scientific materialism doesn't explain the existence of phenomenal experience, but neither does phenomenology.


Scientific materialism doesn't describe what the ''stuff of phenomenal experience'' is. Does phenomenology?


Scientific materialism doesn't describe Laws of phenomenal experience. Does phenomenology?


Scientific materialism doesn't explain Agency. Does phenomenology?


Scientific materialism doesn't explain what makes the experience of seeing red, different to seeing blue, or remembering or imagining red, or thinking about red with our internal narrative voice. Nor the differences of the other types of sensory perceptions, different types of sensations, emotions, etc. Does phenomenology?


Scientific materialism notes a correlation between experiential states and certain physical processes ('the neural correlatrs of consciousness'), but can't explain the mind-body relationship. Does phenomenology?


Are there other things the methodology of phenomenology tells us which scientific materialism doesn't?

That "what is" of the world at the level of basic assumptions is not addressed at all.

The material ''what is '' of the world we are located within is addressed in incredible detail by science, based on the assumption that a world exists independently of humans experiencing it, which we can roughly know things about via our experience of it. However it's a model which is limited and flawed, because we are limited and flawed. We don't have a perfect god's-eye view, we have an evolved-for-utility first person pov, and can only compare notes with each other. The same problem applies to phenomenology.


The ''what is'' of phenomenal experience is addressed in one aspect - by evolution. This gives us a story about the utility basis of human phenomenal experience developing in the way it has. Why we care about ourselves, and find evolutionarily useful behaviours pleasant, and dangerous/harmful behaviours unpleasant. Why as a social species we care about others (the foundation of morality). Why we create useful models of our self and the world - in order to navigate the world safely and achieve goals, remember past experiences and predict consequences, etc. It can even explain some of our flaws and limitations in observing, reasoning and predicting. That's a bloody impressive account of human experience imo.


What does phenomenology offer which undermines this approach in your opinion?


And what does phenomenology add?

A first step in this direction sees with perfect clarity that such an examination presupposes thought IN the empirical examination. This clear insight is at the heart of a LOT of philosophy. Thought examining thought is, by nature, impossible (Wittgenstein) for you would need yet another systematic symbolic pov/standard to stand apart from the thought perspective that is doing the examining; and this would yet require another to examine it! An infinite regress.


Heidegger sees exactly this, and responds: hermeneutics! Circularity IS what IS at the level of basic assumptions. He is right about this. He has opened the door, however, to possibilities, interpretative possiblities, and this is why I value his philosophy: the world is OPEN at the very foundation of meaning making itself. Scientific paradigms are in abeyance, as are all, even that of phenomenology.

Now I can anticipate your objection: This is exactly what science IS, a theoretical openness, founding paradigms questioned, revolutions in the structure of science itself, and so on. Heidegger says YES! the method of phenomenology is not at all a repudiation of science. But it is not working with THOSE paradigms. It works apriori, what is presupposed by empirical paradigms. It is another order of thought entirely, embracing science, religion, sociology, anthropology, and all the rest under one single paradigm, that of hermeneutics.

What are you saying here which goes beyond acknowledging that we are flawed and limited observers and reasoners who can only create models congruent with our capabilities, of whatever lies beyond our own directly known experience?

[Hereandnow]

Faustus5 wrote
There is nothing to be "undone" as no serious thinker has ever, in the entire history of Western philosophy, claimed that science presides over the basic meaning of all things.

Your entire thread is based upon an absurd straw man.

I do love those pithy remarks, but the pith is often without reflection.

What is the common sense authority of what is the case in modern society? What is the essence of the age of reason, of modernity? What comes to mind generally when a serious question is asked about the nature of all things? What has been the general response to all of my claims here about science and hegemony? Explanations go to evolution, anthropology, sociology; hope goes to medical science, politics and governement(political science; and yes, these guys decide our fate).

Are you suggesting science does NOT have hegemony in the present age, not just among philosophers, but circulating in the minds of anyone who has given such mattes a second look? No one reads philosophy much, but if you ask the person on the street about a philosophical matter, (and you are not a bible belt or the like) you will find default thinking goes to science. Analytic philosophy IS an implicit endorsement of scientific paradigms to address all questions, and as religion yields more and more to disillusionment, a trend impossible to stop (one reason we see the desperation in current politics on the Christian right: they know their days are numbered)

It is the positivism, the Wittgensteinian (btw, Witt was a huge fan of Kierkegaard, this tells us ...interesting things about the line he draws) and Kantian (reason has insight (Einsicht) only into what it itself produces (hervorbringt) according to its own design (Entwurfe)) drawn line that has led to a resignation to the unintelligibility of anything but empirical science that binds US and British philosophy to science. It is the success of science in our material affairs that establishes its hegemony in culture.

Religion used reign in philosophy and in cultures around the world, but the new god is science. It is where we go for foundational understanding of the world. No straw in this.

[Pattern-chaser]

Religion used [to] reign in philosophy and in cultures around the world, but the new god is science. It is where we go for foundational understanding of the world. No straw in this.

No, I see no straw man either. But this (your text, above) is what this topic is concerned with. Not to disparage science, but to observe that our new God is often prayed-to for intervention that the God cannot offer. The New God is not omniscient, oddly enough, but is concerned with only with a subset of what we humans perceive as 'reality'. Sometimes, the New God is misapplied. That's what this topic says, yes?

[Faustus5]

What is the common sense authority of what is the case in modern society?

You know the answer to this question already—just look at what normal, sane people actually do. When they want to know what is the case about a disease, they turn to a medical professional. When they want to know what is the case about their car not running, they go to a car mechanic. When they want to know what is the case about the natural world, they ask an appropriate scientist.

Things are more complicated when it comes to ethical or aesthetic issues, because those by their very nature are not always things about which we can form a consensus and turn to reliable experts. But that’s okay. The vast majority of us get by just fine.

What comes to mind generally when a serious question is asked about the nature of all things?

There can never be a serious question asked about the “nature of all things” because that question is hopelessly vague to the point of being utterly meaningless. The best response is that there is literally no such thing as the “nature of all things”. Serious questions depend on specificity.

Are you suggesting science does NOT have hegemony in the present age, not just among philosophers, but circulating in the minds of anyone who has given such mattes a second look?

Science dominates all discourse about the natural world, and this is how it should be. Philosophy stopped having a meaningful contribution to such discourse long before we were born.

I suppose you could say science should and does have something to say about moral or aesthetic issues, but pretty much all philosophers understand that its contributions are very limited there, though of course folks debate about where the borders should be.

My point is that people are smart enough to know when science is the right tool to use to solve or discuss a problem, and when it is inappropriate. There is no problem of science having an unjustified hegemony over issues where it has nothing valid to say. Your entire thread is premised on a made up issue.

By the way, I would never deny that some scientists or philosophers have gone too far in thinking they could apply scientific reasoning or techniques to subjects, or that they have mistakenly denied that philosophy had something to contribute when in fact it does. We'd have to look at this issue by issue. All I am denying is that there is a widespread problem of people doing this. There is not.

No one reads philosophy much, but if you ask the person on the street about a philosophical matter, (and you are not a bible belt or the like) you will find default thinking goes to science.

You love keeping things vague, don’t you? What specific philosophical questions do you think the average person defaults to science on, when asked? And why would they be wrong, on those specific questions?

Analytic philosophy IS an implicit endorsement of scientific paradigms to address all questions. . .

You are making things up. No serious, respected thinker in the entire history of Western philosophy has ever claimed something so silly.

It is the success of science in our material affairs that establishes its hegemony in culture.

And this material success has justifiably lead to science dominating in all the aspects of culture that it ought to dominate. You haven’t provided a specific example of any particular issue or subject where its domination is harmful or unjustified.

Religion used reign in philosophy and in cultures around the world, but the new god is science. It is where we go for foundational understanding of the world. No straw in this.

We turn to science when we want “foundational understanding” of the natural world. There is no sense in which a philosophical exercise conducted from the safety of the armchair is going to provide something deeper than this, though philosophers like to fool themselves into thinking otherwise. That’s why no one pays attention to them.

[GE Morton]

Husserl wanted little to do with Kant's noumena. His "thing itself" is not Kant's "thing in itself." This latter is strictly prohibited for meaningful thought...yet he thinks about it because he feels he simply has to say something. It's out of time and space (our intuition of these) and no sense can be made, lest one fall into a dialectic illusion. No, Husserl is not about this. He is about the presence before one when one does the phenomenological reduction. The "thing itself" rises before one out once what is truly there is distilled out of the clutter of knowledge claims. To "observe" the world phenomenologically, one encounters what is there, REALLY there, apart from the divergent and presuppositions that would otherwise own it.

Like most idealist (and mystical) ontologists you regularly invoke such phrases as "what is REALLY there," what is truly there," etc. But offer no criterion or explanation for the adjectives "really" and "truly," or for the basis of the implied distinction between what is "really" there and what merely appears to be there. And certainly no explanation of how you gained knowledge of what is "really" there.

I agree we can set aside ("distill out") some of the conceptual superstructure we have learned to overlay upon what we perceive, i.e., perceive it eidetically (as a neonate would), without understanding it. Or at least imagine that we can. That is Kant's "sensible intuition." But without understanding it is gratuitous, and contrary to common usage, to call that edetic percept "real" or "true." Those percepts, when embedded in the best conceptual framework we're able to devise, is the only "reality" we're ever going to have. Phenomenologists, like mystics, seem to imagine that if they stare at something long enough, "clear their minds" (perhaps with the aid of fasting, sleep deprivation, or LSD) they will perceive some "reality" that has escaped everyone else's notice.

As to the external world, noumena, there is a lot about this regarding his idealism and the way he was taken up in subsequent philosophy. They say, those that went the way of phenomenology emphasized the ideality of things; and those who went to analytic philosophy emphasized the prohibition on meaningful talk beyond empirical (and analytic? there is that paper by Quine, the Two Dogmas that attacks the distinction. I'd have to read it again).

One of Quine's "Two Dogmas" dealt with the distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions, not between idealism and empiricism (the other dealt with reductionism).

Of course, read the Transcendental Dialectic and it is plain to see the explicit prohibition on such talk. Externality of this kind is nonsense. Again, on the other hand, there are those who say this is misleading: really briefly: this world is existentially imbued with transcendence. As with all ideas, we certainly DID invent the language to conceive it, but prior to language's hold or reduction to language, it has a "presence" that is not invented. This kind of thinking is behind a lot of objections to the attempt to confine meaningful talk to science and empiricism.

That the world has a "presence" we did not invent is itself an epistemological assumption, albeit one that we are forced to make (according to Kant). But the most we can confidently claim is that we did not intentionally, consciously, invent it. There are compelling arguments that that entire "eidetic" world which supplies the foundation for our conceptual understanding of "reality" is an artifact of the structure and functioning of our brains and nervous systems. It is a "virtual model," built of bricks, sticks, glue, and paints concocted by our brains from whole cloth --- from nothing --- of an external "reality" which we must postulate but of of which we can never gain any direct knowledge.

But why call this eidetic "presence" "transcendental"? It certainly doesn't transcend us, its authors, any more than a writers' novel transcends him, except in the sense that we, like the novel, postulate an external world behind it all --- that postulate itself being a construct of our own.

But to speak generally, it is one of the most extraordinary insights one can have, when the structure of experience is laid bare, and one takes the matter as far as one can (see Fink's Sixth Cartesian Meditation), to see that there is no foundation to our Being-in-the-world of the kind so sought after and frankly assumed. This taking the rug out from under basic assumptions OPENS assumptive space foundationally. The familiar idea of science and its authority presiding over the basic meaning of all things becomes undone, if one has the mentality to see it.

As Faustus5 recently pointed out here, science doesn't claim to define or explain the meanings "of all things;" but only those things within the realm of common experience about which information can be communicated via objective propositions. It reports what is publicly observable and attempts to expain it, i.e., supply causes for observed effects, via theories with predictive power. If science holds a "hegemony" over those explanations it is only because it is the only methodology known which produces communicable and actionable information. Yes, we can set that methodology aside, apprehend some experiential phenomenon eidetically, and ponder other assumptions. But unless those assumptions generate predictions that are publicly confirmable and actionable they will be vacuous; "mental masturbation."

It is addressed to the extent that it is rationally, cogently, testably addressible. A proffered ontology which does not rest on empirical evidence and testable theories is mysticism, with no explanatory power or practical application.

Philosophy is apriori analysis, no explanatory power begs the question, cogency certainly applies to phenomenology without question, "testable" begs the question (Consider that thought itself is in the operation of thinking nothing short of testable theories about the world confirmed or denied). Kant was not an empirical theorist at all. He acknowledge thought, judgment, analyzed these for their structure in form, logic, apriority. All of what he said was apriori analysis: taking what is given and looking to what is presupposed by it, what must be the case given that we have experiences of such and such kind. Heidegger the same.

Well, we disagree there. Philosophy is not --- or ought not be --- "a priori analysis." Indeed, that term is meaningless. Before you can analyze anything there must be something to analyze; some raw material you're seeking to breakdown and understand. No analysis is possible of the contents of an empty beaker. For epistemology and ontology that raw material is experience, percepts. For Kant what was a priori were some of the tools we use to conduct that analysis, the "categories," which are a priori only in the sense that they are "built-in" to our brains and cannot be ignored or overridden. That is, of course, a theory, that may or may not be the best we can do in explaining our own thought processes.

We can postulate properties of our own thought processes and theorize that we apply them a priori to the analysis of other phenomena. We do, after all, have some direct knowledge of those processes. But we have no direct knowledge of anything presumed to be external to us, and never will. Any properties we predicate of them a priori will be arbitrary, vacuous, and frivolous.

No, not EMPIRICAL observations and theories. The matter goes to how we conceive of a human being at the most basic level. This is NOT empirical science, for as Heidegger and others have shown us, empirical thought is just one part of human dasein, and a foundational account is to be about all there is in the horizon of experience; empirical science is actually a minor part of this, a useful part, like tying my shoes properly, though often on a larger scale.

I'd agree that empirical science is only a part of human experience, but quibble over whether it is a "minor" part. If we measure according to the portions of our waking hours we devote to acting in and upon the empirical world --- the world described by science --- I'd guess it would constitute the dominant part. But a scientific explanation of how and why the sun shines does not purport to be an account of the human dasein, or of the entire "horizon of experience." That criticism is gratuitous.

What steps forward is not Wittgensteinian facts or states of affairs at all! It is the affect of your existence, the caring, the meaning the ethics/metaethics, value/metavalue matters, the dramatic unfolding of human tragedies and blisses.

I agree that all those are important and present many interesting philosophical problems of their own. But why do you have a problem with breaking down distinguishable elements of that complex --- the "horizon of experience" as a whole --- into separate problems that can be analyzed separately? Isn't that the way we approach most complex problems?

[GE Morton]

Explanations aren't the issue. There are no mind-independent moral principles, stances, etc.

Of course not. No principles, theories, judgments, or propositions are mind-independent, in morality or in physics. They are all constructs of the human brain. That doesn't entail, however, that none of them can be sound, valid, objective, or true.

They can't be sound in the standard logical sense because moral premises can't be true.

A proposition is true if the state of affairs it asserts exists. It is objective if that state of affairs is publicly confirmable. If those conditions are satisfied by a moral premise then it is true.

and rationally defensible

That's simply a matter of mind-dependent persuasion, due to sharing dispositions, etc.

Huh? Are you claiming that "rational" is a subjective matter? An argument is rational if its premises are supported by evidence (or are self-evident) and any conclusions drawn from them follow therefrom. Whether anyone is persuaded by it is irrelevant.

[Hereandnow]

Terrapin Station wrote
Here's the way I'm open to it: show any good reason to believe that meaning/purpose in the relevant sense could occur outside of something we do, in the sense of a way that we think about things. Show any good reason to believe that meaning/purpose exist external to us (or that any real abstract exists--that is, any abstract as an existent external to us/to a way that we, as individuals, think).

External?? I don't know what you have in mind given all that has been said. Meaning purpose external to us...US? How are you thinking about such things?

Again, about interpersonal behavior that we consider to be more significant than etiquette. In other words, how humans behave towards each other, the actions they take towards each other, etc.

The begged question goes to the matter of the essence of ethics, the metaethical or metavaluative. Ethics is ABOUT our entanglements regarding what. Not facts, for facts are value neutral; even though one can describe a valuative situation, the description possesses nothing of the ethical dimension. Such a thing is beyond speaking, which, I think I noted, Wittgenstein would never talk about it. See his Lecture on Ethics.

Moral stances are subjective. They can vary not only from culture to culture but from individual to individual. There are no (objectively) correct or incorrect, true or false, etc. moral stances. Moral stances are ways that people feel about behavior--whether they feel that it's acceptable behavior to engage in systemic homicide, etc. There are no correct/incorrect answers there. There are just different ways that different people feel about such things.

It is not about he different way we are entangled in the world, which gives rise to differences in attitudes, decision making; it is about what value is independently of these entanglements. In discussions about ethics we usually are asking questions about decision making, and there are the usual suspects, utility and deontology, Mill and Kant, and there are various accounts that attempt to say what such decision making ism in it nature. But these look to the subject, as if the affective (valuative) dimension of our experiences were all a matter of taste, and thus infamously unable to pin down. I am a moral realist and I think ethics is really quite simple to pin down. As with reason, one can infer from judgment and the incidentals of judgment, the particular facts of a given case, are dismissed in order to get to what reason is itself. We get Aristotle's substance, quality, quantity and the rest (Kant would refine this latter). For ethics, forget the incidentals as well, the "subjective" facts that confuse talk about ethics, and look exclusively at the ethical qua ethical, that is, the value as such. Here, you find little disagreement as to what is right and wrong, or, disagreement would rest solely with an objective evaluation of value at hand that is in question. Instead of wondering if there is sufficient utility one way or another in a situation of competing obligations, one drops the confusing entanglements to see what it IS that is at risk or in play. It is some joy, some misery, something delicious, perhaps, or something disgusting. Here, we have the, if you will, material grounding of ethics, and it speaks as an aesthesis, as valuative given logically prior to any ethical situation at all. Prior because it is presupposed: an absence of this material grounding, and an absence of ethics altogether.

This, no correct/incorrect answer, you say, and I agree. But it has to understood that the indeterminacy lies not with the value itself, but with the value-arbitrary entanglements. Hitler enjoyed a good cigar as he signed the order to gas thousands. This context of the good cigar makes us cringe, but: the goodness of the cigar is not effected at all OUT of this context, and it is this material goodness that is the kind of thing ethics is "made of," taken as it is itself.

It is an analysis just like Kant's Critique via a vis reason. this isn't Heidegger at all. But to see ethics in this light, one has to be free of interpretative biases that will try to reduce phenomena to something else. Phenomenology allows the world to be what it is.

Since you have read all that stuff, I can trust you understand the issue and not complain that I am being needlessly obscure.

[Hereandnow]

Atla wrote
Don't you mean that back in the early 20th century, the mechanistic, dead, clockwork universe, which was supposed to be observer-independent in every concievable way, was the only worldview that was to be taken seriously!
Because almost no one takes the above picture too seriously anymore, some of it was refuted by science itself, and there was a big retreat towards mere instrumentalism. Maybe that's why I don't understand your critique.

No Atla, not that. Although if you mean by clockwise universe you are referring to causality itself, you would have to get past the apriority of the principle of sufficient cause. But no, it is not about any particular science and its standing in contemporary thinking. It is about the standard of establishing a foundation for a philosophical ontology. Read what I wrote elsewhere in these posts, for all I would do here is repeat that. I though my response to G E Morton was adequate.

[Hereandnow]

Tecolote wrote
My concern here is that the philosophers believe they are actually asking deep questions about nature. And to the scientist it’s, what are you doing? Why are you concerning yourself with the meaning of meaning?

This by Neil Degrasse Tyson is exactly to the point here. It is simply not among the prerogatives of empirical science to think like a philosopher. Philosophical thinking is apriori, it's about what is presupposed BY science. Philosophy cares nothing for the mass of Neptune's rings and the planetary physicist cares nothing for the temporal structure of meaning itself.