dmb says: > I had the impression that Husserl's phenomenology was something like an > attempt to get at pure experience, an impression I believe you gave me. > Last semester when I finally encountered Husserl I was totally baffled. To > me, it looked weird and wrong and didn't seem to resemble pure experience > at all. I was told that Husserl was interested in finding essences this > way. As usual, I kept thinking "what the heck is an essence" and "when did > anybody ever find such a thing"? Now I understand what had me so confused.
DM: I doubt it as you have nor read enough Husserl. Actually I'm not big on Husser lbut I know his use of essence is about the content of experience and nothing to with any essesnce behind experience. > > As Raymond Boisvert says in his "John Dewey's Logic as a Theory of > Knowing", "Within the bifurcated world of modernity, 'subjects', often > thought of as primarily 'minds' (Descartes) or 'rational essences' (Kant), > are in search of knowledge about 'objects'. This view of things gave rise > to the naively optimistic delusion that at some point the objects will be > completely understood. Frege and Husserl were simply following the > tradition of Descartes and Kant when they fastened onto the necessary > deduction of absolutely certain truths as the exemplary activity of human > cognition." DM: Yes, Husserl thought that he could derive truth from experience but runs in to problems. Funny thing is you talk like this sometimes. > > david m said: > ...European philosophy has more doubts about traditional science than the > American pragmatists as they see science as full of aspects of SOM such as > determinism, absolute-laws, reductionism. > > dmb says: > Both James and Dewey rejected determinism, absolutism and reductionism but > managed to do so without rejecting science too. DM: That's right and I am glad that they still keep faith with science but too uncritically though. The Eurpoeans are more critical but they do go to far and get silly. DMB: In fact, Dewey's method of inquiry doesn't set up a brand new idea so much as it identifies the patterns of inquiry that already demonstrate a reasonable level of success. In particular, he points out that everday, common sense inquiry and scientific inquiry both exhibit the same basic pattern and so he develops that pattern into a more coherent general picture of what works and then also puts it all in terms that reject SOM and traditional empiricism. DM: Interestingly, it seems to methat some of the reasons Pirsig gets to the MOQ is because he sees precisely how science and 'quantity' have done something to diminish experience and hide its qualities from us. We need a more MOQ compatible science, Dewey helps, but we need to go further. The philsopher of science Nick Maxwell raises the issue of the value-blindness of Enlightenment based science in his work. A similar theme to Pirsig. Maxwell likes Pirsig too. Science need to be more pragmatic and clearabout what values it is trying to realise when it researches,rejecting knowledge for knowledges sake. Of course, the Enlightment claimedto be objective and that it did not need values as part of it power struggle with religion. But the next dialectical twist is it to add these qualities back to its conceptual framework having won its separation from religion. DMB: (Which makes sense because everyday life and science both rest on learning from experience.) Its a beautiful thing. Hildebrand put the pattern up on the board and we students during the discussion saw it as a pattern that reflects the working of all sorts of things. I saw the hero's journey in it, for example. Another guy said he saw software development in it. I didn't really get that simply because I know nothing at all about software development, but it made me wonder how many other things could this pattern be mapped onto. Anyway, its one thing to reject SOM and scientific materialism and quite another to reject these fruitful methods on inquiry, both of which, after all, have produced real changes in the world. Big time. DM: Agree absolutely (ironic use of word) science is clearly very useful but also dangerous. I think in the past it has been very SOM based, or even only SQ based. As it develops it seems to be opening to something more like the MOQ as it finds DQ at workin nature, i.e. that there is more to reality than laws and patterns, there is the flux, the emerging, the dis-emerging, the levels, on-going DQ creation. > DMB> I would also point out, as Boisvert did at the end of that essay, that the difference between Husserl's approach and Dewey's approach has profound political implications. The beleif in certainty is anti-democratic, authoritarian and elitist. Not co-incidentally, Husserl has since been revealed as an anti-Semitic, racist, authoritarian asshole DM: Husserl was Jewish, do you mean Heidegger? Yes Hussel wanted certainty and Dewey is a political hero wothout equal, yes Heidegger is a political zero. But Being & Time is an immense re-description of experience without equal. Much richer than Pirsig, but borderline unreadable. while Dewey's ideas have only fostered democratic and egalitarian values. For this reason, I have serious doubt about Heidegger. He was a fascist, as we all know by now, and it seems all his best ideas were just Taoism is German. (See "Heidegger's Hidden Sources"). DM: Nothing wrong with ripping off good ideas. Polite to admit itwhich Heidegger was not. Yet Being & Time is also utterly unique. But not to everyone's taste. I admire Dewey more by the day currently. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
