Dear Clark and list
What I mean is that the outer world - be it matter or other living embodied
conscious being - is not assumed as a prerequisite in phenomenology as well as
phaneroscophy. And I do not think proof when we talk about the possibility of
an empirically accessible world is possible. Husserl tried to establish the
other and language when he worked away from his first idealistic period. I do
not know how far he got as I have not follow the publication of his Nachlass in
Husserliana, which seems to be almost without an end. What I do think it is
possible to show is that in order to explain the possibility of real true and
meaningful knowledge you need at least one experiential materially embodied
living being, which we often call a subject. All conceptual knowledge need
language of some sort and -as Wittgenstein says – there are no private
language. Thus you must assume the existence of other embodied experiential
conscious subject in language, - and you must assume something this language is
about. All this does not spring alone from the triadic metaphysical process
philosophical framework. But on the other hand it is very difficult for us to
explain ourselves from only one other aspect of reality, such as pure zero or
Tohu va Bohu. I end up with the gnostic feeling that some basic aspect of us
must have been there form “the beginning”. If it makes any sense at all to talk
about one beginning. All zeroes, empty sets, vacuum fields and so on are a form
of logical backtracking. But as Skt. Augustine says in Book XI of his
Confessions then the universe is not made in time but with time. It makes no
sense asking what God was doing before the creation. When we try to determine
the time of big bang, the physicists do it by backtracking the internal time of
the universe. There is no universal time “outside” the universe to place this
event in, just like the universe is the place for all things, but it does not
have a place of its own to be. There is nothing “outside” or “before” the
universe, because these concepts stop making sense outside. We can only talk
about emptiness and eternity.
Best
Søren
From: Clark Goble [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 21. oktober 2016 18:18
To: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)
On Oct 20, 2016, at 10:23 AM, Søren Brier <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
wrote:
I can find no easy way from phenomenology alone - not even from Peirce’s
triadic phaneroscophy - to the reality of an outer world and other embodied
conscious subjects. I do not think Peirce solves this problem. Do you?
When you say to the reality of the outer world do you mean in terms of proof?
After all in one sense Peirce’s phaneroscopy handles this well. It appears as
real and we can not doubt. Which in a certain sense seems completely
satisfactory. But this is because Peirce rejects the Cartesian tendencies in
Husserl. (I’d add that Heidegger makes a similar move against Descartes and
Husserl in Being and Time to deny that denying the real world can even be posed)
If that’s not what you mean (and forgive me - I’ve not had time to read the
list for a while) then doesn’t Peirce’s notion of continuity solve it? That is
how the inside and outside are approached asymptotically letting us move from
mind like to matter like and back?
Now if we want to say that the outer world aren’t just objects but conscious
objects then we have to unpack what we mean. Again I think Peirce’s notion of
growth of signs handles this without all the confusion that I think we
sometimes get in how Levinas, Derrida, Marion or others. There’s a reason why
post-Husserlian phenomenology goes in that direction (even among those who
consider themselves more Husserlian than Heideggarian). While I might be wrong
I a big part of the problem is in conceiving phenomenology too statically
rather than as process. Trying to explain process in terms of stasis is
inherently problematic and creates artificial problems. Peirce avoids most of
that IMO.
On Oct 20, 2016, at 9:53 AM, Jeffrey Brian Downard
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Husserl, for example, is working towards the same sort of end in his
phenomenological theory, but his mathematical reflections are overly guided by
ideas drawn from arithmetic and metrical geometries--and he misses real
insights about the character of the continuous and discrete features in our
observations can be drawn from graph theory and topology. As such, he (and
Heidegger following him) simply do not provide the kind of phenomenological
analysis of the elemental formal and material features of experience that is
really needed.
This seems completely right, although I’d argue Heidegger in his late period is
trying to do that. It’s just that he adopts a very unhelpful quasi-mystical and
poetic language to do this. I think the big move Heidegger makes from Husserl
is to move towards a more dynamic conception of phenomenology. But most
phenomenology is still trapped in a language that’s quite static. Heidegger
starts going beyond this (although not far enough) but I do think he also gets
at some of the issues you raise. It’s just that his language ends up being less
helpful.
I’d actually say that while Peirce does do something like phenomenology even in
his thought the distinction between inside and outside seems pretty blurry. So
you get comments like consciousness is his swerve as seen from the inside. Or
that appeal to a mathematical graph of continuity to explain how the inside and
outside are connected. I’m not sure he’s able to do what I take you criticism
of post-Husserlian phenomenology entails. Rather he suggests that because of
continuity it’s just not a problem. (I’d add that the externalism of both
Heidegger and Peirce also make a lot of traditional problems of inside/outside
less of an issue)
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