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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 3

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I understand what they are saying but I disagree with it. I've read elsewhere the state being described above described as awareness of awareness.

If one is in a state of awareness, they are aware of something, whether that's awareness of awareness or awareness of being.

If someone is aware, and they know they are aware, then they are aware of something, namely that they are aware.

Introspection implies self-awareness, which implies content.

"I understand what they are saying but I disagree with it. I've read elsewhere the state being described above described as awareness of awareness."

Had you tried Deikman's experiments at this point?


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Yes... I like the clarifications.

Any views on the following:
On the view that knowledge is roughly justified true belief, knowledge is belief dependent. And if we grant that belief is realised conceptually in the sense that you can believe that P only if you possess concepts sufficient for grasping P, then this would indicate that knowledge is always bound by the sophistication of conceptual limits. And if knowledge is to be held as truth, that further entails that knowledge is factive. Inevitably, the standard position is to assume that only humans are capable of possessing knowledge by virtue of the identification and conceptualised coalescing of beliefs about the facts of reality. However, it is surprisingly easy to illustrate that not all truths need necessarily be represented conceptually and indeed that some kinds of knowledge of truths cannot ever be conceptual in construction; which would mean that there can be true knowledge that is not justified true belief.

Knowledge How (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

The Value of Knowledge (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

"On the standard view that knowledge is justified true belief, knowledge is belief dependent. And if we grant that belief is realised conceptually in the sense that you can believe that P only if you possess concepts sufficient for grasping P, then this would indicate that knowledge is always bound by the sophistication of conceptual limits. And if knowledge is to be held as truth, that further entails that knowledge is factive.

From this it is assumed that only humans are capable of possessing knowledge - by virtue of the ability to identify and conceptualize beliefs about the facts of reality."


"However, it is surprisingly easy to illustrate that not all truths need necessarily be represented conceptually and indeed that some kinds of knowledge of truths cannot ever be conceptual in construction; which would mean that there can be true knowledge that is not justified true belief."

This where the referee talks about know how and the ability hypothesis ... right?

That's all I can do tonight ... will look again tomorrow when I can get on a computer.


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Experiment 1: Stop for a moment and look inside. Try and sense the very origin of your most basic, most personal `I', your core subjective experience. What is that root of the `I' feeling? Try to find it.
I've never held the concept that my "I" was a core subjective experience. I've never considered that my "I" was a feeling.

So right off the bat I know that this a concept being talked about here.

When I "try to sense" the origin of my "I," it feels to me to be my unique perspective: where my body is located in space and time. My POV. That to me is what I sense to be my "I."

Experiment 2: Look straight ahead. Now shut your eyes. The rich visual world has disappeared to be replaced by an amorphous field of blackness, perhaps with red and yellow tinges. But awareness hasn't changed. You will notice that awareness continues as your thoughts come and go, as memories arise and replace each other, as desires emerge and fantasies develop, change and vanish. Now try and observe awareness. You cannot. Awareness cannot be made an object of observation because it is the very means whereby you can observe.
As I said, I agree that awareness cannot be observed, but he's moving the goal posts. Awareness cannot be observed, but it can be experienced.

At times there is experience of being an experiencer distinct from what is experienced, and at other times there is only experience.

But in both cases, there is experience. Being.

I am green. I am awareness. I am that I am. I am.
 
I've never held the concept that my "I" was a core subjective experience. I've never considered that my "I" was a feeling.

So right off the bat I know that this a concept being talked about here.

When I "try to sense" the origin of my "I," it feels to me to be my unique perspective: where my body is located in space and time. My POV. That to me is what I sense to be my "I."


As I said, I agree that awareness cannot be observed, but he's moving the goal posts. Awareness cannot be observed, but it can be experienced.

At times there is experience of being an experiencer distinct from what is experienced, and at other times there is only experience.

But in both cases, there is experience. Being.

I am green. I am awareness. I am that I am. I am.

"I've never held the concept that my "I" was a core subjective experience. I've never considered that my "I" was a feeling.

So right off the bat I know that this a concept being talked about here."

....

I'm glad you did the exercises but you have to try and go into it without preconceptions and not overthink it.! Just follow the directions.

Don't think during the exercise - just do the exercise and then report back what you can later ... this sounds like you were trying to watch yourself doing the exercises, like you never stopped thinking.

Do you play a sport or dance? ... for me anyway it's more like the space the mind is in during a complex kinesthetic movement.

Did you experience any kind of quieting effect?

When I do exercise 1 it's very quieting ... I am going to use it before meditating.

Anyway the point is to try and get it right ... to see and experience it from the perspective he describes - it feels to me that you might have gone into it determined to cling to your preconceptions ... determined for it not to work!

(I'm anticipating a particular response here from you.)

You can always go back and pick the experience apart after you've had it - that's what I'd hoped for ... that we'd have the same experience to discuss.

As he documents and as I've experienced - many people have experienced it the way he describes.
.


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Yes... I like the clarifications.

Any views on the following:
On the view that knowledge is roughly justified true belief, knowledge is belief dependent. And if we grant that belief is realised conceptually in the sense that you can believe that P only if you possess concepts sufficient for grasping P, then this would indicate that knowledge is always bound by the sophistication of conceptual limits. And if knowledge is to be held as truth, that further entails that knowledge is factive. Inevitably, the standard position is to assume that only humans are capable of possessing knowledge by virtue of the identification and conceptualised coalescing of beliefs about the facts of reality. However, it is surprisingly easy to illustrate that not all truths need necessarily be represented conceptually and indeed that some kinds of knowledge of truths cannot ever be conceptual in construction; which would mean that there can be true knowledge that is not justified true belief.

"Inevitably, the standard position is to assume that only humans are capable of possessing knowledge by virtue of the identification and conceptualised coalescing of beliefs about the facts of reality. "

At first this read:

(Inevitably, the standard position is to assume that only humans are capable of possessing knowledge by virtue of the identification and conceptualised coalescing of beliefs about the facts of reality.)

And of course only humans would be capable of all that! ... instead I think you mean something like:

"(Inevitably, the standard position is to assume that only humans are capable of possessing knowledge)

... (by virtue of the identification and conceptualised coalescing of beliefs about the facts of reality.") being knowledge

Right? And it's the second half you are contesting ... The very definition of knowledge.

But the referee gave a term for this as "know how" vs "knowledge of" ... although he left room for your point if you successfully engaged the ability hypothesis (comment two - last part)

I think you've started this ... I saw your draft ... I'll look at that.



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it feels to me that you might have gone into it determined to cling to your preconceptions ... determined for it not to work!

It's also possible that Soupie is for some reason fearful of dropping back from familiar content in his awareness, or of going into his consciousness in its deeper waters. I've been afraid of disengaging my consciousness entirely in deep meditative states I've sought, in which I felt myself on the brink of the unfamiliar and pulled back at the last moment.
 
Addendum: It might be that reactions like those mentioned above are beneficial for people who sense they might wander too far from a point of balance in their present state of existence.
 
I have been told the link does not work. For those interested it is
Experience Ancestral Clearing with John Newton on YouTube
 
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Soul Retrieval
Soul Retrieval is the recovery of parts of the person that she left or lost somewhere, or that were stolen or borrowed by somebody else. The objective is to make the person more whole and more present.
Soul Retrieval
The idea of Soul Retrieval originates in ancient shamanic practices. American Indians would do it in drumming ceremonies where the shaman would travel off into the past or into alternate realities and find the part of the person that was missing and invite it to come back.
For our purposes it is a type of gestalt processing and we have the client do the traveling. We don't use any fancy ceremonies, but it can sometimes be interesting for the client to hear about the origin of the techniques.

Most people will quite readily go along with the metaphor of having a part of themselves that they left somewhere. It seems like a natural way of looking at it.

Soul Retrieval might be done as part of other techniques like re-experiencing, or it might be done one its own. A missing part might need to be recovered to make another technique work, or soul retrieval might require another intermediary technique before it can be completed. Specifically traumatic incidents are intertwined with the loss of soul parts. A traumatic incident might have forced the person to split up and might keep her from being whole again. It is quite typical that part of the person leaves during an incident.

People are basically whole, they inherently have all the qualities they need. If they appear otherwise it is generally because they are split up somehow. If the client has "lost her confidence" it is there somewhere. The "confidence" is not just non-existent. It might exist 30 years ago at the bottom of a closet, asleep, but it is somewhere to be found.

You can often pick up specific clues about soul parts in people's language. "My sense of security was out the window", "she stole my heart", "I lost my innocence", "my allegiance is still with the old management", "I no longer have my youthful strength".

A "part" is usually a package of personal qualities, abilities, or feelings. The person now, the part that is here, is usually missing those qualities. We can regard a part as being a collection of awareness units or spiritual energy. It has a consciousness of its own. When the part re-integrates with the rest of the person, we no longer call it a part, but we address the person as being one whole person.

So, one way or another you get the suspicion that a part of the person is missing. It might come up while working on an issue, or you might search specifically for it.

One way of searching specifically for points of soul loss would be to have the person scan through her life and note major points of change. Points where she changed, qualities she had and then she suddenly didn't have them.

You would confirm with the person that she will go along with the metaphor:

"Is that part of you that ___ missing?"

and then we basically need to go and find it.

"We are going to find it and bring it back!"
"Where is that part now?"

You might have to give some hints on what kind of stuff is possible to start her looking.
Soul Recovery - Shamanic Healing - Soul Retrieval - Chester County, PA Inner Light Wellness
Soul Retrieval - Last Mask Center for Shamanic Healing
soulretrievals.com | Maia's Website on Shamanism and Soul Retrieval
 
I've been trying to sense—and seperately—build a concept of my "I" since childhood.

Re awareness. I have experienced the experience he describes, but as I've explained I disagree with his conception of the experience. Perhaps you would say I'm not disagreeing with him but only agreeing with myself.

The experience is the conception.

I'm more concerned about your inability to disagree with yourself!

I'm interested in this, if you could say more:

"I've been trying to sense—and seperately—build a concept of my "I" since childhood."















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I'm glad you did the exercises but you have to try and go into it without preconceptions and not overthink it.!

Just follow the directions.

Don't think during the exercise - just do the exercise and then report back what you can later ... this sounds like you were trying to watch yourself doing the exercises, like you never stopped thinking.
Supposing that the I exists as a core subjective feeling that can be searched for but not found is a preconception.

While Helen was still at Radcliffe she wrote in her first book, The Story of My Life: "When I learned the meaning of 'I' and 'me' and found that I was something, I began to think. Then consciousness first existed for me".
Introspecting is thinking. Thinking about what one is feeling. So if you're introspecting, there will be thinking and there will be an "I," the "I" is the one doing the introspecting. It is the introspecting. When one is not introspecting the "I" dissolves. But I already said that above.

I've done the experiment, and I reported my sense of the "I." Re-read my last post.

This discussion has been fun and helpful. It's obvious to me now that we are all searching for answers to different questions. I have found a very interesting vein to mine, and it does not seem to be recipricated.
 
Supposing that the I exists as a core subjective feeling that can be searched for but not found is a preconception.


Introspecting is thinking. Thinking about what one is feeling. So if you're introspecting, there will be thinking and there will be an "I," the "I" is the one doing the introspecting. It is the introspecting. When one is not introspecting the "I" dissolves. But I already said that above.

I've done the experiment, and I reported my sense of the "I." Re-read my last post.

This discussion has been fun and helpful. It's obvious to me now that we are all searching for answers to different questions. I have found a very interesting vein to mine, and it does not seem to be recipricated.

To clarify - are you leaving the thread, again?

If so - good luck in your search!

If not, I am happy to move on to other topics and to take responsibility for my failure to communicate re: the Deikman experiments.
 
To help us get our feet on the ground . . .

Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, CONSCIOUSNESS: A NATURAL HISTORY
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 5, No.3, 1998, pp. 260-94

Extracts:

". . . Without an account of consciousness, according to Searle, none of the theories can rightfully claim to be a theory of mind. . . .

The question of ‘how consciousness arises in matter’ thus appears absolutely central for both Nagel and Searle. In this paper I outline basic reasons for thinking the question spurious. This critical work will allow me to pinpoint troublesome issues within the context of definitions of life and in turn address the properly constructive task of this essay: to demonstrate how genuine understandings of consciousness demand close and serious study of evolution as a history of animate form. I should note that this demonstration will omit a consideration of botany, though plant life is indisputably part of an evolutionary history of animate form. The omission has nothing to do with importance, but with keeping a manageable focus on the question of consciousness; and it has nothing to do either with a trivialization of the ways in which plants are animate, but with an intentional narrowing of the complexity of an already complex subject. As will be shown in the concluding section, the demonstration has sizable implications for cognitivists generally and for philosophers in particular, notably: (1) a need to re-think the common assumption that unconsciousness historically preceded consciousness; (2) a need to delve as deeply and seriously into natural history as into brains and their computational analogues; (3) a critical stance toward arm-chair judgments about consciousness and a correlative turn toward corporeal matters of fact."

". . . We are a long way from a natural history of consciousness. Given the ultra- exclusive defining terms Dennett insists on, it is no surprise that that history is hard to come by. By radically privileging language, Dennett pulls the evolutionary rug out from under us.7 Whatever modest nods made in the direction of an evolutionary history at the beginning of his quest to ‘explain consciousness’, he does not follow through. A consideration of language itself in the terms he conceives it shows his lack of follow-through unequivocally. If, as Dennett explains, human language explains consciousness, then consciousness arose in the form of human language. The question Dennett does not ask himself is how human language itself arose.8 Clearly, he should ask the question. Indeed, he should ask not only how human language could even have been conceived short of an already existing consciousness but how human language in the beginning could even have been standardized short of already intact consciousnesses.9 Dennett does not seem remotely aware of such questions, much less aware of their needing answers — which is why only linguistic creationism can explain a Dennettian consciousness.

In sum, we cannot arrive at an understanding of ‘how mind got there in the first place’ by espousing biological naturalism but neglecting natural history, by wondering what it is like to be a body other than the one one is but neglecting penetrating studies of other animate forms, by championing a metaphysical theory that shackles inquiry before it even begins, by giving selective definitions of life, by privileging human brains, or by explaining consciousness in narrative terms. In none of these instances do we arrive at an elucidation of consciousness as a dimension of the animate. Until such an elucidation is given, a viable answer to the question of ‘how mind got there in the first place’ will be consistently baffled. "

Sheet

Fascinating - if I understand it right, some of this seems similar to HCT: in terms of a natural history of consciousness ... Kinesthesia is different I think - movement as the start of consciousness and it's development.

Also for @Pharoah I see bearings on what he's doing right now - knowledge hypothesis.
 
I don't agree with everything by any means ... but it touches on some recent topics, including that he makes a nice and witty distinction between continental and analytic philosophy:


At 20:30 he talks about Husserl's Lebenswelt, science and losing our marbles to an unscientific classification scheme (silica, calcium carbonate ...etc)

@Constance

No transcript I could find - but this is an article you may appreciate:

Brain drain » The Spectator
 
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@Pharoah ... still working on the new draft ... I have some things going on this week - may be the weekend but I will do some thinking on it ... I did send the article on the ability hypothesis and defeat of three objections to it?
 
Supposing that the I exists as a core subjective feeling that can be searched for but not found is a preconception.


Introspecting is thinking. Thinking about what one is feeling. So if you're introspecting, there will be thinking and there will be an "I," the "I" is the one doing the introspecting. It is the introspecting. When one is not introspecting the "I" dissolves. But I already said that above.

I've done the experiment, and I reported my sense of the "I." Re-read my last post.

This discussion has been fun and helpful. It's obvious to me now that we are all searching for answers to different questions. I have found a very interesting vein to mine, and it does not seem to be recipricated.

Again, I'm not sure you are speaking to Deikman's claims.

I hope this weekend to finish posting on his article ... my main point is that you have to experience it the way he describes it and THEN decide how you deal with that experience ... That means clearing your preconceptions in order to have the experience.

Jack must be nimble
And Jack must be quick
In order to jump over the fires of consciousness
And their associated candlesticks!
 
Supposing that the I exists as a core subjective feeling that can be searched for but not found is a preconception.


Introspecting is thinking. Thinking about what one is feeling. So if you're introspecting, there will be thinking and there will be an "I," the "I" is the one doing the introspecting. It is the introspecting. When one is not introspecting the "I" dissolves. But I already said that above.

I've done the experiment, and I reported my sense of the "I." Re-read my last post.

This discussion has been fun and helpful. It's obvious to me now that we are all searching for answers to different questions. I have found a very interesting vein to mine, and it does not seem to be recipricated.

You might try PEL - Partially Examined Life - $5/month - well moderated and you can join or start a Not School group on any subject, the guys who run it have a good background in philosophy and might be helpful in developing your ideas.
 
@Pharoah, are you still in the vicinity? @Soupie seems to have gone in search of other pastures and @smcder is occupied with the care of a relative for a few days. I've located the paper on Kant and Husserl that I mentioned to you recently, which might come in handy as you read Husserl and references to him by the other phenomenologists: Taking a Transcendental Stance: Anti-Representationalism and Direct Realism in Kant and Husserl | Julia Jansen - Academia.edu


EXTRACTS

The whole point of Kant’s notion of a transcendental synthesis of the imagination – understood as an influence of the understanding on inner sense – is to explain the necessity of what in experience is only observable as a contingent fact: that in conscious intuitions we are always given objects (or, to be more precise, we are always given undetermined appearances that are determinable in judgments as objects), and not mere sensations. Moreover, the very plausibility of such an empirical doctrine of representations is itself largely based on a further confusion of empirical and transcendental levels of analysis. It ‘naturally’ follows from an empirical reading of claims repeatedly made by Kant, that appearances are ‘mere representations’ and, as such, ‘in us’. In the empirical sense of the expression, this would distinguish things ‘in us’ (understood as internal representations) from things ‘outside us’ (understood as external objects). However, in Kant’s transcendental sense of the expression, it distinguishes things not distinct from us (and our ways of cognizing them) from things distinct from us (and our ways of cognizing them); that is, it distinguishes things as appearances from things in themselves (cf. Allison, 2004; Allais, 2011, p. 384). I say more about the impact of this distinction on Kant’s notion of realism below, but its impact on Kant’s anti-representationalist theory of intuitions is already clear: Due to Kant’s distinction between the empirical and the transcendental senses of the expression, it holds without contradiction that objects of outer sense are both (empirically) ‘outside us’ and (transcendentally) ‘in us’, i.e., they are both external and mind-dependent. In conclusion, intuitions are, as Derk Pereboom puts it, “immediate awarenesses” of objects (Pereboom, 1988, pp. 326, 338).

This holds both for empirical intuitions, which are our immediate awarenesses of empirical objects (of outer or inner sense), and for pure intuitions, which are our immediate awarenesses of formal objects (of space or time as objects). The fact that Kant is still accused of advancing a representationalist theory of representations betrays the force the post-Cartesian legacy of the ‘way of ideas’ continues to hold over debates in philosophy of mind, consciousness and cognition more generally. It is also symptomatic of a persisting confusion of empirical and transcendental levels of analysis, which continues to obscure the radicality with which Kant reconfigured the post-Cartesian philosophical landscape once and for all.

[6 This is, of course, not to deny that intuition “takes place only insofar as the object is given to us” and that this “is possible only […] by the mind’s being affected in a certain manner” (KrV, A 19/B 33). It is just to make the point that, for Kant, the mind’s sensibility is not merely passive but in virtue of the imagination also spontaneous. Contrary to representationalisms that, as Rorty (1979) famously put it, consider the mind’s sensibility a passive ‘mirror of nature’, Kant’s transcendental idealism involves the claim that the way objects are given to us in intuition is already under the “effect of the understanding”(Rorty, of course, misses that both Kant and Husserl reject a ‘mirroring’ representationalism.) To call the synthesis of the imagination that is the “first application” (KrV, B 152) of the understanding’s effect on sensibility “transcendental” is also to say that the mind does not, in a first step, merely receive sensations, and then, in a second step, empirically synthesize them into intuitions. The same empirical fallacy is committed by interpretations that locate the second step not in the imagination but in judgement (for the most recent attempt see Abela, 2002). It is committed by any interpretation that involves a theory of two steps and thus turns Kant’s transcendental theory into the description of an empirical process.]

… Despite the ubiquity of ‘representation’ in the philosophical and psychological discourse of his day, Husserl observed the lack of consensus in its use and meaning. In the Logical Investigations, Husserl counts no less than thirteen different senses of ‘representation’ (5th Inv., § 44). His is a very broad understanding of the term; all consciousness is a case of ‘representing’ (Vorstellen) (2nd Inv., § 23). Consciousness in its broadest sense, he writes, is “a comprehensive designation for ‘mental acts’, or ‘intentional experiences [Erlebnisse]’”, i.e., representations, “of all sorts” (5th Inv.:Hua XIX/1, § 1, p. 356). However, by characterizing representations as ‘lived through (erlebte)’ acts of consciousness, Husserl rejects Brentano’s and, for that matter, any other notion of representations as ‘internal objects’ or ‘psychological entities’. {NB Stevens’s “poem in the act of finding what will suffice.”} In opposition to such theories, Husserl considers representations as modes of being conscious of something, i.e., as modes of intentionality (for example, ‘perceptual representation’ is ‘perceptual consciousness’, ‘phantasy representation(Phantasievorstellung )’ is ‘phantasy consciousness’, etc.). In short, even for the early Husserl, having a representation of a particular kind (e.g., an intuitive representation) is being conscious of an object in a particular mode (e.g., intuitively). With his distinction between intuitive presentations and signitive (or symbolic)representations, Husserl reappropriates the Kantian distinction between intuitions and concepts. Intuitive representations are sensory or quasi-sensory representations, e.g, perceptions, memories, phantasies. Having intuitive representations means intuiting(e.g., seeing, touching, hearing, etc.) objects in their spatio-temporal specifications and with their determining sensible (visual, haptic, audial etc.) features. Husserl, like Kant, considers them immediate, albeit not necessarily veridical, awarenesses of actual objects, which are thus given ‘in the flesh’ or ‘in person’.

7 Intuitions, in this sense, are thus precisely not internal objects that mediate our experience of the world. Rather, they are our experiences of external, or, in Husserl’s language, ‘transcendent’objects, i.e., of objects that are different from us and our mental states.
Accordingly, already in the Logical Investigations
Husserl forcefully condemns the theory of internal objects as “one of the worst conceptual distortions known to philosophy” which “is without doubt responsible for an untold legion of epistemological and psychological errors” (2nd Inv.: Hua XIX/1, § 23, p. 170). In an appendix to the fifth Investigation, which is unambiguously entititled “Critique of the ‘image theory’ and of the doctrine of the ‘immanent’ objects of acts”, Husserl makes it perfectly clear “that the intentional object of a representation is the same as its actual object, and on occasion as its external object, and that it is absurd to distinguish between them” (5thInv., Appendix to § 11 and § 20: Hua XIX/1, p. 439).]


In Husserl’s view, as long as “one deals with mental processes as ‘contents’ or as psychical ‘elements’ which are still regarded as bits of things [Sächelchen]” (Ideas I :Hua III/1, § 112, p. 253), no progress towards an adequate theory of consciousness can be made. Thus Husserl (like Kant) rejects an empirical doctrine of representations and considers a representation not as something one apprehends (as itself an object, a Sächelchen’), but as something in virtue of which one apprehends an object. In Ideas I, in the context of an explicitly transcendental analysis, Husserl speaks of a relation between ‘transcendental’ (i.e., constituting) consciousness and ‘transcendent’ (i.e.,constituted) object. In the case of perceptual consciousness, Husserl claims, this object is nothing other than the ‘physical thing’ perceived, which simply “cannot be given in any possible perception as something really [reell ] inherently immanent,” but is “in itself, unqualifiedly transcendent ” (Hua III/1, § 42, p. 87). Again, Husserl (like Kant) rejects an empirical idea of perceptual objects as ‘mere representations’ as ‘really inherently immanent’ (‘in us’). In his transcendental sense of the expression, ‘intentional objects’ refers to things that are not distinct from us (and our ways of cognizing them); that is, it refers to transcendent things insofar as
they stand in a relation to consciousness. With his transcendental standpoint in place, Husserl begins to avoid the term ‘representation’, which is so difficult to divest of empirical confusions, and replaces it with a pair of technical terms that are meant to capture both the subjective and the objective moments of intentionality: ‘noesis’ (the act of intention) and ‘noema’ (the object as it is intended). And yet, the noema, no less than the old-fashioned ‘representation’, has motivated representationalist interpretations. The contentious issue is Husserl’s distinction between the noema and the intended object. In Ideas I he famously writes:

“The tree simpliciter, the thing in nature, could not be more different from the perceived tree as such that, as perceptual sense, inseparably belongs to the perception. The tree simpliciter can burn down, can be reduced to its chemical elements, etc. But the sense—the sense of this perception, something that necessarily belongs to its essential being—can not burn down (Hua III/1, § 89, p. 205).”

Husserl thereby returns to a distinction that he already makes in the Logical Investigations, namely a distinction “between the object tout court [schlechthin], which is intended on a given occasion, and the object as it is then intended” (5th Inv.:Hua XIX/1, § 17, p. 414). This distinction is often interpreted as a clear expression of Husserl’s representationalism because it appears to posit the noema as a third entity between consciousness and the ‘object tout court’. However, the following passage can also be found in Ideas I:

“I perceive the physical thing, the Object belonging to Nature, the tree there in the garden; that and nothing else is the actual Object of the perceptual ‘intention.’ A second immanental tree, or even an ‘internal image’ of the actual tree standing out there before me, is in no way given, and to suppose that hypothetically leads to an absurdity (Hua III/1, § 90, pp. 207-208).”


Here Husserl affirms the identity of the noema with the intended object – a view that can be described as anti-representationalist in the sense in which I have been using it. The apparent conflict between the two passages is again due to a confusion of empirical and transcendental levels of analysis.


[8 This confusion also results in the conflicting ‘East Coast’ and ‘West Coast’ interpretations of the noema; the former is a transcendental, the latter is an empirical reading.]

When Husserl speaks of an inflammable ‘tree simpliciter’ and opposes it to the non-inflammable ‘sense’ of its perception, he makes the empirical distinction between a ‘thing in itself’, i.e., a thing considered independently from its appearance to a consciousness, and an ‘intentional object’, i.e., a thing considered in its relation to consciousness (in the ‘sense’ it has for consciousness). In transcendental analysis, however, the object of analysis is not the tree as physical thing but the same tree as an object for consciousness. Its transcendental analysis does not say anything about its physical properties (e.g.,whether it is inflammable or not), but investigates the tree as it is given in conscious experience (the tree as noema). This neither denies the existence of the physical tree nor posits the existence of the noema as a new third ‘intensional’ entity between consciousness and object. It simply clarifies the complexity of what, in natural analysis, we consider ‘ordinary perception’. There is, then, also a transcendental-phenomenological sense of a ‘thing itself’. Any perception of a real tree includes both the awareness of different profiles of the tree (due to different angles, different lighting conditions, etc.) and, at the same time, the awareness of these different profiles as different profiles of the same tree, which is thus irreducible to any specific sense in which it is presented and thus ‘transcendent’ in the Husserlian sense. This complex experience of the tree, however, does not require an internal representation of the tree. The tree, as we experience it (the noema), is the same tree that we experience (the physical thing). As Sartre reminds us, Husserl does not think that this experience is ‘in consciousness’, but that we experience the tree “just where it is: at the side of the road, in the midst of the dust” (Sartre, 2002, p.382). To construe perception as a case in which a noema is, so to speak, entertained while its reference is yet to be established is to commit not only “a mentalistic misinterpretation of the phenomenological dimension”, which misinterprets noemata “as part of the mental inventory” (Zahavi, 2004, p. 58), it is also to commit an empirical misinterpretation of a transcendental analysis, which misinterprets noemata as part of an empirical theory.



Direct Realism in Kant and Husserl: Some Essential Agreements and Disagreements

My claim that Kant and Husserl are anti-representationalists about sensible representation commits both of them to the view that cognition is, in virtue of these representations, immediately related to objects, which are not themselves mere representations but, in a sense to be qualified, mind-independent. This reference to mind-independent objects constitutes the direct realism I thereby attribute to both of them. However, direct realism is usually understood – under the name of ‘naïve realism’ – as a purely empirical, even commonsensical view, which, for Husserl, is characteristic of the ‘natural attitude’. Clearly, neither Kant nor Husserl was a naïve realist. On the contrary, they both regarded themselves as transcendental idealists. Hence, an anti-representationalist interpretation must show how it is compatible with their respective accounts of transcendental idealism, which is usually understood as the thesis that we only know objects as they appear to us, and not as they are in themselves. This claim is often used interchangeably with yet another one, namely that there are ‘for us’ no mind-independent objects but only appearances. Kant’s project of transcendental idealism was already suspected of being an ordinary idealism in new clothes before it could even get off the ground. The same suspicion now persists after more than two hundred years of scholarship, which has led Ameriks to refer to it as “a stray dog that refuses to go home” (Ameriks, 1996, p.67). Husserl’s transcendental idealism has fared no better. Many of Husserl’s contemporary followers saw in his ‘dipping into idealism’ enough of a reason to turn away from their master. This disappointment lingers, as is evident from recent demands for a final “break with any transcendental scheme” (Romano, 2012, p. 444; Romano, 2011, 19 f.). In a manner of speaking, there are thus two dogs on the loose,and it might prove more effective to pursue them together than in isolation, especially because the lack of clarity regarding their relation tends to make it even more difficult to catch them. I contribute to this greater end in a small way by focusing on direct implications of the anti-representationalist views I attribute to both Kant and Husserl.

2.1 Some Essential Agreements Concerning Transcendental Idealism

The most important agreement between Kant and Husserl is also what sets them apart from all other direct realists, both past and present, who fail to make a critical problem of their position, a problem whose explanation or clarification must be philosophical, and not empirical, because any empirical explanation would have to rely on the very realism it is meant to explain or clarify.
Since ‘philosophical’ is here opposed to ‘empirical’ or ‘natural’, this implies that the explanation or clarification sought must be in some sense a priori (which can be interpreted in different ways, e.g., as formal, material, ontological, or historical). I take it that this constitutes the ‘transcendental stance’ in its most general form (which need not be Kantian or Husserlian), and that it necessarily involves realism as its explanandum. . . . .


[9This means that it is possible to ‘naturalize’ phenomenology but impossible to do so without going against Husserl on this specific point, which is unproblematic as long as one is aware of it.

10The list of ‘transcendentalists’ in this very broad sense could be surprisingly long and may include thinkers as varied as Plato, Karl Marx, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Mark Rowlands and many others (whether it actually does is a contentious issue).

11This explains to some extent Kant’s and Husserl’s frustration with the persistence of the idealism charges leveled against them. It also explains why the much more recent label of ‘anti-realism’ is, to put it mildly, misleading.]



Note: if it turns out that you wish to quote or cite it, note that this version is her 'penultimate draft', which she does not want quoted. The final version of the paper is available in this book: Husserl und die klassische deutsche Philosophie: Husserl and Classical German Philosophy (Phaenomenologica) (German Edition): Faustino Fabbianelli, Sebastian Luft: 9783319017099: Amazon.com: Books
 
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@Pharoah, are you still in the vicinity? @Soupie seems to have gone in search of other pastures and @smcder is occupied with the care of a relative for a few days. I've located the paper on Kant and Husserl that I mentioned to you recently, which might come in handy as you read Husserl and references to him by the other phenomenologists: Taking a Transcendental Stance: Anti-Representationalism and Direct Realism in Kant and Husserl | Julia Jansen - Academia.edu


EXTRACTS

The whole point of Kant’s notion of a transcendental synthesis of the imagination – understood as an influence of the understanding on inner sense – is to explain the necessity of what in experience is only observable as a contingent fact: that in conscious intuitions we are always given objects (or, to be more precise, we are always given undetermined appearances that are determinable in judgments as objects), and not mere sensations. Moreover, the very plausibility of such an empirical doctrine of representations is itself largely based on a further confusion of empirical and transcendental levels of analysis. It ‘naturally’ follows from an empirical reading of claims repeatedly made by Kant, that appearances are ‘mere representations’ and, as such, ‘in us’. In the empirical sense of the expression, this would distinguish things ‘in us’ (understood as internal representations) from things ‘outside us’ (understood as external objects). However, in Kant’s transcendental sense of the expression, it distinguishes things not distinct from us (and our ways of cognizing them) from things distinct from us (and our ways of cognizing them); that is, it distinguishes things as appearances from things in themselves (cf. Allison, 2004; Allais, 2011, p. 384). I say more about the impact of this distinction on Kant’s notion of realism below, but its impact on Kant’s anti-representationalist theory of intuitions is already clear: Due to Kant’s distinction between the empirical and the transcendental senses of the expression, it holds without contradiction that objects of outer sense are both (empirically) ‘outside us’ and (transcendentally) ‘in us’, i.e., they are both external and mind-dependent. In conclusion, intuitions are, as Derk Pereboom puts it, “immediate awarenesses” of objects (Pereboom, 1988, pp. 326, 338).

This holds both for empirical intuitions, which are our immediate awarenesses of empirical objects (of outer or inner sense), and for pure intuitions, which are our immediate awarenesses of formal objects (of space or time as objects). The fact that Kant is still accused of advancing a representationalist theory of representations betrays the force the post-Cartesian legacy of the ‘way of ideas’ continues to hold over debates in philosophy of mind, consciousness and cognition more generally. It is also symptomatic of a persisting confusion of empirical and transcendental levels of analysis, which continues to obscure the radicality with which Kant reconfigured the post-Cartesian philosophical landscape once and for all.

[6 This is, of course, not to deny that intuition “takes place only insofar as the object is given to us” and that this “is possible only […] by the mind’s being affected in a certain manner” (KrV, A 19/B 33). It is just to make the point that, for Kant, the mind’s sensibility is not merely passive but in virtue of the imagination also spontaneous. Contrary to representationalisms that, as Rorty (1979) famously put it, consider the mind’s sensibility a passive ‘mirror of nature’, Kant’s transcendental idealism involves the claim that the way objects are given to us in intuition is already under the “effect of the understanding”(Rorty, of course, misses that both Kant and Husserl reject a ‘mirroring’ representationalism.) To call the synthesis of the imagination that is the “first application” (KrV, B 152) of the understanding’s effect on sensibility “transcendental” is also to say that the mind does not, in a first step, merely receive sensations, and then, in a second step, empirically synthesize them into intuitions. The same empirical fallacy is committed by interpretations that locate the second step not in the imagination but in judgement (for the most recent attempt see Abela, 2002). It is committed by any interpretation that involves a theory of two steps and thus turns Kant’s transcendental theory into the description of an empirical process.]

… Despite the ubiquity of ‘representation’ in the philosophical and psychological discourse of his day, Husserl observed the lack of consensus in its use and meaning. In the Logical Investigations, Husserl counts no less than thirteen different senses of ‘representation’ (5th Inv., § 44). His is a very broad understanding of the term; all consciousness is a case of ‘representing’ (Vorstellen) (2nd Inv., § 23). Consciousness in its broadest sense, he writes, is “a comprehensive designation for ‘mental acts’, or ‘intentional experiences [Erlebnisse]’”, i.e., representations, “of all sorts” (5th Inv.:Hua XIX/1, § 1, p. 356). However, by characterizing representations as ‘lived through (erlebte)’ acts of consciousness, Husserl rejects Brentano’s and, for that matter, any other notion of representations as ‘internal objects’ or ‘psychological entities’. {NB Stevens’s “poem in the act of finding what will suffice.”} In opposition to such theories, Husserl considers representations as modes of being conscious of something, i.e., as modes of intentionality (for example, ‘perceptual representation’ is ‘perceptual consciousness’, ‘phantasy representation(Phantasievorstellung )’ is ‘phantasy consciousness’, etc.). In short, even for the early Husserl, having a representation of a particular kind (e.g., an intuitive representation) is being conscious of an object in a particular mode (e.g., intuitively). With his distinction between intuitive presentations and signitive (or symbolic)representations, Husserl reappropriates the Kantian distinction between intuitions and concepts. Intuitive representations are sensory or quasi-sensory representations, e.g, perceptions, memories, phantasies. Having intuitive representations means intuiting(e.g., seeing, touching, hearing, etc.) objects in their spatio-temporal specifications and with their determining sensible (visual, haptic, audial etc.) features. Husserl, like Kant, considers them immediate, albeit not necessarily veridical, awarenesses of actual objects, which are thus given ‘in the flesh’ or ‘in person’.

7 Intuitions, in this sense, are thus precisely not internal objects that mediate our experience of the world. Rather, they are our experiences of external, or, in Husserl’s language, ‘transcendent’objects, i.e., of objects that are different from us and our mental states.
Accordingly, already in the Logical Investigations
Husserl forcefully condemns the theory of internal objects as “one of the worst conceptual distortions known to philosophy” which “is without doubt responsible for an untold legion of epistemological and psychological errors” (2nd Inv.: Hua XIX/1, § 23, p. 170). In an appendix to the fifth Investigation, which is unambiguously entititled “Critique of the ‘image theory’ and of the doctrine of the ‘immanent’ objects of acts”, Husserl makes it perfectly clear “that the intentional object of a representation is the same as its actual object, and on occasion as its external object, and that it is absurd to distinguish between them” (5thInv., Appendix to § 11 and § 20: Hua XIX/1, p. 439).]


In Husserl’s view, as long as “one deals with mental processes as ‘contents’ or as psychical ‘elements’ which are still regarded as bits of things [Sächelchen]” (Ideas I :Hua III/1, § 112, p. 253), no progress towards an adequate theory of consciousness can be made. Thus Husserl (like Kant) rejects an empirical doctrine of representations and considers a representation not as something one apprehends (as itself an object, a Sächelchen’), but as something in virtue of which one apprehends an object. In Ideas I, in the context of an explicitly transcendental analysis, Husserl speaks of a relation between ‘transcendental’ (i.e., constituting) consciousness and ‘transcendent’ (i.e.,constituted) object. In the case of perceptual consciousness, Husserl claims, this object is nothing other than the ‘physical thing’ perceived, which simply “cannot be given in any possible perception as something really [reell ] inherently immanent,” but is “in itself, unqualifiedly transcendent ” (Hua III/1, § 42, p. 87). Again, Husserl (like Kant) rejects an empirical idea of perceptual objects as ‘mere representations’ as ‘really inherently immanent’ (‘in us’). In his transcendental sense of the expression, ‘intentional objects’ refers to things that are not distinct from us (and our ways of cognizing them); that is, it refers to transcendent things insofar as
they stand in a relation to consciousness. With his transcendental standpoint in place, Husserl begins to avoid the term ‘representation’, which is so difficult to divest of empirical confusions, and replaces it with a pair of technical terms that are meant to capture both the subjective and the objective moments of intentionality: ‘noesis’ (the act of intention) and ‘noema’ (the object as it is intended). And yet, the noema, no less than the old-fashioned ‘representation’, has motivated representationalist interpretations. The contentious issue is Husserl’s distinction between the noema and the intended object. In Ideas I he famously writes:

“The tree simpliciter, the thing in nature, could not be more different from the perceived tree as such that, as perceptual sense, inseparably belongs to the perception. The tree simpliciter can burn down, can be reduced to its chemical elements, etc. But the sense—the sense of this perception, something that necessarily belongs to its essential being—can not burn down (Hua III/1, § 89, p. 205).”

Husserl thereby returns to a distinction that he already makes in the Logical Investigations, namely a distinction “between the object tout court [schlechthin], which is intended on a given occasion, and the object as it is then intended” (5th Inv.:Hua XIX/1, § 17, p. 414). This distinction is often interpreted as a clear expression of Husserl’s representationalism because it appears to posit the noema as a third entity between consciousness and the ‘object tout court’. However, the following passage can also be found in Ideas I:

“I perceive the physical thing, the Object belonging to Nature, the tree there in the garden; that and nothing else is the actual Object of the perceptual ‘intention.’ A second immanental tree, or even an ‘internal image’ of the actual tree standing out there before me, is in no way given, and to suppose that hypothetically leads to an absurdity (Hua III/1, § 90, pp. 207-208).”


Here Husserl affirms the identity of the noema with the intended object – a view that can be described as anti-representationalist in the sense in which I have been using it. The apparent conflict between the two passages is again due to a confusion of empirical and transcendental levels of analysis.


[8 This confusion also results in the conflicting ‘East Coast’ and ‘West Coast’ interpretations of the noema; the former is a transcendental, the latter is an empirical reading.]

When Husserl speaks of an inflammable ‘tree simpliciter’ and opposes it to the non-inflammable ‘sense’ of its perception, he makes the empirical distinction between a ‘thing in itself’, i.e., a thing considered independently from its appearance to a consciousness, and an ‘intentional object’, i.e., a thing considered in its relation to consciousness (in the ‘sense’ it has for consciousness). In transcendental analysis, however, the object of analysis is not the tree as physical thing but the same tree as an object for consciousness. Its transcendental analysis does not say anything about its physical properties (e.g.,whether it is inflammable or not), but investigates the tree as it is given in conscious experience (the tree as noema). This neither denies the existence of the physical tree nor posits the existence of the noema as a new third ‘intensional’ entity between consciousness and object. It simply clarifies the complexity of what, in natural analysis, we consider ‘ordinary perception’. There is, then, also a transcendental-phenomenological sense of a ‘thing itself’. Any perception of a real tree includes both the awareness of different profiles of the tree (due to different angles, different lighting conditions, etc.) and, at the same time, the awareness of these different profiles as different profiles of the same tree, which is thus irreducible to any specific sense in which it is presented and thus ‘transcendent’ in the Husserlian sense. This complex experience of the tree, however, does not require an internal representation of the tree. The tree, as we experience it (the noema), is the same tree that we experience (the physical thing). As Sartre reminds us, Husserl does not think that this experience is ‘in consciousness’, but that we experience the tree “just where it is: at the side of the road, in the midst of the dust” (Sartre, 2002, p.382). To construe perception as a case in which a noema is, so to speak, entertained while its reference is yet to be established is to commit not only “a mentalistic misinterpretation of the phenomenological dimension”, which misinterprets noemata “as part of the mental inventory” (Zahavi, 2004, p. 58), it is also to commit an empirical misinterpretation of a transcendental analysis, which misinterprets noemata as part of an empirical theory.



Direct Realism in Kant and Husserl: Some Essential Agreements and Disagreements

My claim that Kant and Husserl are anti-representationalists about sensible representation commits both of them to the view that cognition is, in virtue of these representations, immediately related to objects, which are not themselves mere representations but, in a sense to be qualified, mind-independent. This reference to mind-independent objects constitutes the direct realism I thereby attribute to both of them. However, direct realism is usually understood – under the name of ‘naïve realism’ – as a purely empirical, even commonsensical view, which, for Husserl, is characteristic of the ‘natural attitude’. Clearly, neither Kant nor Husserl was a naïve realist. On the contrary, they both regarded themselves as transcendental idealists. Hence, an anti-representationalist interpretation must show how it is compatible with their respective accounts of transcendental idealism, which is usually understood as the thesis that we only know objects as they appear to us, and not as they are in themselves. This claim is often used interchangeably with yet another one, namely that there are ‘for us’ no mind-independent objects but only appearances. Kant’s project of transcendental idealism was already suspected of being an ordinary idealism in new clothes before it could even get off the ground. The same suspicion now persists after more than two hundred years of scholarship, which has led Ameriks to refer to it as “a stray dog that refuses to go home” (Ameriks, 1996, p.67). Husserl’s transcendental idealism has fared no better. Many of Husserl’s contemporary followers saw in his ‘dipping into idealism’ enough of a reason to turn away from their master. This disappointment lingers, as is evident from recent demands for a final “break with any transcendental scheme” (Romano, 2012, p. 444; Romano, 2011, 19 f.). In a manner of speaking, there are thus two dogs on the loose,and it might prove more effective to pursue them together than in isolation, especially because the lack of clarity regarding their relation tends to make it even more difficult to catch them. I contribute to this greater end in a small way by focusing on direct implications of the anti-representationalist views I attribute to both Kant and Husserl.

2.1 Some Essential Agreements Concerning Transcendental Idealism

The most important agreement between Kant and Husserl is also what sets them apart from all other direct realists, both past and present, who fail to make a critical problem of their position, a problem whose explanation or clarification must be philosophical, and not empirical, because any empirical explanation would have to rely on the very realism it is meant to explain or clarify.
Since ‘philosophical’ is here opposed to ‘empirical’ or ‘natural’, this implies that the explanation or clarification sought must be in some sense a priori (which can be interpreted in different ways, e.g., as formal, material, ontological, or historical). I take it that this constitutes the ‘transcendental stance’ in its most general form (which need not be Kantian or Husserlian), and that it necessarily involves realism as its explanandum. . . . .


[9This means that it is possible to ‘naturalize’ phenomenology but impossible to do so without going against Husserl on this specific point, which is unproblematic as long as one is aware of it.

10The list of ‘transcendentalists’ in this very broad sense could be surprisingly long and may include thinkers as varied as Plato, Karl Marx, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Mark Rowlands and many others (whether it actually does is a contentious issue).

11This explains to some extent Kant’s and Husserl’s frustration with the persistence of the idealism charges leveled against them. It also explains why the much more recent label of ‘anti-realism’ is, to put it mildly, misleading.]



Note: if it turns out that you wish to quote or cite it, note that this version is her 'penultimate draft', which she does not want quoted. The final version of the paper is available in this book: Husserl und die klassische deutsche Philosophie: Husserl and Classical German Philosophy (Phaenomenologica) (German Edition): Faustino Fabbianelli, Sebastian Luft: 9783319017099: Amazon.com: Books
Yes... I am still here. Sorry to see Soupie go but I expect I will contact him sometime on the subject of information.
I have just finished a book on contemporary epistemology - well, when I said finished it, what I meant is that I tore the last 30 pages out and binned them lol.
I am overwhelmed with my paper re-write at the mo. I will follow the threads but can't contribute a lot when I am focusing on one thing.
 
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