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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 3

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Soupie said:
You've noted that everything "comes to us" via subjectivity, including the 3rd-person perspective. I didn't mean to say you've argued for idealism or anything.

I'm obviously not 100% one what the author is arguing for, especially in light of his phenomenological post.

He appears to be arguing against metaphysical dualism, while rejecting monistic metaphysics such as idealism. He argues by way of epistemology, I think.

He seems to be saying that the fact that we can't know for sure that our thoughts refer isn't grounds for dualism because we can't prove that they do not refer!?

Re OOO: I noted that it seemed to be an attempt to describe what-is in purely 3rd-person terms, and you replied that that was nonsensical.

I'd love to hear how all of you interpret this authors arguments and your responses.
Click to expand...

Are you sure I said "nonsensical?"

Here's what I had as my response ...

Not sure how you could have an exclusively third person philosophy?
 
Here's a helpful quotation from Taylor Carman, an eminent scholar of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological philosophy:

"Perception is first bodily, prereflective, and is the origin of our knowledge of the world, the nature of being as being thought on the basis of presence in the world before reflection and thought. ‘Schemas’ not as organizing principles in the mind [as in Kant] but as what the body knows: “bodily poise or readiness that gives us a felt sense of rightness or equilibrium and so allows us to regard our own perceptions as either right or wrong, normal or skewed, true or false.”

from TAYLOR CARMAN PAPER IN CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO MP {quote top par on pg 70}
 
Soupie said:
There's no doubt that I can organize the diagram in a more intuitive fashion. I'll do so asap.

(As noted, my intuitions typically leave others bewildered and confused. In RL it's not uncommon for me to spontaneously continue conversations that had ended weeks prior, to make associations that leave conversations participants befuddled, etc. I'll try to do better. I swear!)
Click to expand...

Here's your post about difficulties in communication.

Why do you think your intuitions typically leave others bewildered and confused?
Why do you think your associations "leave conversations participants" (sic) befuddled?

You say you will try to do better ... try to do better in what way exactly? Does this indicate that you have some idea as to how you might "do better"?
 
From wiki, husserl's critic of MH is on cue from my perapective as are most but not all of the criticisms expressed.
Interesting that MH says Sartre misinterpreted it too which brings me onto scruton: "His major work Being and Time is formidably difficult—unless it is utter nonsense, in which case it is laughably easy. I am not sure how to judge it, and have read no commentator who even begins to make sense of it".
I am confident that my thoughts and interpretations are legitimate. Still finding interesting passages...
 
A few years back anarchists organised a march in London. Something about that which reminds me of MH's writing... But don't take that to heart: just light relief.
 
Pharoah said:
From wiki, husserl's critic of MH is on cue from my perapective as are most but not all of the criticisms expressed.
Interesting that MH says Sartre misinterpreted it too which brings me onto scruton: "His major work Being and Time is formidably difficult—unless it is utter nonsense, in which case it is laughably easy. I am not sure how to judge it, and have read no commentator who even begins to make sense of it".
I am confident that my thoughts and interpretations are legitimate. Still finding interesting passages...
Click to expand...

Dreyfus commentary and lectures are very helpful. I posted some articles on Dreyfus critique of AI (via Heidegger) - maybe in part two - which is also very interesting. I'll see if I can find it.
 
Steve, I've read the introductory sample of Morton's book Hyperobjects at amazon (link below) and downloaded it to read on Kindle. You were so right to call our attention to this book and to OOO and speculative realism as a major movement of contemporary thought beyond phenomenology. As Morton recognizes, phenomenology was necessary to bring us to this point in what we can think, but as he writes:

“I cannot locate the gap between phenomenon and thing anywhere in my given, phenomenal, experiential, or indeed scientific space.”

He also writes that

“Heidegger is the one who from within correlationism descends to a magnificent depth. Yet he is unwilling to step outside the human-world correlation, and so for him idealism, not realism, holds the key to philosophy: “If the term idealism amounts to an understanding of the fact that being is never explicable by beings, but is always already the ‘transcendental’ for every being, then the sole correct possibility for a philosophical problematic lies in idealism.”

I have to track down the source of that quotation from Heidegger and will post it when I do. My current sense of its significance and Morton's conclusion re Heidegger is that we need to comprehend what Heidegger meant and didn't mean by his statements concerning the impending "end of philosophy."

 
smcder said:
Dreyfus commentary and lectures are very helpful. I posted some articles on Dreyfus critique of AI (via Heidegger) - maybe in part two - which is also very interesting. I'll see if I can find it.
Click to expand...

Various search word combinations of Dreyfus, Heidegger, AI and ontology - throw in Minsky too will show articles as to how Dreydigger defeated the first two rounds of AI and how AI finally listened (maybe) ...
 
Constance said:
Steve, I've read the introductory sample of Morton's book Hyperobjects at amazon (link below) and downloaded it to read on Kindle. You were so right to call our attention to this book and to OOO and speculative realism as a major movement of contemporary thought beyond phenomenology. As Morton recognizes, phenomenology was necessary to bring us to this point in what we can think, but as he writes:

“I cannot locate the gap between phenomenon and thing anywhere in my given, phenomenal, experiential, or indeed scientific space.”

He also writes that

“Heidegger is the one who from within correlationism descends to a magnificent depth. Yet he is unwilling to step outside the human-world correlation, and so for him idealism, not realism, holds the key to philosophy: “If the term idealism amounts to an understanding of the fact that being is never explicable by beings, but is always already the ‘transcendental’ for every being, then the sole correct possibility for a philosophical problematic lies in idealism.”

I have to track down the source of that quotation from Heidegger and will post it when I do. My current sense of its significance and Morton's conclusion re Heidegger is that we need to comprehend what Heidegger meant and didn't mean by his statements concerning the impending "end of philosophy."

Click to expand...

I think it's the next step after the end of philosophy. (in my opinion what comes next is "work")

And folks in OOO seem to be having fun too ...

I'm listening to Morton's lectures on archive.org.

ECOLOGY WITHOUT NATURE: Object-Oriented Buddhism 19--Consciousness

What if we've been looking for consciousness in the wrong place, as I argue in The Ecological Thought? What if we've been neglecting Darwin in this crucial area and treating consciousness as a prize for being highly evolved--an idea that has so much wrong with it I don't know where to begin?

What if OOO were to show us, along with Buddhism, that consciousness was actually lower down than we expect?
 
Constance said:
“Heidegger is the one who from within correlationism descends to a magnificent depth. Yet he is unwilling to step outside the human-world correlation, and so for him idealism, not realism, holds the key to philosophy: “If the term idealism amounts to an understanding of the fact that being is never explicable by beings, but is always already the ‘transcendental’ for every being, then the sole correct possibility for a philosophical problematic lies in idealism.”
Click to expand...

Morton might or might not be correct in this view of Heidegger's thinking, for H argued in later essays that philosophy would, or could, and perhaps even must continue beyond existentialism and phenomenology. Perhaps he had in mind the very development being articulated in OOO and speculative realism. My point is that in phenomenology in general it has been recognized that consciousness [the subjective pole of experience] transcends the object/phenomenon at the objective pole of what is experienced. Thus the subject transcends the object and the object transcends the subject in the philosophical sense of the term 'transcends'. Is 'idealism' an accurate category into which to place phenomenological thinking? I would still say it is not since Merleau-Ponty's more fully developed phenomenology still recognizes a transcendence of both subject and object in the Chiasm of their mutual appropriation by one another. Experience of the world still involves consciousness and mind as well as objective structures in/of the physical world in our ongoing thinking of, thinking about, objects -- and that includes 'hyperobjects' in their extraordinary distance from us. 'Idealism' is the wrong designator, category, for developed phenomenology since that term still expresses the notion that we transcend the palpably physical, material, objective world in our mere ideas about it. We can't and don't, and I think Heidegger realized that. Here are several statements from M-P's works that suggest where I'm going (or maybe staying) in my own thinking:

"Just as the perceived world endures only through the reflections, shadows, levels, and horizons between things . . . so the works and thought of a philosopher are also made of certain articulations between things said.”

“Reflection does not withdraw from the world towards the unity of consciousness as the world's basis; it steps back to watch the forms of transcendence fly up like sparks from a fire.....”
 
Constance said:
Morton might or might not be correct in this view of Heidegger's thinking, for H argued in later essays that philosophy would, or could, and perhaps even must continue beyond existentialism and phenomenology. Perhaps he had in mind the very development being articulated in OOO and speculative realism. My point is that in phenomenology in general it has been recognized that consciousness [the subjective pole of experience] transcends the object/phenomenon at the objective pole of what is experienced. Thus the subject transcends the object and the object transcends the subject in the philosophical sense of the term 'transcends'. Is 'idealism' an accurate category into which to place phenomenological thinking? I would still say it is not since Merleau-Ponty's more fully developed phenomenology still recognizes a transcendence of both subject and object in the Chiasm of their mutual appropriation by one another. Experience of the world still involves consciousness and mind as well as objective structures in/of the physical world in our ongoing thinking of, thinking about, objects -- and that includes 'hyperobjects' in their extraordinary distance from us. 'Idealism' is the wrong designator, category, for developed phenomenology since that term still expresses the notion that we transcend the palpably physical, material, objective world in our mere ideas about it. We can't and don't, and I think Heidegger realized that. Here are several statements from M-P's works that suggest where I'm going (or maybe staying) in my own thinking:

"Just as the perceived world endures only through the reflections, shadows, levels, and horizons between things . . . so the works and thought of a philosopher are also made of certain articulations between things said.”

“Reflection does not withdraw from the world towards the unity of consciousness as the world's basis; it steps back to watch the forms of transcendence fly up like sparks from a fire.....”
Click to expand...

Had we but world enough, and time
This coyness, Lady, were no crime

... I think more of time/Zeit as we seem to have Welt enough and if not, other worlds may be available - but perhaps we'd do better to understand Heidegger through OOO as his time and world have passed on ...

Germany’s Heidegger Society Chair Resigns (updated) | Daily Nous


(auf Deutsche)
Vorsitzender der Heidegger-Gesellschaft zurückgetreten | Pressemitteilung SWR - Südwestrundfunk
 
Pharoah said:
From wiki, husserl's critic of MH is on cue from my perapective as are most but not all of the criticisms expressed.
Interesting that MH says Sartre misinterpreted it too which brings me onto scruton: "His major work Being and Time is formidably difficult—unless it is utter nonsense, in which case it is laughably easy. I am not sure how to judge it, and have read no commentator who even begins to make sense of it".
I am confident that my thoughts and interpretations are legitimate. Still finding interesting passages...
Click to expand...

Roger Scruton? Ho ho and pip pip!

Or as the American (New Orleans) philosopher Louis Prima put it, after reading Being and Time:

She's exactly like a watermellon
big and round and sweet
In a party dress
She may be quite a mess
But I love her a lot
So what if she's not so neat
The bigger the figure the better I like her
The better I like her the better I feed her
The better I feed her the bigger the figure
The bigger the figure the more ... I can ... llllllllove!
 
smcder said:
Roger Scruton? Ho ho and pip pip!

Or as the American (New Orleans) philosopher Louis Prima put it, after reading Being and Time:

She's exactly like a watermellon
big and round and sweet
In a party dress
She may be quite a mess
But I love her a lot
So what if she's not so neat
The bigger the figure the better I like her
The better I like her the better I feed her
The better I feed her the bigger the figure
The bigger the figure the more ... I can ... llllllllove!
Click to expand...

What's "ho ho and pip pip" mean, or is that a quotation from B&T?
Watermelon definitely has a very "round-about-ness" to it, I grant you Lou: an expansivity region that is discoverable across a totality of equipment circumspectively at one's edible disposal. Hmmm yum yum
 
Pharoah said:
What's "ho ho and pip pip" mean, or is that a quotation from B&T?
Watermelon definitely has a very "round-about-ness" to it, I grant you Lou: an expansivity region that is discoverable across a totality of equipment circumspectively at one's edible disposal. Hmmm yum yum
Click to expand...

ho ho and pip pip is the very bad language stereotype we have of upper crust Britons like Scruton ... he got busted out for fox hunting, I believe ... tally .... ho!

But I am serious about Dreyfus being a good way into Heidegger, particularly his critique of AI and also serious about OOO as another perspective on MH.
 
smcder said:
I think it's the next step after the end of philosophy. (in my opinion what comes next is "work")
Click to expand...

I wonder if you'd expand on that statement. I think human philosophy has always worked with that which philosophers were capable of knowing or, more importantly, understanding at the time and in the place in which they did their thinking. It seems to me that philosophy has not ended but continues, in the present, with the ideas of these new 'speculative realists', but now further beyond the presuppositions of 'correlationism'. That term was foregrounded at first by Quentin Meillassoux, so it will be necessary to get an idea of his arguments to understand what he is claiming to constitute 'correlationism'.
 
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