Neri » December 25th, 2017, 3:05 am wrote:BJ,
Husserl’s method was similar to the Cartesian meditations in that that both were invested in the notion that the thing we can be most certain of was our own conscious experience.
However, the Cartesian method did not require that we set aside our belief that a world existed independently of our thought processes.
On the contrary, Descartes maintained that reality consisted of two basic substances, spatially extended things that populated the world and thinking things such as our consciousness. Thus, he made a distinction between subject (our minds) and object (spatially extended things). To Husserl both subject and object were things of the mind.
Husserl, in his core beliefs, was a Kantian. “Phenomena” (meaning appearances) was after all a Kantian term. To Kant, “extended things ”were concoctions of the mind, for space was only an intuition that represented nothing real in itself. The world we experienced was something put together in our own minds. Husserl accepted these ideas and even used the expression “transcendental.”
When Husserl spoke of the “life world,” he meant the Kantian world of the mind and indubitably not a world that did not need to be experienced to be real. It is precisely for this reason that he wanted us to bracket out the world of extended things.
Of course it was similar to Descartes because he viewed Plato and Descartes as being the most important. And I believe I have stated elsewhere that he thought Descartes missed his own discovery. (note: Husserl was concerned primarily with the First Meditation.)
To Husserl both subject and object were dealt with phenomenologically in a specific way. He has been cast by many as an idealist, but I am not really convinced of this. He completely regarded physical existence as physical existence - he had no issue with that at all. He set out a particular way to use the term "object" though in his work (where I believe he generally meant 'intersubjectivity' where we read 'object'.)
As for Kantian terminology, Husserl does refer to Kant. It is not correct, or even nearly correct, to view Husserl as Kantian though.
Phenomenon is simply "conscious experience". Husserl was concerned with consciousness and phenomenology is meant to be the science of consciousness.
This noema/noesis distinction is pretty much as I described it previously in ordinary language. For those of you who want a more profound-sounding description, I offer the following.
Because Husserl requires us to put out of our minds any notion of spatially extended things as contents of the world, he needs to explain how we have the experience of such things.
It may be slightly misleading to say this. "Put out of mind" does not mean disbelief or forget, but it can be read like that. It is not an act of disregarding the physical world or anything as such. He often said "put out of play".
The process of directing one’s attention to an ideal object (an object of the mind) he called “noesis.” The experience of the object itself, he called a “noema.”
This is too brief and frivolous an explication for me. Husserl doe use terminology like "unfulfilled intention", "fulfilled intention" and "empty intention".
There is the "manner" of directedness and the ... this is where I simplty struggle to find the words, but I will settle by saying "components of correlation".
Your analogy of the tiger deals with one tiny part of the process. Husserl was looking at the components of physical appearance too. I have already mentioned this, the "colour", the "size" (depth, height, width). The "parts" of tiger can be removed and it is still a tiger (a leg for example), but you cannot remove the "moments", you cannot remove the height of the tiger.
The difficult you likely struggle with is understanding how to apply this to more abstract concepts such as "and". The struggle is dealing with the idea of "immediacy" and time is always a pain to deal with in this way.
You probably have experienced the noema, “tiger,” through noesis simply because I made mention of a tiger. The same would happen if you were reading a book about tigers or were just musing one day about tigers.
This is simply a misuse of the terminology. You are suggesting "and" does not exist and has no meaning whatsoever and we should therefore not use "and" ever again. Husserl, on the other hand, wanted to hunt the "and" as best he could knowing full well that objective science has nothing to offer in terms of what it means to experience an object other than by way of bracketing out subjectivity and acting "as if" there is such a thing as "pure objectivity". He set out a way, or rather made explicit what Descartes missed in his own discovery, to create a science of the subjective "pole".
From there Heidegger, and many others, took this and ran with it in regards to the varieties of subjective opinions about conscious experience and made a very strong attachment to language and writing (as had Neitzsche in many ways already set up the ground for this and many others in various fields of study.)
Heidegger I would relate to an extract from 'Pheadrus' where the king talks to Theuth (aka Thoth, the creator of writing) in reagrds to his invention. Theuth says he has discovered the 'elixir' of memory and wisdom by the advent of writing. The king then says by trying to help people in this way that his invention will make people lazy and make them think they have wisdom when they'll have nothing but the appearance of wisdom. He says they will come to possess knowledge but at cost of wisdom - this is something Heidegger really seems to have put to use in order to bring hermeneutics into philosophical play.
The point being here is that Husserl was not (as far as I can see) concerned with hermeneutics, and that he perhaps would have faired better if he'd given some refutation against taking such a line of investigation. Wittgenstein at least seems to have wound some of Heidegger's thoughts back in toward more of a phenomenological position, but still seemed tangled up in the hermeneutics (from what I have read of Logical Investigations and maybe he goes further elsewhere - not sure, I can only focus on so much.)
Asparagus -
To be clear to you where I am coming from. Experience is something. Our experience is about "intentionality". We "see the world" because of emotional content. The meaning of "objects" is emotional meaning. We do everything within an emotional framework.
Even the drive for any kind of understanding is obviously emotionally driven, consciously or subconsciously. So empiricism is tenable because it is known as a path of understanding. In philosophy we should perhaps be looking away from the natural sciences, th emaking of objective measurements, and dealing with experience as an emotionally laden topic. We can of course refer to some useful discoveries of the natural sciences in order to refine our understanding (we understand certain hormonal 'mechanisms' and biological requirements, and also have the rich framework of evolution to consider too.)
To refer to my reply Neri above (the Pheadrus bit), there is something to be said for "knowledge" as food for "wisdom" here. In an analogical sense I would say empiricism can be considered as either a means to floor free-will or as a way to open up ourselves to responsibility and to take on the task of living as one in which we are actively involved. The issue and means of philosophy will always remain a subjective means - it will always be a search for the wisdom of living life not merely a scientific reduction in which emotionally we attempt to refute emotion as anything other than "useful" for our meaningless understanding of a deterministic and static "being". It is no coincidence that the whoel existential moment sprouted in the modern era from the seed Husserl planted (and I would say more due to Nietzsche tbh). It is a mistake, a mistake in regard to the use of objective science, because to get caught up in a psychological fixatedness and to apply th emost useful methodology everywhere is to perform an act of worship and faith in something being able to work beyond its intended limits.
By this I mean I can imagine how to build a flying vehicle and I can say I can do so without ever having to try. By doing so this does not mean I have built a playing vehicle that works. Equally so, I cannot physically manipulate the world and create an object that is without depth, or make a sound without tone. In this respect the physical sciences deal with physical matter toward an objective pole and the phenomenological science deals with phenomenon toward a subjective pole - and understand clearly that these are not in opposition, they are merely divided for convenience of comprehension, like black and white.
Husserl tries to get the reader to put focus into the matter of "thought". Look at the meaning content and feel around it, adumbrate the items of conscious experience as items of conscious experience rather than as purely external objects that are . Given that our language is so deeply embedded in ideas of external objectivity and reinforced by the success of scientific method it has become hard to see past the verbal conceptions of the world - and again this is where Heidegger and those kind of folk when to town with the initial pheonomenological revolution that Husserl initiated.