From: Risto S Varanka <rvaranka-AT-cc.helsinki.fi>
Subject: Re: Body as condition of knowledge
Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 03:21:09 +0300 (EEST)



Sorry for the late response, I did a little tour in Continental
Europe etc ;) Maybe our discussion intensifies towards the Summer
season... 

----- Forwarded message from j laari -----

>No, it's not obvious. You're right. But remembering that has been one
>of the central features of modern philosophy since neokantian wave.

I don't see much evidence of the role of body in some paradigms,
however.  Look at 20th century analytical philosophy or Habermas's
discourse view on knowledge...  For example, in logical positivism
the concept of sense experience is central, but to me it doesn't
seem like this concept necessarily incorporates the idea of the
said experience being conditioned by the physical existence of the
observer.  The sense experience just acts as a raw data for an
abstract knowledge system called modern science. 

>> Is that obvious? Language and meaning could be the second
>> ontological dimension besides physical reality. If one operates
>> with entities of this ontological category (eg. concepts,
>> meanings, words, propositions) then the physical reality seems to
>> fade into the background.
>
>Secondly, I'd be careful not to collapse that all (language and words
>and propositions, concepts, and meanings) into one big "mill", so to
>speak.

Maybe you don't like categories then :-) Of course, some care
should be taken when formulating what exactly goes into the
ontological category of meaning. For example, words certainly
exist as material things as well: sounds, writing on paper and so
on.

Do you know about Popper's view of three worlds: world 1 (physical
entities), world 2 (the psyche, mental states) and world 3
(culture)? I think it was Niiniluoto who commented that some
frankfurt school writers show a tendency towards an ontological
world 1 - world 3 dualism, where the individual's mental sphere
fades into the background. I would like to show such a tendency as
well :-)

Physical reality no doubt exists.  I'd like to adopt some kind of
an eliminativist materialist stance, at least for the philosophy
of mind - material things are the only really interesting, and
they determine (though not causally!) everything.  However,
meaning (language games and such) seems to have a very different
logic, so I'd like to add a second category for that.  Meanings
exist as some kind of supramaterial things, a bit like Plato's
ideas.  On the other hand, there are quite a few sciences and
other disciplines that concern themselves with language games, not
the physical reality. This leaves our mental experience as a bit
of a problem child. What exactly is our experience - our
experience of physical things, of our thoughts and emotions, of
our bodily states and so on? To me that seems to be certainly one
of the most difficult questions in philosophy.

>Think about alternative according to that conceptuality is one process
>- perhaps the thinking process proper - and then we just try to
>express the concepts and thoughts linguistically. It sort of muddles
>the things first but later it's different. After linguistic turn there
>has been certain trend to collapse thoughts and sign systems (that we
>use to express the former) into one. In human sciences culturalism,
>understood as study of signification (as it has been "defined" in
>cultural studies recently), has strengthened the trend. Quite
>unfortunate.

Some contemporary writers (eg.  Kannisto in his essay in
Vuosisatamme Filosofia) seem to very much doubt that thought is
possible without utilizing language.  In my view, thought probably
can manipulate other kinds of entities than language: sensory
experience, images of future actions, feelings and so on. 
However, I'm not sure if there can be concepts (mm, well what are
concepts?) without some structure that comes from language. 

>> Where I sense a difference is my Pragmatist or Practicist
>> orientation. A phenomenologist analyses experience, for example
>> how spatiality is a necessary feature in human orientation in the
>> world, an ingredient in concept formation etc.
>
>OK, we just ought to remember that we shouldn't take that difference
>of viewpoints as an opposition of contradicting doctrines (or
>whatever). In many ways it's fruitful to see them as complementary. At
>least I tend to forget that every now and then.

Perhaps complementary in the way that we just apply the basic idea to
different disciplines (philosophical anthropology vs. praxis
theory) or different questions in episthemology (formation of
knowledge vs. application of knowledge). On the other hand, I
sense a contradiction in the paradigms, concerning which questions
are interesting and which things determine the nature of human
knowledge.  

>You're interested in the theme 'body and knowledge'. In one sense that
>is one of the central themes of phenomenology (though not always
>explicit one). Now, Routila as one of the central figures (in Finland)
>in discussions related to such themes might provide you with some
>easily accessible texts. Originally the central texts usually are in
>German and translations could be difficult to find. That's why I
>mentioned Routila. For him there's probably no problems whatsoever to
>say that "Dasein" (my 'being in the world') is or means basically
>one(self) being a corporeal living being that has a practical relation
>to the world, and that all our ideas, conceptions, ideologies and
>knowledges stem from that.

I'm only familiar with Rauhala (a Finnish proponent of humanistic
psychology), who, coming from the phenomenological tradition as
well, expresses similar views. He doesn't seem to stress the
practical dimension though, and even as he stresses the physical
situatedness of a human being, he seems to adopt a dualist
perspective for philosophy of mind, where the psyche can have
causal effects (or actually whatever he substitutes for causal
effects :) on the physical human body.

>Sincerely, Jukka L

-- 
Risto Varanka | http://www.helsinki.fi/~rvaranka/
risto varanka at no spam please helsinki fi