File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0307, message 103


From: GEVANS613-AT-aol.com
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 07:02:19 EDT
Subject: Devastating Confusion of Phenomenology


In a message dated 19/07/2003 05:16:00 GMT Daylight Time, crifasi-AT-hotmail.com 
writes:

Subj: Re: Devastating Confusion of Heidegger? Date: 19/07/2003 05:16:00 GMT 
Daylight Time From: crifasi-AT-hotmail.com (Anthony Crifasi) Sender: 
owner-heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu Reply-to: heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu 
To: heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu

Jud wrote:
Ok. forget the passion bit - [I'll come back to that later] that leaves us 
with the scientists who are UTTERLY absorbed and INTENSELY interested in the 
subjects of their study bit - what about that?

Anthony:
That is not part of the scientific rigor of the subject. The scientists' 
degree of fascination, interest, or involvement with the subject is SCIENTIFICALLY 
irrelevant to the objective results or methodology of a properly done 
experiment. 

Jud: 
Thank you for your well-explained resume of the relative positions of 
Heidegger and Husserl on this matter. However, there is a suggestion here, with your 
choice of the terms: 'properly done' and objective', that a scientist who was 
fascinated, interested, and involved with the subject of his enquiry might 
render the experiment non-rigorous, non-objective and not properly done - how can 
this be so? How for example can the emotional state of a scientist who mixes 
together two compounds affect the nature of their chemical interaction? How 
can the fact that an animal biologist who feels a heightened interest or concern 
or affection for a certain chimpanzee, affect the performance and outcome of 
that individual as part of an experimental breeding-pair?

Anthony: 
In fact, experiments are designed to filter out all possible external factors 
which could skew the results, including a scientist's personal bias.

Jud: 
We are not discussing bias here, [a different though equally interesting 
subject] but rather the absorption and interest shown by the scientist in the 
phenomena which is most familiar to him as the scientist, as in your original note 
on what Heidegger says on this question. Here it is again.

'How does he say that the phenomena are most familiar to us? Insofar as we 
are absorbed and interested in them, not in the detached mode of knowing or 
science. '

Anthony: 
If someone who is completely fascinated and interested in the subject matter 
does an experiment, and someone else who couldn't care less does the same 
experiment, they should get exactly the same result. 

Jud: 
This is true - so why is it necessary for a scientist not to be absorbed and 
interested in the subject of his experiment? What benefit can a detached mode 
of knowing or a deliberate disinterest in the object of study or the outcome 
of the experiment provide? Is not Heidegger confusing interest and absorption 
with INTERVENTION by the scientist for personal reasons, designed to skew the 
procedure and apparent results? [By interference with equipment, methodology, 
materials, data etc.,] Heidegger's agenda appears to depict scientists as cold, 
disassociated, remote, disinterested automatons, who robot-like mix powders 
and potions, adjust screws and tighten nuts without caring one way or the other 
what the outcome of their tinkerings might be? Now come on Anthony, have you 
EVER met a scientist like that?

Anthony: 
That is what both Husserl and Heidegger mean when they say that science is 
objective and detached - the factual content is supposed to be independent of 
any subjective disposition on the part of the scientist or anyone else.

Jud: 
But we are not talking about THE FACTUAL CONTENT we are talking about the 
demeanour of the people who carry out the experiments, it is THEY who experience 
the absorption and interest in the factual content - the factual content is 
incapable of feeling anything, [unless it be a biological experiment] ammonium 
chloride and oligosaccharide feel no emotions whatsoever?

Jud [previously] 
Are phenomenologists allowed passion in their observations where it is 
forbidden to scientists? If so why?

Anthony:
Husserl held that phenomenology must be scientific and dispassionate. 

Jud: 
Surely he meant that phenomenologists must be scientific and dispassionate? 
How can a noun which describes a philosophical doctrine proposed by Edmund 
Husserl based on the study of human experience in which considerations of 
objective reality are not taken into account be scientific and dispassionate? And why 
if what you say or Heidegger says is true, that if someone who is completely 
fascinated and interested in the subject matter and  does an experiment, and 
someone else who couldn't care less does the same experiment, they should get 
exactly the same result,  why then does it matter if a scientist curtails and 
suppresses any interest and absorption in his subject?

Anthony: 
In order to approach the phenomena objectively, he said that the 
phenomenologist must first do what he called the epoche or phenomenological reduction, 
which suspends what he considered the primary prejudice of our absorption in the 
world - our naive assurance that what we experience exists independently of us 
(after all, he says, it might all be a dream...). 

Jud: 
But surely if Husserl urges us to suspend our absorption in the world, 
[complete attention; intense mental effort - the mental state of being preoccupied 
by something,] he is in fact urging us not to be interested in phenomenological 
enquiry at all, for how is one expected to conduct a phenomenological enquiry 
if we are not to be interested in whether the object of our observation 
actually exists or not? If this is to be the case, why bother with observing real 
objects at all? Why not simply dream up objects in the mind and observe only 
imaginary phenomena, and [after suspending our primary prejudice and absorption 
concerning their apparent existence or non-existence] not bother a hoot 
whether they were the objects of our mind or real objects which had been 
materialised by some mysterious process of our non-absorbtion?

 If Husserl meant what he said, that we should  suspend our absorption and 
interest in the world, why bother doing phenomenology at all - why not  simply 
bracket oneself out and crawl into a corner and [leaving oneself  free of any 
prejudice]  comport oneself towards death that way? At least, if Husserl wasn't 
convinced that he really existed in the world in the first place, he could at 
least dream himself up to be any entity he wished - perhaps a teapot on 
Heidegger's dining-table? That is of course if Husserl was convinced that there 
were indeed such things in the world as  teapots -  or a dining tables -  or a 
man called Heidegger to own a dining table - or a man called Husserl who had 
crawled into a corner?

Anthony: 
The phenomenological reduction is simply the suspension of that belief in 
world-existence, leaving the phenomena free of any prejudice on our part, and 
therefore scientifically objective. 

Jud: 
But [following Husserl] does not the suspension of that belief in 
'world-existence' also include the observing phenomenologist who is also part of 
'world-existence?' And if we correctly follow his methodology we would be also 
suspending our belief in our own existence, and not to do so would be not to free 
ourselves from any prejudice on our part, therefore rendering the 
phenomenological experiment valueless and place us in a position, [if indeed we existed in 
order to be placed in a position] where we remained unsure as to whether we or 
the phenomena  or the world actually existed in the first place?

Anthony: 
As a consequence, however, Husserl's entire analysis was limited to the 
phenomena as present to consciousness, forever cut off from any analysis of beings 
as they are in themselves 

Jud: 
But how could he embark on such an analysis if he wasn't sure whether he and 
the world existed or not, or whether his consciousness or imagined 
consciousness, or the phenomena he imagined, or didn't imagine to be present to his 
assumed consciousness to be cut off from any analysis of beings as they are in 
themselves?

Anthony:
(belief in which is suspended by the reduction), which is why Husserl himself 
called his own phenomenology "transcendental idealism." THAT is what 
Heidegger escaped, by basically questioning Husserl's assumption that the phenomena 
must be approached scientifically and objectively in the first place.

Jud: 
If what you are now saying is that Heidegger's wheeze was to urge people to 
approach phenomena non-scientifically and non-objectively, well that would be 
perfectly in tune with the general tenor of Heidegger's approach, for if 
Heidegger also banned the involvement and interest of the human enquirer he would 
also be abandoning his little ontological box of tricks Dasein.
But if Heidegger objects to the scientific method, then he must object to 
being absorbed and interested in the objects of his enquiry, for being absorbed 
and interested in the phenomena of their research is part and parcel of being a 
scientist and participating in the scientific method,  and that  is what 
compels them to become scientists in the first place. If they were not interested 
in the objects and processes of what they were involved with we wouldn't have 
any scientists, and we wouldn't have any phenomenologists either, for 
according to Heidegger phenomenologists ought to be absorbed and interested in the 
objects and processes of what they were involved with - and that is plainly a 
scientific characteristic, as explained above? Heidegger and Husserl just cannot 
have or have not  their imagined cake, and imagine themselves eating it  - or 
not eating it.


Cheers,

Jud.


<A HREF="http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ ">http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/</A> 
Jud Evans - ANALYTICAL INDICANT THEORY.
<A HREF="http://uncouplingthecopula.freewebspace.com">http://uncouplingthecopula.freewebspace.com</A>


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