File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0307, message 121


From: GEVANS613-AT-aol.com
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 06:52:42 EDT
Subject: Corrected Version of Phenomenology and Science


Subj: Re: Phenomenology and Science Date: 21/07/2003 06:32:12 GMT Daylight 
Time From: crifasi-AT-hotmail.com (Anthony Crifasi) Sender: 
owner-heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu


I don't know what happened to the first version of this message  - it came 
out chevroned-out as if it had been sent before?
Here's a clean copy [hopefully]

Anthony writes:

It does not follow that if a person "has a personal emotional investment," t 
hat therefore this is scientifically relevant. 

Jud: 
You keep repeating the mantra 'scientifically relevant.' What do you mean by 
this? It can be argued that the lax attitude towards the heat- tiles on the 
NASA space vehicle and the subsequent dreadful end to the experiment, not to 
mention the awful loss of the lives of many brave men and women, had a DIRECT 
scientific relevance to the space programme and the future design of spacecraft. 
Hopefully this dreadful episode will encourage the space-bosses to increase 
their personal emotional investment and commitment in the vital life-threatening 
scientific aspects of future projects.

Anthony: 
The fact that scientific objectivity can actually be lessened by emotional 
investment in the subject shows that one does not follow from the other. That is 
all I mean when I say feelings are SCIENTIFICALLY irrelevant, but personally 
or motivationally relevant.

Jud: 
We are discussing attitudes towards items and proceedures in scientific 
practice. Objectivity is [as MichaelP rightly pointed out] an ATTITUDE - an 
emotional attitude or stance which is designed to subdue emotion and encourage an 
active state of objectivity. It is an emotional stance which is QUITE HOTLY and 
EMOTIONALLY advocated and defended by most scientists [including the forlorn 
little man from Prossnitz sitting gazing at the teapot.] Again you continually 
repeat the mantra 'scientifically relevant' ignoring the fact that 'scientific 
relevance' is only scientifically relevant to HUMAN BEINGS as in the case of 
if the dog lives or dies, or if the spaceship explodes or returns safely. You 
are up to the blind Heideggerian pastime of REIFICATION again. NO SUCH THING 
EXISTS as 'scientific relevance,' as a metaphysical entity, it is ONLY A TERM 
used to describe the pertinence TO HUMANS regarding the existential disposition 
and interaction and reaction of actual entities which are studied or 
manipulated by actual living, breathing scientists and technicians to form new 
compounds and composites which affect not some metaphysical notion of 'scientific 
relevance, ' but real flesh and blood HUMAN BEINGS and the actual world which 
those human beings inhabit. 

Anthony:
Again, no one is saying that a scientist must actually lack feelings towards 
the subject. 

Jud:
 I'm not being prescriptive about the way that scientists should behave - 
just telling it how it is and how attitude can affect outcomes.

Anthony:
 I repeat this only because you have continually characterized 

what I am saying in this way, when I have explicitly said again and again 
that this is not what I am saying. Do you see that I am not saying that a 
scientist must actually lack feelings towards the subject? Do you see the difference 
between this and saying that a scientist must not allow their feelings to 
alter the objectivity of their observations?

Jud: 
I agree that you are not being prescriptive either, but you do appear to be 
agreeing with Heidegger, [against Husserl] that a scientific attitude towards 
phenomenological investigation is not necessary and even counterproductive. I 
on the other hand am claiming that scientific attitudes and emotional stances 
towards scientific investigations and procedures DO affect outcomes and and are 
reflected in the results [see dead dog and exploded spaceship or live dog and 
intact spaceship]

Anthony:
Take my dog. Do you see that any scientist testing cures on my dog should 
reach the same objective conclusions regardless of whether they feel as strongly 
as I do about the outcome? Because that is all I mean when I say that feelings 
are scientifically irrelevant.

Jud: 
No, I do not see and I do not agree. Your attitude would be more 
involved/concerned and you are likely to be more thorough, not only in the amount of 
research you would invest to procure the latest substances, but in the actual way 
in which you treated and cared for the animal during its treatment. This 
difference in approach would inevitable affect the outcome. Take two cancer patients 
with exactly the same clinical progress of the disease and the same 
metatastic proliferation. One is a black construction worker, the other a successful 
oncologist. Which one is more likely to live longer than the other and why? 
Don't come back with the answer that if they were given the same medication and 
care that they are both likely to survive for a similar period, because due to 
the position of the oncologist, not only is he likely to receive more care from 
his colleagues [who mix socially with his wife, etc.,] he is in reality very 
likely to have access to better drugs. If in the unlikely circumstance that 
the doctors were just as attached and sympathetically disposed to the black 
construction worker that they arranged parity of medication and treatment for him 
all well and good and the clinical prognosis would no doubt be parable with 
the oncologist. But due to the a priori relationship twixt the medical 
establishment in the clinic and the sick oncologist the emotional commitment to the 
science part of the treatment equation would not be the same and the black man 
would in all probability die first.

Anthony:
Take any nanosecond of waking experience, and you could dream it too. That is 
all I mean when I say that the two can look exactly the same either way.

Jud: 
This whole discussion as I see it addresses the assumption on the behalf of 
Heidegger that scientists and technicians because they exhibit a disciplined 
approach to their investigations are in some way less sensitive and are some 
kind of Untermenchen in the way that they interact with objects of their 
experiments, compared with people like him poetically mooning around in a completely 
disorganised manner examining the undersides of leaves looking for an IS-label. 

Not content with attacking scientists for introducing a controlled modus 
operandi, he sneers [privately to friends] at his potty old mentor for attempting 
to introduce a system of rules of conduct or method of practice into his 
phenomenological investigations. Presumably, if the party to which he devoted his 
sleazy political affiliations had triumphed, he may well have seen to it that 
scientists were forced to wear some distinguishing symbol along the lines of 
the yellow star or the pink triangle? Perhaps the symbol of an unblinking, cold, 
expressionless 'scientific eye?' 

Would he therefore have then felt satisfied to see his old teacher aimlessly 
traipsing about the corridors of Freiburg, locked out of the library, staring 
out at the quadrangle below at the students with their swastika armbands, and 
on his own arms a yellow star on one side and the detested scientific eye on 
the other? ;-)

Anthony: 
Actually, here in Houston most of us drive shiny new cars, including 
students. We hate public transportation here.

Jud: 
Houston? Be careful you drive a saloon and not an open-topped car. :-(

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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