What is Phenomenology

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What is Phenomenology?

• Etymological definition phainomenon logos
  the study of that which appears (to
  consciousness as it appears), the study of
  experience as such.
• A method of doing philosophy
• a descriptive clarification of the things
  themselves.
• not a set of doctrines There is no the one
  phenomenology (Heidegger).
• For Husserl consciousness has an inherent a prior
  structure that can be systematically analyzed and
  described, thus phenomenology can be understood
  as a methodological description of the
  structures of experience.

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What is Phenomenology?

• A complex philosophical movement developed in the
  20th century in Continental Europe
• Beginning with Husserl, who harbors the
  nostalgia of modern philosophy (Cf. Book 3 of
  Ideas, p. 229).
• Phenomenology is thus broadly Kantian and
  Hegelian in spirit.
• For Husserl, like Kant, the central question is
  What makes experience possible.

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Why is Phenomenology?

• Foundation for (all) knowledge.
• A way of overcoming traditional problems of
  philosophy.
• Need to understand the essential correlation
  between subjectivity and objectivity.
• For Husserl, the central mystery of all
  philosophy is this How does objectivity get
  constituted in and for consciousness?
• A corrective to naturalism, i.e., the attempt to
  explain consciousness through natural science.
• (Note the division between the dogmatic
  standpoint, which takes facts as given, and the
  philosophical standpoint, which is concerned with
  the possibility of knowledge.)

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Whither Phenomenology?

• The Current Situation What is Living and What
  is Dead?
• Dead (?) phenomenology as a rigorous
  foundational science.
• Phenomenology denotes a new, descriptive,
  philosophical method, which, since the concluding
  years of the last century, has established (1) an
  a priori psychological discipline, able to
  provide the only secure basis on which a strong
  empirical psychology can be built, and (2) a
  universal philosophy, which can supply an organum
  for the methodical revision of all the sciences.
  (E. Hu, The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1929)

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What is living?

• Living complex descriptive analysis of human
  subjectivity, which emphasizes the ineliminable
  role of csness in knowledge.
• Is this question living or dead Are we at a
  crisis point?
• For the mature Husserl, phenomenology was more
  than an academic matter. He thought the Western
  sciences were in crisis due to the fact that they
  had lost their sense of rootedness in human life
  experience. Man had forfeited his essential
  identity because he had become an impersonal
  object among objects, divorced from the inner or
  transcendental life of experience. (See The
  Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental
  Phenomenology, 1938)
• From this point of view the aim of philosophy is
  to restore the meaningfulness of the lived and
  historical life-world.
• And lets not forget phenomenology and the
  cognitive sciences.

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Franz Brentano (1838-1917)

• Life Works
• Central ideas (to influence Husserl)
• (1) Philosophy as an exact science
• (2) Intentionality view that every mental act is
  related to some object
• (3) Self-evidence of mental acts which could
  yield apodictic truths

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Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874)

• Foreword
• Experience alone is my teacher.
• Outline of books
• Goals the unity of psychology and the triumph
  of truth.

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The Distinction between Mental and Physical
Phenomena

• Aim move from confusion to clarity.
• Examples...
• Definition of mental phenomena
• Either presentations or based on presentations.
  
• Can we find a more unified definition?

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• Brentano considers a negative feature, i.e., the
  absence of extension, but this is not
  satisfactory.
• The positive distinguishing feature he discovers
  is intentional inexistence.
• New def of mp those phenomena which contain an
  object intentionally within themselves.
• Additional features
• Inner perception, real existence, unified.

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Edmund Husserl (1859-1938)

• Life
• Major texts
• Logical Investigations (1900-1901)
• Ideas (1913)
• Central terms
• Pure (transcendental) Phenomenology
• Epoché
• Noesis and Noema
• Life-World (Lebenswelt)

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Husserl The perpetual beginner

• Ideas (1913) merely introductory meditations
  Phenomenology is a beginning science (p. 149).
• Pure Phen (1917) a science of a thoroughly
  new type and endless scope (p. 124).
• Crisis (1936) We are absolute beginners here
  (p. 171).

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Pure Phenomenology, 1917 lecture

• Philosophy is possible as a rigorous science at
  all only through pure phenomenology.
• The phenomenological reduction can be effected
  by modifying Descartes method, it is the
  method for effecting radical purification of the
  phenomenological field of csness from all
  obtrusions from Objective actualitiesputting out
  of action any believing in the actuality of it.
  (p.129)
• For us the Objective world is as if it were
  placed in brackets. (p. 130)
• How is pure phen genuinely possible as a science?

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Ideas General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology
(1913)

• What is Pure Phenomenology (PP)?
• A new science far removed from ordinary thinking
• A science of essential Being (eidetic science
  science of essences)
• The phenomena of PP are non-real (irreal), which
  are discovered following the eidetic/transcendenta
  l reduction.
• Our aim must be to convince ourselves of the
  possibility of this reduction in principle (p.
  231).

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The Thesis of the Natural Standpoint and Its
Suspension

• The natural standpoint is our ordinary, everyday
  outlook on life, which includes an awareness of a
  world spread out in time and space and a
  practical world of values.
• The natural standpoint comprises
• The world-about-me
• The Cogito or mental world
• The world-about-them or Intersubjective world

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Epoché

• Suspend all belief in the natural standpoint and
  all theoretical presuppositions of this
  standpoint
• Put it out of action, disconnect it, bracket
  it
• Of course, its still there, but weve changed
  our attitude towards it, which allows us to focus
  on the Phenomenological Residuum.
• We are now within the realm of a new scientific
  domain, a new region of Being.
• Thus the epoché can be likened to a religious
  conversation and existential transformation.

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Intentionality

• This is an essential structure of consciousness
  or conscious experiences.
• Consciousness is always directed towards some
  object it is always about something. (But
  remember were not concerned with any connection
  to a real existent.)
• being turned towards an object
• Thus there is an essential distinction between
  Being as Consciousness or Experience and Being as
  Thing.
• Intentional experiences are ACTS.
• Reflexive acts have a double intentionality.

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Understanding the Noesis and Noema (from Ideas,
1913)

• Decisive for a legitimate grounding of phen.
• Complicated analysis for the novice
• All of it is hard and requires laborious
  concentration on the data of specifically
  phenomenological eidetic intuition.
• There is no royal road into phen, and therefore
  none into philosophy. There is only one road
  presecribed by the phens own essence. (p. 149)

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The Noesis and Noema

• Noesis act of thinking
• Noesis the components proper of intentive
  mental processes they are really inherent and
  the basis of sense-bestowal
• Formerly called the intentional quality

• Noema what is thought
• Noema the intentional correlates and their
  components the perceived as perceived,
  remembered as remembered, etc. the sense

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To make this clear Husserl carries out an
exemplary analysis.

• In a garden we regard with pleasure a blooming
  apple tree.
• Consider how a naturalist (materialist) would
  explain our perception.
• Epoché the transcendental phenomenological
  attitude suspends the natural belief in the
  actual being of the apple tree.
• The relation between perceiving and perceived,
  liking and liked, remains in pure immanence.
• From this point we can describe perception in its
  noematic aspect as sth given in its essence.
• Quote p. 137 The tree simpliciter....
• Now consider these examples

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• Eidetic law there can be no noetic moment
  without a noematic moment belonging to it.

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Critique of image-theory and distinction between
immanental and actual objects

• Image as meant, not a real predicate, based on an
  originary intentionality.
• For Husserl, truth involves the agreement between
  the intended (meant) and the given (presence).
• The actual object is parenthesized, but this
  doesnt prevent the fact that the perception is
  csness of an actuality.
• Erroneous distinction leads to an infinite
  regress.

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The Way Into Phen. Trans. Phi. by inquiring back
from the Pregiven Life-World

• Crisis of European Sciences our understanding is
  deformed by the one-sided understanding of the
  scientific world we need to relate scientific
  understanding back to the structure of the
  life-world (Lebenswelt).
• This is a very vast theme...
• and a universal problem for philosophy!

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• Problem what is the relation between objective,
  scientific thinking and intuition of the
  surrounding world of life, pregiven as existing
  for all in common.
• Science presupposes the life-world (the ultimate
  horizon of all human achievement).
• The idea of objective truth is predetermined in
  its whole meaning by the contrast with the idea
  of the truth in pre-scientific and
  extra-scientific life. (p.165)

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• The objective-true world is in principle
  nonintuitable the life-world is the universe of
  what is intuitable.
• How does the life-world ground the
  scientifically true world?
• The answer is by no means obvious, but the first
  step istrans. phen. epoché of objective science.