Phenomenology of Science

Husserl (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Husserl) and Merleau-Ponty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merleau-ponty)

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• phenomenology
• science
• philosophy
• experience
• reality

[acephalism]

Heidegger's phenomenology is that science IS a way in which we ARE.

We talk of science thematically because we experience discovery as a mode of un-concealment. The sciences are not merely intersubjective, phenomenologically the sciences ARE, as ways in which we ARE, however confusing or complicated being and our being can become when taken thematically.

Merleau-Ponty is methodologically problematic: he begins with perception. But we are not proximally and for the most part perceivers.

[0ThouArtThat0]

Thank you, that was all very helpful.

Perception is a poor foundation for phenomenology. The only foundation seems to be the experience which we are always already undergoing. I think Merleau-Ponty's later work surrounding the primacy of 'the Flesh,' "the mysterious tissue or matrix that underlies and gives rise to both the perceiver and the perceived," is less problematic.

[pdballiet]

in brief.

true ideas are not "constructed" as you say here (1:20).

ideas are immediately sensed.

ideas are embodied,

NO knowledge or phenomena is DISEMBODIED

what if moving our minds around abstract knowledge is no different than moving our bodies around the externals of the ideas.

the concrete world is just the exterior of the ideas that are their interior.

one knows this "actual concrete world" ,MORE intimately through ideas and understanding, than through pre-rational experience alone

[0ThouArtThat0]

I agree that ideas are embodied, sensed. And I agree that ideas give us a clearer understanding of what lies behind the surfaces of things.

The scientific knowledge I was critiquing in this video is not the same as the philosophical insight that Plato or Hegel wrote about. I was trying to dispel the widespread belief that mechanistic materialism is the way the world actually is.

[judygarsdale]

I have no arguement, which is a new response to the idea of phenomenology.

[EvoinOZ]

Nice presentation, mate. It is a good a concise explication of 20th C.phenomenology.

What I don't understand however, is why it so important to the phenom./existentialist to assert that the the free-will is real(determinism is false) as Satre was so want to argue. I note you mention it too.

Why can't one employ the 'always already' experience as the Taoist does( finger pointing to the moon) without asserting a free will?

[tellyontellyon]

As the Zen Buddhists would say...

conceptual mind is just like a finger pointing to the moon...

don't confuse the finger with the moon.

[zurbarab]

Heidegger calls it "Being-in-the-world". Wonderful presentation !

[gruvinnz]

But what if the final truth is that our entire universe is, say, a sophisticated RPG computer game and, in fact, everything we hold to be "reality" turns out to be numerical values relative to other values, processed over time by some cluster of super fast CPUs?

In that case, phenomenology, or indeed philosophy itself have any real meaning? What is real, if it's not perceived, thought about and discussed? OK... never mind! :P

[gruvinnz]

How can there be any valid phenomenological study when so-called "reality" itself is, apparently, little more than a mental construct of past events and imagined futures for, I imagine, merely the entertainment of we humans, or indeed the gods (either of whom may or may not actually "exist")?

Phenomenology does seem a perfect topic for philosophers though huh? :P

[alteringenting]

Only logos, the mind, is. So you're both right and agree. We are always already in a world because the concepts that are happening, that is living, are forming the horizon of the possible. We have internalized, i.e. inherited our conceptual mak-up. The concepts we're all here before any of us were born. So logos gives life to carne. In the beginning was the word. Its all mind