Do you believe or do you epoché?

[Immanuel Can]

Of course. It would be wrong to disagree with you.

Not morally.

[Gary Childress]

Of course. It would be wrong to disagree with you.

Not morally.

Probably that too.

[odysseus]

Gary:
When it comes to things that seem to be beyond all reasonable ability to know or verify--for example such as whether or not there is a God or whether or not there are "dimensions" to the world and our existences which transcend our average, every day experiences--do you have a belief one way or the other on such matters or do you find yourself like me, unable to decide one way or the other and therefore generally in a perpetual state of suspended judgement or "epoché" with respect to those things?

You might find Anthony Steinbach's Phenomenology and Mysticism helpful. Husserl's epoche is a problem for those who abide strictly by what is clearly there, in "presence" or "presencing" of things because when all presuppositions are dismissed, and one is supposed to be facing "things themselves" Husserl seems to be violating his own insights into experience meaning making: He talks of the privilege of presence, the primacy of intuition, but how can this work if all knowledge is conditioned, or predelineated, as he put it? In other words, he is at once saying there is no pure experience of things because all encounters with the world are prethought, preunderstood in order to make having an experience possible.
But on the other hand, this "hermenuetic circle": does it really preclude understand things as "givens" as presence, as absolutes? This kind of thing is where your question comes in, for in the intentional encounter with things, when one suspends empirical claims and one simply has the object there, before one--this is an extraordinary event! Not for everyone, not for Heidegger, not for Derrida, for these guys argue that Husserl was involved in magical thinking with his talk about pure presence and the Cartesian egoic center (transcendental ego). But for me, it is unmistakable: there is someting, something that enters into the understanding when we step back from Being and witness being qua being. There is some rising intuition that is qualitatively different from what Levinas calls "the same".
Everyone is different and not everyone acknowledges this kind thing. For me it is quite profound,an intimation of something deeply important about being here and now. There is an element of the mystical, the divine, of god, but one is prohibited from putting too fine a point on it, from interpreting this. But it does give one a chance to reexamine old concepts like god and consider their existential grounding. See Kierkegaard and Levinas, and Buber and Otto. See Eckhart. I invite you to read Steinbock's book above .

[A_Seagull]

Let's try another alternative: the invitation to know God goes to everyone. The decision as to whether or not to accept it is made by the recipient.

I'd rather get to know Santa Claus..

[Immanuel Can]

...when one suspends empirical claims and one simply has the object there, before one--this is an extraordinary event!

Thanks for a very thoughtful contribution to discussion.

I wonder if this is so extraordinary as we might at first be inclined to guess, or whether it is a rather ordinary phenomenon that usually simply goes unnoticed. Why I suggest that is not to diminish mystical experience or the encounter with objects-in-themselves as an idea, but rather to point out that empirical knowing is not at all so free from this phenomenon as one might at first think.

Let's take the most self-consciously empirical stance: scientific investigation. That would seem to be the most "non-mystical" type of thinking, I think most people would say. But by what process of cognition does one come to recognize an object or set of phenomena as worthy of being considered by the empirical stance? It's not an empirical process -- scientific objects and problems are not "just there, declaring themselves to be suitable objects of empirical investigation," so to speak. A non-scientists would look at the same object, and see nothing worthy of investigation. Or a different scientist from the one doing the looking would also look and not see the problem, or would imagine it was a different one.

In cases of empirical knowing, something precedes the taking of the empirical stance toward any object of investigation. And this "thing" is a frame of mind that is intuitive, personal, and attentive to the object. One might say it's a "flash of inspiration" by which the scientist says, "Aha! I have a situation to investigate now -- this is worthy of the empirical stance."

How does he know it's "worthy" of his efforts, since he has not yet performed any empirical investigations on it?

Why does Newton see the apple as a problem for an investigation, whereas ordinary folks don't, and Archimedes, who may have eaten (or even been hit by) many apples, never saw anything in it either? Something very odd is going on there. It's not science, per se: it's pre-scientific inspiration of some kind, that flash of insight that allows science to happen. Somehow, the object becomes valuable for special regard and extra effort: but from what and where does this come?

I don't doubt that one can deliberately adopt an attitude of "meeting" the object "there, before one." But is it really always so "spooky" and mystical as all that? And is the attitude always deliberately adopted, or is it just a happening that not everybody processes?

Maybe everybody does some measure of it: but not everybody even knows they do.

[odysseus]

Immanuel Can

I wonder if this is so extraordinary as we might at first be inclined to guess, or whether it is a rather ordinary phenomenon that usually simply goes unnoticed. Why I suggest that is not to diminish mystical experience or the encounter with objects-in-themselves as an idea, but rather to point out that empirical knowing is not at all so free from this phenomenon as one might at first think.

That is really the point. It's a bit like what the Buddhists say about one's Buddha nature: you con't achieve it or acquire it--it's always already there, but you have become, of are, alienated from it by your attachments, your affections and desires. Here, epoche is something that is there, before you and to clean the slate and "see" authentically the object you have to do a reduction, or, a dismissing of presuppositions, things that would make a knowledge claim and would steal away your attention from the presence-as-presence. So, it is not extraordinary if you consider that the object is the same; but then, it is our interpretive "take" on this that makes the difference.

Let's take the most self-consciously empirical stance: scientific investigation. That would seem to be the most "non-mystical" type of thinking, I think most people would say. But by what process of cognition does one come to recognize an object or set of phenomena as worthy of being considered by the empirical stance? It's not an empirical process -- scientific objects and problems are not "just there, declaring themselves to be suitable objects of empirical investigation," so to speak. A non-scientists would look at the same object, and see nothing worthy of investigation. Or a different scientist from the one doing the looking would also look and not see the problem, or would imagine it was a different one.

Most empirical scientists give little or no regard for the philosophical issues about what they do, especially if these issues are husserelian. But philosophy, the one true religion, shows us that at the "end" of every inquiry there is transcendence. Logic is transcendental at the level of basic assumptions, for from whence comes the the proof that logic is valid? Saying it is self evident simply means you don't have one. This is why Kant set his deduction for pure reason in a place where reason cannot go, transcendence, for logic is presupposed in all we can think, and that is circularity in reasoning. Logic cannot think itself; one would have to step outside logic for this. But one would have to step outside this to think it as well; and so on. That is Wittgenstein, but Kant is behind. Transcendence is omnipresent.

In cases of empirical knowing, something precedes the taking of the empirical stance toward any object of investigation. And this "thing" is a frame of mind that is intuitive, personal, and attentive to the object. One might say it's a "flash of inspiration" by which the scientist says, "Aha! I have a situation to investigate now -- this is worthy of the empirical stance."

In cases of empirical knowing, there is, I would argue, very little of the intuitive and personal. It is objective and discursive and derivative. Something new comes along only as a challenge to "normal science" and this is hard to achieve (so wrote Kuhn). That 'aha!' moment is not intuitive, but implicit discursive as the mind conceives "in recollection" and produces in the normal way, through logic and sensory data. Some say, most, really, that there is nothing beyond this rigorous model of thought. My thinking is that logic cannot be overturned, but content, that is quite another thing.

How does he know it's "worthy" of his efforts, since he has not yet performed any empirical investigations on it?

Why does Newton see the apple as a problem for an investigation, whereas ordinary folks don't, and Archimedes, who may have eaten (or even been hit by) many apples, never saw anything in it either? Something very odd is going on there. It's not science, per se: it's pre-scientific inspiration of some kind, that flash of insight that allows science to happen. Somehow, the object becomes valuable for special regard and extra effort: but from what and where does this come?

I don't doubt that one can deliberately adopt an attitude of "meeting" the object "there, before one." But is it really always so "spooky" and mystical as all that? And is the attitude always deliberately adopted, or is it just a happening that not everybody processes?

Scientists are "thrown into" a body of accepted theory when they start out. That is their reference point for knowing what is worthy: in the competition of ideas set before them as scientists. It is when anomalies present themselves, that is where the new comes in. But the what and where? This is IN this collective science of the field. These guys care nothing for philosophy unless it is in the philosophy of science, and here, one doesn't know where theoretical science ends and philosophy begins.
It is not always so spooky. It almost always is just the opposite: the same familiar world. It is when one takes up the world philosophically that one can see the spooky side. Scientists are the polar opposites of philosophers, though the latter tend to be not spooky at all; they prefer the rigors of well reasoned arguments and have little regard for mysticism.
But they are, all of them, deluded. The world as transcendence can be witnessed intuitively as such. Hard to prove, of course. Everybody is different. Not for, usually, the anal retentive types dogmatically devoted to structured thought. Such ones have no truck with epoche, unless it is academically conceived, as with Husserl.

[Immanuel Can]

So, it is not extraordinary if you consider that the object is the same; but then, it is our interpretive "take" on this that makes the difference.

Quite so. The raw materials of the inspiration are the same in both cases.

Most empirical scientists give little or no regard for the philosophical issues about what they do...

This should be carved in stone above the door of every scientific institute.

I remember what Oppenheimer once said: "...when you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb."

If that's how scientists actually think about what they do, then God help us all.

Logic cannot think itself...

Right. It needs a person, and that person has to participate in certain assumptions that preceded the system. Aristotle tried to articulate some of these.

I used to think that maybe mathematics was the lone exception. Maybe it could "think itself," operate without a personal commitment, in that it's a closed system of referential symbols, so it ought to be "watertight." But it's not. It needs axioms that precede maths, and those axioms must be accepted by persons.

For example, it needs the statement, "No numerical value will be used to represent more than one quantity." So a "2" must remain the concept "two," and not be allowed to slip to "3" or "4," or the entire system of mathematics will no longer work. Likewise, "Numerical symbols shall remain referential to the same concepts for all persons and situations." Those sorts of axioms, expressible in words, precede even maths. And they're formal and assumptive, not deduced.

But this has serious implications for those who think "being scientific" is the high and lone road to truth, to the attainment of an objective purity that removes the need for personal commitment.

In cases of empirical knowing, there is, I would argue, very little of the intuitive and personal. It is objective and discursive and derivative.

Once the empirical process has already been recognized and engaged, okay: but the way one comes to see an occasion for empirical knowledge is purely intuitive, and depends on the particular person (scientist) involved in the work. Likewise, at the end of the empirical process we have data: but we don't know what it's for, what its possible applications are, who might benefit from it, how it might change society, and whether or not what we've done is even ethical. All that requires human inspiration.

Thus, the empirical process is at least bracketed by the intuitive, the creative, the artistic, even. And to fail to pay attention to that part of the equation is to know scientific method, but not know what to use it on, or what to use it for.

Scientists are "thrown into" a body of accepted theory when they start out.

Absolutely. Science is a "tradition," with a history, a skill-set and a specific set of rules, that nobody learns from thin air: they learn it from another person or persons, and with that they also learn what this tradition currently believes. Then they are asked to reconcile what they will go on to do, as a scientist, with that tradition and that package of prior beliefs.

To participate with that, according to its rules, is to "extend" science. But as Kuhn says, to defy that, even in part, is to have to "revolutionize" the field...to rock the boat, defy the tradition in some way, and break some of the constraints one has been taught. And that is not always greeted with thanks.

That is their reference point for knowing what is worthy:

Well, if they conform, perhaps: but I'm not convinced even of that much. Science is, first and foremost, a method. And methods don't tell you what to do, just how to do it once you start. As to what you must study, that can be forced on you from the traditions and past questions of science, true; but to do something revolutionary is to see what others have never seen yet, and to seize something beyond the received tradition of science.

It is when anomalies present themselves, that is where the new comes in.

Yes: but how does one recognize an "anomaly"? In truth, they don't "present themselves" (any more than logic does logic, as you say). Rather, they are identified as anomalies by particular human beings, for reasons those human beings articulate, and as a product of those particular human beings' cognitions; and in order to do that, one has to be attuned to things to which other scientists may not be.

Think of it this way: why would we ever give an award to a scientist? If his questions and answers all come only from the tradition itself, then we ought to give all medals to the tradition. But we don't: we recognize that a particular "contribution" is tied to the ingenuity of an individual person -- to his powers of inspiration, imagination, vision, recognition of opportunity, and so on. And a real "contribution" worth awarding "changes the game," so to speak, for everyone.

Scientists are the polar opposites of philosophers, though the latter tend to be not spooky at all; they prefer the rigors of well reasoned arguments and have little regard for mysticism.

They shouldn't be. They should be like Michael Polanyi -- who I understand was highly skilled at both. But we tend to train scientists for technical performance, not for their prowess in metaphysical applications of their work.

But that is an ideal, and unfortunately, the "mindset" that characterizes most scientists is not open on those kinds of issues, as you say. They tend to be prosaic and concrete in their ambitions, which is what makes them great engineers of materials, but is also what keeps them from being great analysts of what it is they're really doing.

And that, perhaps, accounts for a great many of the bad things science has sometimes done. For whenever we think of all the good it has done, we need to reflect on that. But who takes that job seriously? Only the philosophers of science, perhaps.

[A_Seagull]

Well it might help if philosophers had some idea of what they are talking about... which they don't. They live in a fantasy world and pretend that it is reality while at the same time congratulating themselves about how clever they are.

[odysseus]

Immanuel Can
Quite so. The raw materials of the inspiration are the same in both cases.

That is a point to examine, the raw materials that is. For there are those who do not believe such a thing makes sense at all. If by raw you mean what is there sitting and waiting for its nature to be discovered, then it would be very hard to say what this would be, this nature, without resorting to the language that is used o do the explaining. Then one realizes that language, the idea does, is not merely entangled with the things out there, but are part of them; they are "of a piece". Kant said this (intuitions without concepts are blind; concepts without intuitions are empty) and Husserl, our epoche man, said it in spades. What this does is very interesting: it dethrones the privilege of science to explain things because science becomes just another gathering of thought that can be talked about meaningfully. Science remains very important and valid, of course; it just does not define the world as such any longer. Phenomenology does.

This should be carved in stone above the door of every scientific institute.

I remember what Oppenheimer once said: "...when you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb."

If that's how scientists actually think about what they do, then God help us all.

Ethics in science? I think these guys are committed to going where science leads and ethics doesn't enter into it. It's the politicians, the utopians who are willing to sacrifice the least advantaged in order to make things work, create new social order. Put a charismatic psychopath in office, watch out.

Right. It needs a person, and that person has to participate in certain assumptions that preceded the system. Aristotle tried to articulate some of these.

I used to think that maybe mathematics was the lone exception. Maybe it could "think itself," operate without a personal commitment, in that it's a closed system of referential symbols, so it ought to be "watertight." But it's not. It needs axioms that precede maths, and those axioms must be accepted by persons.

For example, it needs the statement, "No numerical value will be used to represent more than one quantity." So a "2" must remain the concept "two," and not be allowed to slip to "3" or "4," or the entire system of mathematics will no longer work. Likewise, "Numerical symbols shall remain referential to the same concepts for all persons and situations." Those sorts of axioms, expressible in words, precede even maths. And they're formal and assumptive, not deduced.

But this has serious implications for those who think "being scientific" is the high and lone road to truth, to the attainment of an objective purity that removes the need for personal commitment.

While this is clearly true, I would say even the agreement as to how the numbers are quantified and designated has not yet touched bottom, for this agreement presupposes the logic/math to do this. Logic cannot behold what is "beneath" the logic that second guesses logic. I can assume the reflective position and question my own logic, ask about what it is that validates it, but any answer that I may come up with, any reductionist take on it, saying, e.g., that all thought is merely brain functions, neuronal networking and the like, will be itlsef cast in logic. There is no way out. We are stuck thinking in logic to think at all, and so the nature of logic will remain transcendental: unwitnessable at its origin. It is nonsense to even say something like, "beyond or beneath logic".

Once the empirical process has already been recognized and engaged, okay: but the way one comes to see an occasion for empirical knowledge is purely intuitive, and depends on the particular person (scientist) involved in the work. Likewise, at the end of the empirical process we have data: but we don't know what it's for, what its possible applications are, who might benefit from it, how it might change society, and whether or not what we've done is even ethical. All that requires human inspiration.

Thus, the empirical process is at least bracketed by the intuitive, the creative, the artistic, even. And to fail to pay attention to that part of the equation is to know scientific method, but not know what to use it on, or what to use it for.

This is a point of argument: when I think about a some puzzling problem, how personal is it, or can it be? After all, all the ideas in my head are those in circulation publicly. I may be a particular locus of reason's work on the problem, but I am not qualitatively original, any more than one computer is distinct from another. Logical systems employed in a world of facts, this is what a scientist is IN. Foucault said that we are, all of us, being ventriloquized by history. When we speak, think, interpret, we are drawing from what we assimilated from others. We simply recollect when we think. And the intuitive part that works invisibly behind the scenes and produces insight: just part of a discursive process all understand.

Absolutely. Science is a "tradition," with a history, a skill-set and a specific set of rules, that nobody learns from thin air: they learn it from another person or persons, and with that they also learn what this tradition currently believes. Then they are asked to reconcile what they will go on to do, as a scientist, with that tradition and that package of prior beliefs.

To participate with that, according to its rules, is to "extend" science. But as Kuhn says, to defy that, even in part, is to have to "revolutionize" the field...to rock the boat, defy the tradition in some way, and break some of the constraints one has been taught. And that is not always greeted with thanks.

He does, Kuhn, that is, agree with Kant, and is therefore an idealist, not believing that anything absolute about the world of empirical discovery could enter into thought: truth is made, not discovered. A radical idea for most. There is only one exception: epoche. I think to do a phenomeological reduction reveals absolutes. Tough to argue, though.

Well, if they conform, perhaps: but I'm not convinced even of that much. Science is, first and foremost, a method. And methods don't tell you what to do, just how to do it once you start. As to what you must study, that can be forced on you from the traditions and past questions of science, true; but to do something revolutionary is to see what others have never seen yet, and to seize something beyond the received tradition of science.

Scientific revolutions are pretty rare, and even these are on the shoulders of others. Could Einstein have proceeded without Maxwell,Newton, Faraday and the rest? But granted, he was entirely original (so I am given to understand. What do I know of such things, though). The philosophical point would be that one does not come up with anything that is not latent in the possibilities laid out before them.

Yes: but how does one recognize an "anomaly"? In truth, they don't "present themselves" (any more than logic does logic, as you say). Rather, they are identified as anomalies by particular human beings, for reasons those human beings articulate, and as a product of those particular human beings' cognitions; and in order to do that, one has to be attuned to things to which other scientists may not be.

Think of it this way: why would we ever give an award to a scientist? If his questions and answers all come only from the tradition itself, then we ought to give all medals to the tradition. But we don't: we recognize that a particular "contribution" is tied to the ingenuity of an individual person -- to his powers of inspiration, imagination, vision, recognition of opportunity, and so on. And a real "contribution" worth awarding "changes the game," so to speak, for everyone.

But one recognizes an anomaly the same way all such things are. It is just on a grander scale in science. I hammer away and suddenly the head flies off the hammer. An anomaly. I stop, look around for a cause, a remedy, a context of meaning when such things occur. I certainly do respect science, I just think that what even the most ingenious scientists are an extension of the common, the usual, because they are confined to empirical methods. Husserl's epoche, now that is like walking on water. For to register the presence of something as presence apart from any context, as an actuality in and of itself is like actually encountering a Kantian thing in itself, a noumenon. ( It is of great interest to me to find and personally encounter things themeslves. I try to argue that it is an encounter with oneself, the Cartesian actuality: the innwardness of apprehending the outer world reveals itself in the epoche. I want to read Husserl on this.) I think imagination, vision and the rest are marvelous, but even the best solutions to he most difficult problems settle into normal science, awaiting the next revolution.

They shouldn't be. They should be like Michael Polanyi -- who I understand was highly skilled at both. But we tend to train scientists for technical performance, not for their prowess in metaphysical applications of their work.

But that is an ideal, and unfortunately, the "mindset" that characterizes most scientists is not open on those kinds of issues, as you say. They tend to be prosaic and concrete in their ambitions, which is what makes them great engineers of materials, but is also what keeps them from being great analysts of what it is they're really doing.

And that, perhaps, accounts for a great many of the bad things science has sometimes done. For whenever we think of all the good it has done, we need to reflect on that. But who takes that job seriously? Only the philosophers of science, perhaps.

We are, many say, at the end of philosophy. I agree, but it is an end achieved in India centuries ago. What philsophy does is shows us that Truth with a capital T' is not a thing to be examined. Rather, it is a thing to be liberated from in order to realize it. Look to Derrida: words, words and more words. They are a prison; we are in a prison of hermeneutical circularity. I recently read John Caputo's Radical Hermeneutics. I don't agree with his essential thesis, but so helpful he is to understand the issues brought forth by Kiekegaard, Husserl, Heidegger and Derrida. One of the best I have ever read.

[odysseus]

A_Seagull
Well it might help if philosophers had some idea of what they are talking about... which they don't. They live in a fantasy world and pretend that it is reality while at the same time congratulating themselves about how clever they are.

Powerful words. Pray, continue.

[A_Seagull]

A_Seagull
Well it might help if philosophers had some idea of what they are talking about... which they don't. They live in a fantasy world and pretend that it is reality while at the same time congratulating themselves about how clever they are.

Powerful words. Pray, continue.

lol

And in what direction would you like me to continue?

One of the biggest problems with philosophy is that it has no measure of success or even progress. In science there is clear evidence of both...more precise and concise predictions are made which are verified from observations, modern technology is also a clear indicator of its accuracy and applicability to the real world.

Philosophy has neither of these indicators. It has progressed up a blind canyon which because there is to progress to be made, philosophers simply presume they have arrived at the truth. But being up a blind canyon it is also incredibly boring and nihilistic. But luckily it is just a fantasy.. reality isn't really that way.

[odysseus]

A_Seagull

One of the biggest problems with philosophy is that it has no measure of success or even progress. In science there is clear evidence of both...more precise and concise predictions are made which are verified from observations, modern technology is also a clear indicator of its accuracy and applicability to the real world.

Philosophy has neither of these indicators. It has progressed up a blind canyon which because there is to progress to be made, philosophers simply presume they have arrived at the truth. But being up a blind canyon it is also incredibly boring and nihilistic. But luckily it is just a fantasy.. reality isn't really that way.

Thanks for that A_Seagull. Much better.
Philosophy takes the matter starting where inquiry encounters difficulty at the level of basic questions that attend everything in the world.

Studying philosophy does not solve problems at this level, but it opens inquiry into deeper meaning. It dispels foolish thinking, casts out medieval demons that haunt our culture and insists on clear analysis of the things that are interpretatively unsettled. It takes the foolishness out religion, while preserving the existential foundation for religion; it presents a way to engage the world at the threshold of meaning; it provides a way to affirm a body of thought is both genuine, because rationally accountable, and exploratory into what is hidden or vague: the world at its borders is not opaque, but translucent. And it is the questioning that let's us open this up to see. How so?

Philosophy is destructive--that is its essence. It does not build things up; rather it takes things apart, annihilates bad reasoning and ancient institutions, in order to invent the world anew. It is Siva, not Brahma. It takes inquiry to a place it never suspected even existed, and there, one is liberated from the massive stupidity that rules our politics,our religion, our ethics.

Philosophy can clear away constructs that bar the way to insight, and insight can be momentous. It can lead to a profound encounter with the world, something Wordsworth and Emerson wrote about.

You think philosophy has no measure of success, but you measure success in terms of questions answered. Consider that in all we do and think, no questions are definitively answered. I can ask about the value of improving your cell phone and if ply inquiry, you will find yourself deep in philosophy in a matter of seconds. Literally. We live in a world where philosophy saturates our thoughts and values implicitly, for all things rest with questions. Only by reading can one see this. One has to want to understand.

[roydop]

Consider that in all we do and think, no questions are definitively answered

Indeed, no matter the system of thought. Thought itself is the creator of delusion. Doesn't matrer if it's religion, philosophy, or science. It's all delusion leading to samsara.

[Immanuel Can]

This is a point of argument: when I think about a some puzzling problem, how personal is it, or can it be? After all, all the ideas in my head are those in circulation publicly. I may be a particular locus of reason's work on the problem, but I am not qualitatively original, any more than one computer is distinct from another.

Ah, but we are not computers. If we were, then the input "public concepts" would be processed by each in exactly the same way, and with the same results. Nor, contrary to Foucault, are we "ventriloquized by history" For if we were, then "history" would be only one thing, and the "hand up our backs" would induce us to the same utterances. We must understand Foucault to be hyperbolical there, trying to tell us we are less original than we think: but if we take him to mean that there is no particular person, no individual identity involved in the processing of a concept, then he's not telling the truth.

Foucault wanted to put everybody in "classes," and make them victims of groupthink. He wanted to do this so as to "debunk" their power-authority structures. (His personal reasons for wanting this are quite transparent and well-known.) But this is only a semi-credible idea at best -- not dead wrong for everything, but only partly right -- because "classes" are themselves different, and process things differently. Even Foucault said they did. Otherwise, what was the evil of "group" or "class"? What was there to "debunk"?

But the inter-sectionalists have taken us even one step farther: in dividing up the groups into subgroups, they've created an infinite number of potential collocations of criteria -- with the net result that the individual is back with a vengeance, not this time as a mere member of a "class" or "power group," but as the unique intersection of diverse criteria.

Moreover, when we think about the phenomenal, we must remember that when a concept is processed, no matter how "public" or "historical" that concept may have been in origin, the stimulus for it comes from somewhere outside the individual and the class. It comes from what we might call "the real world," or Kant might have wanted to call "the numinous." But it doesn't come from ME, and it doesn't come from US.

One short definition of reality is, "That which pushes back against my will." That's not a bad little definition, in some ways.

Now, finally, in the interpretive event there's not just "the interpretation," standing all alone, outside of all facts. There's the inducement-to-interpret (the facts, events or stimuli from "the world"), the interpreter (the individual person, unique as he or she is), and the interpretation (his or her attempt to recode the experience in language, understand it, and to render it "public" again).

He does, Kuhn, that is, agree with Kant, and is therefore an idealist, not believing that anything absolute about the world of empirical discovery could enter into thought: truth is made, not discovered.

It depends what you mean by "truth." Is truth a mere product of the interpretation? Or is truth an approximation to the reality of the stimulus that forms the inducement-to-interpret? The first alternative is implausible, it seems to me.

I think to do a phenomeological reduction reveals absolutes. Tough to argue, though.

I'd be interested in seeing how it would be done, though.

Yes: but how does one recognize an "anomaly"? In truth, they don't "present themselves" (any more than logic does logic, as you say). Rather, they are identified as anomalies by particular human beings, for reasons those human beings articulate, and as a product of those particular human beings' cognitions; and in order to do that, one has to be attuned to things to which other scientists may not be.

But one recognizes an anomaly the same way all such things are. It is just on a grander scale in science. I hammer away and suddenly the head flies off the hammer. An anomaly. I stop, look around for a cause, a remedy, a context of meaning when such things occur.

Why, when the head flies off the hammer, does one person laugh, another curse, and a third just pick up a new hammer and go on? Why does Newton see gravity in the apple, but Joe Lunchbucket does not, and neither does Parmenides? Anomalies are recognized by individuals. By others, they are not even noted.

They do not "present themselves" as anomalies. They only are self-presented as events. They are interpreted as anomalies, or as indicative of something, only by those who are in the frame of mind to do it.

I recently read John Caputo's Radical Hermeneutics. I don't agree with his essential thesis, but so helpful he is to understand the issues brought forth by Kiekegaard, Husserl, Heidegger and Derrida. One of the best I have ever read.

I know Caputo only from the "end of ethics" school. I should take a look at that book.

[A_Seagull]

A_Seagull

One of the biggest problems with philosophy is that it has no measure of success or even progress. In science there is clear evidence of both...more precise and concise predictions are made which are verified from observations, modern technology is also a clear indicator of its accuracy and applicability to the real world.

Philosophy has neither of these indicators. It has progressed up a blind canyon which because there is to progress to be made, philosophers simply presume they have arrived at the truth. But being up a blind canyon it is also incredibly boring and nihilistic. But luckily it is just a fantasy.. reality isn't really that way.

Thanks for that A_Seagull. Much better.
Philosophy takes the matter starting where inquiry encounters difficulty at the level of basic questions that attend everything in the world.

Studying philosophy does not solve problems at this level, but it opens inquiry into deeper meaning. It dispels foolish thinking, casts out medieval demons that haunt our culture and insists on clear analysis of the things that are interpretatively unsettled. It takes the foolishness out religion, while preserving the existential foundation for religion; it presents a way to engage the world at the threshold of meaning; it provides a way to affirm a body of thought is both genuine, because rationally accountable, and exploratory into what is hidden or vague: the world at its borders is not opaque, but translucent. And it is the questioning that let's us open this up to see. How so?

Philosophy is destructive--that is its essence. It does not build things up; rather it takes things apart, annihilates bad reasoning and ancient institutions, in order to invent the world anew. It is Siva, not Brahma. It takes inquiry to a place it never suspected even existed, and there, one is liberated from the massive stupidity that rules our politics,our religion, our ethics.

Philosophy can clear away constructs that bar the way to insight, and insight can be momentous. It can lead to a profound encounter with the world, something Wordsworth and Emerson wrote about.

You think philosophy has no measure of success, but you measure success in terms of questions answered. Consider that in all we do and think, no questions are definitively answered. I can ask about the value of improving your cell phone and if ply inquiry, you will find yourself deep in philosophy in a matter of seconds. Literally. We live in a world where philosophy saturates our thoughts and values implicitly, for all things rest with questions. Only by reading can one see this. One has to want to understand.

Thank you for that. However I think you have a very limited understanding of what philosophy is. You seem to think that philosophy is defined by what has been written about philosophy, surely a naïve view.

Philosophy is much more than that.