Category Archives: Phenomenology

Me, Them, & You, Part 2: Speaking to Things

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“Last week, we examined (in very summary fashion) the basic method common in analytic philosophy, and noted that this approach, that relies on propositional logic, leaves some important aporia. Most importantly, I argued that if we only attempt to describe reality from a third-person perspective, we cannot possibly hope to capture any reality that might be available only through other perspectives. For example, the irreducibly first-person perspective of immediate qualitative experience. My suggestion at the end of the piece was that phenomenology (especially capital-p Phenomenology) was at least one important way we could engage in serious philosophical reflection on or from a first-person perspective. Yet, even if we generated a synthetic philosophical method formed from a combination of third-person and first-person accounts of reality, there still seemed to be important aspects of reality that might be left out, namely: our relationships with other persons and, more broadly, ethical considerations.

“Now, some people might deny that these topics reveal any problem with our previously discussed method(s); indeed, as I suggested last week, plenty of philosophers think that all aspects of reality can be exhaustively described and explained purely from a third-person propositional method. If, however, we accept that our own reflection on phenomenality itself, which is, after all, the very window through which we experience reality at all, shows that a purely third-person description of reality will always both be incomplete and also dependent on the very thing it often is used to deny (and my whole substack is basically an extended argument to that effect), then I believe we can discover for ourselves, in the immediacy of the presentation of reality itself, a need for both a third-person and a first-person account of reality—and that, indeed, epistemologically, the latter must always come first.

But if we do accept this delimitation of any third-person philosophical method, including propositional logic, then I believe we must also accept a corresponding delimitation of any phenomenological first-person method, as well. This latter method indeed does give us much that the third-person approach lacks, but it is itself not complete (even if we reduce the third-person method to it). We can come to see this by simply reflecting on the reality of other first-person perspectives.

Continue reading on substack at: https://open.substack.com/pub/phenomenologyeastandwest/p/me-them-and-you-part-2-speaking-to

Me, Them, & You, Part 1: Speaking of Things

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““Philosophy” is an almost impossibly broad category, denoting a vast collection of ideas, theories, methods, intuitions, hopes, and doubts from basically every human culture that has any written record (and probably all the ones without one as well). Thus, we must be careful when we talk about “what philosophers do” or “the current views in philosophy”. If we do speak this way, it is almost certain that what we really mean is “what this particular kind of philosopher, who publishes in my native tongue, is doing” or “the current views of the kind of philosophy I happen to have read recently and tend to like”. We should not confuse such limited surveys of a tiny sliver of philosophy for philosophy in toto.

“And yet, we do often engage in such an error—certainly, many philosophers do! I remember speaking to a philosophy professor who specialized in analytic philosophy of mind. I mentioned the work of Martin Buber, and how great an impact he had had on my thinking. She responded rather breezily, “oh, I think I read him during my undergrad work. These days, I really only read philosophers.” I was taken aback—she seemed to think that Martin Buber, one of the most famous and influential philosophers of the 20th century—didn’t qualify as a philosopher at all, presumably because he wasn’t an analytic philosopher, but rather a member of that amorphous and threatening mass known as continental philosophy (queue the Imperial Death March on your headphones).

“And, to be frank, it is very often analytic philosophers (at least in my experience!) that tend to draw the fence of philosophy in this hyper-narrow and exclusive way.1 Analytic philosophy—basically, post-Kantian English language philosophy that focuses on producing sets of indubitable propositions and relies on a strict forms of propositional logic to do so—has barely existed for 2 centuries.2 And yet many analytic philosophers seem to think that doing philosophy correctly basically means only reading other analytic philosophers and employing its methods, to the exclusion of just about every other philosophical school or method (excepting occassional references to big names from the past like Aristotle or Hume). Other contemporary approaches to philosophy, whether from the broad continental and phenomenological tradition, or the pragmatic/pragmaticist tradition (to speak nothing of Indic, Chinese, or other non-Western philosophical methods), are generally either ignored or explicitly attacked as insufficiently philosophical. It is, gentle reader, not a recipe for truly critical engagement with the world.

Continue reading on Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/phenomenologyeastandwest/p/me-them-and-you-part-1-speaking-of

Consciousness is not a Phenomenon, Part 2: Other People’s Windows

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Last week, we saw that phenomenal consciousness, which is the “stage” upon which the world reveals itself to us as phenomena, is itself not a phenomenon, which makes any account of it—especially in material(ist) terms—exceedingly difficult. But to see just how serious the issue is, we need to move from a consideration of our own consciousness to how we might learn about the phenomenality of other people.

Red things just appear red to me, of course. But let’s say that we set up a little experiment. We find a hallway with a 90° turn. I sit at the corner itself and look down one leg of the hallway. I put a paint swatch at the other end of the hall, but I don’t tell you what color it is. You sit in the other leg of the hallway and look at me. I stare at the paint swatch, focusing on its color (spoiler warning: it’s green).

But what do you see? You see my head, and you see me staring intently. Within my brain, complex neurological activity is happening, which involves information processing that allows my brain-body complex to recognize the color green (understood as a specific hertz value of the electromagnetic radiation that struck my retina). This involves my eyes, the optic nerves, and probably many different sections of my brain. This is complicated, but not fundamentally mysterious. We can describe the process, beginning with the light bouncing off the swatch and ending with a brain state of “seeing green”, and we can describe it in purely mathematical terms. Meanwhile, also, this same process (somehow) results in my consciousness hosting the appearance of the quality of greenness (among many other things).

But where does the quality of greenness occur? Let’s say we isolate the part of my brain that actually process visual information and does the green-seeing. If we were able to install a little transparent window on the side of my head, would we expect to see that part of my brain glowing green?

Continue reading at: https://open.substack.com/pub/phenomenologyeastandwest/p/consciousness-is-not-a-phenomenon-f8a

Consciousness is not a Phenomenon, Part 1: Forgetting Our Window

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The question of what consciousness is has long interested—and perplexed—philosophers. Plato’s dialogue in the Phaedo, for example, is (in part) an effort to work out what consciousness might be. But the quest for an understanding of consciousness intensified in the latter part of the 20th century, at least within English-language philosophy. Contemporary Philosophy of mind developed in order to make sense of consciousness, to explain how consciousness could be fitted into the materialist ontology which had, by that time, become unquestionably dominant within most of academic philosophy.

However, after many decades of earnest work, the effort to arrive at a decisive answer to the question of how consciousness might arise from the brain seems no closer to success today than it did in 1950; indeed, in many ways, the pendulum seems to have shifted. More and more philosophers seem dubious that any materialist explanation of consciousness will be forthcoming.1

Now, there is much to say about all of this, both in making sense of the materialist strategies in philosophy of mind (eliminativism, epiphenomenalism, and “constitutivism”) as well as in the premises, assumptions, and biases that informed those efforts, and the fact that non-materialist or semi-materialist efforts to develop a philosophy of mind have not necessarily been any more successful (at least, so far). Philosophy of mind is an extremely complex and confusing group of discourses. I intend to write about it plenty in this space, but I will have to make sure I only bite off as much as I can chew each week.

So today I want to offer a general remark about a fundamental confusion that I see in much of philosophy of mind discourse—materialist or otherwise. It’s a confusion that I think helps to explain why so much of the writing on this subject is so often so fruitless and opaque.

Continue reading at: https://open.substack.com/pub/phenomenologyeastandwest/p/consciousness-is-not-a-phenomenon

Postmodernism vs. Postmodernism, Part 2: Ontic vs. Epistemic Postmodernism

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Last week, we took a look at the basic origin of postmodern philosophy, exploring how Kant’s distinction between the phenomenal and the noumenal set the stage for a crisis in modernist (i.e. more or less Enlightenment-era and, sometimes, post-Enlightenment) philosophy. I suggested at the end of that piece that the main reaction to this crisis—what we generally call postmodernism—took two distinct paths, one of which is the better-known (and frequently attacked), the other of which gets much less attention (but I think should get much more). So let’s dive right in1 (though if you haven’t read Part 1 and you aren’t that familiar with Kant’s work, you may want to read that first).

Western philosophers in the 19th century, who took Kant’s distinction seriously, were indeed in an intellectual crisis, for if the phenomena of our thinking lives—sensory impressions, concepts, the reasoning that binds them, etc.—have no guaranteed access to the noumena of reality, of things as they are in themselves, then it would be easy to give into despair: perhaps our thinking makes no contact with reality. If Kant is right, we can’t actually ever check or verify whether it does, since any new evidence we could evaluate would be, of course, evidence that we gathered with our senses and used our reason to organize into concepts—all evidence of the noumenal must become phenomenal for us to consider it at all.

From one perspective, then, post-Kantian philosophy found itself “locked in” to the mind. They wanted to say true things about reality, but had lost confidence that they could do so. What does an aspiring philosopher do in such dire straits?

Continue reading on my substack at: https://phenomenologyeastandwest.substack.com/p/postmodernism-vs-postmodernism-part-c1c

Non-Dualism vs. Non-Dualism vs. Non-Dualism vs. Monism

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Last week, we dove into the turbulent waters of dualism. I focused my time there pointing out that “dualism” is, as the smart kids say, an overdetermined term: there are (at least!) four different meanings to dualism: what I called 1) ontological dualism, 2) theological dualism, ditheism style, 3) theological dualism, Barthian style, and 4) phenomenological1 dualism.

Attentive readers may remember, however, that I began that post on dualism asking a question about something else entirely—non-dualism. Although I did touch on non-dualist responses to the various modes of dualism outlined, we didn’t dig deeply into it there—so we shall today.

As I pointed out at the top of last week’s post, non-dualism is a trendy, popular word today, especially in many spiritual-but-not-religious spaces who are looking for alternative approaches to spirituality. Many in the west today, both conservative and liberal, tend to act as if the only options are mega-church Christianity or new Atheism. Non-dualism, with its air of mystery, seems to offer a refreshing alternative to both.

Considering that we offered 4 different modes of dualism, one might assume/worry that we will have to investigate 4 different modes of non-dualism here. Fortunately for you, my intrepid but time-strapped reader, things aren’t as bleak as that. Although there are non-dualist philosophical approaches to all 4 modes of dualism outlined, here I want to focus on just two.

Continue reading on my Substack, Phenomenology, East & West.

Dualism vs. Dualism vs. Dualism vs. Dualism

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Has anyone ever extolled the virtues of non-dualism to you? Many westerners who are interested in “Eastern” spirituality and mysticism tend to think that non-dualism is the key to unlock spirituality for us mundane Westerners. Anyone interested in Vedanta philosophy, in particular, will surely spend a lot of time considering non-dualism. Richard Rohr, undoubtedly one of the most popular Christian contemplative writers, speaks constantly about non-dualism. Why, even YouTube anarchists are getting in on the action. Non-dualism is interesting and trendy—but what, exactly, is it?

As we will see, that’s both a great question for anyone interested in phenomenology (I’m hoping that’s you!), but it’s also a complicated question. Indeed, I don’t think we can answer this question without first answering a related but distinct one: before we figure out what non-dualism is, surely we first need to figure out what dualism itself is.

Again, though, things get complicated quickly: there is no one thing called dualism. Today, I want to outline the three four common meanings of dualism, and explore how they are both related but also distinct. Only then will we be able to come back and figure out what non-dualism might be.

Click here or on the image below to keep reading on my new SubStack.

Phenomenology, East & West

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I have been writing here at Wrestling with the Angel for about 10 years, often only intermittently. It’s changed names and focuses a few times. In the last year, my own interest has moved more and more towards a discussion of some particular topics, most notably phenomenology (broadly conceived) and related discipline like Vedanta and Neoplatonism.

So, I have started a Substack, Phenomenology, East & West. I will be posting there weekly. I will be linking those posts here as well (for a while), so if you are curious about that work, you can still check back here, and/or subscribe the Substack directly. I will likely also post some things only on this blog, especially if I want to write on something not really related to phenomenology itself.

(Note: I included links to the first few months’ worth of articles on the Substack here on my WordPress blog. I have since stopped doing so, since I figure anyone who wanted to follow me over there has done so. Rest assured, I have continued publishing over there. You can find all of those articles on my main substack page: https://phenomenologyeastandwest.substack.com/)

Without further ado, here’s the first, introductory post: Keeping Up Appearances: The Why, How, and Already of Phenomenology

Phenomenology is a ten-dollar word for something that you probably already do, at least some of the time. Phenomenon is the Greek word for “appearance”, and so phenomenology is just the study of, or focused ordering of, the appearances. But what, exactly, is an appearance?

The use of this word in its more-or-less post/modern philosophical sense can be traced back to Immanuel Kant, in at least two ways. For one thing, the word “phenomenology” seems to have first appeared in a letter written to Kant. Second, and more importantly, the basic frame of phenomenology was set by Kant himself in his (in)famous Critique of Pure Reason.

In the Critique, Kant introduces a fundamental metaphysical distinction between the appearances (phenomena) and things-themselves (noumena). Kant was pointing out something that is, for most people, pretty obvious, but which we often ignore and which has massive philosophical consequences: the way things appear to us is not the same as the way things actually are, in and of themselves.

Click here to continue reading on Substack.

The Flat Self and the Deep Other

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Julian-of-Norwich-&-hazelnut-798183Early in our lives, our sensory and mental life is all we can imagine; it fills not only our immediacy but also the boundaries of what we think possible. However things appear, whatever thoughts come to us, that’s reality, as far as we can know or imagine. It doesn’t seem like there could be anything else. As we get older, things start to change a bit. We have new experiences, new ideas, new conceptual relations. We begin to realize that there is more to reality than what appears to our consciousness at any given moment. We come to realize that other people’s experiences could be different–perhaps radically different–from our own, and yet also reflect reality just as truly as our own.

Once we begin to admit and accept that not all is as it seems, that there is more than meets the eye, and indeed more than meets our conceptual models, a funny thing happens to us. Our sensory experience, our mental life, which before seemed so full and so rich, starts to flatten. We recognize that what occurs to us is superficial. It’s almost as if our world goes low-definition; we thought we had three or indeed four dimensions available to us, but we begin to see that our world, the world as it appears to us, is more like two-dimensional. Something is missing. Maybe a lot is missing! We begin to fill a bit hemmed-in by the horizons of our immediate consciousness.

This can be deeply unsettling, because our grip on certainty loosens here, and we have to give up control. Especially for people raised primarily as English-speakers, this can be even more troubling, for the culture of English-language philosophy is primarily a culture of empiricism: a confidence that, if we analyze our sensory experience closely enough, we can uncover all truth. To begin to see that this may not be quite true is to relinquish not only a view of the world that is important to us, but a view of ourselves too. The real world is somewhat veiled to us; not all mysteries will yield to our probing.

Yet this realization is, ultimately, liberating. To relinquish this world of our creating is to relinquish a small, sad, dead world. So long as the world is only what we see and think it to be, so long as we are the measure of reality, we know that we can never go beyond ourselves, we cannot transcend our limitations; we know we are trapped. To realize that the world we know is flat and superficial, ironically, allows us to see the world’s true value. Its flatness points to a depth somewhere else; the world we make doesn’t speak the whole truth, but it is spoken by a deeper truth. If there is more to reality than what we see and think, that more is real and is worth turning towards, even if its beyond our sensing and thinking. To see the world as flat is actually to begin to appreciate its real depth.

To see our world–and ourselves–in this way, however, is not easy. It means relinquishing not only that control and certainty, but also easy and convenient answers. It means accepting that life is, at its very core, infinitely mysterious, that we are given to ourselves from a place beyond our understanding. So it is not only that our world is stranger than we imagined, but we are stranger to ourselves than we imagined or want to accept. It’s not always a totally pleasant realization. But in the face of this troubling mystery lies our truth and the only possibility of real freedom.

Most of all, this realization, of the otherness of reality from our immediate experience, is the true foundation for faith in God.