Phenomenology

We're going to talk about phenomenology roughly as the study of being in the world as most popularly characterized by Martin Heidegger in his most famous work Being and Time. Phenomenology is a method of investigation or style of thought that has applications and implications within many fields of human intellectual and creative interest: religious studies, neuroscience, film, and painting are some that most immediately come to mind. What I want to say is that for me phenomenology is about a person or being experiencing the world from the vantage of its beingness or in our case our creatureliness. Human phenomenology is anthropomorphic meaning distinctly of human character, because the idea is that phenomenology is from the vantage point of the experience of existence.

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Now, let's talk about the phenomenology of whatever comes to mind. For instance, the phenomenology of basketball would be the content of the conscious experience one has when playing basketball the emotions, judgments, and perceptions normal to you playing basketball.



For more on Phenomenology check out this wiki page:

Phenomenology (philosophy) - Wikipedia

If you're curious about Heidegger check out this playlist:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4gvlOxpKKIgfufAQZ55tItfcQxAXub--

 

It's more the humility to acknowledge that the world "out there" cannot be honestly separated from our experience of it in any reliable way that gives us absolute and objective truths as understood in Grecian and Medieval classical philosophy. You're trying to see what makes an experience of something, you're less interested in what's unique about you, but unique about the thing you are and its experience of something within a given context. Like a human and a bat can both experience a cricket at night, but the cricket will appear as differing content to the two.

AI researchers and Neuroscientist find it practical because they are trying to figure out how to get robots to make accurate identification, intelligent movements, and take reliable learning routes. Also, Phenomenology is useful in thinking about consciousness which is why Neuroscientist care about it. Anytime something other people care about seems eminently impractical just assume you don't know much about it and thus don't have very much interest.

 

Yes, but metaphor and analogies are useful for thinking about the world outside, because as human beings we're imbedded within the world with a need to decide on what is true, right, or wrong in the world, so we're not in the position to take pure being and know what to judge as up, down, right or wrong, pure being is immanent but goes beyond the horizons of our experience such that we can only know it through logical consideration when we consider the role language and memory plays in forming and shaping our perceptions.

 

Would a lion, if it could, see the same spirits as you or experience spirits the same way as you?

I think reason is what went wrong in the Garden.

 

This was lovely to read, thank you for sharing.

 

Maybe, you and everyone else will find this video helpful in better understanding Phenomenology:

 

Understood.

I agree, I cannot adequately or fully represent the raw experience of pure being or the unfolding and revelation of the roaring thunder or blaze and flash of the leaded lightening, yet philosophy is a human activity, a game for man to put to use intellect and creativity in a harmony that can be seldom achieved in more stringent scientific programs to arrive at an understanding and consideration of what escapes the purview of pure observation and immediate thought. We hit technical problems in capturing the character, meaning, and existence of raw experience, because philosophy is a technical discipline of representation where one uses rigorous thought guided by intuition to do justice to the phenomena of raw experience in an attempt to understand them; the living is complex and we're figuring things out as we go. Philosophy is both an art and science, yes, it has at many instances fallen short, but what better for future philosophers to do than to attempt to do more justice in getting to the heart of what it is trying to capture? Nay, we waste no time in endeavoring to understand and render the world we inhabit in an intelligible sense, for knowledge is the servant of man, man is not the servant of knowledge, that is error is not a sin, but a part of the process of the evolution of thought as necessary as the space between notes and minor discordances in harmony are to creating pleasing music. Philosophy is extremely difficult and that's what makes it satisfying to the philosopher, one should see forming a sound argument more like performing a monstrous dunk or landing a solid jump shot, yet we ultimately are aiming for understanding, wisdom, truth, and insight regarding something.

Well put and I couldn't agree more and I'm glad.

Maybe, but it's worth thinking about is my point

Well, yes, everyone's perspective is unique; however, there are shared content across experiences and shared events of experience such as emotions and religious experiences which is why phenomenology is employed to think about and understand these experential realities. Now, character and family resemblance might strike one as crude notions, but it's like walking through an art gallery and viewing the impressionist and then expressionist paintings of what one is considering and then explaining why these images make sense as representations, this is applying phenomenology.

Yes, but across alpha male lions there is shared content and the same with defeated males, there is a reason Gollum and Scar from lion king strike the psyche as similar figures and that's what phenomenology can endeavor to explore, what are the emotions, perceptions, and judgements of the alpha and defeated male lion?

 

Indeed, my perspective, I think Prometheus is different because nature is seen as fundamentally hostile to life when humans are created by the gods or when Prometheus creates man where in The Genesis account the world is made for humans to inhabit and Satan tricks them bringing on death and hostility. Prometheus tricks the gods and Satan tricks man. I see the Gensis account as the folly of reason and the myth of Prometheus as the heroic deeds of reason.

 

Why Phenomenology is the legitimate intellectual turning in understanding truth. The self is an oligarchy a thing that differentiates its relation and evaluation based upon emotions, drive, instincts, motivations, and conditioning that formulate into values that act as the basis of coloration for what we filter, recall, and cogitate upon from encounter, experience, and observation. There is no mind free from a set of values that underlies its valuation of what it encounters; thus, the condition of the truths we arrive at therefore cannot be value free and so in our reasoning there is no purely objective, there is only a relationship between perception, understanding, and an everchanging evolution and dynamic of cognitive and evolutionary forces conspiring to bring about awareness and judgement.