“I see phenomenology as basing truth and existence on what we experience, as in seeing “phenomena”, and what we do with the observation or what it means to us. That is similar to existentialism, but existentialism does not try to be scientific, and existentialism endorses subjectivity rather than work to resolve it.” -David
I would argue, David, that it runs a little deeper than that in that it does consider the nature of the body and the brain (the logic of it if you will (in that based on pure perception there is no way we could have come to understand that for every external event (noema) there is a corresponding internal event (noesis). We simply would have thought of it in realist terms in which everything is just out there and we are in here. It is that break from experience-in-itself that led to Sartre’s recognition of the underlying nothingness of consciousness –something there is no way he could have perceived directly. Still, we have a lot of common ground here:
“In what way can phenomenology be considered ‘scientific’ I wonder?” –Steven
“I see phenomenology as the basis of science. For instance, before we had such a vast knowledge base of scientific information, what did people do? They looked at stuff and formed from it what opinion they could. Now I think we get caught up in the significance of the amount of knowledge accumulated and forget the phenomenological origin of science.”
You, Husserl, and Hegel as well:
“It is this process by which science in general comes about, this gradual development of knowing, that is set forth here in the Phenomenology of Mind. Knowing, as it is found at the start, mind in its immediate and primitive stage, is without the essential nature of mind, is sense-consciousness.” -Hegel, Georg W. F. (2010-06-24). The Phenomenology of Spirit (The Phenomenology of Mind) (Kindle Locations 679-681). Neeland Media LLC. Kindle Edition.
Now focusing in on an individual point:
“For instance, before we had such a vast knowledge base of scientific information, what did people do? They looked at stuff and formed from it what opinion they could.”
Yes: we have to remember that there was a time when philosophy and science were basically one thing (think Aristotle here. And I would add that it wasn’t just the lack of accumulated knowledge, but the lack of technology as well –hence the change in the philosophy of mind based on neuroscience and its brain scanning technology.
Still, in its time, phenomenology was the best technology we had available to study consciousness. And Hegel goes to great lengths to make it feel like science: those complex (almost mathematical (descriptions of the relationship between the various terminology that we still used well after him: consciousness, being-for-itself, being-in-itself, nothingness, the now which is always behind us the minute we point to it, etc… (Technologies in themselves. Hegel doesn’t just say; he actually attempts to show. And I, as one who leans to the more poetic side of the philosophical spectrum, can entertain a little forgiveness for his scientific lean. I can even forgive his analytic smugness and dismissal of more poetic approaches, perhaps even chuckle at the cleverness of:
“When such minds commit themselves to the unrestrained ferment of sheer emotion, they think that, by putting a veil over self-consciousness, and surrendering all understanding, they are thus God’s beloved ones to whom He gives His wisdom in sleep. This is the reason, too, that in point of fact, what they do conceive and bring forth in sleep is dreams.”
That is the preface, as I come familiarize myself with it, seeming like it could have been subtitled the state of philosophy in Hegel’s time.