Feb 12, 2010 -- 3:21AM, stardustpilgrim wrote:

I've tried to read some Dennett before, I can't get too far, he sticks in my throat. So, I have not encountered his Heterophenomenology.

All it is, is what social sciences have been doing for ages:  Taking down, recording or writing down, what the subjects themselves say they are experiencing.  Anthropologists & sociologists, most notably, do this all the time & have been doing it forever.  It's just the same as listening to someone else's self-report about their own emotions & thoughts, but not judging them or correcting them as "wrong," at least insofar as it is what the person says they're experiencing.

"Heterophenomenology" is a very fancy, technical, philosophical term, and one which I think Dennett uses to tweak many philosophers.  Breaking it down to its root terms, it's like this:

"Phenomena" -- Subjective experiences.  Every color or texture or taste or sense sensation or cognitive thought or emotion, the bare "feel" or "raw feel" of these, are phenomena.

"-ology" -- "Study of."  As in, bio - logy, psych - ology, anthropo - logy, etc.

"Phenomenology" -- This is really just psychology.  It's the attempt to study the phenomena that any conscious mind experiences, subjectively.  It's long held a bewitching spell over philosophers, including me.  I think Hegel actually invented the term.

"Hetero" -- Roughly, means "other."  As in the difference between homosexual and heterosexual, or orthodoxy and heterodoxy.  e.g. "homo" or "ortho" implies "sameness," while "hetero" implies "otherness." 

In this case, when "hetero" is joined with "phenomenology," it more or less means, "observing the phenomenology of others." 

This is qualitatively different from most previous usages of "phenomenology," since Phenomenologists (types of philosophers into phenomenology, the study of phenomena) instead believe the only legitimate way to study phenomena (e.g. to do phenomenology), is to do this literally first-person, subjectively -- e.g. more or less exactly what 2bme's OP suggests by "inner empiricism."

Dennett, instead, by relying on the principles of pragmatic philosophy of science, including its core logical requirement of inter-subjective, third-party verification ("Is it just me, or did you see that, too?"), tweaks the Phenomenologists, by deflating their project to the degree that he demonstrates their quest for "inner empiricism" is utterly incompatible with actual science, and offers them an olive branch by way of offering the sensible, pragmatic suggestion that only sociologist-like taking-down of self-reports is the only possible way "phenomenology" could actually be conducted on a literally scientific basis -- e.g. "heterophenomenology."

But he's being disingenuous with it, as he automatically throws out the C team's reports. (Jesus, Socrates, Buddha, Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu are five of my favorites).

(1) I think you've got several notions muddled up & confused; besides, I've already shown that your notion of "C team" is nothing other than the B team.

(2) In important ways, he's not being disingenuous at all.  Heterophenomenology means, effectively, that the heterophenomenologist, the observer of someone else's subjective self-reports, believes (or takes at face value as fact) that the other person really believes what they are saying -- regardless & without judgment in consideration of what other objective facts might actually say about that person's own beliefs (e.g. whether that person is, obectively, actually right or wrong about their belief).

Feb 15, 2010 -- 6:51AM, Don't_Be_Captious wrote:

I'm into or have been into Taoism myself, but I think your interpretation here is apples & oranges.  On many levels, Taoism is just aesthetically beautiful poetry & art, and offers some pretty enticingly intuitive heuristic advice for survival & flourishing (like most myths).  But even taking Taoism at face value, what your saying here doesn't even conflict with Dennett or at least what I've said about Dennett here so far.

You can believe whatever you wish to believe; that's the libertarian essence of Dennett's heterophenomenology, or anthropology or sociology, taking down the self-reports of other people's inner mental lives. 

DBC,

If you think that Toaism is just a fluffy, artsy worldview - you have terribly disrespected its history and effects on world culture.  Let alone science.

In debate with MdS -- I posted that the ying/yang was a functional logical operator and after seeing his dismissal of same - I was able to back it up, with recent papers on the subject(surprise - by a well known Chineese Information Theory researcher.)

And - it is just this bravado, "taking down the self-reports of other people's inner mental lives" - that leaves Dennett in a lessor status than he could be, as a majority of thinkers and reseachers have not abandoned first person accounts.  (As is fact that is all that can be recorded)

While equally rejecting only first person accounts - and being a firm believer in 3rd person objective nature - the normative view accepts both.

Our inner experiences ARE worthy of study, research and logical analysis as phenomena.

(While being available to only a quasi-empirical method.)  see G. Chaitin's view of mathematics as an example of a quasi-empirical view   

Feb 15, 2010 -- 9:01AM, newchurchguy wrote:

If you think that Toaism is just a fluffy, artsy worldview - you have terribly disrespected its history and effects on world culture.  Let alone science.

In debate with MdS -- I posted that the ying/yang was a functional logical operator and after seeing his dismissal of same - I was able to back it up, with recent papers on the subject(surprise - by a well known Chineese Information Theory researcher.)

First, I must admit I'm at least a bit ambivalent.  I don't give Tao any ontological, metaphysical credence; yet I have to admit that as a metaphor, and heuristic "rule of thumb" device, it's really, really good.  But, then, all art & poetry can give valuable lessons that aren't the same as those of science.  (Which is probably something people like 2bme or you want to hear from "us."  Perhaps unlike some others, I don't pretend at all that there isn't anything valuable in art, though I cannot agree that there's anything scientifically important in it beyond cultural or perhaps phenomenological.)

Second, you misspelled "Chinese."

Third, you didn't give any more information than a bald assertion that yin/yang is a functional logic operator.  Based on 2 & 3, it's a bit hard to take your assertion seriously.

4th, yin/yang & Taoism are just other names for Hegel's Dialectic, as well as Postmodernism.  It's the same thing, and to the extent that people want to apply it rigorously to everything in reality, they are dead wrong.  At best, Kant had it right (and Hegel had it completely wrong, with his superstitious, non-scientific, illogical miscomprehension of Kant) when he said that reasoning can have limits, and where either not enough information is available, or in some cases at the the limits of logic itself, paradoxes (per Kant, "antinomies") can arise.

But these are epistemologic concerns, not ontologic.

And - it is just this bravado, "taking down the self-reports of other people's inner mental lives" - that leaves Dennett in a lessor status than he could be, as a majority of thinkers and reseachers have not abandoned first person accounts.  (As is fact that is all that can be recorded)

Good god, what part of what I wrote about Dennett don't you understand?  That's EXACTLY what I said Dennett DOES (he DOESN'T "abandon...first person accounts...as in fact that is all that can be recorded.")  He DOESN'T necessarily pass judgment on them (unless the rubber meets the road in some cases, say if the villagers want to shrink his head based on their beliefs) -- EXACTLY as the anthropologist or sociologists DOESN'T pass judgment.

As Kwinters has said in the past, your reading comprehension sucks.

Feb 10, 2010 -- 10:39AM, 2bme wrote:

Feb 10, 2010 -- 6:56AM, Kwinters wrote:

Feb 9, 2010 -- 11:19PM, 2bme wrote:

Can we witness the Ding an sich--in our inner world through the conscious ability to "know thyself?" Is it possible and are empirical standards possible in relation to efforts to Know Thyself?

Feb 16, 2010 -- 8:32AM, Kwinters wrote:

Feb 11, 2010 -- 6:07AM, Don't_Be_Captious wrote:

Feb 10, 2010 -- 6:56AM, Kwinters wrote:

2bme:  Can we witness the Ding an sich--in our inner world through the conscious ability to "know thyself?" Is it possible and are empirical standards possible in relation to efforts to Know Thyself?

No and no.

Kwinters,

I don't understand this blunt reply here.  Probably I agree with you on the second part, but what exactly is certifiably impossible about the first part?

The one aspect of modern consciousness studies that I disagree with & that drives me loony is this seemingly morbid fascination with the alleged impossibility that human beings can possibly acquire actual self-knowledge, as if we are to be considered or rendered helpless fucking infants.

 

2b is trying to frame this in terms of empirical methods and empirical standards.

And when you try to do this stuff through empiricism the answer is no.

At that level, I agree.  I certainly don't think "standards" are possible.  Given all I've already written here, it's clear that scientific empiricism -- e.g. standards -- are impossible, here.

What does your inner world look like?  I can't witness - literally see - the Ding an sich.

That's almost semantical quibbling.  An instructor I had long ago often stated that for Buddhists -- spec., Buddhists -- there were, in addition to the five senses of taste, touch, sight, smell, hearing -- the sixth sense of mind.  (Of course, there are other senses, too:  sense of balance, some animals have magnetic sense, sense of infrared or ultraviolet "vision," etc.).  But the point is, "mind" is not something even Buddhists do away with in a manner a la Eliminative Materialism.  To be frank, your opinion as I interpret it so far is little different than Eliminative Materialism, and that's something most people, even many Brights like Dennett, disagree with.

Again, I reiterate, even for Buddhists -- in fact, they are actually an exception -- "mind" is a type of "sense."  I realize "mind" is defined-away in typical science as not being a "sense," but in many ways this is muddled thinking, imo.  There are other sense experiences (and no, I don't mean "ESP" telepathy or whatever) than just organizing by weight or size or color.  Indeed, the five conventional "physical" senses don't, in fact, actually "organize" anything.  The organizing -- which you for whatever reason appear to state here is a type of "sense" -- is not done by sight, touch, taste, smell or hearing, but by mind.

And further, a la Foucault, given how much of the subject is simply a formulation of social forces, the extent to which our thinking is shaped and limited by our linguistic tools - how much of the Ding an sich is truly 'self' and how much of it is other which we've internalised? 

What about the role of inter-subjectivity?  There can be no sense of self without an other against which to compare or contrast, thus the 'self' only exists in relations with and against others, not independently.

I've asserted before, there's a distinct difference between "self" and "awareness."  Even the Buddhist, who argues against self-hood (as self is illusory), doesn't deny the fact of conscious awareness. 

Even per Kant, I don't think Ding-an-sich re: human consciousness is necessarily "self," but instead only raw phenomenological awareness.  This is separate, in important ways, from "selfhood."  Animals don't (often, perhaps) experience "selfhood," but they do experience, e.g. pleasure & pain, etc.

I halfway expect I'm negotiating a middle ground here again that I've often found myself doing on Bnet in the past.  On the one side, religious zealots want to shout me down for being too atheistic & scientific; on another side, those who are imo in many ways naive materialists, want to criticize my so-called "soft" "non-scientific" stance.  Oh, well.