{"id":9129,"date":"2012-12-19T14:08:25","date_gmt":"2012-12-19T14:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/12\/19\/phenomenon-and-existence\/"},"modified":"2012-12-19T14:08:25","modified_gmt":"2012-12-19T14:08:25","slug":"phenomenon-and-existence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/12\/19\/phenomenon-and-existence\/","title":{"rendered":"Phenomenon and Existence"},"content":{"rendered":"

E. C. writes:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

In the recent post Mary Neal\u2019s Out of Body Experiences<\/a><\/em> you state: "No experience, no matter how intense or unusual or protracted, conclusively proves the veridicality of its intentional object.  Phenomenology alone won't get you to metaphysics."<\/span><\/p>\n

I have been attempting to reconstruct your reasoning here, and the following is the best I could come up with. <\/span><\/p>\n

 1) No experience, no matter how intense or unusual or protracted, conclusively proves the veridicality of its intentional object.  <\/span><\/p>\n

 2) The subject matter of phenomenology is experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

 3) The subject matter of metaphysics is existence, which includes the quest of proving the veridicality of intentional objects. Therefore:<\/span><\/p>\n

 C) Phenomenology alone won't get you to metaphysics.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have an issue with (1). Surely, the very meaning of \u2018veridical experience\u2019 designates a harmonious pattern of interconnected experiences, the paradigm case being perceptual experiences. Correlatively, when one speaks about the intentional object existing, one means nothing other than the reappearance of the self-same object across this harmonious flow. <\/span><\/p>\n

Non-veridical experiences, e.g. hallucinations, are then just those experiences that promise, but fail, to endure harmoniously. Whenever non-veridical experiences obtain so do veridical experiences. For example, I was mistaken that there was a cat walking outside on the pavement, and hence had a non-veridical experience of the cat, but I had a veridical experience of the pavement itself. Ultimately, the experience of the world is given as the veridical background that serves as a foundation for all non-veridical experiences. To speak ontologically, the existence of non-veridical experiences depends on veridical experiences and likewise non-existence objects demand existent objects. Therefore, non-veridical experience could never exist on their own, which does not prevent us as talking about them as self-sufficient. <\/span><\/p>\n

In relation to (2), I would argue that the subject matter of phenomenology is not just experience but also the object experienced just as it is experienced. But if existence is just the reappearance of an object through a harmonious flow of experience, then phenomenology does have metaphysical implication.<\/span><\/p>\n

I do not think that perceptual experience is the only mode of experience through which existence is experienced; the room is left often for experiences that reveal the divine. <\/span><\/p>\n

As always, I am very grateful for the existence of your blog.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

REPLY<\/span><\/p>\n

Thanks for reading, E. C., for the kind words, and for the above response.<\/span><\/p>\n

First of all, you did a good job of setting forth my reasoning in support of (C).  But I take issue with your taking issue with (1).  You are in effect begging the question by just assuming that what makes veridical experience veridical is its internal coherence.  That is precisely the question.  It may well be that coherence is a criterion of truth without being the nature of truth.  By a criterion I mean a way of testing for truth.  It could be that coherence is a criterion, or even the<\/em> criterion, of truth, but that correspondence is the nature of truth.  One cannot just assume that truth is constituted by coherence.  I am not saying the view is wrong; I am saying that it cannot be assumed to be true without argument or consideration of alternatives.  Such arguments and considerations, however, move us beyond phenomenology into dialectics. <\/span><\/p>\n

To say of an experience that it is veridical is to say that it is of or about an object that exists whether or not the experience exists.  If so, then the existence of the object in reality cannot be explicated in terms of its manners and modes of appearing.  If you say that it can, then you are opting for a form of idealism which, in Husserlian jargon, reduces Sein<\/em> to Seinsinn<\/em>.  I would insist, however, that it part of the plain sense of outer perception that it is of or about objects whose existence is independent of the existence of perceivers and their experiences.  To borrow a turn of phrase from the neglected German philosopher Wolfgang Cramer, it is built into the very structure of outer perception that it is of or about objects as non-objects<\/em>.  That may sound paradoxical, but it is not contradictory.  The idea is that the object is intended in the act or noesis as having an ontological status that surpasses the status of a merely intentional object.  Whether it does have that additional really existent status is of course a further question.<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, my seeing of a tree is an intentional experience: it is of or about something that may or may not exist.  (Note that, phenomenologically, 'see' is not a verb of success.  If I see x in the phenomenological sense of 'see,' it does not follow that there exists an x such that I see it.)  Now if you say that the existence of the tree intended in the act reduces to its ongoing 'verification' in the coherent series of Abschattungen<\/em> that manifest it, then you are opting for a form of idealism.  And this seems incompatible with the point I made, namely, that it is part and parcel of the very nature of outer perception that it be directed to an object as non-object.  The tree is intended as being such that its existence is not exhausted by its phenomenological manifestation.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the point is not to get you to agree with this; the point is to get you to see that there is an issue here, one subject to ongoing controversy, and that one cannot uncritically plump for one side.  If you haven't read Roman Ingarden<\/a> on Husserl, I suggest that you do.<\/span><\/p>\n

As for premse (2), we will agree that there are acts, intentional experiences (Erlebnisse<\/em>), and that they are of an object.  Throughout the sphere of intentionality there is the act-object, noesis-noema correlation.  But this leaves wide open the question whether the being of the thing in reality is exhausted by its noematic being, whether its Sein<\/em> reduces to its Seinsinn<\/em>.  On that  very point Ingarden disagreed strenuously with his master, Husserl.<\/span><\/p>\n

"But if existence is just the reappearance of an object through a harmonious flow of experience, then phenomenology does have metaphysical implications."  That is true.  But I deny the consequent of your conditional and so I deny the antecedent as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

My point, in sum, is that you cannot just assume the truth of the antecedent.  For that begs the question against realism.  From the fact that an object manifests its existence in the manner you describe, it does not follow that the very existence of the object is its manifestation.<\/span><\/p>\n

It may be methodologically useful to bracket the existence of the object the better to study its manners and modes of appearing, but this very bracketing presupposes that there is more to the existence of the object than its appearing.  One could say that Husserl was right to bracket the existence of the object for purposes of phenomenology, but then, in his later idealistic phase, he forgot to remove the brackets.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/legend>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>Mary Neal's Out-of-Body Experiences<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Eben Alexander: "We Are Conscious in Spite of Our Brains"<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Is Heaven Real? A Neurosurgeon's Near-Death Experience<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

E. C. writes: In the recent post Mary Neal\u2019s Out of Body Experiences you state: "No experience, no matter how intense or unusual or protracted, conclusively proves the veridicality of its intentional object.  Phenomenology alone won't get you to metaphysics." I have been attempting to reconstruct your reasoning here, and the following is the best … Continue reading “Phenomenon and Existence”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[142,67,79,94,523],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-existence","category-husserl","category-idealism-and-realism","category-paranormal","category-phenomenology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}