Dear Friends and Colleagues,
The last couple of postings have opened the discussion in a direction their
authors may not have intended. Bob's felt personal plea for a
phenomenological approach to biology, and hence to other sciences, and as
the foundation of a philosophy, begs the question of non-phenomenological
approaches which may be equally or more valid.
We all agree the mind is capable of phenomenal experience and is not a
machine, but the (correct) arguments being made seem to me expressions, in
various styles, of the non-fundamentality of matter and energy. Unless I am
wrong, this is at least a still open question. Further, Terry's (again
correct) statements about the importance of the Liar and Goedel paradoxes
perhaps overlooks one aspect of them: they (the paradoxes) themselves are
only relatively simple binary cases that can be considered reduced versions
of some more fundamental, underlying princple governing relationships in the
real, physical world. These relationships are crucial to an understanding of
the non-binary properties of information.
A recent book by Tom Sparrow is entitled "The End of Phenomenology". It
proposes a new science-free doctrine, Speculative Realism, to provide a link
between phenomena and reality which in my opinion also fails, but may be of
interest to some of you. I wrote about this doctrine:
As it turns out, however, Speculative Realism possesses its own set of
weaknesses which can be ascribed in a general way to its retention of
concepts embodying classical binary, truth-functional logic. These include
an ontology of 'things' rather than processes as the furniture of the world,
a logic of non-contradiction and a ground of existence that has reason and
value, but excludes the possibility of a ground of existence which includes
incoherence and contradiction.
All for now, for various reasons,
Best wishes,
Joseph
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert E. Ulanowicz" <u...@umces.edu>
To: "Stanley N Salthe" <ssal...@binghamton.edu>
Cc: "fis" <fis@listas.unizar.es>
Sent: Friday, May 06, 2016 7:36 AM
Subject: Re: [Fis] Clarifying Posting
Dear Pedro,
Most of the discussion has centered about phenomenology in the sense of
Husserl. The topic is broader, however, and remains the foundation of the
engineering philosophy that has guided my career.
I have long advocated a phenomenological approach to biology as the only
way forward. I have devoted years to the phenomenological study of
ecosystems trophic exchange networks and have shown how hypothesis
falsification can be possible in abstraction of eliciting causes
<https://www.ctr4process.org/whitehead2015/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/PhilPrax.pdf>.
I have gone so far as to propose an alternative metaphysics to
conventional mechanical/reductionist theory that followed from
phenomenological premises.
<http://people.clas.ufl.edu/ulan/publications/philosophy/3rdwindow/>
So I would submit that phenomenology is alive and well as a practical and
even quantitative tool in science. It's just that, as an engineer, I find
Husserl tough going. :)
Warm regards,
Bob
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