Metaphysics of presence/Derrida

[Wyrdskein]

Wyrdskein, have you heard of the Sth American Shaman and Ayahuasca? I find this whole phenomenon really fascinating and had been tempted myself once, but trusted the voice of intuition. How has philosophy helped me? Well, a lot of my previous views were challenged through this medium and I also realized I was stuck within an old paradigm and just feeding my ego with intellectual bullsh#t. I was banned at one stage which pushed me towards an inner journey which has taken me away from philosophising towards quiet contemplation. Nice sharing with you

Had to look it up, but it seems similar in that they come from an Animist standpoint, rather like the old Scandinavian and Germanic European people.

[Burning ghost]

Belinda -

I don't think it is in line with this thread to ramble on about Husserl to much. I think I try to outline the reason Derrida broke away from phenomenology.

I will get to it asap ...

-- Updated March 25th, 2016, 3:41 am to add the following --

In brief ...

Derrid has issue with Husserl about his position of absolute subjectivity and specifically refers to hearing-oneself-speak. Derrida seems to say that Husserl is saying there is no partition between what is spoken and and is heard (they are both immediate).

The terms Derrida must be referring to are Husserl's use of "protention" and "retention", which he uses to refer to the "present" and which Derrida says are part of his "present". He says Husserl refers to them as "non-perceptions", but if true then they are imaginings of present not actually present??

An exame used is to talk of myself looking in a mirror at myself. The gap between the perception and perceiver is "blind" (seemingly immediate). For these reasons, and I suspect more, Derrida refers to phenomenology as "metaphysics of presence".

I am not familiar with the intricacies of Derrida. This is sourced from Internet philosophy and Stanford philosophy. Best to read those than rely on my reduced form here.

Note: I would say both sites oversimplify Derrida's and Husserl's views. I will attempt to offer a fuller view of Husserl's "protention" and "retention" once people have commented on this.

Would be helpful if we had someone who has read Derrida? I am not very familiar with his work other than interent sources mentioned above.

-- Updated March 31st, 2016, 12:57 am to add the following --

No takers?

[Raspberry_Yoghurt]

Burning ghost wrote:

By even beginning to talk about neural systems you are stepping into the transcendental and away from immediate experience. Husserl is not saying there is no "real object out there" but certainly that it is nonsense to try and prove there is. Phenomenology is almost solipsistic but it is not. It just doesn't waste time applying properties to objects out there but instead focuses on the properties of experience as directed towards these transcendental objects. The reality of the objects is of little to no importance when taking on phenomenology and moving towards the "epoche" and the "tranacendental reduction". Maybe you are more familiar with the term "bracketing"?

You make sense to me Ghost, but I still feel very vague about phenomenology. I hope you will keep on with your explanations because I think they are helpful . I don't know what 'bracketing ' is and have only a vague memory of having heard the term.

'bracketing' means you should ignore all you know (what you learned in school for instance) about a phenomenon when you are trying ro grasp it's essence.

This is because you want to go straight at the phenomenon as it is, so the stuff you have learned is just a distraction.

Example:

On this particular occasion, you have planned to spend the evening making a phenomenological analysis of the color blue.

Now you have learned in school that the color blue is light in a certain wavelength.

But ... what you want to do is get to the color blue as you experience it. And you are certainly not experiencing a wavelength as you look at the sky, because those things can only be gotten to be inference and by using special equpment.

So you 'bracket out' what you know about wavelenghts, since it is just a disturbance of your analyzing your experience. Then maybe you get the result that the color blue is 'cold' - which is something you might not have gotten to if you had seen the color blue it as a wavelength, since wavelenghts aren't cold or hot.

For me it is a little vague exactly how much you need to 'bracket out' - maybe Husserl explains this somewhere? - but the general gist of it is, I guess, always try to get to the phenomenon and bracket out the things that seem to prevent you from doing that.

[Belinda]

Thanks, Rasperry_Yoghourt. Very helpful

[Boots]

I've been struggling with this. As far as I can make out (back tracking through Heidegger), is that there is no fixed point at the centre of human consciousness (in fact, there is no centre at all) from which we can attempt to discover meaning or truth. We are simply made up of the past and the future, but have no 'core' which transcends this (nothing 'timeless'), therefore trying to seek truth from this standpoint (or non-standpoint) is impossible. Not sure if this covers it, but would be interested in the opinions of others? Thanks.

That sounds about right.

[Burning ghost]

Rasp -

To bracket does not mean to "ignore". I believe Husserl said it was more like "putting it out of play".

It is a very subtle subject. Husserl didnt really do much to explain his terminology.

[Raspberry_Yoghurt]

Rasp -

To bracket does not mean to "ignore". I believe Husserl said it was more like "putting it out of play".

It is a very subtle subject. Husserl didnt really do much to explain his terminology.

Yeah you are right.

I used "ignore" in the sense "pretend X doesn't exist for a while", "do not pay attention to X", "forget about X".

I'm not a native English speaker, so I might use a word here or there that has some connotations I am not aware of

[Burning ghost]

Well, he wrote in German so if that is your native tongue you'll have easier acces than me!

[Felix]

Raspberry_Yogurt said: 'bracketing' means you should ignore all you know (what you learned in school for instance) about a phenomenon when you are trying to grasp it's essence. This is because you want to go straight at the phenomenon as it is, so the stuff you have learned is just a distraction.

Example: On this particular occasion, you have planned to spend the evening making a phenomenological analysis of the color blue.

Even to label a particular phenomena as such & such, e.g., the color blue, is to bracket it, is it not? It is the bracketing that conjures up the illusion that it is discrete thing.

From Wyrdskein's opening post: As far as I can make out (back tracking through Heidegger), is that there is no fixed point at the centre of human consciousness (in fact, there is no centre at all) from which we can attempt to discover meaning or truth. We are simply made up of the past and the future, but have no 'core' which transcends this (nothing 'timeless'), therefore trying to seek truth from this standpoint (or non-standpoint) is impossible.

It should be evident that you'll never find the root of consciousness via thought, men have been attempting that for ages: seeking ultimate truth in a land of relative values. As J. Krishnamurti said "truth is a pathless path." The brackets shall not set you free.

[Stormcloud]

Aye, the truth is a pathless path - - is it not?

[Raspberry_Yoghurt]

Raspberry_Yogurt said: 'bracketing' means you should ignore all you know (what you learned in school for instance) about a phenomenon when you are trying to grasp it's essence. This is because you want to go straight at the phenomenon as it is, so the stuff you have learned is just a distraction.

Example: On this particular occasion, you have planned to spend the evening making a phenomenological analysis of the color blue.

Even to label a particular phenomena as such & such, e.g., the color blue, is to bracket it, is it not? It is the bracketing that conjures up the illusion that it is discrete thing.

From Wyrdskein's opening post: As far as I can make out (back tracking through Heidegger), is that there is no fixed point at the centre of human consciousness (in fact, there is no centre at all) from which we can attempt to discover meaning or truth. We are simply made up of the past and the future, but have no 'core' which transcends this (nothing 'timeless'), therefore trying to seek truth from this standpoint (or non-standpoint) is impossible.

It should be evident that you'll never find the root of consciousness via thought, men have been attempting that for ages: seeking ultimate truth in a land of relative values. As J. Krishnamurti said "truth is a pathless path." The brackets shall not set you free.

Very good point!

"Labelling" would more be the opposite of "bracketing".

If you wanted to go to the sort of ultra-deepest level of consciosness, a naked consciousness stripped of all clothes, then I guess you might have to bracket out language as well.

I don't think Husserl wanted to go down that deep - his goal is to use phenomena to ground science. His goal is not to go to the ultimate nature of the world or get in meditative states and so on. He wants to analyze phenomena, get that done, and then ground science, and then everyone is happy, because off cause the biggest concern for everybody is that mathematics lacks a solid basis He never got further than the phenomena though. He MIGHT have written on pre-language consciosss - he wrote so much you need to spend many years to get an overview. It's literally a roomfull of books.

Some of his pupuls disagrees with this. Heidegger just wanted to get straight to the very core of Being and didn't care at all about justifying science. And Heidegger in a way does bracket out language, and then instead creates his own weird words which he thinks describes phenomena in the human being-in-the-world better than the traditional words.

I know Merleau-Ponty at one point tried to bracket out language, but then came to the conclusion that this was impossible, at humans just couldn't get rid of language. I don't know why M-P wanted to do that.

A contemporary phenomenologist, Hermann Schmitz, has with a pre-language state of consciousness, and says that the momemt language arrives, that is the biggest event in consciousness. So yeah for him the "root" of consciousness is also not thought.

[Felix]

says that the moment language arrives, that is the biggest event in consciousness.

So true, Language is such a drag, always spoils the party. Why do people keep inviting him?

[Rr6]

1} The peak of color blue =
...1a} Wave-legnth 450–495 nm

....1b} Frequency 606–668 THz

I, r6, is composed of specific set of frequencies, that, only vary so much from day to day.

Similarly for many of us, mass, generally speaking i,e, average has a peak, low end and high end. This probably carrys over into a lifetime average for each of us. The peak average being differrent for each human.

We are and aggregated of discrete quanta, that come and go second by second, day by day month by month, by year etc....

http://study.com/academy/lesson/the-nat ... uency.html
..."Recall that the regions in the EM spectrum are distinguished by their ranges in wavelength as well as frequency. EM waves with a large wavelength have a low frequency, and waves with a small wavelength have a high frequency. Visible light spans from about 760 to 380 nanometers in wavelength, which is the same as about 430 terahertz to about 750 terahertz. The low-frequency end corresponds to light that we perceive as the color red.

.....The high-frequency end is related to light that we see as violet. EM waves that are just below the red spectrum are called infrared. These are the waves that have a frequency of less than 300 THz, or more than 1000 nm. We can't see these waves, but we can detect them as heat. At the other end, above the limit for violet light, is the ultraviolet spectrum. Ultraviolet waves have a frequency of more than 1000 THz, or a wavelength of less than 300 nm. We can't see ultraviolet light, either, but we can certainly tell when our skin has been burned by UV exposure."

[Raspberry_Yoghurt]

1} The peak of color blue =
...1a} Wave-legnth 450–495 nm

....1b} Frequency 606–668 THz

I, r6, is composed of specific set of frequencies, that, only vary so much from day to day.

Similarly for many of us, mass, generally speaking i,e, average has a peak, low end and high end. This probably carrys over into a lifetime average for each of us. The peak average being differrent for each human.

We are and aggregated of discrete quanta, that come and go second by second, day by day month by month, by year etc....

http://study.com/academy/lesson/the-nat ... uency.html
..."Recall that the regions in the EM spectrum are distinguished by their ranges in wavelength as well as frequency. EM waves with a large wavelength have a low frequency, and waves with a small wavelength have a high frequency. Visible light spans from about 760 to 380 nanometers in wavelength, which is the same as about 430 terahertz to about 750 terahertz. The low-frequency end corresponds to light that we perceive as the color red.

.....The high-frequency end is related to light that we see as violet. EM waves that are just below the red spectrum are called infrared. These are the waves that have a frequency of less than 300 THz, or more than 1000 nm. We can't see these waves, but we can detect them as heat. At the other end, above the limit for violet light, is the ultraviolet spectrum. Ultraviolet waves have a frequency of more than 1000 THz, or a wavelength of less than 300 nm. We can't see ultraviolet light, either, but we can certainly tell when our skin has been burned by UV exposure."

Like already said, there is no wavelengts in the phenomenon of blue.

If there was, we could simply see them directly, and we would not need scientific theory to explain them or scientific instruments to see them.

All this information is a good exampled of what must be bracketed/ignored if one wants to analyze the phenomenon of blue.

[Burning ghost]

Rasp -

When Husserl refers to "ideal objects" he is referring to prelingual "content".