[Fis] Answer to Mark. Phenomenology and Speculative Realism

[Loet Leydesdorff]

Dear colleagues,

 

Without wishing to defend Husserl, let me try to formulate what is according
to my knowledge core to his contribution. The message is that the
transcendental intersubjectivity is phenomenologically present in our
reality. He therefore returns to Descartes' (much rejected) distinction
between res extensa and res cogitans. Intersubjectivity is res cogitans. It
is not "being" like in the Latin esse, but it remains reflexively available.
Thus, we cannot test it. The philosophy of science which follows (in "The
Crisis") is anti-positivistic. The intersubjectivity is constructed and we
live in these constructions.

 

Descartes focused on the subjective Cogito. According to him, we meet in the
doubting, the Other as not limited and biologically constrained, that is,
God or the Transcendency. Husserl shifts the attention to the cogitatum:
that about what we are in doubt. We no longer find a hold in Transcendency,
but we find the other as other persons. Persons relate to one another not
only in "being", but also in terms of expectations. This was elaborated as
"dual contingency" (among others, by Parsons). The dynamics of
inter-personal expectations, for example, drive scholarly discourses, but
also stock exchanges.

 

Alfred Schutz was a student and admirer of Husserl, but he did not accept
the Cartesian duality implied. He writes: "As long as we are born from
mothers ..." He then developed sociological phenomenology (Luckmann and
others), which begins with the meta-individual phenomena. This is close to
Mannheim's position: one cannot analyze the content of the sciences
sociologically, but only the manifestations. The strong program in the
sociology of science (SSK: sociology of scientific knowledge) positioned
that socio-cognitive interests can explain the substantive development of
the sciences (Bloor, Barnes, and others) in the 1970s. It returns to a kind
of materialism.

 

Luhmann "criticized" Husserl for not taking the next step and to consider
meaning ("Sinn") as constructed in and by communication. In my opinion, this
is an important step because it opens the realm of a communication theory
based on interhuman interactions as different from basing theories
(micro-foundationally) on human agency (e.g., the homo economicus or
agent-based modelling). The communications can be considered as first-order
attributes to agents; the analysis of communications is in terms of
second-order attributes; for example, codes of communication. This is very
much the domain of the information sciences (although Luhmann did not see
this connection).

 

In sum, "phenomenological" is sometimes used as an appeal to return to the
phenomena without invoking explaining principles a priori. The question,
however, remains whether our intuitions, imaginations, etc. are also part of
this "reality". Are they limited (constrained; enabled?) by material
conditions or epi-phenomenological consequences of them? Husserl's critique
of the modern sciences was the reduction of the very concept of "reality" to
res extensa (that what "is"). Derivatives of esse such as ontology dominate
the scene. Shannon-type information, however, is the expected uncertainty in
a distribution. Thus, we stand on common ground that does not exist. J

 

Note that this discussion is different from the one about "being" versus
"becoming" (Prigogine), but also shares some aspects with it. Is
"life"/biology considered as a monad different from physics that studies
"nature" as a given? How can one perhaps distinguish scientific domains in
these terms?

 

Best,

Loet

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Fis [mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Robert E.
Ulanowicz
Sent: Sunday, August 02, 2015 1:04 AM
To: Joseph Brenner
Cc: fis
Subject: Re: [Fis] Answer to Mark. Phenomenology and Speculative Realism

 

Dear Joseph et al.,

 

I'm afraid I can't comment on the adequacy Husserlian phenomenology, as I
never could get very far into Hursserl. I would just add that there is also
a variety of phenomenology associated with thermodynamics and engineering.

 

The generic meaning of phenomenology is the study of phenomena in
abstraction of their eliciting causes. This applies to almost all of
classical thermodynamics and much of engineering. The idea is to describe
the behavior of systems in quantitative fashion. If the resulting
mathematical description proves reliable, it becomes a phenomenological
description. PV=nRT is such a description. Too often physicists try to
identify thermodynamics with statistical mechanics, an action that is
vigorously eschewed by engineers, who claim the field as their own.

 

I have spent most of my career with the phenomenology of quantified
networks, where phenomena such as intersubjectivity (if I correctly
understand what is meant by the term) thoroughly pervades events.

 

Of course, I'm feathering my own nest when I say that I believe that the
only *current* fruitful way to approach systems biology is via such
phenomenology! (See Section 3 in

< <http://people.clas.ufl.edu/ulan/files/Reckon.pdf>
http://people.clas.ufl.edu/ulan/files/Reckon.pdf>.)

 

The best,

Bob

 

> Dear Mark,

> 

> Thank you for this note, which points correctly to the fact that there 

> was something missing in the debate. Intersubjectivity is a good word 

> for it, but phenomenology in general is probably no longer the answer, 

> if it ever was. Check out the new book by Tom Sparrow, The End of 

> Phenomenology, Edinburgh, 2014; Sparrow is a key player in a new 

> 'movement' called Speculative Realism which is proposed as a replacement.

> 

> What does this have to do with information? I think a great deal and 

> worth a new debate, even in extremis. The problem with Husserlian 

> phenomenology is that it fails to deliver an adequate picture of 

> reality, but speculative realism is too anti-scientific to do any 

> better. What I think is possible, however, is to reconcile the key 

> insights of Heidegger with science, especially, with information 

> science. This places information science in a proper intersubjective
context where its utility can be seen.

> For discussion, I hope.

> 

> Best,

> 

> Joseph

 

 

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