[Fis] _ FIS discusion

[Maxine Sheets-Johnstone]

To FIS colleagues,

First, an open-to-all response to Lou Kaufmann:

Thank you for your lengthy tutorial—some time back--but I wonder and am
genuinely puzzled given the “phenomenology-life sciences theme” why none
of the articles that I referenced were read and a response generated at 
least
in part on the basis of that reading in conjunction with your own work.

Is there some reason why they were not taken up, especially perhaps the 
article
identified as being a critique of Godels’s incompleteness theorem from a
phenomenological perspective? I would think that you and perhaps FIS 
persons
generally would feel particularly inquisitive about that article. I 
would think
too that people in FIS would be particularly inquisitive about the 
reference to
Biological Cybernetics. Viewpoints that differ from one’s own are by 
some thought
a waste of time, but for my part, I think they rightly broaden a 
discussion, which
is not to say that entrenched or deeply held views are not solidly 
based, much less
wrong, but that they have the possibility of being amplified through a 
consideration
of the same topic from a different perspective.

For example: Language did not arise deus ex machina, and it certainly 
did not arise
in the form of graphs or writing, but in the form of sounding.  
Awareness of oneself
as a sound-maker is basic to what we identify as a ‘verbal language’. 
Moreover this
awareness and the verbal language itself are both foundationally a 
matter of both
movment and hearing. A recognition of this fact of life would seem to me 
to be of
interest, even primordial interest, to anyone concerned with 
‘SELF-REFERENCE', its
essential nature and substantive origins.

With respect to ‘substantive origins’, does it not behoove us to inquire 
as to the genesis
of a particular capacity rather than take for granted that ‘this is the 
way things are and
have always been’?. For example, and as pointed out elsewhere, the 
traditional conception
of language being composed of arbitrary elements—-hence 
“symbols”--cannot be assumed with
either epistemological or scientific impunity. Until the origin of 
verbal language is accounted
for by reconstructing a particular lifeworld, there is no way of 
understanding how arbitrary
sounds could come to be made  . . . let alone serve as carriers of 
assigned meaning.
What is essential is first that arbitrary sounds be distinguished from 
non-arbitrary sounds,
and second, that a paradigm of signification exist. Further, no creature 
can speak a language
for which its body is unprepared. In other words, a certain 
sensory-kinetic body is essential
to the advent of verbal language. In short, in the beginning, thinking 
moved along analogical
lines rather than symbolic ones, hence along the lines of iconicity 
rather than along arbitrary
lines. See the extensive writings of linguistic anthropologist Mary 
LeCron Foster and
Sheets-Johnstone’s The Roots of Thinking, Chapter 6, "On the Origin of 
Language." Foster's
finely documented analyses show that the meaning of the original sound 
elements of language
was the analogue of their articulatory gestures. Similarly, in my own 
analysis, I start not with
symbols or symbolic thought but at the beginning, namely, with a 
sensory-kinetic analysis of the
arbitrary and the non-arbitrary.

Husserl wrote that "each free act [i.e., an act involving reason] has 
its comet’s tail of Nature.”
In effect, living meanings are, from a phenomenological perspective, 
historically complex phenomena.
They have a natural history that, in its fullest sense, is bound not 
both ontogenetically
and phylogenetically. Like living forms, living meanings hold—-and have 
held—-possibilities
of further development, which is to say that they have evolved over time 
and that investigations
of their origin and historical development tell us something fundamental 
about life in general and
human life, including individual human lives, in particular. WITH 
RESPECT TO ORIGINS AND HISTORICALLY
COMPLEX PHENOMENA, consider the following examples:

Information is commonly language-dependent whereas meaning is not.
We come into the world moving; we are precisely not stillborn.
We humans all learn our bodies and learn to move ourselves.
Movement forms the I that moves before the I that moves forms movement.
Infants are not pre-linguistic; language is post-kinetic.
Nonlinguistic corporeal concepts ground fundamental verbal concepts.


To all FIS colleagues re Alex Hankey's presentation:

I thought at first that we might be talking past each other because it 
was my understanding
that this 4-part discussion was about phenomenology and the life 
sciences. What this means to
me is that we conjoin real-life, real-time first-person experience, thus 
methodologically
anchored phenomenological analyses, with real-life-real-time 
third-person experience, thus
methodologically anchored empirical analyses. With this last 
conversation between Rafael and
Alex, the terrain seems to be shifting precisely toward this ground. 
With respect to that
conversation, I would like first to note my accord with their critique 
of Heidegger's
metaphysical view that animals are "poor-in-world." In an article 
published at the end of
last year, I give a detailed critical analysis of that metaphysical view 
in conjunction
with a detailed critical analysis of Heidegger's own metaphysical 
shortcoming, namely, his
being, among other things, "poor-in-body." See "The Enigma of 
Being-toward-Death," Journal of
Speculative Philosophy,2015 24/4: 547-576.

I recommend Aristotle (again) to FIS colleagues:

"Every realm of nature is marvellous. . . .[W]e should venture on the 
study of every kind
of animal without distaste; for each and all will reveal to us something 
natural and
something beautiful."
"If any person thinks the examination of the rest of the animal kingdom 
an unworthy task,
he must hold in like disesteem the study of man."

Aristotle wrote four astoundingly perceptive books on animals. The above 
quotes are from
his book Parts of Animals. Of Aristotle, Darwin in fact wrote, "Linnaeus 
and Cuvier have been
my two gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere 
school-boys to old Aristotle."

With respect to consciousness,may I refer you to a thoroughly documented 
article titled
"Consciousness: A Natural History" that first appeared in the Journal of 
Consciousness Studies
(1998) and that both critically and constructively addresses the 
question of 'how consciousness arises
in matter'. Documentation is based on corporeal matters of fact from 
vertebrates to invertebrates
and includes consideration of bacteria. The article was later included 
in The Corporeal Turn: An
Interdisciplinary Reader and in The Primacy of Movement.

What I term "phenomenologically-informed" studies of "the bodies we are 
not" requires acute
observations to begin with, observations untethered to theories and 
beliefs about X, and then,
finely detailed descriptions of those observations. Just such untethered 
observations and
meticulous descriptions are the cornerstone of any life science. One is 
not out there trying to
make others as you want them to be, but attempting to know them as they 
are. The task is precisely
a challenge since it is a matter of achieving knowledge about living 
bodies that are different from,
yet evolutionarily connected to, your living body. Jane Goodall's years 
of dedicated study set
the original gold standard, so to speak, for such research, the 
foundations of "good life science."
As I earlier wrote (and documented by way of a publication), descriptive 
foundations undergird
phenomenological analyses, studies in evolutionary biology, and 
ecological literature.

Cheers,
Maxine