[Fis] Maxine’s presentation

[Pedro C. Marijuan]

Dear FISers and New Colleagues,

For travel reasons, Maxine could not post her presentation. On her 
behalf, I am attaching a file with the whole text and also copying below 
the Intro and the Final Section, in order to facilitate discussion. For 
those interested in further reference material, there is a folder in the 
FIS web pages, at the section "resources": http://fis.sciforum.net/fis 
The folder can also be accessed by clicking on the announcement of this 
specific session (http://fis.sciforum.net/fis-discussion-sessions/). In 
due time, the other presenters will have similar arrangements.

Responses have to be addressed to fis at listas.unizar.es. Remember please 
that only two messages per week are allowed to each participant. In case 
you have problems with spam filters (helas, very active in this host 
server), do not insist and change slightly the title of the message, far 
better than insisting.The max. message size is 300 K, and attachments 
are unwelcome, except for presenters.

Reading the whole text of this presentation is strongly encouraged. It 
is a fine and rigorous essay that deals with fundamental issues not 
always within the focus of natural and computer scientists (and of many 
other tribes). It is interesting that Maxine's views in Sections 2 and 3 
are not far from two previous discussion sessions in this list: 
"Informational Foundations of the Act" (2015), and "The Sociotype: 
Social Relationships and Beyond" (2013). Intriguingly, in Section 4 
about Descriptive Foundations (below), is there a cryptic message for 
the Foundations of Information Science too?

Best regards to all,

--Pedro
fis coordination

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*Phenomenology and Evolutionary Biology*


***(1): Phenomenology
*As written in the Preface to the 2^nd edition (1979) of The 
Phenomenology of Dance, “Certainly words carry no patented meanings, but 
the term ‘phenomenology’ does seem stretched beyond its limits when it 
is used to denote either mere reportorial renderings of perceptive 
behaviors or actions, or /any/ descriptive rendering at all of 
perceptible behaviors or actions. At the least, ‘phenomenology’ should 
be recognized as a very specific mode of epistemological inquiry, a 
method of eidetic analysis invariably associated with the name Edmund 
Husserl, the founder of phenomenology; and at the most ‘phenomenology’ 
should be recognized as a philosophically-spawned terms, that is, a term 
having a rich philosophical history and significance.”

A phenomenological analysis of movement given in The Phenomenology of 
Dance follows the rigorous methodology set forth by Husserl. The 
methodology is integral to understandings of phenomenology as well as to 
its practice. Husserl distinguished two modes of the methodology. One 
mode is termed “static,” the other is termed “genetic.” The aim in 
static phenomenology is to uncover the essential character of the 
phenomenon in question or under investigation. The aim in genetic 
phenomenology is to uncover the source and development of meanings and 
values we hold.

The abbreviated phenomenological analysis of movement set forth below 
follows a static phenomenology. The abbreviated phenomenological 
analysis of the origin of tool-making follows a genetic phenomenology. 
The first analysis elucidates the inherently dynamic character of 
movement, and in ways quite contrary to the idea that movement is a 
force in time and in space and quite contrary as well to the dictionary 
definition of movement as a “change of position.” The second analysis 
answers questions that paleoanthropologists, archaeologists, and 
anthropologists leave unanswered. The analyses present basic aspects of 
animation that anchor the relationship between phenomenology and the 
life sciences. In particular, the point of departure for both 
phenomenology and the life sciences is /animate/ being not just in the 
sense of /living/ creatures, but in the sense of /moving/ creatures, 
creatures who, in and through movement, are sustaining their lives, 
mating and reproducing, and so on. In short, movement is fundamental to 
animation, a decidedly significant entrée to understanding basic aspects 
anchoring a relationship between phenomenology and the life sciences. 
Following these analyses is a final section on the descriptive 
foundations of both phenomenology and evolutionary biology and on their 
common concern with origins...

(cont., see attached file)


*(****4) Descriptive Foundations*
**While it is common to speak laudingly of the keenness and scope of 
Darwin's observations, it is not commonly recognized, certainly not 
explicitly, that his observations, as written, describe his experiences. 
His written observations are in fact equivalent to his experiences in 
the sense that they detail what he saw, felt, heard, smelled, and even 
tasted. Though focal attention is consistently--one might even say, 
exclusively--riveted on his theory of natural selection, Darwin's 
descriptive writings are of fundamental significance, for it is these 
descriptive writings that ground his theory, that are its foundation. 
More broadly, evolutionary understandings and explanations of Nature are 
in the end tethered to an experientially-derived descriptive literature. 
Reading this literature, we learn a good deal about nonhuman animals. We 
learn that they are perceptive, thoughtful, and affectively moved by 
creatures and things in their environment, and we learn further that 
their perceptive, affective, and thoughtful ways are intimately 
relatedto our own. In short, Darwin's descriptive accounts of the 
natural living world reveal something about the lives of others and in 
turn something about our own lives.

I highlight the descriptive foundations of evolutionary theory in part 
because these descriptive foundations have fallen by the wayside, 
particularly in the highly visible present-day writings on evolution by 
neuroscientists and cognitive scientists. “Darwinian bodies” are not 
automatons. Neither are they robots lumbering about on behalf of selfish 
genes nor are they head-end neurological mechanisms, as per cognitivists 
of all stripe who collapse bodies into brains. I highlight the 
descriptive foundations of evolutionary theory equally to call attention 
to experience, specifically to the fact that descriptive foundations are 
grounded in experience. Descriptive foundations do not come by way of 
reducing the living world to genes, collapsing it into brains, or 
modeling it along the lines of a computer. Descriptive foundations are 
laid by way of direct experience of the living world. Only by hewing to 
experiences of that world have we the possibility of arriving at 
veridical descriptive accounts of nature and in turn, at explanations of 
nature.

I follow up these aspects of Darwinian evolutionary biology to show 
their confluence with phenomenology. Phenomenology, like Darwinian 
evolutionary biology, is methodologically essential to understandings of 
human nature; like Darwinian evolutionary biology, it too is tethered to 
experience and is basically a descriptive project; and again, like 
Darwinian evolutionary biology, it too is concerned with origins. What 
we think of and separate academically as disparate fields of knowledge 
are undergirded by descriptive foundations. The descriptive challenge 
lies in languaging experience and being true to the truths of 
experience, a challenge common to both fields of study.

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