[Fis] Response to Salthe's response

[Maxine Sheets-Johnstone]

Response to Salthe's response:

So, as I understand the discussion, we are using the term origin in
at least two different senses: origin as in Darwin's "origin of 
species,"
which passes muster, and origin as a big bang of some order or other,
which does not pass muster, muster in the sense of being objectively
attainable by science.

I agree that “there can be no First Person observation of an 
evolutionary
origin.” I would say that there can be only deductive observations of
evolutionary origins on the basis of fossil evidence. The same holds for
extinctions. But I wonder, as in the case of passenger pigeons, for 
instance.
You state that no one “would actually SEE its death,” but wasn’t the 
death
of the last passenger pigeon seen? I take the following from Wikepedia:

The last captive birds were divided in three groups around the turn of 
the
20th century, some of which were photographed alive. Martha, thought to 
be
the last passenger pigeon, died on September 1, 1914, at the Cincinnati 
Zoo.
The eradication of this species has been described as one of the 
greatest and
most senseless extinctions induced by humans.

Regarding movement and phenomenology: Husserl spelled out an exacting 
methodology
with respect to phenomenology. That methodology is not always recognized 
and
respected in the so-called practice of phenomenology or in discussions 
of phenomenology.
In my original article in the special issue of FIS, I pointed out common
definitions/understandings of movement that are, well, off the wall in 
terms of
grasping the foundational dynamic nature of movement. Alas! I quote from 
that article:

Movement is indeed the essential measure of being alive.
Like other forms of animate life, we humans come into the
world moving: we are precisely not stillborn (for more on this
particular kinetic reality see Sheets-Johnstone 1999/exp. 2nd
ed. 2011). To understand movement from this living, essentially
experienced perspective, one must necessarily cast aside such
common definitions and understandings of movement as
“movement is a change of position” and movement takes place
in time and space. In doing phenomenology, that is, in the
practice of the phenomenological method, one indeed separates
oneself from standard texts and assumptions, long-held beliefs,
and so on, and thereby makes the familiar strange. In doing so
with respect to movement, one plunges into a bona fide
phenomenological investigation of dynamics, the dynamics that
undergird both kinesthetic experiences of movement and
kinetic-visual experiences of movement. Let us think for a
moment along the lines of such a plunge and of what such an
investigation reveals.

Many thanks for your comments!--and
Cheers,
Maxine