[Fis] Fw: Clarifying Posting. Speculative Realism

[Joseph Brenner]

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

The last couple of postings have opened the discussion in a direction their 
authors may not have intended. Bob's felt personal plea for a 
phenomenological approach to biology, and hence to other sciences, and as 
the foundation of a philosophy, begs the question of non-phenomenological 
approaches which may be equally or more valid.

We all agree the mind is capable of phenomenal experience and is not a 
machine, but the (correct) arguments being made seem to me expressions, in 
various styles, of the non-fundamentality of matter and energy. Unless I am 
wrong, this is at least a still open question. Further, Terry's (again 
correct) statements about the importance of the Liar and Goedel paradoxes 
perhaps overlooks one aspect of them: they (the paradoxes) themselves are 
only relatively simple binary cases that can be considered reduced versions 
of some more fundamental, underlying princple governing relationships in the 
real, physical world. These relationships are crucial to an understanding of 
the non-binary properties of information.

A recent book by Tom Sparrow is entitled "The End of Phenomenology". It 
proposes a new science-free doctrine, Speculative Realism, to provide a link 
between phenomena and reality which in my opinion also fails, but may be of 
interest to some of you. I wrote about this doctrine:

As it turns out, however, Speculative Realism possesses its own set of 
weaknesses which can be ascribed in a general way to its retention of 
concepts embodying classical binary, truth-functional logic. These include 
an ontology of 'things' rather than processes as the furniture of the world, 
a logic of non-contradiction and a ground of existence that has reason and 
value, but excludes the possibility of a ground of existence which includes 
incoherence and contradiction.

All for now, for various reasons,

Best wishes,

Joseph


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert E. Ulanowicz" <ulan at umces.edu>
To: "Stanley N Salthe" <ssalthe at binghamton.edu>
Cc: "fis" <fis at listas.unizar.es>
Sent: Friday, May 06, 2016 7:36 AM
Subject: Re: [Fis] Clarifying Posting


> Dear Pedro,
>
> Most of the discussion has centered about phenomenology in the sense of
> Husserl. The topic is broader, however, and remains the foundation of the
> engineering philosophy that has guided my career.
>
> I have long advocated a phenomenological approach to biology as the only
> way forward. I have devoted years to the phenomenological study of
> ecosystems trophic exchange networks and have shown how hypothesis
> falsification can be possible in abstraction of eliciting causes
> <https://www.ctr4process.org/whitehead2015/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/PhilPrax.pdf>.
> I have gone so far as to propose an alternative metaphysics to
> conventional mechanical/reductionist theory that followed from
> phenomenological premises.
> <http://people.clas.ufl.edu/ulan/publications/philosophy/3rdwindow/>
>
> So I would submit that phenomenology is alive and well as a practical and
> even quantitative tool in science. It's just that, as an engineer, I find
> Husserl tough going. :)
>
> Warm regards,
> Bob
>
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