<1>
ABSTRACT
In response to my posting of 23 November 1997 concerning the recent JCS
editorial, a number of comments have appeared in JCS-online which deal with
the present-day possibilities and limitations of phenomenology. In answer,
I want to suggest that as a basis for the study of subjective experience
an explicitly non-ontological phenomenology might be helpful.
<2>
The question of ontology had, in my understanding, not been decided by Husserl,
who wanted to distinguish between existence (which was to be 'bracketed')
and intuition of essences (Wesens-Schau). This suggests that he left the
question of mind-independent reality in the balance. Jaspers also seems
to have left the door half open by talking about 'ciphers'. Heidegger and
Sartre, who started out as phenomenologists, later worked on something like
the establishment of ontological bases within phenomenology, which impresses
me as a self-
contradictory undertaking. Merleau-Ponty as well affirmed the existence
of a transcendental world.
<3>
Although the assumption of mind-independent reality works well for most
of science, this constitutes nevertheless a shortcut in argumentation, and
it effectively obstructs the access to understanding of subjective experience
(as I have shown elsewhere). For this reason, ontology (that is, persistent
metaphysics) should be replaced by a non-permanent 'working' metaphysics.
The mentioned shortcut also marks the point where 'naturalism' originates
and departs from its more comprehensive experiential (phenomenological)
matrix.
<4>
In the following, I present tentative answers to the questions about the
four 'assets' of phenomenology mentioned by Bill Adams (JCS-online, 27 November
1997), from a non-ontological point of view - subject to revision as necessary.
<5>
1. Adams' term 'phenomenological attitude' would become an explicitly non-ontological
attitude.
<6>
In that respect it differs from the 'natural attitude' which tends to be
firmly ontological: either it is naively objectivist, or it has the form
of an explicit exclusive objectivism or empiricism, but in either case it
is characterized by an assumption of pre-fabricated mind-independent perceptual
and conceptual entities which is either explicit or more often implicit,
and which is not clearly different from the metaphysical postulates of Plato's
idealism.
<7>
A possible procedural explication for a non-ontological attitude would be
that: belief in the reliability of mental structures must always remain
accessible to doubt and concurrent re-evaluation, according to the method
of doubt as it has been advocated over the centuries, for instance by Descartes,
but without falling for (or into) his doubt-free ontological certainties,
as empiricists tend to do.
<8>
2. The 'bracketing of presuppositions' becomes an outright denial of the
possibility of ontology.
<9>
3. The 'phenomenological reduction' becomes a statement to the effect that
all mental structures arise within our unstructured and and undivided (for
instance into subject and object) mind-nature experience. We have to acknowledge
that we are the creators of, and responsible for, all mental structures,
including even those which are immediately and completely present on a physiological
basis. This situation cannot be escaped from by referring to outside (including,
if you like, 'physiological inside') reality, nor to some authority.
<10>
4. Adams' term 'noema' refers, I assume, to what Husserl called 'Wesen'
or 'Sache', or 'phenomenon'. If this is so, I would think that one might
address it by a general term like 'mental structure', or 'mental entity',
which are the mental units with which we operate.
<11>
I am interested in knowing whether these definitions might be seen to serve
as a step in the attempt to achieve a procedural consensus, and I would
appreciate further discussion, with the aim of determining in which form
they might become generally useful.
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[Author: Herbert FJ Muller
e-mail <mdmu@musica.mcgill.ca>]