Phenomenology

I recently ran across the concept of Phenomenology. The dictionary defines it as:

quote:

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phe·nom·e·nol·o·gy\ ( P ) Pronunciation Key (f-nm-nl-j)
n.
1. A philosophy or method of inquiry based on the premise that reality consists of objects and events as they are perceived or understood in human consciousness and not of anything independent of human consciousness.

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Now, I don't wanna get into a discussion about some new-age crap dealing with the Matrix and Brains in Jars. I'm seriously curious as to how far us human beings are trapped by our perceptions.I suppose this question is more for the scientific folks who frequent here at the EVC. I would like to explore with them, the limits of empiricism, and how our perceptual capabilities may limit what we can know/understand.i.e. : Are there some things we will never be able to understand due to the limits of our perceptions? If our 5 senses are all the input we get, does that mean there is some sort of data we may be being excluded from?EDIT: fixed spelling and such.This message has been edited by Yaro, 09-21-2005 04:22 PM

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Some links for those who want a little background on phenomenology. From phenomenologycenter.org
From the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy

As far as I can tell, phenomenology is just one of the ways that philosophers use to indulge themselves in mysticism. We make extensive use of xrays and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging for medical purposes. We send robots to mars, to report what we cannot ourselves perceive. It seems to me that we are not entirely trapped by our perceptions.As for the limits of empiricism -- my view is that, at least in principle, we can eventually gain knowledge of anything in the cosmos that is relevant to us. And whatever it is that we find, we will consider to be natural (part of nature). It makes me wonder about supernaturalism, for it seems to me that supernaturalists are defining their God to be what is not relevant to us.

Yes, I agree. But these tools basically "translate" data into something we can input using one of our five senses. They turn things into images, or numbers, or digital information.Further, all of the technologies you mentioned deal with things that are phisicaly interactive. You can touch, hear and see these things. My answer traditionaly would be "Of course, 'REAL' things can be seen, heard, smelled, or interacted with physicaly (touch) on some level.", but isn't that the kicker? It seems that what we define as 'REAL' is that which we can percive.Does that mean there could possibly be something else outside of our perception? Are there boundaries to what we CAN percive?

Thus we are not limited by what we can directly perceive. Maybe we can call it indirect perception, when our instruments measure xrays (or some other thing), and we then perceive the measurements. I'll take that as meaning indirect perception. That is, it includes what we can somehow measure.If there is anything that affects us then, at least in principle, we could use its affects on us as a way of measuring it. Thus we can deal with whatever affects us, whether directly or indirectly.Can there be something which does not affect us even indirectly? That's certainly a possibility. But I don't see any reason to lose sleep over that possibility.

Hi Yaro,Our five senses generally give us information about the outside world. By "outside" I mean the world outside our own consciousness. Our senses allow us to listen to our own heartbeats, to measure levels of hormones in our blood, to watch regions of the brain light up under an NMR scan, etc, etc, but do not give us direct access to the content of conscious activity.Nice examples of knowledge which is not easily availble to empiricism are the emotions. We know what it feels like to hate, love, or feel jealous. Some of the physical correlates of these emotions can be assessed by our senses - for example the increased heart rate during anger or the prickling of hairs during fear - but the feeling itself, the conscious content of experiencing an emotion, isn't to my knowledge accessible to empiricism.If we want to get knowledge of the content of emotional feeling we necessarily rely on phenomenology. For example, the feelings that drove Abdullah Yones to murder his own daughter for being "too westernized" can only be understood phenomenologically - there is simply no empirical access point into understanding what he must have been thinking and feeling.Much of historical writing and literature is testament to the importance of phenomenological knowledge. That's why we continue to read novels about romantic love - because knowledge of changes to brain activity and hormone levels only tells a small part of the story.Another example: if we want to understand what life was like for a first world war soldier, empiricism will only get us so far. We can examine the belongings of dead soldiers that exist in museums, we can visit the same places as them and see what the countryside looks like, we can look at records of the kind of diet that soldiers had and the kind of ailments that they endured. We can examine the equipment used in field hospitals and we can examine the old war fields for evidence of bomb craters and the like. But empiricism doesn't tell us the whole story. We also need to read the diaries of soldiers, read the war poets, etc. if we want to get a full understanding.

quote:

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Lost in the swamp and welter of the pit,
He flounders off the duck-boards; only he knows
Each flash and spouting crash,--each instant lit
When gloom reveals the streaming rain. He goes
Heavily, blindly on. And, while he blunders,
"Could anything be worse than this?"--he wonders,
Remembering how he saw those Germans run,
Screaming for mercy among the stumps of trees:
Green-faced, they dodged and darted: there was one
Livid with terror, clutching at his knees. . .
Our chaps were sticking 'em like pigs . . . "O hell!"
He thought--"there's things in war one dare not tell
Poor father sitting safe at home, who reads
Of dying heroes and their deathless deeds.

​

Siegfried Sassoon

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Mick[Edited to add the name of the poet]This message has been edited by mick, 09-24-2005 03:38 PMThis message has been edited by mick, 09-24-2005 03:44 PM

Isn't that what our instruments are for? To translate perceptions of other senses into perceptions of our own five senses?

I don't think that any of the examples which you give are necessarily outside of empiricism. Certainly, it can be very difficult to research feelings accurately, but that's where the concept of qualitative analysis comes in.

Hey crash, that's a good point. But one problem that imediatly comes to mind with this is are we losing something in the translation? Think of it this way.Migrating birds can sense the elctromagnetic field of the earth and are able to guide their flight this way. Now, we can use instraments ranging from simple things like a compas to more complex gadgets that I don't even know the names of But do we really get an idea of how the bird really 'feels' those electromagnetic lines?I once heard someone describe a dogs sense of smell as allowing the animal to 'see' smells. To actually be able to get a 3D sense of the smell. Dogs transmit bookloads of info thrugh smell. Can we ever truely understand what that is like?Does that make sense?

Does it matter? We detect magnetic fields via visual observation of a compass; the bird detects it via feelings in its brain. Aren't we detecting the very same thing? Are you familiar with a condition known as synesthesia?

Maybe your experience when you see blue is the same as my experience when I see red. Maybe your experience when you smell a rose is the same as my experience when I smell onions. How could we ever tell? Does it really matter?

While I don't think we can fully comprehend the information of these senses, this is not really what you were asking (or what I got from the question).That would be more like a blind person trying to 'visualize' sight, even when it is described to them -- but then think how difficult it is to visualize a sense that you have absolutely no knowledge of.We have a sense of up and down because of the interaction of gravity with our inner ears, perhaps the sense that birds have is similar to this. (Octopii on the other hand have eyes with weights so their horizontal eye slit is always level, no inner ear sense of gravity).Thinking of "seeing" in radio waves is just an extension of visual imagery, and is usually translated into visual images for consumption. Likewise, translation of "ultrasound" and "infrasound" is usually done by changing the frequency to ones we naturally hear.This is not analogous to imagining a new way of sensing the universe and then building something to measure it.It is really a tautology that our understanding of the universe is limited by our perceptions of it.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

​

RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

No, do tell?

It's a mental condition characterized by an inability to properly distinguish sensory input "channels." Sufferers of synesthesia - normally a congenital condition, but known to be temporarily induced by certain psychoactive drugs - hear shapes, smell colors, see music, etc. Interestingly there appears to be some consistency between synesthetes in regards to what sounds each color has or other associations.