Zahavi, Phenomenology & Socioproctology

 Dan Zahavi seems a bright guy. Why the fuck does he rate Husserl of all people? The plain fact is things don't 'present' themselves to us. Nor do they draw us into a conversation or try to sell us a Time Share apartment. It is not the case that people end up getting seduced by their Dyson in a manner which voids its warranty. 

Zahavi writes- 

Husserl points out, the object beckons us to explore further: 'There is still more to see here, turn me so you can see all my sides, let your gaze run through me, draw closer to me, open me up, divide me up; keep on looking me over again and again, turning me to see all sides. You will get to know me like this, all that I am, all my surface qualities, all my inner sensible qualities.'

This is a crock of shit. Clearly 'Phenomenology' is paranoid nonsense about how your Sofa wants to have sex with you. As researchers employed by the Democratic Party have pointed it is only Vance, the Hillbilly, whom sofas succeed in seducing. 

The plain fact is, objects are of interest to us because they are useful. A sofa is good enough if it is comfortable to sit on and goes with our other furniture. In ordering a sofa online, I make some measurements and search for models in my budget of a certain color and fabric. The sofa which actually arrives may be a little worse or better than I expected. But this is equally true if I order a sofa for my neighbor. In that case my own preferences are irrelevant. Indeed, I may never see it or sit on it. The thing only exists as an abstract or intellectual object. Moreover, it is something specifiable according to objective traits which people in the business would recognize. Indeed, as I research the matter, I increasingly adopt their terminology and point of view. 

This is the opposite of what Husserl believes- 

There is no purely intellectual point of view

sure there is, if the thing is worth exercising your intellect about. Businessmen have to do this all the time. 

and there is no view from nowhere,

a view which can be from anywhere is a view from nowhere in particular 

there is only an embodied point of view.

No. A committee may have a point of view which isn't embodied in any person or group of people on it. Suppose the issue on which they have to decide has to do with something highly controversial and each member has a very strong point of view on one side or the other of the case. The committee might nevertheless issue a statement saying that, in their view, this was not an issue on which they were called upon to say anything whatsoever. 

Zahavi quotes Heidegger's Being & Time to defend the view that things are constantly presenting themselves to us and inviting us to do all sorts of naughty things to them. 

  It is phenomenologically absurd to speak of the phenomenon as if it were something behind which there would be something else of which it would be a phenomenon in the sense of the appearance which represents and expresses [this something else].

This is silly. The curvaceous blonde lady may turn out to have a dick. There is a phenomenon hidden behind the phenomenon. Moreover, plenty of phenomena- like 'air'- turns out to be composed of different things like oxygen and nitrogen and so on. Currently, Phenomenological quantum gravity is a research field because none of the candidate theories for the thing itself have yielded testable predictions. This may change. It may not. 

A phenomenon is nothing behind which there would be something else.

That would be the noumenon- which may be inaccessible.  

More accurately stated, one cannot ask for something behind the phenomenon at all, since what the phenomenon gives is precisely that something in itself.

This is sheer magical thinking. Phenomena can't give or take anything. 

Zahavi writes-

Whereas some might claim that the phenomenon is something merely subjective,

it may be but it may not as when we speak of the view taken by a Court of Law or other such body because there is no 'embodiment' in a particular perceiving subject.  

a veil or smoke screen, that conceals the objectively existing reality, phenomenologists reject what is called the two world doctrine, i.e., the proposal that we have to make a principled distinction between the world that presents itself to and can be understood by us and the world as it is in itself.

We are welcome to have a multiple world doctrine. It is merely an appearance that there are appearances or indeed reality. Who the fuck cares? What's important is we get to eat and fuck and have babies who eat and fuck. 

This is certainly not to deny the distinction between mere appearance and reality – after all, some appearances are misleading – but, for phenomenologists, this distinction is not a distinction between two separate realms (falling in the province of phenomenology and science, respectively),

Science has phenomenology- e.g. phenomenological quantum gravity.  

but a distinction between two modes of manifestation. It is a distinction between how the objects might appear at a superficial glance, and how they might appear in the best of circumstances, for instance as a result of a thorough scientific investigation.

This is the crux of the problem. It may be that to know everything about one thing is to also know everything about all things. Currently, we don't expect any scientific hypothesis not to be refuted in some particular at some point in time. 

Indeed, phenomenologists will typically claim that the world that appears to us, be it perceptually, in our daily use, or in scientific analysis, has all the required reality and objectivity.

In which case we ought to be 'at home in the world'. Yet ontological dysphoria- the feeling of being in the wrong Universe- can help make this world more hospitable to us. In mathematics, 'Cantor's paradise' was welcomed by some and considered a scandal by others. But, thanks to Cohen forcing, the thing seems very useful. W.H Woodin writes- 'The development of Set Theory, after Cohen, has led to the realization that formally unsolvable problems have degrees of unsolvability which can be calibrated by large cardinal axioms. Elaborating further, as a consequence of this calibration, it has been discovered that in many cases very different lines of investigation have led to problems whose degree of unsolvability is the same. Thus the hierarchy of large cardinal axioms emerges an intrinsic, fundamental conception within Set Theory.'

Is this a 'phenomenon' or does it refer to some Platonic Reality such that the Continuum Hypothesis is either true or false? It is perfectly possible that, in this world, there is no ultimate reality and even appearances are so only apparently. Indeed, this is the 'mayavadi' doctrine in Hinduism. 

To claim that there, in addition, exists a behind-the-scenes world,

like Woodin's 'transfinite universe'?  

a hidden world that transcends every type of givenness,

'forcing' can get us more than anything given.

every type of evidence, and that this is the really real reality, is rejected as an empty speculative claim by the phenomenologists.

Speculation can pay off big time. Till it does, we are welcome to reject it.  

In fact, they would insist that the very proposal involves a category-mistake,

like thinking objects keep presenting themselves to us when they aren't coming out as debutantes?  

a misapplication and abuse of the very concept of reality.

Did you know that Reality is a minor? That's statutory rape, dude! 

Rather than defining objective reality in terms of an inaccessible and ungraspable beyond, phenomenologists would argue that the right place to locate objectivity is in, rather than beyond, the appearing world.

Why not locate objectivity in some dispassionate protocol bound, buck stopped type of adjudication? That's what the Law does.  There are some useful things we do which don't depend on others or where 'input' from others is not required or may be mischievous. But, even in the most cerebral or private of activities, at some point 'utility' of an intersubjective sort supervenes. Now, one could call this intersubjective realm- which is like the law in that it one can't say it is the judgment of any particular embodied subject- 'transcendental', but it isn't really. There is no 'overturning of all prior beliefs' as for Husserl, nor is there any affirmation about the reality of appearances (if appearances are only apparent, Kant's idealism is empty) indeed there is nothing but utility. Sadly, sooner or later, there is nothing useful we will be able to do to avert the extinction of our species. After that, I suppose, some higher dimensional being might be able to figure out what our epistemology and ontology ought to have been and whether we ever actually approached that ideal. 

Zahavi quotes Heidegger-

In directing itself toward […] and in grasping something, Dasein  (literally 'Being-there') does not first go outside of the inner sphere in which it is initially encapsulated,

It isn't 'initially encapsulated'. Also there is no 'inner sphere'. There is merely the behavior of beings who evolved by natural selection who are involved in various coevolutionary processes and coordination and discoordination games. True a Descartes, taking a break from soldierly duties, may retreat into his own mind and come up with a work of some literary or philosophical merit. But, surely, that merit had to do with its utility to at least some of Descartes's contemporaries, not to mention those, who came later , like Husserl, whose cogitations led them to similar conclusions. One may say that, to provide a sort of super-natural certification for their research program, some may travel a little distance down the Cartesian, or Liebnizian, road. However, unless they then embrace Occasionalism (which cashes out as acknowledging appearances are merely apparent and everything is but the occasion for God or Chaos or unknowable Fate to do something or refrain from doing anything). But why not just be a mystic and say you have attained samadhi or satori or whatever?  

but, rather, in its primary kind of being, it is always already “outside” together with some being encountered in the world already discovered.

Yes, yes. Samsara is already Nirvana and God is already the dog and the Past is already the Future and Andromeda is already up Uranus.  

Nor is any inner sphere abandoned when Dasein dwells together with a being to be known and determines its character.

Being-there dwells together with Being-here which is already over there, in Utah, establishing residence so as to file for divorce.  

Rather, even in this “being outside” together with its object, Dasein is “inside”, correctly understood; that is, it itself exists as the being-in-the-world which knows

'Correctly understood' for Heidi's purpose- sure. But there are plenty of useful purposes for which this understanding would not be correct at all. The big problem for the mathematical philosophers of the period was 'impredicativity'. The mind is itself an object for itself. To 'make up our mind' or even 'to know our own mind' on a particular matter may require not just deep cogitation but much consultation of others or independent research. 

Zahavi quotes Husserl

the objects of which we are “conscious”, are not simply in consciousness as in a box, so that they can merely be found in it and snatched at in it; […] they are first constituted as being what they are for us,

in which case our mind is constituted for us- but by what? We may say, by habit and our social network etc.. But that doesn't sound very 'philosophical'. This is the cul de sac of pyschologism or sociology or the 'social construction of reality'. Going down this road ends in Grievance Studies and gesture politics.

Zahavi puts it this way- 

Social reality is thus conceived of as a fragile and vulnerable construction that is actively maintained by the participants.

If it really is fragile, we should keep stupid shitheads teaching useless shite well away from it. The fact is society is based on economics and thus anti-fragile, robust, configurations must be insulated from tampering with by useless pedagogues or their paranoid students.  

As Husserl once observed, the being of the world is only apparently stable. In reality, it is a construction of normality, which, in principle, can collapse. 

Husserl was wrong. It is the principles discoverable by the Natural Sciences- not the manner in which we construct shoving pineapples up our rectums as Neo-Liberalism's new Normal- which undergirds stuff we actually construct. 

 I suppose, a Husserlian who didn't want to come across as totally gay might babble on about neural networks and autopoiesis and high IQ stuff of that sort. The danger is, people will think you are Deepak Chopra. 

and as what they count as for us, in varying forms of objective intention. 

 Zahavi himself may be doing something interesting and his books and articles are useful because they are clearly written. Still, Phenomenology appears to be its own algorithmic Socioproctology.  That is its objective intention. Subjectively, of course, it can continue to shit higher than its arsehole.