Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-sxzjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T07:49:20.479Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Phenomenology, Naturalism and the Sense of Reality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 April 2013

Matthew Ratcliffe
Matthew Ratcliffe*
Affiliation:
Durham UniversityM.J.Ratcliffe@durham.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Phenomenologists such as Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty reject the kind of scientific naturalism or ‘scientism’ that takes empirical science to be epistemologically and metaphysically privileged over all other forms of enquiry. In this paper, I will consider one of their principal complaints against naturalism, that scientific accounts of things are oblivious to a ‘world’ that is presupposed by the intelligibility of science. Focusing mostly upon Husserl's work, I attempt to clarify the nature of this complaint and state it in the form of an argument. I conclude that the argument is effective in exposing naturalism's reliance upon impoverished conceptions of human experience, and that it also weakens the more general case for naturalism.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 72: Phenomenology and Naturalism , July 2013 , pp. 67 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See, for example, Dupré, J., Human Nature and the Limits of Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar for a critique of scientism.

2 For a very different formulation of naturalism, which is not – in my view – vulnerable to the kind of phenomenological criticism that I consider here, see, for example, Rouse, J., How Scientific Practices Matter: Reclaiming Philosophical Naturalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

3 Roy, Jean Michel, Petitot, Jean, Pachoud, Bernard, and Varela, Francisco J., ‘Beyond the Gap: an Introduction to Naturalizing Phenomenology’, 1–2, in Petitot, J., Varela, F.J., Pachoud, B. and Roy, J.-M. (eds.), Naturalizing Phenomenology: Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology and Cognitive Science (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 1–80Google Scholar.

4 See Gallagher, S. and Zahavi, D., The Phenomenological Mind (London: Routledge, 2008, Chapter 2)Google Scholar for a good summary of views concerning the relationship between phenomenology and cognitive science.

5 Dennett, D.C., The Intentional Stance (Cambridge MA: MIT Press 1987, 5)Google Scholar.

6 Husserl, E., Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. Cairns, D. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Husserl, E., The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. Carr, D. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970)Google Scholar.

8 Heidegger, M., Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie, J. and Robinson, E. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962), 29–30)Google Scholar.

9 Heidegger, M., Zollikon Seminars: Protocols – Conversations – Letters. trans. Mayr, F., and Askay, R. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2001), 103Google Scholar.

10 Husserl, E., Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: Second Book, trans. Rojcewicz, R. and Schuwer, A. (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989), 183CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Ibid., 192.

12 Heidegger, Being and Time, Division One, III.

13 Heidegger, Being and Time, 90.

14 Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, 48–9.

15 Merleau-Ponty, M., Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Smith, C. (London: Routledge, 1962)Google Scholar.

16 Wheeler, M., Reconstructing the Cognitive World: The Next Step (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 126–7Google Scholar.

17 Thagard, Paul, ‘The Passionate Scientist: Emotion in Scientific Cognition’ in Carruthers, P., Stich, S., and Siegal, M. (eds.) The Cognitive Basis of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 235–250CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Fraassen, B. van, The Empirical Stance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

19 See, for example, Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology.

20 See, for example, Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, xiii-xiv, for a discussion of the reduction in his own work, along with that of Husserl and Heidegger.

21 Husserl, E., Analyses concerning Passive and Active Synthesis: Lectures on Transcendental Logic trans. Steinbock, A.J. (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: Second Book, 42.

23 Ibid., 75.

24 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 317–8.

25 Husserl, Analyses concerning Passive and Active Synthesis, 83–91.

26 Ibid., 196.

27 Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: Second Book, 29.

28 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, Fifth Meditation.

29 Husserl, Analyses concerning Passive and Active Synthesis, 42.

30 Ibid., 91.

31 Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: Second Book, 61.

32 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 146.

33 See, for example, MacPherson, F. (ed.), The Senses: Classic and Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)Google Scholar for discussions of the nature of perception and the individuation of sensory modalities. See Hawley, K. and MacPherson, F. (eds.), The Admissible Contents of Experience (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011)Google Scholar for a recent collection of essays on the nature of perceptual content.

34 O'Callaghan, Casey, ‘Lessons from beyond Vision (Sounds and Audition)’. Philosophical Studies 153 (2011) 143–160, 157Google Scholar; ‘Perception and Multimodality’, in Margolis, E., Samuels, R., and Stich, S., (eds.) Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Cognitive Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, 92–117)Google Scholar.

35 Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, 110.

36 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 330.

37 Heidegger, Being and Time, 176. See Ratcliffe, Matthew, ‘Why Moods Matter’, in Wrathall, M. (ed.) Cambridge Companion to Being and Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in press)Google Scholar, for a detailed discussion of Heidegger on mood.

38 See Ratcliffe, Matthew and Broome, Matthew, ‘Existential Phenomenology, Psychiatric Illness and the Death of Possibilities’, in Crowell, C. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Existentialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, 361–382)CrossRefGoogle Scholar for further discussion of phenomenological psychopathology.

39 Ratcliffe, M., Feelings of Being: Phenomenology, Psychiatry and the Sense of Reality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), Chapter 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Jaspers, K., General Psychopathology, trans. Hoenig, J., and Hamilton, M.W. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1962), 98Google Scholar.

41 Sechehaye, M., Autobiography of a Schizophrenic Girl (New York: Signet, 1970, 27)Google Scholar.

42 Ibid., 29.

43 Ibid., 55–6.

44 Weiner, Stephen, ‘Unity of Agency and Volition: Some Personal Reflections’, Philosophy, Psychiatry & Psychology 10 (2003), 369–372, 369Google Scholar. Weiner has received various diagnoses over the years, the most recent being paranoid schizophrenia and schizo-affective disorder. See Weiner, Stephen, ‘Lack of Autonomy: A View from the Inside’. Philosophy, Psychiatry & Psychology 14 (2007), 237–238Google Scholar.

45 Weiner, ‘Unity of Agency and Volition: Some Personal Reflections’, 370.

46 Ibid., 371.

47 These are responses to a questionnaire study that I carried out with colleagues in 2011–12. See Ratcliffe, M., The Modalities of Melancholy: a Phenomenological Study of Depression (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming)Google Scholar for a detailed phenomenological discussion of depression and the sense of reality, which includes a defence of the view that depression involves changes in a phenomenological possibility space.

48 However, there are many elaborate descriptions to be found in literature (M. Ratcliffe, Feelings of Being, Chapter 2).

49 McGinn, C., The Problem of Consciousness (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 349Google Scholar.

50 This paper was written as part of the project ‘Emotional Experience in Depression: A Philosophical Study’. I am grateful to the AHRC and DFG for funding the project. Thanks also to Havi Carel, Stephen Weiner and an audience at the September 2011 Royal Institute of Philosophy conference on ‘Human Experience and Nature’ for helpful comments.