Phenomenological Arguement

Phenomenological Argument

By: Van Dwinnells

          If you will for a few moments, I ask of you to suspend presuppositions and follow my train of thought.  The subsequent stream is in response to some of my recent studies and readings of phenomenological arguments within the past 100 or so years.  Here is some background information:

Phenomenology - is the science of categorizing phenomena and the observed occurrences in the world - mostly viewed as an empirical and more scientific understanding of experiential matters .

What is phenomena?  -  To explain, the possibility of [something's] existence is only realized when it is noticed.  The act of noticing such [a thing ] then changes our perceptual context.  The [something] or [thing] has just became phenomena. 

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      Situation A

You walk down the street looking around.  You are in no hurry.  It's a beautiful spring day; the ones that are warm yet still crisp.  You begin "noticing" the wind blowing through the trees, and how the sun scatters, piercing through the undulating leaves.  Looming in the distance dark clouds start to mock you causing you question the weatherman's judgment. Will it soon rain?   With all this attention being proportioned elsewhere, you are abruptly and rudely halted as your foot strikes an askew chunk of sidewalk sending you tumbling down to the ground.  This sudden awareness of the askew sidewalk chunk ( to be here on  referred to as just "chunk") is now considered a phenomena due to its previously unaware status.  Prior to this incident, there was no mental concept there was a chunk in front of you OR at a minimum, you were not "currently" aware of said chunk.  This variation is referred to as "cognitive dissonance".

Since attention was not given in our mental construct of reality, the chunk only could have had a passive existence, a background existence.  This poses the question that if that chunk even existed.  Granted the latter statement we negate through third party verification, but it still makes you think.

This begs the question whether all phenomena are internal to the mind.  This poses an issue because of how we see things in terms of their existence.  The concept seems feasible because we experience life through sensory mechanisms, our ears, eyes, and even tactile mechanisms all just react to "energy".  Those sensory mechanisms are only really filters for the energy and are open to discrepancies between individuals (i.e. color looks purple to me, looks blue to you).  So, are all phenomena really just subjective "interpretations" of what is really occurring.   Making such stark contradictions to presupposed ontological facts actually changes how we even look at subjects as sciences.   Considering our "observation" are actually already filtered through subjective mediums and therefore can't really be "objective" facts?  Just some food for thought.

Here are some other inquiries to chew on.  Til' the next blog.  Later

Persistence of Memory - are memories really just ordered phenomena?

dreams vs. reality - how do these relate, is the process of dreaming "real"? - consider our mind is still interpreting energies and associations of past experiences

consciousness vs. unconsciousness - what is the difference?

How can we only have limited supplies of "attention" yet store so many facts/relationships or data? 

Can we design a space to evoke attention to things therefore theoretically broadening our "currently aware" stream of consciousness?