Dgr Feral Phenomology Lecture - October 20th, 2007
How do we account for subjective and embodied experiences?
Phenomenology arose at a time when world was considered rational. These thinkers were thinking that none of this accounts for our embodied experiences.
Husserl (1859-1938)
noema – relation between objects of consciousness intentionality
noesis – our mental experiences of objects, our consciousness of them
---example when jack sees a tire, he has to see hundred on road, some he focuses on, some he doesn’t but he this kind of orientation to tires, then when e focuses on them, examining them in greater depth, that is noesis….there is a spiraling feedback
How do we know the essence of what an object is? ---example : chair u see front but fill in the back based upon experience…he wants to get to the essence of how humans have this intersubjectivity…sit, use as doorstep….but how do we know what chair is?
jhave: for me this raises questions of generative grammar, archetypes, and even neurological shape recognition in lateral geniculate nucleus….
dgr: in order to get to essence of chairness u have to cast aside everything u know about chairs and let it into yr consciousness, almost become one with chair….
-modernism )
essences life world is inter-subjective (shared meaning)
One way to bracket is almost like meditation where u get into flow consciousness, allow ideas in.
jhave: parallels zen, vajrayana seeing the object without attributes,
---most contemporary humanists do not practice this form of essence based practices references: Varela, Embodied Mind
Heidegger(1889-1976)
rejected mentalistic attitude ---rejected some of Husserl’s ideas, sought to rejoin mind-body dichotomy and introduced axiom:
---privileged physicality so that he could try to think outside of mind and body. ---jargon is an attempt to escape from the physical metaphors of language…
central idea: “how we exist in world shapes the way we understand it “ ---cyclical feedback ---body form radically changes the way we exist in the world…… ---the notion of affordances has its roots in this idea ---projected meanings and interpretations exist between beings but do not necessarily reflect truth…. ---what Heidegger did is change the questions from epistemology (how do we know) to ontology (how do we be) ---‘ready-to-hand’ tools are used implicitly without consciousness until they break ‘present-at-hand’ ---reference transparent interface (Gromala) ---a lot of HCI
Schutz
---social world intersubjectivity --- disagreed with Max Weber : society is a given ---- ---example: shared meanings and experiential meanings create private and interpersonal domains…. ---think of punk movement, exclusionary values over time get integrated by mass capitalism ---or the way cell-phones are used by teenage girls in japan or drug dealers in new Zealand…commodification of social structures…
Merleau-Ponty
--phenomenology of perception ---embodiment ---took Husserl’s concern with perception and Heidegger’s concern with being situated in the world and brought them together into the body… ---ethnography is in some cases very close to phenomenology, but there are certain kinds of methods….
History of Methodologies
---example of a bullet-proof methodology:
::First-Person Methodology in conjunction with ::Third-Person Methodology: interpretive analysis of discrepancies between first-person account and bodily behavior…
---yr project has to guide you to most appropriate methodology
Jinsil: potential question : if needing natural forms in immersive space can lead to different qualities of immersion
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