Consciousness As Presence : Wolfgang Fasching

[Wayfarer]

On reading the remainder of the Wolfgang Fasching paper. He shows that the Advaita distinguishes consciousness from the contents of consciousness (or lived experience). He says that Advaita argues that consciousness has no special characteristics or qualities of its own, and any distinctiveness belongs to the vrtti, or ‘thought-formations’, that occupy conscious awareness when objects are experienced. A key term in his paper is prakāśa, which he gives as ‘manifestation’. He quotes a source saying '“[W]hatever is seen, consciousness is not seen, since it is always and only the seeing”.

When he turns to materialist philosophy of mind he says concentration on qualia (qualities of experience) obscure the point about the quality-less nature of consciousness itself. Instead, qualia (felt sensations, the qualities of experience) are interpreted as ‘private and ineffable states’. But he says this concentration on qualia obscures the real nature of the subject-consciousness that has these experiences. He shows that physicalist theories typically miss or simply assume the essential issue of presence—the fact that experiences are not just physical events but are present to a subject. They often reduce consciousness to physical or functional properties, assuming rather than explaining the phenomenon of presence-for-subjectivity, which remains the central, unresolved aspect of the “hard problem” of consciousness. And why? Because the whole methodology of physicalism comprises the ‘bracketing out’ of the subject. It’s already assumed that is what is real, is real in the absence of any subject and so must attempt to reify consciousness as some kind of objective existent. Which is where the convergence with Husserl’s critique is clear.

Compare:

“Consciousness is not something within the objective world, but rather the mere “witness” (sākṣin) – the happening of manifestation – of the world. For Advaita, it makes no sense to view what is never given to us as an object as a part of the world of objects, and a fortiori it is nothing physical: Physics deals with the externally observable (i.e. what is given to us as givenness-transcendent objects) and what can be posited by explanatory inference on the basis of the externally observed; and consciousness the appearing itself – is neither one of the objects encountered within the appearing world, nor does any inferential path lead from the objectively observable facts to the existence of consciousness. Consciousness is the place wherein the presence of the object-world unfolds, yet it is not itself part of this world” ~ Fasching 697

with:

“In contrast to the outlook of naturalism, Husserl believed all knowledge, all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all. Consciousness should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world at all, since consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place. For Husserl it is not that consciousness creates the world in any ontological sense…but rather that the world is opened up, made meaningful, or disclosed through consciousness. The world is inconceivable apart from consciousness. Treating consciousness as part of the world, reifying consciousness, is precisely to ignore consciousness’s foundational, disclosive role” ~ Moran, Routledge intro to Phenomenology, p144.

Thanks for introducing this paper, very interesting!

[j_j]

@Joshs

You point out that the positivism of figures like Mach and Ayer stops short of a thoroughgoing and radical reduction to the primordial evidences of transcendental phenomenology.

I’m sure you are aware of the gist of their work, but have you looked into the details ? LTL is a wild book when Ayer gets to his update of Mill’s phenomenalism.

Does it stop short ? Well Ayer doesn’t dwell enough on the problem of “meaning,” though he does recognize the importance of equivalence classes. He uses the word “truth” ambiguously or incoherently.

Seems to me that Husserl’s essences are related to positivism’s “analytic” statements. In both cases, we deal with the a priori.

@Joshs

Is the most apodictically grounded basis of empiricism to be located as a presenting of world to subject or in a constituting synthesis of world within subjectivity? How does a radical positivism avoid slipping into the naïveté of the natural empirical attitude if it sees the noetic pole of the intentional act as merely an empty opening onto the ‘real’ world? How does noesis accomplish the production of the real perceptual object?

Positivism does not say enough about “enacted tribal software” (the Anyone). It needs a big dose of Heidegger. But it “sees the perspectival perceptual basis” of the scientific image. So not so naive, especially compared to the dominant talk about the “physical” which presupposes that “experience is ( just ) qualia” that “emerges” from this de-sensualized physicality. The disconnect of the physical from perceptual quality looks to me like a supreme alienation of theory from life. That this alienation persists helps make my point really. We can “afford” to talk nonsense in philosophy. But if the plumber only unclogs a non-sensual (meta-)physical toilet, while we continue to experience the “internal qualia” of feces, we aren’t so eager to pull out our wallets. The plumber, who wants to get paid, is “irrationally constrained” by our “illusive perceptions” of his success or failure.

I understand why Husserl wants to give consciousness something to do, make it active and constituting. But I would still put all of that “in the world.” To give consciousness as a role is to lose the crucial ontological difference. We move into a metaphysical psychology, which is on the edge of pseudo-science.

The “meaning” of signs is “there in the world” as the “significance” of their aspects.

[j_j]

@Wayfarer

He shows that physicalist theories typically miss or simply assume the essential issue of presence—the fact that experiences are not just physical events but are present to a subject. They often reduce consciousness to physical or functional properties, assuming rather than explaining the phenomenon of presence-for-subjectivity, which remains the central, unresolved aspect of the “hard problem” of consciousness. And why? Because the whole methodology of physicalism comprises the ‘bracketing out’ of the subject. It’s already assumed that is what is real, is real in the absence of any subject and so must attempt to reify consciousness as some kind of objective existent.

My own complaint about this kind of physicalism is the same. The bracketing out of the subject is “metaphysical” in the pejorative sense of the positivists. It “forgets the quality” of objects that allows for measurement to be measurement. Bridgman, the operationalist, was not confused on this issue. Perhaps because he a great experimentalist, who measured pressures that had never been measured before. He had to develop his own instruments. He was also “troubled” ( in an inspiring way ) by Einstein’s relativity.

I agree on the last point also. To assume the physical as a substrate truthmaker leads to the “hard problem of consciousness” — or its handwaving evasion. Hence we get talk of a epiphenomenon. Such talk is absurd, for the basis of the physical, immediate qualitative perception, is made an “unreal fume” that rises from an imposter “physical,” the fetishization of floating mathematical models no longer rooted in the primacy of perception. Hence my claim that they indulge in a sci-fi Pythagoreanism, while enjoying this position as “hard boiled” and “serious.” It’s easy to “solve the problem” when the problem hasn’t even been recognized.

[j_j]

@Wayfarer

Instead, qualia (felt sensations, the qualities of experience) are interpreted as ‘private and ineffable states’. But he says this concentration on qualia obscures the real nature of the subject-consciousness that has these experiences.

For me this leads us back to the quality of empirical objects themselves. But the structure of such objects is very different. Instead of a “true” object that “causes” representations in “container subjects,” we empirical-cultural subjects “perform” the inter-personal, temporal “synthesis” of “aspects.” The river is not “other than” its fugitive perspectival manifestations. But it is never done manifesting. We perform the unity of those manifestations ( aspects, moments.) So the objects keep their quality and “between-us-ness,” while “subjectivity” is recognized in the metaphor of “aspect.”

[j_j]

@Andy

The thing is, when a “step back” is taken (and I’m deliberately avoiding the implication of ‘something’ that is ‘taking’ that step), then consciousness (on this stipulated definition) and ‘being’ seem to merge. I’m uncomfortable calling it a ‘manifestation’ or a ‘phenomenon’ because these terms seem to imply an appearance, and appearances are for whatever it is that they are appearing to. And there isn’t anything.

Is this what you’re getting at? Or have I missed your point?

That’s it. Yes. I’m not sure if you studied phenomenology yet closely, but in that context “phenomenon” does not mean representation, as if in some mental stuff. Instead it’s more like the simple presentation of the object.

So I am saying indeed that “consciousness is being.” And “being is presence.” But as Heidegger points out, presence includes absence, and so the best formulation, though more obscure, is that “consciousness is being is time.”

But of course consciousness cannot be understood here as some kind of stuff. We are using a noun, weirdly, to point at the “thereness” of things. But this “thereness” is not intended as a stuff, even if we are forced to use a noun.

As you note, there is “perspective” or “point of view” “baked-in” to what is present. The coin is there, “visually speaking,” though the eye is not in “the visual field.” But only the heads side or tails side is there. Yet later, the other side is the other side of that same coin. This is how time is brought in. We “perform” or “live” the unity of the moments or aspects of this coin, etc. The presence of the heads side is the absence of the tails side. The presence of the first notes of the melody is the absence of its final notes.

Even as you read this sentence, its “total meaning” is “spread out” in “memory and anticipation.”

[Joshs]

@Wayfarer

“In contrast to the outlook of naturalism, Husserl believed all knowledge, all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all. Consciousness should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world at all, since consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place. For Husserl it is not that consciousness creates the world in any ontological sense…but rather that the world is opened up, made meaningful, or disclosed through consciousness. The world is inconceivable apart from consciousness. Treating consciousness as part of the world, reifying consciousness, is precisely to ignore consciousness’s foundational, disclosive role” ~ Moran, Routledge intro to Phenomenology, p144

It is true that the world is inconceivable apart from consciousness, but this should not be understood to mean that consciousness is prior to world. The phrase “the world is opened up through consciousness” doesn’t indicate an already-formed consciousness disclosing an already-formed world. Self and world are radically intertwined rather than there being a transcendental ego standing over against the world.

Consciousness is always consciousness of something, and world is always world for consciousness. The relation is internally correlated rather than externally connected. So rather than consciousness first and world second, subjectivity and world are mutually implicative poles of intentional correlation. Consciousness is this correlation.

[Joshs]

@j_j

But the structure of such objects is very different. Instead of a “true” object that “causes” representations in “container subjects,” we empirical-cultural subjects “perform” the inter-personal, temporal “synthesis” of “aspects.” The river is not “other than” its fugitive perspectival manifestations. But it is never done manifesting. We perform the unity of those manifestations ( aspects, moments.) So the objects keep their quality and “between-us-ness,” while “subjectivity” is recognized in the metaphor of “aspect.

Husserl was not a realist. For him both the aspects (perspectival adumbrations) and the objects they are aspects of are subjective and relative. ‘Real’ objects are abstractions, idealizations. They can always be construed differently from how they are perceived and there is no ‘external’ world for everyone to constrain how they are constituted.

“Certainly the world that is in being for me, the world about which I have always had ideas and spoken about meaningfully, has meaning and is accepted as valid by me because of my own apperceptive performances because of these experiences that run their course and are combined precisely in those performances—as well as other functions of consciousness, such as thinking. But is it not a piece of foolishness to suppose that world has being because of some performance of mine? Clearly, I must make my formulation more precise.

In my Ego there is formed, from out of the proper sources of transcendental passivity and activity, my “representation of the world, ” my “picture of the world, ” whereas outside of me, naturally enough, there is the world itself. But is this really a good way of putting it? Does this talk about outer and inner, if it makes any sense at all, receive its meaning from anywhere else than from my formation and my preservation of meaning? Should I forget that the totality of everything that I can ever think of as in being resides within the universal realm of consciousness, within my realm, that of the Ego, and indeed within what is for me real or possible?” (Phenomenology and Anthropology)

[j_j]

@Wayfarer

D. Sensory qualities are treated as secondary appearances, while mathematical properties are taken as objectively real.

This is part of “scientism” but not an issue for positivism/empiricism. Ayer calls “physical objects” “logical constructions” from ( neutral ) sense-data. So the “sensory” is fundamental, which means “subjectivity” is fundamental. Ayer and others don’t much go into the concept of a “logical construction.” What is language ?

[Andy]

@j_j

We are using a noun, weirdly, to point at the “thereness” of things. But this “thereness” is not intended as a stuff, even if we are forced to use a noun, grammatically speaking.

This brings to mind the Buddhist notion of tathata – commonly translated as “thusness” or “suchness” – the ultimate reality or the true nature of all phenomena as they exist in their pure state, prior to dualistic thinking, conceptualization, and subject-object distinctions.

@j_j

As you note, there is “perspective” or “point of view” “baked-in” to what is present.

It was gratifying to find that the Avenarius reference you provided earlier made the same point.

@j_j

The coin is there, “visually speaking,” though the eye is not in “the visual field.”

Ah – the microcosm.

@j_j

But only the heads side or tails side is there. Yet later, the other side is the other side of that same coin.

The fact that Planck’s Constant is non-zero has been indicating that subject and object are not as radically distinct as our default thinking makes them out to be since its discovery in 1900, though Planck wouldn’t have understood that at the time.

[Wayfarer]

@j_j

LTL is a wild book when Ayer gets to his update of Mill’s phenomenalism.

Language, Truth and Logic. I cannot, for the life of me, see how you keep connecting this with Husserl or phenomenology. According to Ayer, any utterances that cannot be validated by scientific observation are ‘otiose’ (I still remember the word — I did an undergraduate unit on that book), or, in more plain language, nonsense. It would have to rate as the least ‘wild’ book I studied as an undergrad.

[Wayfarer]

The Wiki entry on Ayer tells us that:

Ayer was a strong critic of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. As a logical positivist, Ayer was in conflict with Heidegger’s vast, overarching theories of existence. Ayer considered them completely unverifiable through empirical demonstration and logical analysis, and this sort of philosophy an unfortunate strain in modern thought. He considered Heidegger the worst example of such philosophy, which Ayer believed entirely useless. In Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, Ayer accuses Heidegger of “surprising ignorance” or “unscrupulous distortion” and “what can fairly be described as charlatanism”.

I think there’s plenty to criticize in Heidegger, specifically in respect of his association with Nazism, but I posted this more as an example of the typical positivist view of continental philosophy.

[j_j]

@Andy

This brings to mind the Buddhist notion of tathata – commonly translated as “thusness” or “suchness” – the ultimate reality or the true nature of all phenomena as they exist in their pure state, prior to dualistic thinking, conceptualization, and subject-object distinctions.

That sounds right to me. “Suchness” reads to me like a synonym for “quality.” Presence is presence as quality. Or quality is presence. It’s so radically simple that it’s hard to gesture at it without reification or “conceptualization, and subject-objective distinctions.”

What Mach says about the ego in The Analysis of Sensations reminds me of dependent origination and anattā. No self but the “composite” or “enacted” empirical self, which is one more entity which is present rather than presence itself.

@Andy

Ah – the microcosm.

Yes, I think we are interpreting that in the same way. So what is the shared world that is also “only” such microcosms ? Each microcosm as a whole is a “fluid aspect” of the world as a whole. Perhaps this is what Leibniz was getting at.

And as the same town, looked at from various sides, appears quite different and becomes as it were numerous in aspects [perspectivement]; even so, as a result of the infinite number of simple substances, it is as if there were so many different universes, which, nevertheless are nothing but aspects [perspectives] of a single universe, according to the special point of view of each Monad.

@Andy

The fact that Planck’s Constant is non-zero has been indicating that subject and object are not as radically distinct as our default thinking makes them out to be since its discovery in 1900, though Planck wouldn’t have understood that at the time.

Perhaps you can say more about this ?

[j_j]

Schopenhauer ungenerously blasted Hegel, and many admired him for this, but it was shameful, because he was blind to something good.

It’s easier to understand in Ayer’s case, given the terrible war. And I’m ambivalent about the later Heidegger’s style myself. But the early lectures are something else:

The lectures have a twofold task: 1. Establishing and opening up the horizon within which specific facts of the matter are to be expected. Provisional orientation of the perspective, stripping away mistaken expectations. 2. Concretely working out the facts of the matter that have, step-by-step, been made more accessible; familiarity with the objects and with the way of dealing with them theoretically. Before anything else, the following misguided expectations need to be stripped away: 1. No journalistic information about phenomenology, no divulging of some trick for perceiving essences. 2. More dangerous, because more entrenched: no foundation, no program or system, is given here; not even philosophy should be expected. It is my conviction that philosophy is at an end. We stand before completely new tasks that have nothing to do with traditional philosophy. This view is, however, only a clue. Only facts of the matter are of significance. Definition, classification, explication, and disputation are of secondary importance.
…
Ad 1. Not absence of prejudice, which is a utopia. The idea of having no prejudice is itself the greatest prejudice. Mastery in the face of each possibility of something establishing itself as prejudice. Not free from prejudices but free for the possibility of giving up a prejudice at the decisive moment on the basis of a critical encounter with the subject matter. That is the form of existence of a scientific human.

Ad 2. Lethargy towards knowledge is the consequence of science conceived as a collection of material that has already been worked over. This lethargy is characteristic of today’s educated consciousness. One has to see that precisely this aspect is fatal. One no longer understands what is actually going on. This cowardice when it comes to questioning often adorns itself as religiosity. Ultimate questioning, questioning that confronts itself, appears as temerity to this religiosity. One flees in the face of a fundamental possibility of existence, a possibility that seems today, alas, to have lost its way. The sciences are one possibility of existence and of existence’s critical confrontation with itself. If each person, in his place opposite his science, experienced in specific questions that he critically confronts himself and his world here, then he has understood what science means.

This is the opening from his first lectures given at Marburg in the winter semester of 1923–1924.

[j_j]

@Joshs

Husserl was not a realist. For him both the aspects (perspectival adumbrations) and the objects they are aspects of are subjective and relative. ‘Real’ objects are abstractions, idealizations. They can always be construed differently from how they are perceived and there is no ‘external’ world for everyone to constrain how they are constituted.

I didn’t claim he was a realist, so I’m not sure what you are objecting to. You can say that “real” objects are abstractions, but you may want to say what abstractions are then. I’ve sketched a theory of “meaning” elsewhere. We “perform” the “synthesis” of “moments/aspects” of what are “therefore” objects in the “space of reasons” or “forum” or intersubjective lifeworld. A large part of this performance involves signs, unfortunately typically conceived of as empirical-sensory vessels of non-empirical non-sensory “mind-stuff.”

Many, assuming the necessity of this mind-stuff, then need to invent an “external” stuff, which is the mystified version of the physical.

[j_j]

@Joshs

In my Ego there is formed, from out of the proper sources of transcendental passivity and activity, my “representation of the world, ” my “picture of the world, ” whereas outside of me, naturally enough, there is the world itself. But is this really a good way of putting it? Does this talk about outer and inner, if it makes any sense at all, receive its meaning from anywhere else than from my formation and my preservation of meaning? Should I forget that the totality of everything that I can ever think of as in being resides within the universal realm of consciousness, within my realm, that of the Ego, and indeed within what is for me real or possible?”

Sure, this is the kind of talk that many found and find disappointing in Husserl.

Let’s say you want to read Husserl at 2 AM, because everyone else in the house is asleep and won’t interrupt your concentration, but then some yahoo is blasting boom boom boom from his car somewhere outside. Did you “constitute” that interruption ? Is the “for-you-ness” of that awful racket also an “inside-you-ness” ?

Who is Husserl talking to, writing for ? Is he referring to “the proper sources of transcendental activity” in his Ego Realm ? Does that have anything to do with my Ego Realm ? But does my Ego Realm even “exist” in his ?

These playful questions are of course my attempt to point out the performative contradiction of excessively subjective claims. If “between-us” objects ( including signs/concepts) aren’t “external” in the mild sense of exceeding both of us, then philosophy doesn’t make sense in the first place.

Let’s examine this:

I myself, as transcendental ego, “constitute” the world, and at the same time, as soul, I am a human ego in the world. The understanding which prescribes its law to the world is my transcendental understanding, and it forms me, too, according to these laws; yet it is my - the philosopher’s - psychic faculty. Can the ego which posits itself, of which Fichte speaks, be anything other than Fichte’s own? If this is supposed to be not an actual absurdity but a paradox that can be resolved, what other method could help us achieve clarity than the interrogation of our inner experience and an analysis carried out within its framework? If one is to speak of a transcendental “consciousness in general,” if I, this singular, individual ego, cannot be the bearer of the nature-constituting understanding, must I not ask how I can have, beyond my individual self-consciousness, a general, a transcendental intersubjective consciousness? The consciousness of intersubjectivity, then, must become a transcendental problem; but again, it is not apparent how it can become that except through an interrogation of myself, [one that appeals to] inner experience, i.e., in order to discover the manners of consciousness through which I attain and have others and a fellow mankind in general, and in order to understand the fact that I can distinguish, in myself between myself and others and can confer upon them the sense of being “of my kind.”

The problem with Husserl, who is nevertheless great, is phrases like “inner experience.” “Mentalistic” approaches tend to understand “meaning” as “inner” stuff. So signs have to be “vessels” that somehow carry inner-stuff out of mouths through ears and back into “innerstuff” again. Of course consciousness then gets reified and crammed with mystical machinery, so that the result is caught between psychology and theology.

[j_j]

@Wayfarer

A. The rise of the modern scientific conception of nature culminates in the work of Galileo Galilei.
B. Galileo introduces the decisive idea that nature is fundamentally mathematizable.
C. The true structure of nature is conceived as a system of ideal mathematical forms underlying sensory appearances.
D. Sensory qualities are treated as secondary appearances, while mathematical properties are taken as objectively real.
E. Scientific method therefore constructs an idealised mathematical model of nature.
F. This model achieves extraordinary explanatory and predictive success.
G. The mathematical world gradually replaces the world of lived experience as the primary conception of reality.
H. The original abstraction involved in mathematization is forgotten.
I. The theoretical construction is mistaken for the world itself.
J. The lifeworld (Lebenswelt)—the world of everyday experience—becomes concealed.
K. Scientific objectivism thus excludes the experiencing subject who performs science.
L. The resulting philosophical crisis is a loss of insight into the foundations of meaning underlying scientific knowledge.

So I agree with all of this. But Mach, for instance, does not at all make sense as the target.

[Andy]

@j_j

So what is the shared world that is also “only” such microcosms ? Each microcosm as a whole is a “fluid aspect” of the world as a whole. Perhaps this is what Leibniz was getting at.

Fazang was a prominent figure in Huayan Buddhism (China). He gave us the analogy of the “Net of Indra” – a collection of jewels wherein every jewel reflects every other jewel. All relations in this model are internal to each jewel. Perhaps a jewel in this net is analogous to W’s microcosm.

Leibniz gained familiarity with Chinese philosophy through the Jesuits that were active there at that time, so it’s not beyond credibility that his Monadology is based on Fazang’s analogy. But, being of the Madhyamaka school, the jewels in the analogy would have been conceived as “empty of inherent existence.”

Leibniz’s monads are substances, and so have only external relations. Thus Leibniz needed an external source of synchronization for all of his monads and invoked a deist notion of theism. Both points are contrary to Madhyamaka Buddhism.

It was Whitehead who took the Monadology and converted it from a substance ontology to a process ontology, more in keeping with Fazang’s analogy (but he retained a kind of theism).

@j_j

Perhaps you can say more about this ?

Planck was trying to come up with a more accurate equation for the black body radiation spectrum than the available Wien equation and the available Rayleigh-Jeans equation. Somehow he hit on the idea of quantizing the amount of radiation emitted or absorbed by the body’s surface, and found it worked, implicating his famous constant. But he considered this a mathematical sleight of hand that would be worked out properly in due course.

Einstein’s treatment of the photoelectric effect (1905) showed that this was not mathematical sleight of hand at all, but a fundamental feature of light itself.

Heisenberg was working on his attempt to explain the emission and absorption lines in atomic spectra, and had a breakthrough in 1925. One outcome was his famous uncertainty principle – the fact that there are certain pairs of operators (measurements that can be made) that “don’t commute.” That is to say that the more accuracy you have from one measurement, the less accuracy you can have from the other. And the constant relating these two levels of accuracy implicates Planck’s Constant. If Planck’s Constant were zero, you could have zero indeterminacy for both measurements. But it’s not zero.

So in the classical limit we can observe the world without disturbing it. The observer is entirely external – the state of the world exists independently of whether anyone is looking at it, as if there were a “glass wall” transparent to information but impenetrable to interaction, between the observer and the observed.

With quantum indeterminism, the “glass wall” must be replaced by a permeable membrane. The glass wall might represent the classical illusion that we are radically distinct from the world we are studying, but quantum indeterminacy is telling us that we are actually participants.

John Wheeler proposed that far from being on the “on the far side” of a glass wall, the object is generated by the questions we ask about it (Wheeler’s “It from Bit” scenario).

[Joshs]

@j_j

So I agree with all of this. But Mach, for instance, does not at all make sense as the target

Mach reduces nature to immediate sensory appearances and operational abstractions. He prioritizes epistemology over existence, abstraction over lived meaning, analysis over world-disclosure,
and explanation over participation. His phenomenalist empiricism, which exemplifies Sellars’ ‘myth of the given’ and Quine’s analytic-synthetic distinction, is rejected by many communities within philosophy, from enactivism to phenomenology, pragmatism to hermeneutics and existentialism. Those same communities reject Ayer’s approach, which is essentially an extension of Mach, for the same reasons.

Even Karl Popper, whose work is closer to Kant than to post-Hegelian movements like pragmatism, hermeneutics and phenomenology, attacks Machian empiricism and positivism. Popper rejects inductivism and observational foundations, arguing that science proceeds through conjectures and falsification. Observation is theory-laden. Popper sees Mach as representing an untenable verificationist outlook.

[j_j]

@Andy

It was Whitehead who took the Monadology and converted it from a substance ontology to a process ontology, more in keeping with Fazang’s analogy (but he retained a kind of theism).

And also, arguably, Heidegger, in his own way.

I look forward to responding to your post in detail later, but it’s great stuff !

[j_j]

Is it rude of me to ask how much of Mach’s work you have looked at yourself ?