Phenomenology, Naturalism And Empirical Science: A Hybrid And Heretical Proposal

233 Pages·2018·0.855 MB·English

by  Jack Reynolds

Phenomenology, Naturalism
and Science
Arguing for the compatibility of phenomenology and naturalism, this book
also refashions each. The opening chapters begin with a methodological
focus, which seeks to curb the “over-bidding” characteristic of both tra-
ditional transcendental phenomenology and scientific naturalism. Having
thus opened the possibility that the twain might meet, it is in the detailed
chapters on matters where scientific and phenomenological work overlap
and sometimes conflict—on time, body and others—that the book con-
tests some of the standard ways of understanding the relationship between
phenomenological philosophy and empirical science and between phenom-
enology and naturalism. Without invoking a methodological move of quar-
antine, in which each is allocated to their proper and separate domains, the
book outlines the significance of the first-person perspective characteristic
of phenomenology—both epistemically and ontologically—while according
due respect to the relevant empirical sciences. The book thus renews phe-
nomenology and argues for its ongoing relevance and importance for the
future of philosophy.
Jack Reynolds is Professor of Philosophy and Associate Dean (Research) of
the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University. Other books of
his include Chronopathologies: The Politics of Time in Deleuze, Derrida,
Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology (2012); A nalytic Versus Continen-
tal: Arguments on the Methods and Value of Philosophy (2010, with James
Chase); M erleau-Ponty and Derrida: Intertwining Embodiment and Alterity
(2004); and Understanding Existentialism (2006).
Routledge Research in Phenomenology
Edited by Søren Overgaard
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Komarine Romdenh-Romluc
University of Sheffield, UK
David Cerbone
West Virginia University, USA
1 Phenomenology and the Transcendental
Edited by Sara Heinämaa, Mirja Hartimo and Timo Miettinen
2 Philosophy of Mind and Phenomenology
Conceptual and Empirical Approaches
Edited by Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Andreas Elpidorou, and Walter Hopp
3 Phenomenology of Sociality
Discovering the ‘We’
Edited by Thomas Szanto and Dermot Moran
4 Phenomenology of Thinking
Philosophical Investigations into the Character of Cognitive Experiences
Edited by Thiemo Breyer and Christopher Gutland
5 Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty
Edited by Komarine Romdenh-Romluc
6 Pragmatic Perspectives in Phenomenology
Edited by Ondřej Švec and Jakub Čapek
7 Phenomenology of Plurality
Hannah Arendt on Political Intersubjectivity
Sophie Loidolt
8 Phenomenology, Naturalism and Science
A Hybrid and Heretical Proposal
Jack Reynolds
Phenomenology, Naturalism
and Science
A Hybrid and Heretical Proposal
Jack Reynolds
First published 2018
by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Reynolds, Jack, 1976– author.
Title: Phenomenology, naturalism, and science : a hybrid and
heretical proposal / Jack Reynolds.
Description: 1 [edition]. | New York : Routledge, 2017. |
Series: Routledge research in phenomenology ; 8 |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017027275 | ISBN 9781138924383 (hardback :
alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Phenomenology. | Science—Philosophy. | Naturalism.
Classification: LCC B829.5 .R494 2017 | DDC 142/.7—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017027275
ISBN: 978-1-138-92438-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-68441-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Permissions xi
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Phenomenology and Naturalism 1
1.2 Phenomenology and Science: A Dilemma 4
1.3 Naturalizing Phenomenology and Liberalizing
Naturalism 7
1.4 Conservative or Radical? 9
1.5 Heresy or Triviality? 10
1.6 The Structure of the Book 11
PART I
Methodology and Meta-Philosophy 17
2 Phenomenology and Naturalism: A Hybrid and
Heretical Proposal 19
2.1 Précis 20
2.2 Phenomenological and Naturalism: Never the Twain
Shall Meet? 21
2.3 Phenomenological Over-Bidding 25
2.4 Minimal Phenomenology 32
2.5 The Over-Bidding of Philosophical Naturalism 35
2.6 Minimal Phenomenology as Consistent With Liberal
Naturalism 40
2.7 Minimal Phenomenology and Weak Methodological
Naturalism 41
3 Scientific Realism and Phenomenology: A Showdown? 53
3.1 Scientific Realism 55
3.2 Meillassoux and the ‘Great Outdoors’ 56
vi Contents
3.3 ‘Corroboration’ and ‘No Miracles’ Contra
Meillassoux 59
3.4 Wiltsche’s Phenomenological Anti-Realism and Van
Fraassen’s Constructive Empiricism 63
3.5 Phenomenological Agnosticism and Fine’s Natural
Ontological Attitude 70
3.6 Gallagher and Zahavi on the ‘Showdown’ 72
3.7 Enactivism and Scientific Realism 75
3.8 Conclusion: World, Experience and Epistemic
Optimism 76
4 Merleau-Ponty’s Gordian Knot: Transcendental
Phenomenology, Science and Naturalism 85
4.1 The Phenomenological Reduction 87
4.2 Eidetic Analysis/Reduction 92
4.3 Genetic Phenomenology and a ‘Phenomenology of
Phenomenology’ 95
4.4 Philosophy and Psychology, the Transcendental and the
Empirical: Beyond Parallelism 97
4.5 Conclusion: Merleau-Ponty as Weak Methodological
Naturalist 104
PART II
Situated Thought: Time, Body, Others 113
5 Time 115
5.1 Phenomenological Time and the ‘Minimal Self’ 118
5.2 Phenomenological Time(s): From Husserl to
Gallagher 120
5.3 Temporalizing Lynne Baker and the First-Person
Perspective 127
5.4 A Metaphysics of Intrinsic Time? 131
6 Body 143
6.1 Embodied Cognition and Naturalism:
The Emergence Dilemma 144
6.2 The Forgetting and Return of the Body:
Phenomenology and 4e Cognition 147
6.3 Complicating Leib and Körper 151
6.4 Online and Offline Cognition: Know-How and
Emergence 154
Contents vii
6.5 Body-Schema and Body-Image 157
6.6 Rubber-Hands, Illusions and the Robustness of the
Body Schema 160
6.7 Animals, Evolution and Embodied Cognition 163
6.8 The Predictive Mind and Embodied Cognition 168
7 Others 183
7.1 Phenomenology and Intersubjectivity: Some Core
Insights 186
7.2 Sartre’s Necessary and Sufficient Conditions 187
7.3 Social Cognition in Theory Theory, Simulation Theory
and Beyond 196
7.4 Theory Theory 197
7.5 Simulation Theory 204
7.6 C onclusion: An Inferential Justification for the Non-
Inferential Methods of Phenomenology? 207
Index 215

Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank all those who have read and commented on parts of this
work or otherwise significantly impacted this manuscript and the life that
was one of its conditions: mine! In terms of the book itself, I am particularly
indebted to Erol Copelj, Andrew Inkpin and Ricky Sebold, all of whom have
offered important feedback and criticism of the whole manuscript and often
forced me to think again. If one needs to be provoked to think, as Gilles
Deleuze says, this book is especially indebted to Ricky. To invoke an image
from the history of philosophy, he did stir me from my slumber when he
commenced his PhD with me early in 2009, even if we continue to hold very
different positions regarding both naturalism and phenomenology. This
book has benefited from his provocations, as well as from the many other
PhD students I have worked with on topics that also relate to this proj-
ect in a variety of complex ways, including James Burrowes, Dale Clisby,
David Rowe, Paul Barry, Aaron Harrison, Ross Pain, Nik Alksnis, James
Watt, Michael Mitchell, Sherah Bloor, Steve Churchill, Andrew Kirkpatrick
and Kane Simpson, to mention a few. Beyond that, I have received helpful
feedback on selected chapters from Somogy Varga, Jon Roffe, James Chase,
James Williams, Mike Wheeler, Shaun Gallagher, Dan Zahavi, Søren Over-
gaard, Sandy Boucher, Burt Hopkins, Pierre-Jean Renaudie, Michael Kelly,
Sean Bowden, Pat Stokes, Matheson Russell, Andy Sims and the anonymous
reviewers of the manuscript for various journals and Routledge.
I’d also like to recognize my immediate family (Jo, Rosa and Penny), and
my colleagues and friends at Deakin University, especially Sean, Pat, Matt
Sharpe, George Duke, Leesa Davis, Petra Brown, Daniela Voss, Russell
Grigg and, in a newly expanding philosophy department, Cathy Legg and
Talia Morag.
Institutionally, I would like to acknowledge the School of Humanities and
Social Sciences at Deakin and my managers, Matthew Clarke and Brenda
Cherednichenko. My move to Deakin at the beginning of 2014 has allowed
this book to be completed much sooner than would have otherwise been the
case. Support has also come from the Alfred Deakin Institute of Citizenship
and Globalisation and from the University of Wollongong, Murdoch Univer-
sity, and the University of Dundee, for invitations to speak on related themes.