"Noncorrelationist Phenomenology"
Leon Niemoczynski
Immaculata University
Workshop Proposal for Pragmatism and Phenomenology: A Two Day Workshop at the Kings University College at Western University, Ontario, Canada
A traditional link between
pragmatism and phenomenology is each position's appeal to the immediate and
qualitative stream of subjective personal experience in effort to discern
either a.) intersubjective features of that experience which are common to
other subjective streams of experience or b.) simply to discern aesthetic
qualities that are present for the subject experiencing them and to report
those experiences for what they are while bracketing further levels of
meta-reflection. In the first case
Husserlian phenomenology seems to be a prime example, and in the second case I
think the phenomenological pragmatism of William James could be an example.
This workshop seeks to
understand yet another and quite different relationship between pragmatism and
phenomenology, one that is necessarily non-correlational; that is, one that
does not claim that the nature of being or reality and thought always must come
as a pair – hence limiting phenomenological inquiry to the realm of a mere
descriptive reportage had by the observing subject. In the pragmatism (and phenomenology) of C.S.
Peirce for example, the categories of experience (presumably revealed in
Husserl's phenomenological approach and more organically revealed in James'
phenomenological approach) are said to be isomorphic
to reality itself and thus are claimed not only to transcendentally
constitute human experience but any experience
whatsoever, for the categories "are" reality's modes of
self-constitution. Thus any categorial
description, or better, for Peirce, any categorial exhibition, is not bound
to the stream of personal subjective experience for it is in fact reality's self-presentation
of its objective modes, whether phenomenological or cosmological. Thus there is a self-exhibitive display of
the real whether there is a human observer or not. This point is further clarified in Charles
Hartshorne's own version of Peirce's non-correlational phenomenology where
Hartshorne acknowledges how his own approach to phenomenology is non-Husserlian
and thus "eclectic," while he does draw on logic and mathematics
(like the early Husserl) in order to make observer-independent claims
(something Husserl never acceded to).
In short, then, Peirce's and
Hartshorne's ontological categories (there are only three) seem to be able to
reach cosmological conclusions. And because
Peirce and Hartshorne both saw phenomenology to be a branch of mathematics - as
they thought any branch of philosophy, if it is to reach the real, must draw
upon in some way mathematics - it becomes apparent that a mathematical and
logical understanding of the phenomenological categories seems to be required.
In order to elucidate these
themes we shall explore how Peirce's pragmatism ("pragmaticism" in
order to distinguish it from James' version of the outlook) is
phenomenologically mathematical and logical in its orientation. To that end we will read Ketner's "Hartshorne and the Basis of Peirce's Categories." In order to more concretely draw out the
difference of Peirce's outlook from both Husserl's and James' outlooks we consider
Hartshorne's extension and revision
of Peirce's phenomenology in his "A
Revision of Peirce's Categories."
In looking at both of these readings the basis of a
"non-correlationist" phenomenology, one that uses ontological
(logical and mathematical) categories in order to reach cosmological
(metaphysically realist and observer-independent) conclusions should become
visible. As it turns out, the continuity
of the personally immediate subjective stream of experience (present in
Husserl, James, and also Bergson, for example) yields to a mathematical-logical
temporal triad that is the "moding" of reality itself. I believe that this has important
consequences for how we see pragmatism generally.
