[Xmca-l] Re: Noumenal and Phenomenal

[Greg Thompson]

Martin,

This doesn't answer the question that Andy and I were raising, namely the
issue of mediation and whether or not the phenomenological position that
you embrace also embraces "mediation" as a concept. I will attempt to
answer my question on your behalf (based on my reading of your book, The
Science of Qualitative Research). I intend this as a provocation as much as
an attempt to articulate some common ground so feel free to say "No, you've
got it all wrong!"

In your book you draw a distinction between epistemological and ontological
construction. You note that Kant (as the villain) is interested in
epistemological construction - i.e. the construction of representations.
This leads to the noumenal/phenomenal distinction. Thus, although
things-in-themselves are noumenal, the constructed representations of the
world are phenomenal (and thus not of this world - or perhaps more
playfully, "out of this world"?). The problem here is that in this
conception of things, the world of things is made up of one type of thing
and the world of ideas is made up of an altogether different thing.

So I wonder then if there might be a similar distinction with regard to
mediation - i.e., there is epistemological mediation and this is different
from ontological mediation.

The trouble is that as my hermeneutic phenomenologist friend Stephen
Yanchar (he was one of Brent Slife's students) points out, mediation
presupposes something that stands between two different kinds of thing -
(e.g., the noumenal and the phenomenal?). Yanchar points to Heidegger's
notion of disclosure or unconcealment as a more productive concept than
mediation because it places the phenomenal back into the noumenal world.

So I guess I've failed to answer my question, so I'll simply re-pose it:
does "mediation" have a role in a non-dualistic hermeneutic phenomenology?

Martin?

-greg




On Tue, Jun 21, 2016 at 10:32 PM, Martin John Packer <
mpacker@uniandes.edu.co> wrote:

> Well as I see it, hermeneutic phenomenology set out precisely to escape
> from the Kantian (and Husserlian) distinction between the ‘world of
> experience’ and ‘the real world.’ It insisted that we live *in* the world,
> and are *of* the world. In my view, Vygotsky was attempting something
> similar.
>
> What “a prior property” are you referring to, James?
>
> Martin
>
> > On Jun 21, 2016, at 6:27 AM, Ma, James (james.ma@canterbury.ac.uk) <
> james.ma@canterbury.ac.uk> wrote:
> >
> > The reason I brought up the Kantian distinction was somehow connected to
> existentialism which has a direct bearing on hermeneutic phenomenology (the
> a priori property of which has long been my interest). I've often had
> something phenomenological at the back of my mind whenever my thoughts are
> on Vygotsky's "non-classical" psychology - I wondered what your thoughts on
> the relevance of phenomenology for CHAT might be, if any?
>
>
>


-- 
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson