All the discussion the last few months on A-theory vs. B-theory of time, on speech acts, on intentionality and on naturalism has made me think about what is all behind it all. I think a lot of the discussion ends up being the old problem of the subjective (1st person world) versus the objective (3rd person world). In other worlds the way the naturalism debate goes, naturalism seems more committed to the view that a full description of reality can be given in a purely 3rd person account. The debate about time and free will often hinges on the nature of 1st person language. Typically philosophers argue that the 1st person account can't be reduced to the 3rd person account. With the naturalists arguing that in a way 1st person accounts are either an illusion or not what we think of them.
Perhaps that's an over simplified account of things. But I think that's really what many debates in philosophy come down to.
Now I'll leave the debate about time alone for the moment and instead focus on intentionality. I think intentionality is one of those places where the debate is most clear and perhaps most pronounced. Now Heidegger (along with both Wittgenstein and Kant as well) argues that intentionality is not the same as a positive science. That is, he appears to fall into the camp of those who say the 1st person can't be reduced to the 3rd. Having said that though, he also doesn't accept the notion of subjectivity that many philosophers do.
What Heidegger introduces, and what I see him arguing is irreducible, is the hermeneutic circle.
Within this circle we can't have a privileged 1st person or 3rd person account.
Now philosophers from both camps (1st and 3rd) will argue that they aren't claiming Cartesian certainty nor anything akin to it. But even if they give lip service to the notion of fallibility and the epistemic limits of human knowing, they still conceive of the question as if there were some absolute, pure 1st person account that fully accounts for the phenomena. (Or, in the case of science, a 3rd person account that we at best converge upon) That is, they treat hermeneutics merely as an unfortunate aspect of how we come to know and not an essential part of phenomena itself.
If we take the hermeneutic circle seriously, not only does that problematize what we mean by intentionality. It also opens up science. The phenomena of science becomes more than the static eternal entities that science often assumes.
This is why I still tend to call myself a naturalist or a materialist, even though I diverge radically from the views of many in those camps. To me science is more than the 3rd person account that I think it is often taken as. (And I note, for those reading Heidegger, that what he attacks as science or technology is this 3rd person stance)
If one adds in Levinas and his particular thinking through of Heidegger's project, then I think we end up with fundamental ontology being not a 1st or 3rd person account, but a 2cd person account. We conceive of the other as a you and not just an I (as in empiricism or many idealisms) or an it (as scientism and many other such approaches).
So what are the implications for the whole A-theory vs. B-theory of time?
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Blogged by Clark Goble