jesus christ this post pales in comparison to the phenomenal (hah, pun! just wait for it) writing of my small-minded peers (they’re not small minded, they’re brilliant, it’s a reference to the blog name). but I’ve been wanting to post something, i’ve thought about this a lot lately and also over many years prior, and so here it is. to make it even better? its pretty unedited at least compared to the usual editing i need to do to make my writing into something digestible. wow, that’s a strong start, i bet you’re stoked for this one, huh?

In class (ethnographic research methods) today (no longer true, it was today when I wrote this) my professor talked about ontology, epistemology, and methodology. These fucking -ologies man. They really make my brain hurt. I’ve heard them a million times now at this point and yet reliably every time I hear them I think to myself “WTF does this mean again?” So, that’s my start to this philosophy post, in which I will seek to outline my own ontological position. I love talking about things I barely understand, and in that sense I’m a great academic. but, i am trying to write accessibly about these things. accessibly in terms of language but also accessibly in terms of attending to what it may feel like to read this, using pop cultural references and a lighthearted, comedic tone. am i successful in that endeavor? that’s for you to say. in my work, I am deeply inspired by this quote from bell hooks: “any theory that cannot be shared in everyday conversation cannot be used to educate the public.” I am publishing this post, incomplete, with the plan to come back and revisit and revise. in part, the decision to push this out today is in direct response to a lecture I’m listening to in this very moment as I write this (again, no longer true in terms of it’s a different moment now, but that guy was rambling on and I think my philosophical ramblings are more fun and engaging than his).

But first, why am I writing about this? Great. fucking. question. I’m not quite sure. What’s at stake here? Who the fuck knows. There’s a nagging part of me that thinks I’m onto something here or that this philosophical approach has some potentially important ramifications or applications but there’s a much bigger nagging part of me that perceives that smaller nagging part as part and parcel of the worm of academia living inside my brain, the pathology of deeming all this nonsense far too important. as much as I critique cognitive and analytic ways of relating and living, here I am.. Mostly, I just wanna get these thoughts down on paper as a way to think through my thinking and maybe, possibly, hopefully, engage with some people about these ideas. A perhaps naive part of me thinks my classmates might find this interesting or find some of the ideas, concepts, or terms useful for their own work and thinking. As one of my icons, Miss Frizzle, would say:

“Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!”

Now, without further adieu, aboard the magic school bus we go! “Seat belts, everyone!”

Poppers, anyone?

Let’s start with some poppers. No, not the drug, you degenerate (I self-identify as a drug-using degenerate, a hypocritical one at that cause I don’t quite live up to those values, but I mean, c’mon, being polished and put together in today’s age? borderline pathological. I have done poppers though, not my fav, mostly cause as I understand it they’re neurotoxic, and the high lasts like 2 minutes). I’m talking about Karl Poppers. His ontological theory (aka theory of reality) is often referred to as Popper’s three worlds, consisting of the:

1. Material
2. Mental
3. Cultural

Funnily enough, I actually disagree with a lot of his fundamental stances. I disagree with his takes on:

• the independent existence of World 3 (this is a biggie for me, i’ll return to it ASAP), likePlatonic formsfloating around
• objective knowledge – relates to his emphasis on world 3. dude was legit obsessed with ‘objective knowledge’ like scientific theories, logical relationships. big no no for us anthropologists; my friend and classmate mentioned Bruno Latour’s work on how facts are produced which seems relevant here
• reification of culture – treated it as a thing with causal powers acting on its own (also relates to memetics which I used to be drawn to, hard pass nowadays)
• scientific/positivist bent – Popper believed in objective truth, falsification, scientific method as the path to knowledge

But, his three-realms are useful as a starting point, and he certainly was on to something, I think. I, however, think there are really only more like 2 or 2.5 dimensions to reality.

• Dimension 1 – Material Reality; very similar to Popper but I have a different approach to it
• Dimension 2 – Phenomenological Experience; I’m no Popper expert but I think also quite similar to his second dimension with, I imagine, some important distinctions and nuances in terms of understanding of mind, consciousness, experience, etc., but a similar gist
• Dimension 2.5 – Social/Cultural Realm; this is where I diverge markedly

Dimension 1 – rocks are rocks, right, Madonna?

There is a physical world with an objective material reality. We could get into metaphysics and more psychedelic perspectives on this, but I’m honestly disinterested and don’t think it’s so relevant. We got bodies. We got brains. We got rocks. We got material stuff. Okay class, moving on.

I do, however, think our access to this material reality is always incomplete, and in that sense I vibe with Roy Bhaskar’s notions of critical realism. This is my understanding of his perspective:

• Reality exists independently of us (ontological realism), BUT
• Our knowledge of reality is always limited and perspectival (epistemological relativism)

We’re never accessing the thing-in-itself (shout-out to Kant), always seeing through our human-shaped lens. So: material world is real, constrains what’s possible, but we can’t have perfect objective knowledge of it. Humble about knowing, confident about existence.

Before getting into the phenomenological world, I need to state that this material dimension exists without the felt, experienced dimension. Rocks existed before consciousness. I don’t think rocks are conscious, sorry folks. I can get into that, why I strongly feel that way, and why I also feel strongly that it’s a problematic position to take (the other side, not mine, obvs). Everything has a material basis. Dimension 2 has a material basis. Dimension 2.5 has a material and a phenomenological basis. That’s my whole point. The qualia of dimension 2 is what gives it ontological validity/significance/existence.

Madonna said it best:

“You know that we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl”

Dimension 2 – the juicy stuff

A forewarning, this section may read like a stoner’s rant. Once upon a time, I smoked way too much weed, like consistently, for many years. Perhaps, I’m still recovering.

Phenomenological Experience.

This is the crux of everything for me. Both ontologically (what exists) and politically (what matters). So let me really break this down.

What the hell is “phenomenological experience”?

Philosophers love fancy words for simple things. Here’s what I mean:

Consciousness: You’re awake right now. You’re aware. There’s something it’s like to be you in this moment.

Phenomenology: The study of what things feel like from the inside. Your first-person perspective. What it’s LIKE.

Qualia: The felt quality of experience. The redness of red. The painfulness of pain. The taste of coffee. That specific texture of joy or anxiety or boredom.

Honestly I get real fucking confused when we start mixing and matching these terms so I’ll do my best here: consciousness, conscious, qualia, phenomenology, subjectivity, lived experience,

Thomas Nagel (philosopher) wrote a famous paper: “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” His point: bats experience the world through echolocation. There’s something it’s LIKE to be a bat – to experience sonar, to navigate by sound. We can study bat neurology all day (D1), but we’ll never fully know the bat’s phenomenology (D2). The experience itself is real and distinct.

Why I claim D2 is ontologically real

Some philosophers say consciousness is an illusion (eliminative materialists). “There’s no ‘what it’s like’ – just neurons firing. Consciousness isn’t real.”

I think that’s fucking stupid.

When you’re in pain, you’re in pain. That’s not an illusion. The experience itself is real. It’s not reducible to “just” neurons firing. Yes, consciousness emerges from material (brains), but once emerged, it’s REAL because we feel it. (in some ways this is a collapsing of phenomenology and ontology, no?)

David Chalmers calls this the “hard problem of consciousness.” We can explain brain mechanisms (easy problems). But explaining WHY there’s experience at all – why it feels like something – that’s the hard problem. I don’t have the answer. But I know the experience is real, and that’s what’s important to me.

Phenomenological realism: Consciousness exists. Qualia exist. There’s something it’s like to be you. This is ontologically real, not epiphenomenal (not just a side-effect), not eliminable (not just “in your head” in the dismissive sense).

Against Cartesian dualism (the bodymind thing)

I’m not saying mind and body are separate things. No ghost in the machine. No soul piloting a meat robot.

Consciousness doesn’t float free. It’s always IN and THROUGH bodies.

Thoughts happen through neurons. Emotions are mediated through biochemical processes (shout out to my neurotransmitters, ugh dopamine you’re finicky but a real one, can’t live without ya). Experiences are shaped by having particular bodies with particular nervous systems, sensory capacities, and histories of embodied experiences. person with chronic pain experiences the world differently than someone without it. Not just “has different beliefs about the world” – literally experiences different phenomenology. An ADHD brain processes time differently. These aren’t just “mental” differences – they’re bodymind differences.

Margaret Price (disability studies scholar) coined the term “bodymind” – one word, no hyphen – to emphasize you can’t separate them. Mind is what certain bodies DO. You can’t have disembodied consciousness. Even in your wildest psychedelic experiences, you’re still having them through your brain, shaped by your neurochemistry.

Merleau-Ponty (phenomenologist) made similar moves – talked about the “body-subject,” argued we don’t HAVE bodies, we ARE bodies. We’re not minds locked inside bodies looking out. We’re embodied consciousness, body-subjects living through our flesh.

So what AM I saying?

Matter is ontologically prior. Meaning: the physical world (D1) can exist without consciousness (D2). The universe existed for billions of years before any consciousness emerged.

But consciousness cannot exist without matter. No brain, no consciousness. Consciousness emerges from material complexity – specifically, from nervous systems of sufficient complexity embedded in bodies embedded in environments.

This is emergent materialism:

• Consciousness emerges FROM material (brain complexity)
• But is ontologically real once emerged (not “just” neurons firing)
• And is irreducible (can’t be fully explained by describing neurons)

The cosmic gift

You are conscious RIGHT NOW. Pause and try to notice this: you’re experiencing reading these words.

This is fucking wild.

The universe is mostly dead matter. Stars burning, rocks floating in space, radiation, void. No experience. No feeling. Nothing, as far as we know. (side note of realistically there are intelligent life but that one theorist says we don’t get to the stage of ET contact cause iintelletual life always self destructs like we are now)

But you – this temporary arrangement of atoms that will exist for maybe 80 years – can feel things.

You can experience:

• Sunlight on your skin
• The way a good song gives you chills (if you can hear music and enjoy it)
• That specific blue of a clear sky (if you can see blue)
• Connection with someone else
• The taste of really good food
• Intellectual insight (the “aha!” moment)
• Love, joy, wonder, meaning
• The sheer bizarre fact of being aware of your own existence

“The universe is very beautiful, and I’m very fortunate to be able to see so much of it.”

This is cosmically improbable. Carl Sagan said it: “We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” Alan Watts: “You are the universe experiencing itself.” Consciousness is matter becoming aware of matter.

And it’s finite. Every moment unrepeatable. You’ll never read this sentence for the first time again. You have roughly 80 years, if you’re lucky, then nothing. This heightens everything – the preciousness, the tragedy of wasting it.

Thornton Wilder eloquently articulates this tragic beauty of life. In Our Town, Emily dies and gets to relive one ordinary day. She’s overwhelmed by the beauty of it all:

EMILY: “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it—every, every minute?”

STAGE MANAGER: “No. The saints and poets, maybe—they do some.”

We don’t. We’re distracted, planning, regretting, doom-scrolling. We miss actually being alive. That’s the tragedy.

(And to be clear: this isn’t self-help “be present!” bullshit. I’m not blaming individuals for not maximizing experience or self-actualizing. This is about collective devaluation of D2).

Why D2 is ethically primary

For me, this dimension is the site of all value.

Why do we care about climate change? Because beings are suffering and will suffer. Humans, animals, – there will be experienced catastrophe. Without consciousness to suffer, it would just be planetary change. Neutral. But there IS consciousness, so it matters.

Why do we value beauty? Because we experience it. The beauty of art, nature, architecture – it’s experienced as moving, meaningful, valuable.

Matter without consciousness has no value on its own. A universe of just rocks – so what? Nobody’s there to care. Value, meaning, suffering, joy – these only exist where there’s consciousness to experience them.

In other words, “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”.

This connects to Camus and absurdism: the universe is indifferent. There’s no inherent meaning. The planet doesn’t care if we ruin it or flourish. BUT – we care. And that caring IS the meaning. Consciousness creates value through experiencing and caring.

“Once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion, we can then observe which of our various life endeavors bring us closest to that fullness” Joy/pleasure/deep feeling as epistemology – knowing what’s worth fighting for

Everything I care about happens here, in D2:

• Suffering matters because it’s experienced
• Justice matters because people feel oppression
• Beauty matters because we experience it
• Connection matters because we feel it
• Meaning exists through conscious beings creating and experiencing it

TL;DR of D2:

• Consciousness/phenomenological experience = what it’s like to be you
• Qualia = felt quality of experiences (pain hurts, coffee tastes bitter, music moves you)
• Ontologically real (not an illusion, not “just” neurons)
• Always embodied (bodymind, not Cartesian dualism)
• Emerges from material but irreducible
• Cosmically improbable, temporally finite, therefore precious
• Ethically primary = the site of all value and meaning
• Requires material substrate (D1) and is patterned by culture (D3)
• This is what it’s all about, baby

Dimension 2.5 – fight me on this one @suhesh

There is where I may get myself into some shit. Maybe this isn’t so radical or different from the way anthropologists think. Anthropologist Tim Ingold seems to think like this, although I think he’s far less human-centric than I am, and maybe he’s saying different things. I’m a devout humanist (we can also circle back to that).

As I understand his work, similar to Margaret Price collapsing (wc? dissolves?) body and mind into one inseparable but distinct (wc?) entity, Ingold takes this further, “dissolving the distinctions between body, mind, and culture,” understanding culture as a generative practice rather than a static entity.

But I just don’t think this dimension is all that…real? At, least not in the way think and talk about it. I know, I hear myself, an anthropologist (although my cohort is well aware I’m critical of anthropology), a white person from the United States, arguing that culture isn’t real. Okay inflammatory point made to grab your attention, let’s back it up and explain what I mean. I think you might be on board actually.

So of course, “culture” is real, but in a more instrumentalist sense. They’re just concepts, patterns, ideas that we use to describe emergences from the previous two dimensions. Hence two and a half dimensions in contrast to Popper’s three.

Anything in this realm only exists through the other two realms. It has no independent ontological existence. Things in this realm, the realm of the virtual, the cultural, the social exist as patterns or emergences of the previous two realms. Now, let me be very clear, fuck Margaret Thatcher. She once said “There is no such thing as society.” That is NOT what I am saying, particularly in terms of what she meant by saying that and the political dimensions of that. What I am saying is that there, of course, is such a a thing as society, but that thing that is society only exists in the material world and our experiences in it.

The rapture is upon us

Okay I think I struggle to explain this dimension sometimes and really lose people, sometimes myself included lol. Take this post, for example, the words you’re reading right now.

• Dimension 1 (Material): Light waves from your screen, electrical signals in your laptop, photons hitting your retina, neurons firing in your visual cortex. Physical, measurable, real.
• Dimension 2 (Phenomenological): Your experience of reading, understanding, maybe agreeing or getting confused or annoyed. What it’s LIKE to engage with these ideas.
• Dimension 3 (The ideas themselves): The ideas and concepts; ‘Phenomenological materialism,’ ‘real abstraction,’ ‘ontology.’ Where are THESE? They exist in: the materiality of your screen (D1) + your experience of understanding them (D2) + similar experiences across other readers who’ve learned these concepts.

If everyone disappeared (Leftovers-style rapture x50 or Thanos’s snap x2)

• The light waves would still exist (D1)
• But there’d be no experience of them (D2)
• And the meanings would cease to exist (D2.5)
• Just patterns of light, no ideas

D3 patterns have no independent existence. They’re what happens when D1 material marks meet D2 conscious minds. Real (these ideas shape how you think) but derivative (require substrate and experience).

Money money money, give me the money

Let’s borrow an example from Marx, who used the term ‘real abstractions.’ Now, I just want to remind you, I have no fucking idea what I’m talking about. I do not have a philosophy degree. Part of the point in me writing this is so that I could actually hopefully receive some critique or further direction on these ideas from someone who’s a lot more familiar with these philosophical strains of thought than i am. and hey, if i’m actually quite on base after all, just another fuck you to the academic gatekeepers. Anyways, back to (wc? our comrade? home boy? they’re all problematic lol what’s a word that I can use?). I actually don’t think Marx, or any of these people, were using their ideas in particularly the way I’m using them, but I’m referencing them as they’ve helped inform my thinking, and I think the parts I’m discussing are compatible. I’m not meaning to cherry-pick what works but point to intellectual ???.

Okay so you’ve got a $20 bill (reference to Harriet Tubbman??). What is it?

• Materially (D1): Paper, ink, specific atoms arranged in a pattern
• The paper isn’t inherently valuable – it’s just cotton fiber
• ‘Value’ is an abstraction – there’s no value-molecule, no value-substance

But here’s the thing: We collectively treat it AS valuable. And through that collective practice:

• It organizes actual exchange (D1: I trade this paper for food)
• It structures labor (D1: I work to get these papers)
• It creates feelings of security, anxiety, worth (D2: having money vs. not having it)

Money is a real abstraction:

• Constructed (not natural – gold standard abandoned, Bitcoin proves we can make new money)
• Historical (shells, gold, paper, digital – changes over time)
• BUT has real material effects (try not having it)
• Only exists THROUGH D1 practices and D2 experiences, not independently

There’s no Platonic realm where the concept of ‘value’ lives. It exists in the paper + in our collective practices + in our experience of security/anxiety. That’s D2.5: real but derivative.

I think there’s a couple other thinkers whose work is compatible with my take. I’m honestly feel quite over this post so I kinda wanna wrap it up for now, so I’m just going to list them, cause I also don’t have the energy or motivation to fully engage with their ideas and make sure I’m understanding and representing them accurately (lol, as if I did that with the other ones!). So, we got:

• Tim Ingold again (anthropologist): argues against ‘culture’ as autonomous thing. Skills and practices, not transmitted culture. Dwelling in environment, not separate cultural realm
• Pierre Bourdieu: ‘Habitus’ – culture is embodied in bodies, not floating above them. ‘Social world is in the body, body is in social world.’
• Raymond Williams: ‘Structures of feeling’ – culture as lived, emergent, not fixed autonomous system.
• John Dewey: Meanings emerge from organism-environment transactions, not separate realm

Okay….so, what?

Guy Debord – Society of the Spectacle

• Commodity fetishism alienates us from experience
• Spectacle = Dimension 3 dominating D1 and D2
• “Lived reality” vs. representation
• D3 critique theorized

Jamesian pragmatism – reamphsizes a focus on the phenemonology, shifts away from the spectacle

the 2.5 is kind of distint; Jame’s pure experience versus getting lost in abstraction (what is getting lost in abstraction? that which loses sight of and neglects our bodymind realities, material realities)

His point: Words, concepts, abstractions (maps) are not the things they represent (territory). We constantly confuse the two.

Alfred Korzybski (1933, Science and Sanity): “The map is not the territory.”

• level of language of thought
• we mistake our conceptual models for reality itself

Bunzl

Baudrillard

Debord

You: Who the fuck cares, max?

Me: Have you heard of fully automated luxury gay space communism?

Honestly, I think this is the most interesting part about this, and yet, I’m so tired. Maybe another blog post I’ll expand on it, or I’ll return back to this. For now, just trying to get the damn thing birthed.

First, my emphasis on phenomenology.

• anti puritan, against puritanism
  • could cite a lot of people here
    • Weber?
• material basis of reality but with a qualia-centered politics:
• Politics that takes subjective experience seriously as:
• Object of concern (what are people actually feeling?)
• Metric of success (are people flourishing?)
• Guide for policy (what enables richer experience?)
• NOT: Utilitarian pleasure calculus (too reductive)
• NOT: Liberal “preferences” (too abstract)
• coalition building, uniting things like fight against hunger, war, genocide, with drug decriminalization, urban design for joy, workin ghours reduction, sexual freedom

idk Marcuse?

Raoul Vaneigem – “People who talk about revolution without referring to everyday life have a corpse in their mouth”

we gotta be careful about slipping into Fisher’s depressive hedonia

anthropocentric, humanist

“Pleasure activism is the work we do to reclaim our whole, happy, and satisfiable selves”

“Feeling good is not frivolous—it is freedom”

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field
somewhere and don’t notice it.”

“For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.”

Barbara Ehrenbeich – collective joy

“We are in an imagination battle” Pleasure as guide to what’s worth fighting for

oh Mark Fisher for sure here

sum up at the end, maybe a diagram

title for this theory: simply, a complex take on the way things are by mx. max

future road map

• visual diagrams to help guide, summarize, synthesize
• Lexend font for accessibility
• earthrise photo cause why the fuck not
  • but actually in conversation with:
    • The Fermi paradox
    • Great Filter Theory (Brian Cox)
    • Kardashev Scale
    • Carl Sagan – “adolescence” stage
• fleshing out (love this phrase, contentious I imagine) Dimension 2, right now feels kinda flat but is actually quite complex and multi-layered, multidimensional (small ‘d’, no, not that way, get your mind out of the gutter) in and of itself
• proper attribution of quotes – oopsies sorry for the plagiarism-lite (i’m not claiming as my own! and it’s an incomplete blog post!)
• From Spent – consumerist materialism is actually semiotic
• connect to:
  • disciplinary/philosophical turns
    • resonance
      • materiial turn
      • affective turn
      • embodied cognition
      • pragmatism
    • conflict
      • linguistic turn
      • post-structuralism
      • ontological turn
    • complicating:
      • postmodernism
      • structuralism
  • critique of liberal politics & rational actor model
    • rational choice theory
      • Adam Smith
      • Jeremy Bentham
      • public choice theory
      • game theory
    • liberal vision
      • fucking Jürgen Habermas, ugh I went to one of his lectures once in Amsterdam and my brain hurtttt / I recall feeling so overwhelmed and anxoius
      • disemboied minds, atomized individuals, rational calculators
    • emotion/reason binary
      • Alison Jaggar
      • Sara Ahmed
      • Nancy Fraser
      • Katrine Fangen Wahl-Jorgensen
    • neuroscience rebuttal
      • Antonio Damasio – Descartes Error
      • Lisa Feldman Barrett – Theory of Constructed Emotion (TCE)
  • so many fucking terms
    • post humanism

Glossary

• -ologies:
  • ontology
  • epistemology
  • ontology
  • methodology
  • phenomenology
  • pathology
  • anthropology
  • sociology
• -isms:
  • materialism – 3 fucking definitions
    • historical materialism (as in Marxism)
    • materialism (as in physical ism)
    • materialism (as in consumerism)
  • positivism
  • scientism
  • realism
    • critical realism
    • naive realism
    • ontological realism
    • embodied realism
    • other realisms, no?
  • constructivism / constructionism
  • Cartesian dualism
  • instrumentalism
  • structuralism
  • cultural idealism
  • reductionism
  • epistemological relativism
• Mind concepts;
  • consciousness
  • qualia
  • bodymind
  • mental
  • psyche / psychic
  • conscious
    • unconscious
    • subconscious
• Philosophy concepts:
  • Platonic forms
  • real abstractions
  • thing-in-itself
• Mental
• Material
• Materialism – 3 fucking definitions
  • Historical Materialism
  • Materialism
  • Materialism
• Cartesian duality –
• Objective
• Scienticism
• Positivism
• Platonic forms
• Real abstractions
• Epistemology
• Methdology
• Reification
• Positivism
• Constructivism/Constructionism
• Critical Realism
• Naive Realism
• Cartesian Dualism
• Real Abstraction
• Bodymind
• Phenomenology
• Qualia
• Emergence
• Instrumentalism
• Structuralism
• Cultural Idealism
• Practice Theory (Bourdieu)
• Reductionism

References:

• Poppers
• Kant – thing in itself
• Bruno Latour
• Margaret Price
• merleau Ponty
• Our Town
• Carl Sagan
• Alan Watts (are these the best people to be citing? look back at my notes)
• Camus
• Tim Ingold
• The Leftovers TV show
• Marx
• Thomas Nagel
• David Chalmers
• magic school bus
• Bourdieau
• Raymond Williams
• John Dewey
• Madonna – i lost the material girl quote
• adrienne maree brown
• philosophy in the flesh
• james kent perhaps? on psychedelic information theory
• The entropic brain: a theory of conscious states informed by neuroimaging research with psychedelic drugs
• Evan Thompson – Waking, Dreaming, Being (2015)
• Anil Seth – Consciousness researcher
• enactivism, embodied cognition, 4e
• pragmatism
• eudaimonia, (depressive) hedonia, dionysia
• talking heads, The Noosphere

WHAT are the stakes? the great filter, kardashev scale

start with Indra’s net

turtles all the way down.