First Principles by Howard Burton

After returning home from our little vacation, I've hunkered down to read, and I thought this would be a good time to come to know of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada and how it started up.

As you know I've linked the Q2c site coming in September as well as I think after ten years this Institute has done a very good job of promoting a science based view toward the latest in the science frontiers.


Mike Lazaridis Donates Additional $50 Million to Perimeter Institute

In his remarks on behalf of the Government of Ontario, The Honourable John Wilkinson, Minister of Research and Innovation said: "Ontario's $3B Innovation Agenda focuses on our government acting as a catalyst to support our top researchers and entrepreneurs - extraordinary people like Mike Lazaridis who are leading the way to turn groundbreaking ideas and innovation into Ontario's next generation of jobs. Ontario's commitment to fundamental and applied research has not only been informed but also inspired by Mike's personal commitment to innovation, and his contributions to the Perimeter Institute. That's why our government has already invested over $65M to support this important initiative. This new investment will strengthen the Institute and the government-industry partnerships that have made it possible, and help us to continue to attract the world-class talent and the scientific knowledge Ontario needs to compete in the 21st century."See: Mike Lazaridis Donates Additional $50 Million to Perimeter Institute

Now you should know that I had received earlier notice of Howard's book from Bee of Backreaction. I have always been under the notion that what can be learnt can be learnt from all ages and there is no one aspect that we can not learn from, when we read and write about the thoughts of bloggers who have something to share with regard to their own journeys.

Bee of Backreaction writes:

The book tells the story of the first years of Perimeter Institute. From Mike Lazaridis' donation, over the search for a name, for a mission, for a location, the joy of building constructions, the hiring of the first faculty members, the establishment of PI's public outreach program, and the successful acquisition of governmental funding, to Howard's departure.

It is very entertainingly written and quite informative in addition, though I admittedly had hoped for more gossip stories about the research and the researchers. The chapter about who talked to whom when and where to pull the strings for governmental support is somewhat lengthy and tiresome, but provides interesting inside views. The book also has an amusing chapter titled "The Trouble with Physicists" about the difficulties in saving scientists from administrating themselves into dysfunctionality. I'm very tempted to quote the funniest paragraphs, but I think you should read the book yourself. It comes with some characterizations of well-known physicists that are quite to the point indeed.

The book is probably more interesting if you know some of the people involved, but besides this it conveys authentically and passionately the fascination, joy and importance of theoretical physics. Overall recommendable. If this was an Amazon review, I'd give 5 stars.Howard Burton: First Principles

I think this is what I like most that what can be revealed in our blogging encounters, that what was written can go out toward the public to what had be done for me in the exposure of a book. I scoured the bookshop shelves for something interesting to read about science. Of course, in this case it was Howard' Burton's book First Principles.

At 5:18 PM, April 09, 2009, Blogger Plato said...

I have been watch this developing institution as well. In a weird sort of way feeling quite proud that such an institution was given impetus out of which an appreciation for developing of the science perspective was displayed here in the north, by Lazardis

I really don't think it is a Ivory Tower that is being described while Turok resides in his position. Just that what you do as a theorist is brought in line with cosmology. It's much like working the LHC and see that it is working from two perspectives, not just one.

I don't see anything wrong with that.

Nice to see a few prominent names like Susskind, Hawking and Hooft associated with PI.

When I seen the name of the book and the time you spent at PI Howard I was drawn to the idea of what Condense Matter theorists spoke of, in the same way Robert Laughlin looked at how he might describe the "foundational basis" that Phil was talking about.

Witten and others understood the condensed matter point of view as well.

Again I will read the book once finding it.

Best,

Now you must know something about this lay person who writes this blog. Previous to Howard's selective title I came across this term when I was looking for some basis as if in equatorial description that was simple to think it has some relation in algorithmic proportion that this could be the basis of all organization thought that could have exploded amongst the computer world. The very essence and core of our being as it was translated to reveal the very nature of who we are as beings.

This is when I came upon my own "Correlations of Cognition," as the condense matter theorist came to mind. I saw this relevance in how organization could be thought of at a fundamental level. Here in this case, "string theory" held my mind. So when I seen Howard's title of his book it resonated with me, for this is something that had stayed with me for years as I've remained part of the blogging experience of scientists and their engagements with each other.

How is it you then I could not learn to think, that by experiment, that one could line up two counter and oppositional points of view, to see what can be held as truth, and what remains as abstraction of the theoretical division of exploration. You know that what can reside internally as to the mode of operation as to what is self evident(arche), is something that you can place in the external world as well.

So Howard and young students become "mindful of the conduct becoming" and we see this value orientation as to the discussions between scientists. Some students become discouraged and subtle voices strain to speak,"May the ole work horses die?":)

The Book

Anyway I am on page 47 for those readers that have their books. I recognize some aspect of what Mike Lazaridis likes in Howard as to the letter he wrote, preparing the way for his future as to what? I see this fateful discerningly as to a course of action, to much in how after serving their time in the academics, that they must make their way to the financial responsibility toward providing food and sustenance to the family. No fooling around now is there.

So the letter is a spark of genius in terms of putting it out there for hire. Mike Lazaridis recognized something in himself, in what was written by Howard Burton. Mike Lazaridis although an engineer, was was much like him? Avenues to freedom then were the ability to put together a plan once accepting the job, and Howard ability to get to work even though it didn't seem like Howard Burton had a job, was exactly what Mike seem to me what he was looking for.

I liked Chris Isham too, in his explanations, and toward this regard, Chris Isham reminded me of Penrose. I found it kind of odd that later on as Howard is making his way gathering information on Institutes that when again visiting Isham that there was a distance and unknowing attribute of who Howard was? I find this strange when mentioning about his wife and who was meet first as to consequence of saying?

The Rhetorician

This raises all sorts of questions, the most basic of which are: “What counts as `looking’ vs. `not looking’?” and “Do we really need a separate law of physics to describe the evolution of systems that are being looked at?” Sean Carroll

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

AN INQUIRY INTO VALUES

Robert M. Pirsig

Afterword

This book has a lot to say about Ancient Greek perspectives and their meaning but there is one perspective it misses. That is their view of time. They saw the future as something that came upon them from behind their backs with the past receding away before their eyes.

When you think about it, that's a more accurate metaphor than our present one. Who really can face the future? All you can do is project from the past, even when the past shows that such projections are often wrong. And who really can forget the past? What else is there to know?

Over the last couple of days my mind seems focused on time lines. It seems I am adjusting perspective, while knowing full well that while the day can be assessed, and so a life. One is facing the past as Pirsig did in writing his book. Imagine him actually looking to his past as it recedes to where the words become "a place" and behind, a sun shines. We see where such an adjustment of thinking here helps one to see what Pirsig was doing.

Plato:

So in that case it was not normal experience that suffered, but what came out of the sickness that allowed an "ultimate realization" that you or I do not have to contend with, but sick men who struggle to search and found something, that normal people would not. So this is why the time line is important to be realized.

It can indeed seem quite confusing but it is an interesting idea here, much as one could be unsettle here with the Chicken before the egg scenario. This took me back to some of the things Sean Carroll wrote. This is not about biology or creationism, but about how perspective has been orientated in a historical sense to how we see it today. For Pirsig and Nash, they had to recount their past in order for us to understand their struggle.

Sean Carroll has a interesting set of four entires about the backwardness of the arrow of time and how it would appear. This is an interesting exercise for me on how perception about the current direction of the universe could have represented "the Egg before the chicken" scenarios.

Incompatible Arrows, I: Martin Amis
Incompatible Arrows, II: Kurt Vonnegut
Incompatible Arrows, III: Lewis Carroll
Incompatible Arrows, IV: F. Scott Fitzgerald

Chicken or Egg

Illustration from Tacuina sanitatis, Fourteenth century

Reverse chronology — narrating a story, or parts of one, backwards in time — is a venerable technique in literature, going back at least as far as Virgil’s Aeneid. Much more interesting is a story with incompatible arrows of time: some characters live “backwards” while others experience life normally.

***



PHAEDRUS. - Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 1 [387 AD]Edition used:

The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 1, translated into English with Analyses and Introductions by B. Jowett, M.A. in Five Volumes. 3rd edition revised and corrected (Oxford University Press, 1892).


Phaedr.I think that I understand you; but will you explain yourself?

Soc.When any one speaks of iron and silver, is not the same thing present in the minds of all?

Phaedr.Certainly.

Soc.But when any one speaks of justice and goodness we part company and are at odds with one another and with ourselves?

Phaedr.Precisely.

Soc.Then in some things we agree, but not in others?

Phaedr.That is true.

Soc.In which are we more likely to be deceived, and in which has rhetoric the greater power?

Phaedr.Clearly, in the uncertain class.

Soc.Then the rhetorician ought to make a regular division, and acquire a distinct notion of both classes, as well of that in which the many err, as of that in which they do not err?

Phaedr.He who made such a distinction would have an excellent principle.

Soc.Yes; and in the next place he must have a keen eye for the observation of particulars in speaking, and not make a mistake about the class to which they are to be referred.

Phaedr.Certainly.

Soc.Love belongs to the debatable class.

Now to which class does love belong—to the debatable or to the undisputed class?

Phaedr.To the debatable, clearly; for if not, do you think that love would have allowed you to say as you did, that he is an evil both to the lover and the beloved, and also the greatest possible good?

Soc.Capital. But will you tell me whether I defined love at the beginning of my speech? for, having been in an ecstasy, I cannot well remember.

Phaedr.Yes, indeed; that you did, and no mistake.

Soc.Lysias should have begun, as I did, by defining love.

Then I perceive that the Nymphs of Achelous and Pan the son of Hermes, who inspired me, were far better rhetoricians than Lysias the son of Cephalus. Alas! how inferior to them he is! But perhaps I am mistaken; and Lysias at the commencement of his lover’s speech did insist on our supposing love to be something or other which he fancied him to be, and according to this model he fashioned and framed the remainder of his discourse. Suppose we read his beginning over again:

Phaedr.If you please; but you will not find what you want.

Soc.Read, that I may have his exact words.
Phaedr.‘You know how matters stand with me, and how, as I conceive, they might be arranged for our common interest; and I maintain I ought not to fail in my suit because I am not your lover, for lovers repent of the kindnesses which they have shown, when their love is over.’
Soc.He begins at the end.

Here he appears to have done just the reverse of what he ought; for he has begun at the end, and is swimming on his back through the flood to the place of starting. His address to the fair youth begins where the lover would have ended. Am I not right, sweet Phaedrus?

Phaedr.Yes, indeed, Socrates; he does begin at the end.

Soc.No order or arrangement of parts in his discourse.

Then as to the other topics—are they not thrown down anyhow? Is there any principle in them? Why should the next topic follow next in order, or any other topic? I cannot help fancying in my ignorance that he wrote off boldly just what came into his head, but I dare say that you would recognize a rhetorical necessity in the succession of the several parts of the composition?

Phaedr.You have too good an opinion of me if you think that I have any such insight into his principles of composition.

Soc.At any rate, you will allow that every discourse ought to be a living creature, having a body of its own and a head and feet; there should be a middle, beginning, and end, adapted to one another and to the whole?

Phaedr.Every discourse should be a living creature, having a body, head, and feet.

Certainly.

Soc.Can this be said of the discourse of Lysias? See whether you can find any more connexion in his words than in the epitaph which is said by some to have been inscribed on the grave of Midas the Phrygian.

Phaedr.What is there remarkable in the epitaph?

Soc.It is as follows:—

 * ‘I am a maiden of bronze and lie on the tomb of Midas;
    * So long as water flows and tall trees grow,
    * So long here on this spot by his sad tomb abiding,
    * I shall declare to passers–by that Midas sleeps below.’

The discourse of Lysias had no more arrangement than the silliest of epitaphs.

Now in this rhyme whether a line comes first or comes last, as you will perceive, makes no difference.
Phaedr.You are making fun of that oration of ours.

Soc.Well, I will say no more about your friend’s speech lest I should give offence to you; although I think that it might furnish many other examples of what a man ought rather to avoid. But I will proceed to the other speech, which, as I think, is also suggestive to students of rhetoric.
Phaedr.In what way?

Soc.The two speeches, as you may remember, were unlike; the one argued that the lover and the other that the non–lover ought to be accepted.

Phaedr.And right manfully.

Soc.You should rather say ‘madly;’ and madness was the argument of them, for, as I said, ‘love is a madness.’
Phaedr.Yes.

Soc.And of madness there were two kinds; one produced by human infirmity, the other was a divine release of the soul from the yoke of custom and convention.

Phaedr.True.

Soc.Four subdivisions of madness—prophetic, initiatory, poetic, erotic.

The divine madness was subdivided into four kinds, prophetic, initiatory, poetic, erotic, having four gods presiding over them; the first was the inspiration of Apollo, the second that of Dionysus, the third that of the Muses, the fourth that of Aphrodite and Eros. In the description of the last kind of madness, which was also said to be the best, we spoke of the affection of love in a figure, into which we introduced a tolerably credible and possibly true through partly erring myth, which was also a hymn in honour of Love, who is your lord and also mine, Phaedrus, and the guardian of fair children, and to him we sung the hymn in measured and solemn strain.

Phaedr.I know that I had great pleasure in listening to you.

Soc.Let us take this instance and note how the transition was made from blame to praise.

Phaedr.What do you mean?

Soc.The myth was a creation of fancy, yet true principles were involved in it: (1) unity of particulars in a single note; (2) natural division into species.

I mean to say that the composition was mostly playful. Yet in these chance fancies of the hour were involved two principles of which we should be too glad to have a clearer description if art could give us one.

Phaedr.What are they?

Soc.First, the comprehension of scattered particulars in one idea; as in our definition of love, which whether true or false certainly gave clearness and consistency to the discourse, the speaker should define his several notions and so make his meaning clear.

Phaedr.What is the other principle, Socrates?

Soc.The second principle is that of division into species according to the natural formation, where the joint is, not breaking any part as a bad carver might. Just as our two discourses, alike assumed, first of all, a single form of unreason; and then, as the body which from being one becomes double and may be divided into a left side and right side, each having parts right and left of the same name—after this manner the speaker proceeded to divide the parts of the left side and did not desist until he found in them an evil or lefthanded love which he justly reviled; and the other discourse leading us to the madness which lay on the right side, found another love, also having the same name, but divine, which the speaker held up before us and applauded and affirmed to be the author of the greatest benefits.The dialectician is concerned with the one and many.

Phaedr.Most true.

Soc.I am myself a great lover of these processes of division and generalization; they help me to speak and to think. And if I find any man who is able to see ‘a One and Many’ in nature, him I follow, and ‘walk in his footsteps as if he were a god.’ And those who have this art, I have hitherto been in the habit of calling dialecticians; but God knows whether the name is right or not. And I should like to know what name you would give to your or to Lysias’ disciples, and whether this may not be that famous art of rhetoric which Thrasymachus and others teach and practise? Skilful speakers they are, and impart their skill to any who is willing to make kings of them and to bring gifts to them.


***

The idea here is that the argument can be held in objective analysis as a defining relation to perspective about what is real, in the here and now. So any describing from it's source to something more defined topologically in movement from the vacuum, is a move to a finer substrate of the reality? What shape in the valley? Which one?

While scientifically engaged, "what if" internally you face the past as a lesson in history, and look upon the world, as our sun? Change it up, and the world is our past, while internally a sun shines behind us. This asks that the internal world is configured according to this dimensional perspective. Subjective yes, but allegorical to what any state of mind garners as it rests to it's ideological state?

Heaven

In the modern age of science and space flight the idea that Heaven is a physical place in the observable universe has largely been abandoned.[citation needed] Religious views, however, still hold Heaven as having a dual status as a concept of mind or heart, but also possibly still physically existing in some way on another "plane of existence", dimension, or perhaps at a future time.[citation needed] According to science there are unobservable areas of the universe (everywhere beyond earth's Particle horizon), although by their very nature it is not possible to observe them.

In this examination of "position" we are always facing our past. If we are to examine our scientific position, is this then real in how we analyze all of the experiments that are currently being undertaken?

You see, looking to an event in the cosmos, this orientation of looking back is to place "a measure" between the earth we stand on, and the event. The event is receding as we are gazing. While some of this observation is picked out in Pirsig's afterword, the subsequent revelation given by Socrate to Phaedrus raises some perspective in my mind about what I had always believed.

As I look at the world, it is receding, yet, internally connected as if in a Ambigram of continuous rotation. It has to be symmetrical, in that asymmetry is to move into the world, while internally, it has always been where symmetry resides?

Why move into an objective status of scientific belief that what can exist in relation to the values that science call its dimensional, is the realization that such an existence is as if matched internally according to the degrees of freedom that we match according to the nature I had assigned Colour of Gravity.


***

See:

Incompatible Arrows

Our Consciousness can "Contain the Future?"

Memories Arise Out of a Equilibrium

Oh Dear!... How Technology has Changed Things

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beautya beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.--BERTRAND RUSSELL, Study of Mathematics

The "Talking Pictures" Projection Wagon-

In the 1920's about the only entertainment that came to the rural community of Leakey, Texas was the traveling tent shows. This form of family entertainment would come to the canyon about once a year to the delight of all. Everyone looked forward to the horse drawn wagons that brought the much anticipated entertainment to town. In later years the horses were replaced by the Model T Fords but this form of transportation did not deter the excitement.

See:"Leakey's Last Picture Show" by Linda Kirkpatrick
Vintage photos courtesy Lloyd & Jackie Shultz

It is important sometimes to hone in on exactly what sets the mind to have it exemplify itself to a standard that bespeaks to the idealizations that can come forward from a most historical sense. It is in this way that while one can envision where the technological views have replaced the spoken word in movie pictures, we can see the theatre above as an emblazoned realization of what changes has been brought to society and what may have been lost in some peoples eyes.


This is a photograph of author and philosopher Robert M. Pirsigtaken by Ian Glendinning on the eve of the Liverpool conference of 7th July 2005.

What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua...that's the only name I can think of for it...like the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer. The Chautauquas were pushed aside by faster-paced radio, movies and TV, and it seems to me the change was not entirely an improvement. Perhaps because of these changes the stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep. The old channels cannot contain it and in its search for new ones there seems to be growing havoc and destruction along its banks. In this Chautauqua I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply dig deeper into old ones that have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Part 1 Chapter 1.(Bold added by me for emphasis)

I wanted to take the conversation and book presented by Phil and immortalize it in a way by laying it out for examination. Regardless of my opinions and viewpoint, the world goes on and the written work of Robert Pirsig persists as a "object of the material." In the beginning, no matter the choice to illuminate the ideal, it has been transgressed in a way by giving the symbols of language to a discerning mind and verily brought to that same material world for examination. How ever frustrating this may seem for Pirsig, it is a fact of light that any after word will reveal more then what was first understood. Reflection has this way about it in the historical revelation, of how the times are changing. Things dying and becoming new. The moon a reflection of the first light.

The conclusion of the whole matter is just this,—that until a man knows the truth, and the manner of adapting the truth to the natures of other men, he cannot be a good orator; also, that the living is better than the written word, and that the principles of justice and truth when delivered by word of mouth are the legitimate offspring of a man’s own bosom, and their lawful descendants take up their abode in others. Such an orator as he is who is possessed of them, you and I would fain become. And to all composers in the world, poets, orators, legislators, we hereby announce that if their compositions are based upon these principles, then they are not only poets, orators, legislators, but philosophers.

Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 1 [387 AD] PHAEDRUS.


***

IN announcing himself in the written work with regards to the IQ given in signalling the identity of the character Phaedrus, it was important that one see this in a way that excuses are not made, and allowances not be set forth for what was to become the lone wolf. John Nash too, had his excursions into the bizarre as well, was to know that in the "end of his synopsized life," a certain contention that he had to deal with in this inflection of his disease, as part of his make-up. Was to deal with, while now, he continues to move on with his life. He is aware of the intrusions that personage can do as it infringes from the periphery, as ghosts of his mind too.

To me in reading John Nash's biography in historical movie drama, was to bring attention to what cannot be condoned by exception, when allowing genius to display it's talents, while causing a disruption not only to themself, but to see the elite make allowances for these transgressions. Pattern seeking is not to be be rifting the idea, that we cannot look into the very structure of reality and see what makes it tick? Just that we do not get lost in travelling the journey.

Practising escapism was to deny oneself the responsibility of becoming whole. To allow for genius, as an exception, would mean to not recognize that the intellect is part and parcel of the greater whole of the person called Robert Pirsig or John Nash.

Who of us shall placate failure as a sure sign of genius and allow the student 's failure as acceptable? This was a transgression seen from another perspective and as afterthought realized in a mistaken perception "about broadcasting Phaedrus" as some towering voice from the past as relevant in todays world, because of the location and time in history?


***


Click on link Against symmetry (Paris, June 06)

While I may use the alias of Plato and look at the substance of his written work, it is also from that view point such a discussion had to take place within the context of the written prose about two people in this Socratic method, that while worlds in the dialogues existed in speech, no such persons were there at the time. Yet, such thoughts are transmitted and established in that historical sense, and moved forward to this time.


Against symmetry (Paris, June 06)


To me there are two lines of thought that are being established in science that in Lee Smolin's case is used to move away from the thinking of the idea of Plato's symmetry by example. To see such trademarks inherent in our leaders of science is too wonder how they to, have immortalize the figures of speech, while trying hard to portray the point of view that has been established in thought. These signatures have gone from Heisenberg to Hooft. And the list of names who have embedded this move to science, as a education tool, that is always inherent in the process. That reference is continually made.

IN this sense I do not feel I had done anything wrong other then to ignite the idealization I have about what that sun means to me, as the first light in a psychological sense. Where it resides in people. How divorce we can be from it while going on about our daily duties existing in the world. That there also resides this "experience about our beginnings." To ignite what the word of geometrics has done in the abstract sense. How much closer to the reality such a architecture is revealed in Nature's way, to know that we had pointed our observations back inside, to reveal the world outside.


***

See Also:

Stargazers and Hill Climbers

Evolutionary Game Theory

Inside the Mathematical Universe

Operational Definition Regressed to the Arts

It is necessary at this time to show that such a procedure evolved here in Dialogos of Eide had to be taken to be interpreted as a an acceptance and assumption of the way the world "is" according to scientific elaborations given in the interpretation of the "back ground."

For example, the weight of an object may be operationally defined in terms of the specific steps of putting an object on a weighing scale. The weight is whatever results from following the measurement procedure, which can in principle be repeated by anyone. It is intentionally not defined in terms of some intrinsic or private essence. The operational definition of weight is just the result of what happens when the defined procedure is followed. In other words, what's being defined is how to measure weight for any arbitrary object, and only incidentally the weight of a given object.

When observe and held in face of the scientific valuation and spoken to in the science world, the veritable conceptual acceptance of any model is its amalgamation into the way one would move into the world. This is a bold step, because you have accepted the way in which such a proposal has been put forward to demonstrate how one may now see the world.

Operational definitions are inherently difficult — arguably, even impossible — to apply to mental entities, because these latter are generally understood to be accessible only to the individual who experiences them and are therefore not independently verifiable. According to this line of thinking, a person's mental image of a brick cannot be operationally defined because it cannot be measured from outside that person's mood. Philosopher Daniel Dennett has argued that first-person operationalism is possible and desirable, using the anthropological version of the scientific method to bring the mind fully into the third-person realm required by science. As part of the Multiple Drafts Model of consciousness, Dennett defines a process he calls heterophenomenology, by which the mental is defined operationally in terms of the observed behavior of the subject.

Held in relevance to use of the word background it is necessary to consider the depth and potential of the human being in light of the bulk perspective assigned to that background to demonstrate that the depth and generation of the human interaction is more defined by more then just the compartmentalization assigned to human action.

Ir was necessary in my own mind to recognize the greater foliation of the response to stimuli as a governing factor in the emotive expressions of the human endeavour then just to let it r,main as a consequence without a possible course of direction, as an effect.

Heterophenomenology ("phenomenology of another not oneself"), is a term coined by Daniel Dennett to describe an explicitly third-person, scientific approach to the study of consciousness and other mental phenomena. It consists of applying the scientific method with an anthropological bend, combining the subject's self-reports with all other available evidence to determine his or her mental state. The goal is to discover how the subject sees the world him- or herself, without taking the accuracy of the subject's view for granted.

Heterophenomenology is put forth as the alternative to traditional Cartesian phenomenology, which Dennett calls "lone-wolf autophenomenology" to emphasize the fact that it accepts the subject's self-reports as being authoritative. In contrast, heterophenomenology considers the subject authoritative only about how things seem to him or her.

In other words, heterophenomenology requires us to listen to the subject and take what he or she says seriously, but to also look at everything else available to us, including the subject's bodily responses and environment, and be ready to conclude that the subject is wrong even about his or her own mind. For example, we could determine that the subject is hungry even though he or she doesn't recognize it.

The key role of heterophenomenology in Dennett's philosophy of consciousness is that it defines all that can be — or needs to be — known about the mind. To quote Dennett, "The total set of details of heterophenomenology, plus all the data we can gather about concurrent events in the brains of subjects and in the surrounding environment, comprise the total data set for a theory of human consciousness. It leaves out no objective phenomena and no subjective phenomena of consciousness."

Dennett stresses that heterophenomenology does not dismiss the first-person perspective, but rather brackets it so that it can be intersubjectively verified by empirical means, allowing it to be submitted as scientific evidence. This can be seen by how heavily heterophenomenology relies on adopting the intentional stance toward subjects.