A synopsis and discussion of "ontocubism"

[j_j]

@Joshs

So far as the Dasein exists a world is cast-forth with the Dasein’s being. To exist means, among other things, to cast-forth a world, and in fact in such a way that with the thrownness of this projection, with the factical existence of a Dasein, extant entities are always already uncovered.

I read dasein/existence as being-an-aspect-of-the-world that has the “shape” of the “experience” of an organism within that world. The organism’s experience is world-from-POV that includes — at least in the human case — the organism’s self-perception and self-thematization.

Ortega writes that “I am me and my circumstance.” In this lingo, the “I” is “the total stream.” The “me” is the character that the non-me component of the stream is organized “around.”

We might speak of a “primal phenomenal field” that in practice is understood in terms of an inside and outside, a me and a not-me-encompassing-me.

We are “cast” into the world or into eventing an aspect of the world in the sense that it happens to us. Passivity, suffering. Things that hurt. Things that should not happen. So it’s relative to the fundamental care structure that we are thrown. We suffer our fate, including the fate of our inherited prejudice. I am “forced” to be me, play these cards rather than those. I am this little monkey rather than that one over there. The “I” is a locus of pain, pleasure, and responsibility. To the I, praise and blame accrue.

@Joshs

Being, the manifestness of being, is only given through the presence of beings. In order that beings can come to presence and, therefore, that being, the manifestness of being, can be given at all, what is needed is the [ecstatic] standing-in of the human being in the Da [there], in the clearing, in the clearedness of being as which the human being exists.

To me it makes sense to read this in terms of humans being able to recognize being itself and not just beings that are. Basically we can come to understand the ontological difference, which is to experience the world as a “miracle” in a sense that is “stronger” than the theological, for the theological integrates the miracle into a comforting explanatory system. The miracle is relative. God’s technology ( power) is “miraculous” relative to paltry human technology.

The “miracle” of “there being a world here at all” is instead a glimpse into the nature and limit of explanation itself. “There is no question.” The “question” is revealed as a helplessly lyrical cry of wonder or terror. “God” speaks not from but as the whirlwind.

@Joshs

This assertion stands in gross contradiction to the [following] statement of natural science: Due to the absolutely uniform rate of atomic decay in radioactive substances present in the earth’s crust, it can be calculated and therefore proved that the earth has already existed for about four billion years, whereas the first man appeared only about two million years ago. At the very least, the being we call earth was already here long before human beings appeared. Therefore, beings and the manifestness of being, and therefore being can also exist entirely independently of human beings.(Zollikon)

I agree w/ Heidegger here. I’ve been calling him a phenomenalist for quite a while now. I mean “of course” he is, except that phenomenalism is badly remembered. We know that Heidegger and Husserl read Mill, James, Mach, Avenarius, and others. Even if we didn’t know this (because we hadn’t read enough ), it’s there in the structure of their general vision of our basic situation.

[Corvus]

@j_j

But my approach is hard to digest if my listener takes for granted the existence of a mind-stuff called “consciousness.”

Great summary, thanks. I too, feel consciousness is something that manifests from human beings when they communicate, create and interact their thoughts, ideas and feelings with other beings in the world.

Consciousness is not something that is physical although physical body is precondition for the mental states and operations.

I feel I can access others’ consciousness via their writings, speaking and works of arts partly and indirectly. Hence the beings with no capacity of such interactions wouldn’t be in the category of conscious beings.

@j_j

People will be tempted to misread this as idealism. But I don’t believe in the ghost story of consciousness. Or in the ghost story of some primordial “physical” stuff that is other than the mundane perceptual object.

I don’t believe all idealism is necessarily meaningless if supported and claimed with good arguments and real life examples. There are definitely parts of our mentality which are inaccessible by others and even by the owners of the mind, which can only be described and inferred in abstract way.

Just a quick points on the parts of the summary which I have been also mulling about recently. More later. cheers.

[j_j]

@Corvus

Consciousness is not something that is physical although physical body is precondition for the mental states and operations.

I’m saying something weirder than what you are saying. I think.

Consciousness is the being of the physical. Or the “being there” of the physical. We can also call it the “quality” of the physical. A perceptual object is “there” as hot or red or noisy, etc. There-ness is quality. Consciousness is being is quality. Including the being of those objects we call “physical.”

My “consciousness” of an object ( via perception ) is the “being” of a “moment” of that object.

I agree that we tend to attribute “consciousness” — the presence-of-the-world-for — to organisms like ourselves. I think that the being of the world-from-my-POV will vanish when my brain dies.

The physical object is not, in my view, something “outside” of an “inside.” Consciousness “does not exist” as a stuff in the world. It is the presence and being of the world.

This will tend to sound like idealism, but only as long as people insist on understanding consciousness as an internal stuff. What my view does accept and emphasize is that “from-a-point-of-view-ness” is a fundamental characteristic of the world. But so is “between-us-ness” or the “(phenomenological) transcendence” of every entity, including the ego.

The witness is given with the witnessed.

[j_j]

@Corvus

I don’t believe all idealism is necessarily meaningless if supported and claimed with good arguments and real life examples. There are definitely parts of our mentality which are inaccessible by others and even by the owners of the mind, which can only be described and inferred in abstract way.

Just a quick points on the parts of the summary which I have been also mulling about recently. More later. cheers.

Basically I want to do justice to idealism without following into the trap of “all is X.” Entities always manifest with a from-a-point-of-view-ness. You can tell me about your pain, but I can’t feel it as you. But it’s same with a piece of music. I can’t hear it with your ears.

Yet it’s plausible that a device can be invented that transcribes the “interior” monologue. Even a “mind-reader” whose method is obscure for us is logical possible. They may be able to transcribe, but they still aren’t accessing your interior monologue as you yourself do. But they don’t access a painting through your eyes either, even if they can describe your memory of a painting.

[Chelydra]

Found the rock by tracking myself.

[Chelydra]

@EQV

I think this is the point I’m still trying to understand: how do we get from the unobjectionable claim that things are always relationally situated to the stronger claim that they “don’t exist in themselves in any sense”?

By conflating content determinately there with content determinately available.

[Corvus]

@j_j

I’m saying something weirder than what you are saying. I think.

Consciousness is the being of the physical. Or the “being there” of the physical. We can also call it the “quality” of the physical. A perceptual object is “there” as hot or red or noisy, etc. There-ness is quality. Consciousness is being is quality. Including the being of those objects we call “physical.”

It is what forum discussions are about, suppose i.e. seeing how others think differently from my ideas on the topics or concepts. If everyone always thinks the same as me, there would be no much point discussions.

As long as the ideas are well thought out, and have good arguments and points, it will add more value and food for thought to my own ideas or even conversion to the synthesis based on the antithesis.

Yes, I can see your points on consciousness seem somewhat different from mine.

To me, consciousness is a transcendental a priori existence. It is beyond the physical and also perception or understanding. You cannot point to consciousness, be it yours or others’.

Consciousness exists in noumena, not in phenomena. How do we know it exists? It exists because we perceive the individual particular mental phenomenon and manifestations from the living beings i.e. firstly from my own mind, and from others communicating and interacting with me in the world.

I cannot perceive the existence of consciousness, but I can feel, sense therefore postulate it.

The postulation also gives me the possibility of the existence of the transcendental world, in which the consciousness resides.

To me, consciousness is not static. It is dynamic. It changes, transforms from super alertness or awareness to total unconsciousness such as when body and mind sleeps. Even if the body and mind sleeps, I feel the consciousness is kept awake all through the duration of unconsciousness. Hence unconsciousness is not the opposite of consciousness, but it would be the state when the general mind is detached from the consciousness.

Perception of time and space is generated from consciousness. Without consciousness, there would be NO time and space perception or conception.

I don’t posit consciousness to physical “here-ness” in the world. To me, it belongs to the transcendental world, where normal perception or finger pointing is not possible from the physical world.

I would also label consciousness as pure mind, mind-in-itself or pure spirit, to mean that it belongs to the transcendental world as a transcendent being, which manifests all the mental events possible.

I believe the individual consciousness all exist in the transcendental world, but they appear in different mind or brain of different people. Hence our sharing the meanings and feelings and ideas are possible. Although they are different conscious beings, they all belong to the same transcendental world.

It sounds overly idealistic and dualistic, but it works for me for understanding the world and mind.

[Corvus]

@j_j

But they don’t access a painting through your eyes either, even if they can describe your memory of a painting.

I agree. We use our own sense organs to perceive the world, hence we cannot access others’ feelings, thoughts and sensations.

However, the perceived data must go beyond the primary level of understanding once entered our minds to the depth of our transcendental consciousness, in order to allow the sharing or accessing the others consciousness albeit in partial quantity.

The access or sharing would be possible, because our consciousness exist in the same transcendental world in their origin, even if they are individual and strictly private in their existence.

[Joshs]

@j_j

“the subjective pole” has a psychological function here. I think we agree that there is no pure subject or pure object. “Pole” suggests a kind of limit point in each case. The limits are not in the sequence.

I prefer to emphasize that the projection shines back from the object.

As I read you, the subject-object dynamic reveals both a psychological and a pre-psychological dimension. By pre-psychological I mean in terms of a more fundamental ground or condition of possibility. Husserl argued that the intentional psychologies of Brentano, the Gestaltists and others have much in common with his transcendental phenomenology, but they ground their intentionality in contingent empirical processes ( evolutionary mechanisms, etc). The implication is that a psychological explanation of subject-object relationality could function otherwise than it does were the empirical history of its bio-psychological genesis different.

Husserl insisted the subject-object dynamic revealed through transcendental phenomenology is not reducible to contingent empirico-psychological processes but is their condition of possibility.

Heidegger countered that what Husserl believed to be the universal and irreducible ground for any empirical psychology still harbored contingent presuppositions which kept it within the bounds of a psychology. Heidegger believed that his understanding of Dasein in terms of its relation to Being was the pre-psychological ground Husserl was looking for but couldn’t attain.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t you also offer a pre-psychological, pre-biological ground of the world which you articulate as the qualitative point-of-viewness of the world in relation to itself? Or would you say that it is philosophically coherent to imagine returning to a universe prior to the appearance of biological and psychological subjects, wherein it makes sense to conceive that world as existing but devoid of point-of -viewness?

This raises a further question about the nature of perspective . One might take the phrase ‘point-of-view’ literally and conceive it as staring at a thing from a certain spatial vantage This treats ‘view’ as representation. We glimpse what is presumed to be already present from our own vantage. But you seem to want to go further than this You talk about a qualitative sense produced by or associated with viewing a thing This leads me to ask: if we can’t recover from this qualitative sense the original thing as something that we have added our view to, then does it make sense at all to assume an original thing prior to our viewing it?

If a thing is only what it is as a qualitative sense produced in the very moment of its being viewed, if things only exist in their being viewed within ‘agential’ configurations of matter which determine how things matter, then the origin of the thing is in the viewing itself.

It may be obvious how a self-transcending world is conceivable on the basis of this thinking, but what about a world imposing constraints, rules, norms, patterns and regularities on events? How can such a world justify the goals of science which depend on prediction and control?

The question writers like Merleau-Ponty, Husserl, Heidegger, Jean Luc Nancy, Derrida, Karen Barad, Joseph Rouse, Deleuze , Foucault and Nietzsche ask is whether we need the Platonism of representation to conceive of experience which is both constraining and transformative, predictable and differing, at the same time. James and Peirce only went so far in this post-platonist direction.

[EQV]

@Joshs

But isn’t the very definition of representation the taking up of something already present in the world? If my taking up the object doesn’t change the nature of that object, then the object persists as itself both before it affects me and as I encounter it by re-presenting it. The same object is present twice, in two different relational contexts.

I think this depends on how we characterize “taking up.” Even granting that perception involves a phenomenal presentation constrained by the object, why suppose that this presentation must be a duplicate of the object?

Nor does the object’s standing in two relational contexts mean that it is present twice. The same object can be related both to its environment and to a perceiver without being numerically duplicated. What is present in the perceiver is not a second object, but a presentation through which the perceiver is related to the object.

Peirce, for example, offers one way of understanding this. The presentation functions as a sign: it stands for the object to an interpretant while being constrained by the object. Representation therefore need not involve constructing a facsimile and then inferring the existence of its original. There is one object and a distinct presentation through which that object becomes cognitively accessible.

@Joshs

For these thinkers differences are not relations among identities. Rather, identities are derivative of differences. An object is a modification, not a subsistence or identity which also happens to modify or affect surrounding identities. To exist is not to subsist but to transcend. There are not first beings and then becomings. To be is to become.

I find myself unconvinced by the claim that identities are derivative of differences. It seems more plausible that identity and difference are reciprocally constitutive, with neither enjoying absolute priority. An identity is determinable only through its differences from other things, but a difference also seems to require enough identity or continuity for it to count as a difference rather than as sheer unrelatedness.

@Joshs

A numerically different rock IS produced in each interaction. By different I mean qualitatively different, not quantitatively. By qualitative I mean a different sense of meaning, not the iteration of a new instance within the same overarching category. Just as for the Gestaltists the whole precedes the parts, each new variation within a configuration is not just an addition to a already existing category, but a transformation of the sense of the configuration as a whole.

Can’t we grant qualitative transformation without saying that a numerically different rock is produced? If “numerically different” means a distinct individual, then a change in the rock’s qualities or in the sense it has within a configuration does not by itself entail numerical replacement.

My phenomenal presentation of the rock is constantly changing, and the rock itself is presumably undergoing physical changes as well. But why must every such change amount to a change in what individual exists? If the sense of the whole configuration is transformed, that may show that the rock cannot be exhaustively defined apart from its relations. But it doesn’t show that no numerically identical rock persists through those transformations.

What, on this account, grounds the distinction between the transformation of one persisting rock from the disappearance of one rock and the production of another?

@Joshs

The patterns produced by configurations constrain even as they are born anew in each interaction. The continuous qualitative change that marks each interaction is subtle. It doesnt prevent the continually self-reinventing world from appearing to us (or to itself) via relatively stable normative organizations. We are able to make sense of the world, to anticipate new events as variations of previous ones, because of the intimacy of its continual becoming. We live our lives within social and empirical norms whose change is imperceptible enough to allow most of us to believe in such things as identity, equality and subsistence.

Again, I’m curious what licenses the ontological conclusion here. You have explained how a world of continuous qualitative self-transformation could nevertheless appear relatively stable, but you haven’t explained why we should prefer that account to the more straightforward view that stability appears because identities are real.

Why interpret identity, equality, and subsistence as useful illusions generated by imperceptibly slow change, rather than as fallible concepts that track real continuities within change? What explanatory work does the stronger ontology of continual self-reinvention perform that an account of persisting but changing entities cannot?

@j_j

EQV mentions a “determinate essence.” Basically I see us as seeking a sharing in situation. For instance, the phenomenologist hopes that structures that he finds in the-world-from-his-POV are also there for others, in the-world-from-their-POV.

The identity of the object is “ideal.” It is always on the way, and essentially social. Science is essentially social. Art is essentially social. But the ideal community will generally not be everyone. But only for those who are basically on the same path. The mathematician writes a proof for peers, and so on. Husserl is famously difficult to read. So it’s only with effort that others can validate one’s discovering invention or inventive discovery.

Would you be willing to say that this hope for shared validation is oriented toward an ideal of fuller, though never final, fulfillment?

And might that social orientation itself express something more fundamental: that we, as finite, fallible, and situated knowers, are nevertheless oriented beyond our present perspectives toward an unrestricted horizon of intelligibility—or, in the classical parlance, toward Being?

[j_j]

@Joshs

Husserl insisted the subject-object dynamic revealed through transcendental phenomenology is not reducible to contingent empirico-psychological processes but is their condition of possibility.

I can understand why a thinker might use the phrase “condition of possibility.” I’m reluctant to use it though, because it can be taken as a reification of being. So that being becomes a thing that makes other things possible.

I’d like to circumvent metaphysics-as-“explanation” as much as possible.

To me it’s more like “we find ourselves here together, sharing in various things, explaining some of them in terms of others.” I can’t make sense of a “grand” explanation, which always ends up looking like the same sort of brute fact that it was supposed to explain.

I’d say that “consciousness” is best understood as a pointer to the very being of empirico-psychological processes.

Granted that we share things, what is the structure of these things ? Not the magical main ingredient — a pointless detour — but just a sketch of the structure of things that doesn’t immediately lie about the way we live in the world.

[j_j]

@Joshs

Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t you also offer a pre-psychological, pre-biological ground of the world which you articulate as the qualitative point-of-viewness of the world in relation to itself? Or would you say that it is philosophically coherent to imagine returning to a universe prior to the appearance of biological and psychological subjects, wherein it makes sense to conceive that world as existing but devoid of point-of -viewness?

I wouldn’t use the word “ground.”

My spin on fundamental ontology is that it just describes what all objects — entities, beings, things — have in common. This description is a tentative generalization of my own existence. I try to sketch the structures in my own existence that I hope that others can find in theirs. Dialogue is fundamental here. I have to see what others make of my formal indications.

“My” fundamental ontology ( obviously mostly inherited, curated, and paraphrased ) offers “from-a-point-of-view-ness” and “between-us-ness” as plug-and-play replacements for immanence and transcendence. The subject becomes an emptied eject — and the postulation of consciousness as a stuff is rejected — in order to leap over the typical bad reading of phenomenalism. Basically J. S. Mill is best read as merely explicating the genuine physical object, because Mill was too shrewd to lose himself in Berkeley’s theomaterialism in a scientistic but anti-scientific garb that replaces Jehova with a distilled deistic residue. The “physical” object is precisely the co-experienced perceptual and qualitative object. The “idealists” are those who transform the genuinely physical into “internal icons,” paradoxically waxing realistic as they rehash Plato’s caveman conspiracy theory. Of course Plato’s theory of forms, along this same theological vector, becomes unworldly and mystical rather than presciently phenomenological.

To answer your question finally, I am a shameless correlationist. Meillassoux’s After Finitude not only failed to shame me into pious physicalism, but his excellent focus on the primary issue called my attention to what is perhaps the crux of deistic ( omniscient narrator) “objective reality” metaphysics. We can sum up this crux as “the truth is what God believes.” Reality is pre-articulated, dead and finished, the vision of an ideal believer who lives outside of time. Meillassoux, for all his radical points about contingency, is piously fixed on the fixity and univocity of what is therefore the past. This he takes for granted, however wild and free he allows the future to be.

I’m not sure that anyone has shared with me yet in the recognition of Berkeley’s theomaterialism as the basic structure of a metaphysical realism that fetishizes “objective reality” not as a social ideal ( a goal, a point at an infinity that never arrives) but as a Truthmaker that is already out there in crystalline determinateness.

For all the talk of “the great outdoors,” we get refried Berkeley. We get theomaterialism with a different god. This god doesn’t give a fuck. This god is a mirror of our machines and formal systems. We final humans ( last men ) will settle for the vague possibility of infinite correctitude. This is a god for the polished mirrors that Nietzsche discusses somewhere in BG&E. The “humble” objective man collects theorems as others might collect stamps or coins. This should suffice for the mumblecore megalopolitan.

In case that answer is too indulgently indirect, I don’t fret over ancestral objects. Empirical claims are about future experience. Meillassoux’s naivety peaks — and almost shocks me — when he earnestly speaks of the “literal” meaning of ancestral statements. Presumably he means the vague metaphysical foolosopher’s meaning. As opposed to the this-worldly pragmatic meaning. We get the by-now-predictable appeal to the technological prestige of science against a technological reading of that same science and toward a theological “spiritual cheerleading” reading.

So yeah I continue to offer “from-a-point-of-view-ness” as a fundamental structure of objects.

====

But I recognize that this is a tempest in a teacup. The critique of metaphysical indulgence is not itself some great practical feat. I think it might be helpful to artists who have anxiety about being out of touch with reality, because they’ve been intimidated by the fine but empty phrases that initially seem to be the friends rather than foes of science.

[j_j]

@Joshs

This raises a further question about the nature of perspective . One might take the phrase ‘point-of-view’ literally and conceive it as staring at a thing from a certain spatial vantage This treats ‘view’ as representation. We glimpse what is presumed to be already present from our own vantage. But you seem to want to go further than this You talk about a qualitative sense produced by or associated with viewing a thing This leads me to ask: if we can’t recover from this qualitative sense the original thing as something that we have added our view to, then does it make sense at all to assume an original thing prior to our viewing it?

So the typical metaphysical response to perspective has of course been to demote the “moment” of an object to a mere internal icon.

I hope that you don’t mistake my own position to go along with that. I don’t know how I can be much clearer on this issue. The subject is empty empty empty empty empty. “From-a-point-of-view-ness” is an attempt to account for what inspired a representational reading without making that representational mistake.

This ocular metaphor is only a pointer. We could talk about noses rather than eyes. Or feelings ( differing responses to the sound of the same music.)

Does it make sense to assume the same thing ?

As I see it, my foolosophy doesn’t assume it but merely respond to and confess a deeper and prior assumption. Conversation presupposes shared objects. But this “presupposition” is deep. We “enact” this faith constantly. In this very conversation, for instance, we discuss the “same” “intentional objects.” These objects are discussable as logically between us. But this “logic” is “ideal” in the sense of a hope that might not be fulfilled, of a goal that might not be achieved.

We can psychologically discuss or explain “why” the object appears this way rather than that way to so-and-so. If we do so, we drift from fundamental ontology into a rich topic for psychology. I’m happy to just keep to the structure of the object as my topic. “Ontocubism” is one rich but simple grip on this structure.

[j_j]

@EQV

Would you be willing to say that this hope for shared validation is oriented toward an ideal of fuller, though never final, fulfillment?

And might that social orientation itself express something more fundamental: that we, as finite, fallible, and situated knowers, are nevertheless oriented beyond our present perspectives toward an unrestricted horizon of intelligibility—or, in the classical parlance, toward Being?

Yes. I’m very much with you on that. The unrealized future in its shimmering promise is “more real” than the present and the past. It is the “light” that reveals the present and the past.

I was strongly influenced by post-Hegelian humanism. I can also very much appreciate Peirce’s vision of truth as the limit point of belief as it evolves within and through an ideal inquiry.

I’m just not as optimistic as thinkers from that era. And I’m less focused on words ( propositions, etc. ) as the primary means of revelation. Even in terms of words, I might suggest Shakespeare over Plato, etc.

[j_j]

@Corvus

To me, consciousness is a transcendental a priori existence. It is beyond the physical and also perception or understanding. You cannot point to consciousness, be it yours or others’.

Right. So for me this is just the ontological difference. The being of the world is not a thing in the world. To me the issue that blocks understanding here is the learned assumption that consciousness is a stuff, like a vapor or a mysterious ghost-like something. When ( in retrospect, for me anyway) it’s far simpler than that. So simple as to be elusive and obscure, because we are looking for our glasses under the bed, forgetting to check our noses.

You can’t find the consciousness of another person as a thing in the world from your POV because this consciousness of the other is the being of the entire world from another point of view.

If you look for your own consciousness, you also just find that the world is “there” ( more or less explicitly “for you.”)

I mean that’s my take on it.

[j_j]

@EQV

Again, I’m curious what licenses the ontological conclusion here. You have explained how a world of continuous qualitative self-transformation could nevertheless appear relatively stable, but you haven’t explained why we should prefer that account to the more straightforward view that stability appears because identities are real.

I’m with you on this point. We enact the reality of identity. Identity is “ideal” in the sense of this passionate enactment. I mean here we are discussing the sign “identity,” assuming the secure between-us identity of identity itself. We grant the other a certain leeway to understand identity differently, but we all presuppose that we are discussing the same or identical identity.

[j_j]

@EQV

Peirce, for example, offers one way of understanding this. The presentation functions as a sign: it stands for the object to an interpretant while being constrained by the object. Representation therefore need not involve constructing a facsimile and then inferring the existence of its original. There is one object and a distinct presentation through which that object becomes cognitively accessible.

Very cool that you mention that.

The sign is the for-me manifestation of the object. You and Peirce might prefer “representation.” I only object to this if “representation” is understood as less than a genuine presentation. The “re” can be understand to emphasize the transcendence of the object. The first presentation is a re-presentation in the sense that the first pronunciation of a word is ( metaphorically ) a re-presentation. Because the acoustic image is relatively “timeless” and “frozen.” It makes the singular sounding a sounding of. The “first” has no deep priority. It can only be the first through the possibility of potential parade of later pronunciations which are just as real.

Do we infer a “real” object from the perception ? I’m not saying you are claiming this. Just making a point. The experience is only a perception if understood as a genuine presentation of the object.

[Corvus]

@j_j

Right. So for me this is just the ontological difference. The being of the world is not a thing in the world. To me the issue that blocks understanding here is the learned assumption that consciousness is a stuff, like a vapor or a mysterious ghost-like something. When ( in retrospect, for me anyway) it’s far simpler than that. So simple as to be elusive and obscure, because we are looking for our glasses under the bed, forgetting to check our noses.

That is why I feel “transcendental being” would be a good description for consciousness. Transcendental being means it is not physical or mental. It is unknown being. It is prior to our sense and perception or understanding. It is being which is postulated like Kantian “Ding-An-Sich”, but in more for the mental or spiritual “Geist” in nature.

@j_j

You can’t find the consciousness of another person as a thing in the world from your POV because this consciousness of the other is the being of the entire world from another point of view.

Consciousness is not findable or point-able, as it is transcendent being. But it is the source of all mental events and manifestations. I can postulate others’ consciousness, if there were good close interactions, communications and sharing on the works of art, writings, speaking and coordination or co-operations because all consciousness belongs to the same world of noumena in its origin.

@j_j

If you look for your own consciousness, you also just find that the world is “there” ( more or less explicitly “for you.”)

It doesn’t have to be located in “there”, but it is always there as long as we are thinking, imagining, speaking or creating behind all the mental manifestations.

@j_j

I mean that’s my take on it.

Sure. it is good to know where your take on it lies, so I could see where my take lie in the map.

[EQV]

@j_j

I’m just not as optimistic as thinkers from that era. And I’m less focused on words ( propositions, etc. ) as the primary means of revelation. Even in terms of words, I might suggest Shakespeare over Plato, etc.

I can appreciate that. I would not wish to identify disclosure with discursivity. Art, symbol, affect, embodiment and perhaps even the unconscious can disclose aspects of reality before we are able to articulate them conceptually. I’m willing to grant that Shakespeare may reveal something that no philosophical theory could adequately reproduce.

But I still think there’s value in distinguishing disclosure from knowledge. Something may be disclosed pre-discursively, but recognizing and affirming it as a disclosure of reality (I know you don’t like this word) still seems to require intellectual appropriation. The unconscious and the phenomenal may be real and efficacious independently of our knowing them, but the claim that they are real and efficacious seems itself to be an intellectual achievement.

Otherwise, what basis do we have for distinguishing genuine disclosure from projection, fantasy, or ideological possession? It’s not that judgment is infallible, or that it guarantees agreement. But it introduces the critical, evaluative aspect of consciousness that is otherwise missing. That’s why I resist the conclusion that Being is simply and transparently given as “thus and so” independently of all inquiry and discernment. Otherwise we’re left at the mercy of every crack-pot, fanatic and lunatic who claims to “speak on behalf of God”.

@j_j

The sign is the for-me manifestation of the object. You and Peirce might prefer “representation.” I only object to this if “representation” is understood as less than a genuine presentation.

I’m with you there. Personally, I don’t think “representation” is the right word. “Presentation” better captures what I’m trying to express.

@j_j

The “re” can be understand to emphasize the transcendence of the object. The first presentation is a re-presentation in the sense that the first pronunciation of a word is ( metaphorically ) a re-presentation. Because the acoustic image is relatively “timeless” and “frozen.” It makes the singular sounding a sounding of. The “first” has no deep priority. It can only be the first through the possibility of potential parade of later pronunciations which are just as real.

Yes, I think this is very close to what I am getting at. I would express it like this: presentation is itself a real event of disclosure in the sense that something appears, affects us, and solicits further understanding. But what it discloses is not simply and immediately manifest as “thus-and-so.” That requires further mediation by understanding and judgment, even if that mediation is tacit, embodied, or not explicitly discursive.

So, I’d be willing to grant that there is a broad sense in which every presentation discloses reality. It is a real encounter in which something becomes present. But there is also a narrower epistemic sense in which, I’d say, presentation alone does not disclose what reality “is”. It contributes to disclosure, but it does not, by itself, determine whether what appears is an enduring object, an illusion, a symbol, a projection, or something else. That’s where understanding and judgement are required.

In that sense, presentation is not opposed to mediation. It is the event that calls out for mediation.

@j_j

Do we infer a “real” object from the perception ? I’m not saying you are claiming this. Just making a point. The experience is only a perception if understood as a genuine presentation of the object.

Agreed.

[EQV]

@j_j

Do we infer a “real” object from the perception ? I’m not saying you are claiming this. Just making a point. The experience is only a perception if understood as a genuine presentation of the object.

I just realized I should say more about this. In my previous post I basically stated that the real is mediated by understanding and judgement, but I don’t think that this mediation is straightforwardly reducible to “inference”.

Bernard Lonergan, for instance, spoke of the act of insight (i.e. understanding) as a kind of “sublation”. Phenomenal presentations can condition the occurrence of insight, but insight is not an act of conscious deduction or induction. Peirce spoke of abduction, but even he admitted that, in the limit case, insight comes to us involuntarily, “like a flash”. Lonergan analogizes the relationship between presentation and insight in terms of the classical relationship between matter and form — as form sublates matter into a higher intelligible unity, so insight sublates presentation.

I suspect that much of the concrete genesis of insight is unconscious or subpersonal. That doesn’t mean consciousness plays no role: sustained attention, questioning, experimentation, and conceptual work may prepare and guide its occurrence. But, in my opinion, the occurrence of insight itself cannot be voluntarily forced or reconstructed as a sequence of explicit, conscious, “inferential” steps.

That is why I would hesitate to say that the real is simply “inferred” from presentation. I’d say it’s something more akin to an intelligible proposal, one that becomes progressively more educated and skillful the more one learns and develops (though, age and injury may reverse this). Philosophy can describe the intentional structure of this movement from presentation to understanding and judgment, but I think it is the job of the special sciences to investigate how it is concretely implemented in an embodied cognitive agent.

And then there is judgement, which is the act that reflectively affirms (or denies) what insight proposes. The agent grasps that the conditions for the proposed insight are (or are not) fulfilled by the presentation (in conjunction with previously established judgments). This is where, in the successful case, I would say that the agent not only encounters an appearance, or entertains an idea, but actually meets the real.

But of course, there is no “sideways on”, God’s-eye-view from which the agent can determine whether or not they have achieved any success. This is where the agent must rely responsibly on their own capacities while remaining open to further evidence, criticism and correction — seeking feedback from the community and drawing on both personal and communal discernment to sift the true from the false.