From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Tue Jan 29 2002 - 04:00:01 MST
Here is my part of an exchange I posted on the Memetics list. It's a bit
garbled, but not too difficult to parse. Hope y'all enjoy it.
Phenomenology and genetic epistemology agree that
spatiotemporality is constructed by the subject, but
phenomenology has come to the conclusion that we construct
them from a manifold that exists independent of our perception of
it, as we construct a worldly object that is nevertheless actually
there to be constructed, that we have artificially bifurcated a
single perceptual spatiotemporality into 'space' and 'time', and, as
the ideal limit of a completely grasped object must
noncontradictorally contain all perspectives upon it in all
perspectival modalities as aspects, so the ideal limit of a
spacetime grasped omnipositionally must noncontradictorally
contain each perspectival apprehension of it. How can one prove
that spacetime is singular? By means of thought experiments, in
which, thomas kuhn asserts, "nature and conceptual apparatus are
jointly implicated" (1977: 265). Our two thought experiments will
be (a) to try to imagine a spaceless time, and (b) to attempt to
imagine a timeless space. (a) A spaceless time must be
infinitesimal, that is, it must lack the three perceiveable spatial
dimensions. But worldly and somatic consciousness, as well as
imagination, are perspectival; the observe their objects from
positions which are not identical with the positions of the objects.
To perform such an observation is to establish two points, that of
observer and that of observed, which define a line, a spatial
dimension. The apodictically self-evident and necessary
conclusion contradicts the assumed premise, therefore the premise
is disproved by reductio ad absurdum. Q. E. D. (b) A timeless
space must be instantaneous, that is, it must lack duration. But the
establishment of a spatial perspective requires presence to
succeed absence, and the co-presence of the observer and the
observed entails their simultaneity. Succession and simultaneity
are temporal distinctions. Once again, the apodictically self-
evident and necessary conclusion contradicts the assumed
premise, therefore this premise, too, is disproved by reductio ad
absurdum. Q. E. D. (again). How did we come to bifurcate
spacetime? The answer is to be found in the character of our
perceptual modalities. All of them involve 'both space and time',
but in vision thbe spatial aspect is dominant, while in audition the
tempral aspect predominates; they utilize the spatiotemporal
manifold in differing ways. We simply (and incorrectly)
absolutized their respective dominances. Notice that in taction and
proprioception, the most basic perceptual modes, both aspects of
the manifold are equally represented. Since, according to Aron
Gurwitsch, taction and propripoception are omnipresent to
consciousness, the evidence for this contention has been
perpetually 'with' us all along. edmund Husserl's theory of the
"living present", found in his unpublished manuscripts by, among
others, Tran Duc Thao, (1951: 227-231) is a theory of the
"primordial Now which is posited as permanent" and which has as
a fixed structure the flow of the future through it into the past.
This theory is generalizeable into a primordial and permanant
perceptual here-Now through which spactiotemporality flows,
carrying particular perceptions into and out of consciousness
while the perceptual structure Remains-Here-Now. Gurwitsch, in
THE FIELD OF CONSCIOUSNESS, presents the tesis that there
is a structure common to all perception and conception, the
theme-thematic field-margin structure (1957: 56). Within a
perceptual or conceptual field, there is always a theme, or focus of
intention, surrounded by a thematic field, or context, which is in
turn bounded by a margin, or fringe. In vision, this structure is
primarily spation; in audition, it is mainly temporal. If our focus is
a concept, its thematic field is composed of other concepts
relevant to it. In MARGINAL CONSCIOUSNESS, Gurwitsch
asserts the omnipresence of three orders of existence in at least
marginal form. These are "(1) a certain segment of the stream of
consciousness, (2) our embodies existence, and (3) a certain
sector of our perceptual environment" (1985: xlv). The
omnipresence of these three existential orders is said to
"constitute an a priori condition of consciousness" and to be the
foundation of Husserl's 'natural attitude', which, prior to the
phenomenological reduction, or epoche (the bracketing of the
existence or nonexistence of a world grounding our perceptions),
assumes an intentionality-independent existing world, for they
incessantly provide evidence of the existence of this world to
consciousness (1985: 56-59). Thus, phenomenology, in the last
half century, was led inescapably from the placing in abeyance of
the existence of a world grounding out perceptions to the proof of
its existence by the very investigation of those perceptions, just as
it is led inexorably from the assumption of independent space and
time to the conclusion that the intention-independent
spatiotemporal manifold is indeed as singular as is the perceptual
one of ordinary experience, whe that experience is carefully
attended to in a disciplined manner. This is why transcendental
phenomenology died, and in its place we have existential-
hermeneutic phenomenology.
Actually, it is exactly that sort of apodictic study into self, body,
world and other from the inside that phenomenology has been
pursuing in a disciplined and careful manner for some time now,
with solid results, as enumerated above; genetic epistemology has
been studying these same phenomena from the outside.
Phenomenology can offer apodictic certainty regarding the mature
invariant structures of these phenomena, but can offer no
information concerning the evolutionary development of then in
the individual, for one must possess them in their mature form and
be capable of abstract speculation upon them in order to
philosophize (and perception develops propr to conception). IOW,
phenomenology is an irreduceably synchronic discipline. Genetic
epistemology can offer us diachronic information on the
evolutionary development of these structures from their genesis to
their maturity, but its evidence, gleaned from experimenting with
and questioning children and interpreting the results, is statistical
and probable rather than apodictically certain. Thus these two
disciplines possess a kind of synchronic-diachronic
complementarity in the realm of being, each being able to provide
what the other does not, and with the combination of their
respective insights providing the most complete view, just as the
complementary disciplines of synchronic semiotics and
diachronic memetics do in the realm of meaning.
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