First Live, then Philosophize

On December 8, 2020June 14, 2021 By Chris Shuttleworth1 Comment

Embodied and Psychological Engagement with the World

All experience is found in our Being’s manifestation within the present moment, in the specific actualization stemming from the general overarching potentiality. In phenomenologically analyzing the expression of the totality of our Being as it actualizes itself in the present moment, we discover differentiable modes of being with specific characteristics. We can uncover concrete categories of existence that we designate as modes of being(s) by analyzing reflexively the realm of subjective experience and our orientation to our environment. These modes of being include phenomena such as sensation, perception, conscious awareness, thought, memory, sensory-motor activity, being-with-others, beings-toward-something in the environment, and in general the different manners in which we are modified given the innumerable factors that influence us. Everything that affects us in the moment, whether its developed or present, modifies our mode of being in a manner that is reflexive of the totality of our being’s conditional nature as it is so conditioned by the phenomena in the realm of content able to be experienced.

Certain modes of being stem from our activity acting in the world, in the manner we respond to our immediate environment, whether it’s the general modification of us by immediate phenomena such as objects, time, or others, or if it’s an external manifestation of our conditioned Being in its totality. The manner we interact with the world, experience the world, orientate ourselves within our environment, and spontaneously react to the content of the moment can be classified as a meta mode of being which contains activity and minor modes of being within it. The totality of our psychic state, as represented conceptually as our Being, insofar as it is affected genetically, environmentally, developmentally, and modified by its orientation within space and time, contains the potentiality of states and actions that we can actualize, whether from the meta mode of being embodily engaged with the world, or meta mode of being psychologically engaged with the world.

From the meta mode of being embodily engaged with the world, we are living as such, we are acting in accordance with our developed mode of being in a manner that is not cognitively interacting with the world. Immediate reciprocity, instinct, action or speech prior to conscious awareness, such as in free-flowing playing, dancing, talking, working, etcetera, all are momentary actions and modes of being. These momentary actions are absent explicit subjective awareness and conscious direction, to these minor modes of being, we group them under the meta-head of embodied engagement with the world.

Our embodied engagement with the world is characterized by the absence, or negative existence, of subjectively experienced internal content – which is often in the form of dialogue and conceptualization. The less such experience is explicitly recognized by ourselves, the more we are engaged with our immediate environment and living out our developed orientation towards the world. The set of modes of being that are unconsciously directed towards the immediate environment, whether it be that mode towards which objects are encountered as present at hand or ready to hand, a mode which has developed schematically through habitual tendencies, or that mode which produces spontaneous orientations of our bodies in response to the perceived environment and the content of the present moment, we will designate as characteristic of the meta mode of being embodily engaged in the world. This is differentiated from the mindful recognition of mental experience found in active thought, self-realization, and the awareness of the content of the present moment which can be experienced as being known to us in its most common form: conceptual representation. Conceptual representation is a form of abstract symbolic schema from which phenomena is classified and able to be delineated, in its manifestation within our experience we see one form of psychological engagement with the world.

This embodied engagement with the world we find in those manifestations of our being that are marked by accomodatory action in regards to an assimilated schema that is absent of the realization of subjective experience. These actions are lived through without consciously being considered. The subjective realization of our potentialities, the conceptual representation in the form of thought, the anticipation of the future, retrospective memory of the past, and the awareness of the present, break this mode of Being embodily engaged with the world. The spontaneous, instinctual, and developed reaction to the moment, is contributed to by every factor which enters our realm of influence. All factors considered, the mode of embodied engagement is absent of abstract thought, and absent of a conscious awareness of the present moment. This categorization of a set of modes of being has its utility, and its drawbacks, in reference to psychological wellbeing.

Our psychological engagement with the world is in the subjectively experienced explicitness of our Being manifesting itself in accordance with the temporal moment we find ourselves in. As subjective experience is part of “our world”, it is in its experiencing, and dealing with such experience, that we attach to it as an “engagement with the world”. In the same manner that we develop an orientation towards embodily enacting pragmatic schemas that develop according to novel circumstances (Genetic Epistemology) in our embodied engagement with the world, we likewise develop our psychic realm in its manifesting content, and the manner in which we experience it, through the same assimilatory and accommodating process of dialectical development. As we experience more, and find the utility in different actions, movements, and symbolic representations used to order the chaos of existence, we develop mental patterns and reactive tendencies that are in alignment with a “successful” orientation towards the problem of our own Being – its explicitness and the implications of it being a problem for us.

The benefits of mindfulness and present moment awareness include establishing a knowledge of our mental experience and its characteristics, developing concentration and providing a training of the mind towards diminishing of unwholesome mental states and promoting wholesome mental states (Benefits of Mindfulness). Reflective analysis of our memories and a pointed directional thought towards anticipating and planning for the future provide a function of promoting learning and reorientation, allowing corrections for past sub optimality in navigation, promoting past success, and instantiating the lessons and developed goal fulfillment strategies which serve us to properly move forward in the world (actualization of our values and the subjective meaningfulness attached to such pursuits). This separation from an embodied engagement in the world is itself found in the world, produced by causal connectivity in its arising within the world, in reference to our Being-in-the-world, and informs our continued existence in the world as a causal precursor to further manifestations of our Being.

The engagement with the world absent of this explicit psychological engagement, which is our Being-in-the-world without the explicit recognition of it as such, enables us to embody the developed Being which is free of subjectively intuiting it as such. Taking objects up as tools as ready to hand, social situations, creating, building, working in general, become the object of engagement rather than the awareness of the experience of them as found in psychological engagement. This type of engagement with the world enables us to be unhindered temporally by mental deliberation and consideration, to act spontaneously without the problem of our Being interrupting the flow of life’s processes. This experience gained through embodied action provides developmental data that informs psychological engagement with the world, it acts as the basis of its interpretation of ourselves and the outside world. Without embodied existence, without our being-in-the-world, and the experience gleamed there, there would be no data to instantiate a psychological engagement that can characterize an optimal navigation of reality and our place in the world. Thus the literal interpretation of the old aphorism attributed to Aristotle “First live, then philosophize.”

Philosophy itself requires cognition that arises from the material substratum coupled with experiential “life” development in a certain manner in the form of being-in-the-world. Our genetic code instantiates a sensory-perceptive system (Merleau-Ponty), which forms sensory-motor accommodations that works to form schemas to assimilate experience in a pragmatic manner (Genetic Epistemology). From these systems we develop a manner of being-in-the-world that enables us to act and be that is sufficiently capable of operating in our environment. Everything in our immediate environment from which we are perceptively oriented towards, all introjected stimuli, has significance and meaning to us insofar as it modifies our Being. Once mental development reaches the point of symbolic representation, and then linguistic capability, and eventually abstract thought, we are able to conceptualize reality in a manner that makes sense to us. This representation of reality constitutes the formation of how we articulate an explicit philosophical belief and value system, and thus the capability of philosophizing emerges. When we are able to articulate subjective experience, and the construction of symbolic representation of different aspects of reality which occurs within it, we gain the capability of sharing information with other Beings who are able to deconstruct the linguistic symbolism and deduce relational meaning behind them. This knowledge is modified by our developed perspective and articulation of it, and constitutes the potentiality of philosophizing, prior to any logical, scientific validation. Embodied cognition is acted on by extended cognition of our environment and we have the potentiality of psychologically engaging with the content of consciousness within the present moment. This momentary subjective experience that is characterized by a psychological engagement with the world enables a subsequent conceptualization of the content located within itself, and this produces philosophy and sharable knowledge, as we know it today.

Due to the nature of such development we need to experience more of life itself in order to get a clearer philosophical picture. We must embodily engage with the world, psychologically engage with the world, then step back and articulate the content located within (by psychological engagement with the abstract representation of both modes in the form of language). This enables the production of philosophy. The degree of pragmatic utility, objective truth, and logical cohesion of one’s worldview, one’s manner of living – in short – one’s philosophical position, depends on one’s acquired knowledge and the wisdom in applying it. The more experience, the more data, the more knowledge, the higher intelligence and time in both experiencing life, and psychologically engaging with this endeavor of “philosophy”, like any endeavor, tends to constitute the universal categories of value that determine the success of it. Aristotle’s famous quote points to the wisdom in experiencing a range of life’s potentialities first, before psychologically analyzing them, and philosophically attempting to represent reality from the data. Without adequate experience, the philosophical interpretation is merely naïve and not grounded in reality. It takes living life itself, in embodied engagement with the world and the environment, in the situations, encounters, and experiences found there, to take place in order for us to make any headway in conceptualizing characteristics of reality. In looking to develop a moral code, and organizing a value system that is consciously articulable, we ought to have experiential data, and acquired knowledge, the more of which we can utilize to better inform our conclusions. Only once we contain adequate experience can philosophy be utilized towards the improvement of our lives.

In the admonition to first live, then philosophize, we are simultaneously warned against the opposite, which is to philosophize first, then live. This puts the cart before the horse, and as the existentialists conclude, existence precedes essence. Unlike Sartre who claims the implications of freedom in this statement, we find that in a deterministic development, our existence is still primary, phenomenologically, to the characteristics which we develop and attribute to it. We must be in order to become. While this becoming is understandable in causal terms, the production of the Being which we find ourselves manifesting today constitutes the essence of our existence as it has been modified by every experience and introjected perceptive content of our embodied Being. In striving to become the person we want to be, and in pursuing what we have developed as valuing, we ought to not merely think about the manner in which we do so, not merely conceptualize an optimal pathway, nor contemplate the nature of existence and reality, but we must simultaneously employ these conscious schematic rewirings through living as such, in our engagements with the world. It is through trial and error, experience and subsequent knowledge, prudence, differentiation, judgment, and post-acquisition of knowledge, that we become better informed to philosophizing, in any of its domains that we seek to do so. Whether its morality, metaphysics, politics, or philosophy of life, the pragmatic instantiation of philosophical models, the “taking up” of our positions and living them is essential to collecting the data that we can discern as being better or worse, good and bad, having more or less pragmatic utility. While pragmatic utility isn’t the only metric used to judge our behavior and beliefs, the objectivity of a claim can also be the standard used, but the value that objectivity in itself has for us is always mediated by the pragmatic nature it has of fulfilling the value of “objective truth”. Any way you slice it, the pragmatic truth is what matters to us.

The correct development of psychological engagement with the world provides the ability to consciously direct our being towards better orienting and experiencing the world, while embodied engagement lives out the conclusions, allows us to be in the world in a manner that isn’t scrutinizing every moment, and provides the necessary data for further analysis. The two systems develop cyberneticaly, and each domains success and pragmatic utility towards actualizing our goals and a life marked by subjective fulfillment is informed by the discoveries of the other.

Our developed value systems directionality based on meaningful pursuits are manifest actively in both forms of engagement with the world, and the ability to virtuously pursue what matters to us is only possible due to them both being employed in our lives. While the causal precursor to such engagements may be uncovered, represented, defined, organized, and represented symbolically in our psyche, it is lived out and expressed both in our psychological engagement with the world in every moment of subjective experience, as well as in every action taken in embodied engagement with the world. The significance and meaningful fulfillment of our values takes place only through authentic “care” or behavior predicated on the significance of content actuated in engagement with the world. Psychological engagement provides us with the potential of internal orientation necessary for proceeding with life in an optimal manner, and the embodied engagement with the world absent of explicit psychological engagement lives out our intuitions, beliefs, values, and conclusions.

We can discern the optimality of our system, and measure the appropriate balance between our usage of the two systems, only through psychological engagement, that is, in its ability to phenomenologically analyze past subjective experience that is the feedback to our Being-in-the-world. While this subjective feedback itself is the production of both types of engagement, it is itself reflexively analyzed within the present moment as a psychological engagement directed towards ourselves – upon the metric of these two meta modes of being. When we find negative subjective experiences stemming from a lack of proper orientation, our conscience forewarns us through negative conscious states such as anxiety, uncomfortableness, fear, regret, shame, or dread. In order to alleviate these unpleasurable modes of being, we ought to analyze the causal nature of those situations. We hold them in their proper place as isolated instances against the mode of being which acted them out, the perspective and mindset, actions and speech that lead to their arising. In most cases a minor mode of being that is running off an inadequate assimilatory schema is to blame, but sometimes the meta mode of Being itself is the culprit. If it is found that we were over analyzing a low value occurrence that produced negative subjective experience, we can look to if we ought to have been psychologically engaged at all, and if spontaneous embodily acting would have been preferred. If we are in an intellectual situation, whether its schoolwork, a research project, a critical thinking assignment for work, or a personal ambition to optimize our conception of reality, we cannot adequately do so merely by embodily being in the world, our sensory-motor system cannot alone solve the problem. Often times we find ourselves acting spontaneously in the moment and responding in a way that negative impacts those we value, or represents a character trait we don’t desire to have. We often have to be mindful of our actions and speech to guard against trespasses, especially once we’ve gone wrong in similar situations beforehand. In a balanced psyche, the constant recalibrating and transcendence of knowledge which takes place applies the dialectical movement of improved prudence in directing differing meta modes of being from which minor modes can spring from to adequately navigate our environment. In these situations, we can learn from the subjective experience and phenomenologically uncover the root cause of their occurrence. In learning the causal natures, applying wisdom to developing an optimal pathway to recalibrate our assimilated schema (conscious accommodation) we can train ourselves to modify our behavior in the subsequent occurrence of the situation.

Overindulgence in embodied engagement with the world has negative repercussions, both on an individual level, and a societal level. We all reach a point in conscious development where we have the potential to be aversive to our own nature, our own subjective experience, and this aversion leads to overindulgence in modes of being in the world that stem from the meta mode of embodied engagement. For many, when our own Being becomes such a problem that we can’t cope with ourselves, we attempt to distract ourselves from our very existence. This aversion can manifest itself in many different forms, and its characteristics can be identified retrospectively and interpersonally. It is broadly characterized by a constant directionality towards embodied engagement with the world, and a reluctance to engage in psychological engagement. This leads to a life of constant action, busyness, and external concentration, and is marked by an absence of pointed explicit awareness of internal dialogue, contemplation, and mindful subjective awareness. For many, this threshold of “perceived” inability to cope with subjective psychological life is crossed at some point in life, but for those of us who wish to deal with life on its own terms, and overcome psychological ailments, we must confront headfirst the problem inherent within our own Being, its very existence, and its developed essence.

For those that develop this inclination to engagement with the world, and sacrifice psychological engagement for the perceived benefit of its exclusion, spontaneity is the main indicator (Spontaneity and Conscious Direction). Immediate response to any stimuli, interaction, and situational encounters in life is responded by the assimilated schema without consciously directed contemplation, awareness, or accomodatory processes. Where accommodation still exists in response to novel situations, the process is solely unconscious if one’s life is predominantly oriented by the embodied engagement meta mode of Being. Psychological traits such as extroversion, openness to experience, and agreeableness become modified toward the higher end of the spectrum, as their manifestations provide the means to the ends of avoidance of psychological engagement, and promote embodied engagement with the world. Neuroticism in the forms of stress, anxiety, and unwholesome reaction to emotions, is also reduced. While their causal precursors may be the same, their experiencing consciously leads to less recognition and thus less influence over the individual’s life. This means someone who is actively engaging with the world is more than appearing to handle emotions better, they actually are, based on their reduced ability to subjectively experience, feel, and identify emotions as such. The psychological trait of conscientiousness is always reduced, as structured and orderly living requires planning, analyses, and mindful contemplation of activities. This is where we see the biggest detriment to the individual’s life, as conscientiousness plays the second most influential role in one’s “success”. A reduction in conscientiousness leads to less pursuance of meaningful activity, less accomplishment in work, less stability in home, business, and relationships. While someone who is characterized in such a manner may have an improved social position and reduced neuroticism, their ability to succeed at progressing in a skill, career, or other meaningful pursuits have a higher risk of potentially being hindered.

So long as we are in a social setting, or engaged in a physical task, activity, or occupation we can more readily avoid the explicit realization of our own nature. Embodied game playing, spontaneous speech, undiscerning decision making, and a lack of ability to judge people and life altering choices to be in alignment with one’s values are serious potential repercussions of aversion to psychological engagement. The rational faculty itself isn’t suspended, as it is embodied, but the critical thinking required in making long lasting decisions that affect us and those in our expanding circle of influence, necessarily requires causal chain analyses which becomes hindered. Spontaneity and the “whim of the moment”” take priority over delayed gratification with the view to long term meaningful solutions to life’s problems. In fact, in an absence of psychological engagement, life’s problems become subordinated to the problems of the moment, which, in many cases is the benefit of such an unbalanced psyche. The long term anticipatory problems that are inherent in our Being and manifest in psychological engagement are themselves a primary source of driving the individual away from psychological engagement. While the unpleasurable subjective experience is what drives some away from engaging with the inherent problems with our Being and consciously finding solutions, they simultaneously are the potential instigators of meaningful change and reorientation which is necessary to improve our lives.

Over indulgence in psychological engagement with the world also has its pitfalls, that hold the potentiality that can be equally detrimental to one’s wellbeing and life trajectory. Many in the modern era have become coerced to an overabundance of this meta mode of being, as its existential viability has become freer for expression, and it has become increasingly rewarded through social acceptance and the changing work environment. Despite this information, it still produced an unbalanced psyche, and holds a potential to leading to a variety of problems. In finding pleasure in egocentricism, competence in one’s intellectual ability, and the reward systems craving for exploration of the unknown, the frontiers of the mind may become so captivating to cause one to be aversive to our embodied Being-in-the-world. The obvious repercussions of an unhealthy engagement with psychological content is that many of life’s tasks go undone. Where the predominantly embodied engager can lack stability through spontaneity and lack of structure, the predominantly psychologically engaged person can neglect socially accepted behavior as their dependence on external validation is reduced, which can likewise cause unstable living conditions. One pitfall that may occur is that the egocentric person can come to only seeks their own competence and self-sustained validation, which can lead to the value of career, family, friends, diet, and bodily health to drop below the levels which promote a holistically integrated psyche and lifestyle. The socially accepted values can be reduced in this individual; job importance, interpersonal importance, and the significance of social relationships all can be hindered by a self-interest that doesn’t place sufficient value on these areas of significant importance to our lives. Being that we are social by nature, and our wellbeing is inextricably tied with our Being-towards-others, and the social dominance hierarchies we find ourselves in, we will suffer a psychological toll from overindulgence in this mode of being. Health and romantic relationship repercussions may also follow a similar pattern, the ability for the individual to authentically represent himself in interactions is hindered by a mindful awareness of every moment, causing an impairment to his ability to act or speak naturally, as the “optimal” content is contemplated rather than “lived” out in the world.

In the relentless drive to psychological awareness and intellectual activity, one may succeed to levels unparalleled in a given field of competency which requires dedication and sustained critical thinking to make headway. In the aversion to sociability, a dedicated and conscientious pursuit of career, skill, or field of knowledge, the predominantly psychological engager can find success through the lack of opportunity cost in pursuing distractions, whims of the moment, or spontaneous acts. The psychologically engaged individual experiences a psychological trait modification towards higher degree of conscientiousness, and with it neuroticism, as their ability to experience, feel, and recognize emotional disturbances is increased, and thus the affect negative mental states have on the individual is also increased. Contrary to the embodied engager – extroversion, openness to experience, and agreeableness all decrease.

The two meta modes of being we differentiated, that of embodied and psychological engagement, cyberneticaly inform each other in a well-integrated individual. This cooperation creates a cohesive, pragmatically beneficial, system from which differentiable modes of being spring from to adequately navigate us in the world. From this place of optimal pragmatic utilization of either mode of engagement we find the appropriate mode manifesting itself in response to the appropriate situation. In certain social settings we are embodied and living out who we are authentically, in intellectual discussions we speak from a more nuanced, intentional, conscious psychological engagement mode. Depending on our type of work, the appropriate mode will be employed. In schematic planning, problem solving, interpersonal and business relationships, and where awareness of one’s own internal disposition would be helpful, psychological engagement would be employed. When physical action in coherence with a plan, or where momentary reaction and intuition is optimal, embodied engagement is instantiated. When our spontaneous action isn’t calibrated enough for the situation, when we still don’t have the appropriate assimilatory schema and are still working to accommodate ourselves to a novel situation, or relationship, such as when we are learning a new skill or working a new job, we ought to be more mindful than in areas where we are competent and have a working schema that has proven itself successful. When acting from a place of balance between the two we find ourselves adequately responding to situational encounters throughout the day.

When they are working cohesively, successfully, and adequately, we find both a positive subjective experience, and a positive external environment. We find aspects of a well-integrated and healthy psyche, such as a solid friend group, good family relations, successful occupation, stable living place, and meaningful and productive hobbies. Our ability to manage our environment is optimized and our ability to cope with novel situations which arise in it are satisfactory enough to move us along through life in the direction of our values. Our internal disposition is authentically represented in our embodiment, and we live out the values we consciously ascribe ourselves to. While perfection in this regard is an impossible task, the integrated psyche succeeds to the degree in which our Being is experientially, intellectually, and competently prepared for the world. When we act out what we believe, and we believe that what we act out is authentically a representation of our psychological conclusions, we find a peace that is marked by coherentness and non-contradiction, in short, where there can be cognitive dissonance in one’s beliefs, so too can there be dissonance between ones psychological and embodied engagement.

While either extreme holds both potential positive and negative repercussions for the individual, we also hold the potential to select the best of both worlds. In seeking to counteract an unbalanced psyche in either direction, and to optimize the situational response we embody or psychologically engage with, in developing a discrimination of situations and environments which call for either in their optimality, we can improve our lives substantially. By subjectively analyzing our experience, realizing where we have tipped the scales of balance, and where we have unwisely acted from a meta mode of being that isn’t conducive to our goals and values, we can correct, and dialectically improve both our knowledge of when and how to act, and simultaneously the manner in which we instantiate different modes of being to act in accordance with our values. By improving ourselves in such a manner, we improve our lives, open ourselves up for growth, and become more competent individuals for a wider range of experiences. Our orientation towards the world is always modified by the mode of being we enact to counter it, and the meta mode of being which dictates whether we are embodied or psychologically engaged plays a crucial role in determining our pragmatic success of operating as individuals. By an awareness of these two factors, their characteristics, and a dedicated reorientation towards balance and optimal living in accordance with our values, we can modify ourselves to differentiate the manner we deal with situations in life. By prudently discriminating the modes of being which coincide with different experiences, we are better equipped with improving moral action, relationships, psychological wellbeing, and careers. The optimization of our meta mode of being system and its appropriate allocation to environments, situations, people, and novel situations, we improve our potential for living successful, meaningful lives. By firstly, living, then philosophizing, we are able to experience life in an authentic Being-towards the world, and can subsequently improve the system through analysis. By philosophizing, and then living out our ideas, we can optimize our experience, and test out the efficacy of our critical thinking applied to pragmatic utility. If we can utilize our ability to engage with the world appropriately from both an embodied, and psychological meta mode of being, and can live out our developed philosophy, we create the arena for active development towards greater heights of wisdom, wellbeing, and successful pursuit and actualization of our values.

Existential Ramblings and Conclusions

On July 20, 2020November 2, 2020 By Chris ShuttleworthLeave a comment

The problem is that we have an experience, and that experience can be better or worse. Not to mention, that experience and its contents, which are ranging, are wholly contingent upon this world in which we find ourselves thrown into.

The question no longer becomes whether anything matters or doesn’t, as it surely does, to us, it becomes – how do we best navigate this existence we find ourselves thrown into? The social milieu, the time, the space, the experience, the present moments causal tethers, and the anticipation of the future, how do we navigate with the givens?

Do we stop trying, and produce an intolerable suffering that we subjectively experience? Do we struggle to pursue what we individually uncover as valuing, despite the universes judgment upon the futility of meaning? We ought to. We ought to rebel against the universes condemnation, and bring to the forefront that meaning which we find gives sense to our experience, that which relates to our conscious awareness the beneficiality of pursuing, not because it means something to the world, but because it means something to us. Is this real? Does it exist? It exists as sure as our experience of existence exists, and to optimize this experience is to pursue what we value, which, if we’re smart, we would look to discovering what is the most optimal pursuits to value themselves.

We don’t forget our thrownness into a world unasked for, we don’t ignore the universal insignificance of our existence, rather, we value the content of our own experience, we see the sense that is made behind every moment, as our embodied perceptive ability discerns which content to manifest in conscious experience, and in so inviting, we discern modes of being, we experience life, we live and we learn, we strive for optimal states, and we ought not feel guilty, nor forget the framework from which we work in.

Our natural orientation toward the world will inform us of our values, whether they be pre-conscious in perception, or consciously directed. Our genetic encoding for how to perceive, and the way in which we orient ourselves towards our environment is done so by a certain signification that objects in our environment give as mediated by the perceptive system (itself genetically and environmentally informed). This is base level sense, meaning, and signification. It also just so happens to be the case that we are located in a social milieu, a familial and culturally influenced system, which is formulated into our perceptive orientation system since birth. These systems all seek to orient us in a way that has value, from the basis of survival, propagation, and other evolutionary factors. This basis, provided with a social milieu, entails action and Being that works in a way towards properly being in the world. This “proper” is somewhat anthropomorphized, but it is a natural process that is underlined by a certain sense.

There is sufficient reason why we pay attention to certain things, why certain content has the effect it does upon us, why we reciprocally act in a way that is “intuited” as optimal for us. It is a production of a value system, that is part in parcel of our Being, that which we are, and our place in the world we find ourselves in.

We can extrapolate, as the desires and goals become enriched by the societal norms, become more complex as the means to survival and satisfaction become more entwined and enriched with a causally determined value. We pursue things, we say things, we do things, we think things, and we reflect on our own experience, not for no reason at all, but for good reason, it is all bursting with meaning, we ought to attempt to uncover such things, which we can (Value System Uncovering). Proper Vipassana meditation, analyzed with a phenomenological method, can disclose the intentionality behind conscious experience, can disclose the modes of being which we embody, and their characteristics (Phenomenology of Vipassana Mode of Being). One of which, as Hiedegger pointed out, is our natural care or concern system, which courses through every present moment.

Everything we do is fundamentally informed by our care and concern, our want, our deficiency and its alleviation. We care about things, we value things, because they mean something to us, there is no escaping this, whether we consciously attribute our belief structure to being nihilist, or absurdist, etc., the orientation towards a belief structure, and mediated by the belief structure, itself is rooted upon a type of meaning, albeit the selection of negation over affirmation (in these cases).

Why do you think you better yourself? We should answer these questions for ourselves, look to who we want to be, what we want to do, and strive to go there, for good reasons and intentions. Making this goal, these intentions, and the path there explicit provides a benefit towards achieving that goal of becoming who we want to become, of getting “better” in a subjective sense – made objective only in its relation to our subjective experience of being better or worse.

Why do we continue living? Why do I do the things I do? I do it because it fills me with meaning, provides positive states of being, it will make me a better husband, father, citizen, which themselves are sources of meaning, they provide a framework from which to act under that improves my psychological state, it fills my life with potentialities that have a significance to me, and for me, that is enough to continue living.

The better we are, in ways which we value, hypothetically (if our goals, intentions, practice, and definition of “better” is actually conducive to a better experience of life) the better we can navigate existence, the better we can cope with hardship, the better subjective experience we have, and the better we can aide others. By bettering ourselves, we become more equipped to handle life itself, optimally, that produces wellbeing for ourselves and those we care about.

The more virtuous we are, the better we can act, the more knowledgeable we become, the better we are able to understand reality, and the better equipped we become to live in an optimal manner.

While this is itself subjective, I think we ought to pursue what we value regardless, at the least on a “whim” as Camus said, but we can go past that, because this “whim” can be properly informed and backed by empirical evidence of improving psychological wellbeing, which ought to matter to us, seeing as our experience does matter to us. We can instantiate a path towards a consciously formulated goal, mode of being, character trait, personal accomplishment, creative act, etc. that is the result of a pursuance in accordance with what we find meaningful in the present moment, or what we value.

Now why ought we to pursue what we value, what we consciously formulate as being valuable? This is generally a tautology, we pursue what is valuable because it is valuable, it provides us with wellbeing, reduces suffering, creates a life that is meaningful, to us, by definition, because it’s based on our values.

This would be, if you could grant me, a subjective pursual that is objectively verified as a real present moment decision, act, understanding. The phenomena of such conscious decisions, the awareness necessary to realize, is all subjective, but we can say, from our experience, if is an objective fact about our existence that it is occurring.

I would never make a claim that pursuits and values are universally shared to the same degree, just that they objectively exist and can be discovered subjectively. Any further extrapolation would require quite a detailed phenomenological explanation as well as a philosophically vigorous explanation of what “truth” here entails. (On Truth Claims) I hope you see where I’m coming from regardless.

One more point on the is ought problem, as far as morality is concerned, I’m coming from a meta ethical perspective of moral realism, tempered by individually acquired wisdom in actuality, so there’s that.

In regards to extrapolating these musing beyond the life of a human, to other sentient life, the natural orientation we have towards the world we’re in, this goes for Dasein, and dog, and buffalo, is naturally oriented towards the content within its environment, pre-consciously. This orientation is grounded upon the biological structure of our system, formed through DNA, developed through our historical development by environmental factors. The dog isn’t aware of the being of the object which imposes a reaction, the dog is merely orienting himself to the environment he perceives in embodied pre conscious adjustments. The perception of the hot ground in Arizona, and the subsequent movement of the lizard in response, isn’t merely an empirical sensory intake and thus movement, neither is it the intellectual comprehension and directedness of the mind imposing direction and movement, it is the embodied perceptibility of his being which is seeking to reorient that being based on the conditions of the world in which he finds himself, the milieu which surrounds him.

I would say the orientation of the being of the organism to color and heat is intuited by its perceptive abilities prior to cognize, that being said, where anthropomorphized cognition and intellect must be suspended, such as in another organism such as a lizard, we cannot claim that it recognizes the being of such phenomena as such. We only claim the being of the object being perceived in consciousnesses as being a possibility due to our own recognition of our being, I think it would be fallacious to attribute the same power, to the same degree, to other beings – but this also holds true to members of the same species.

That being said, from our perspective, using our language, we can say that the organism does intuit heat and color, that they recognize the fluctuation, variance, and thus orient themselves accordingly, but this content is never made explicit to itself in a way which humans are capable of doing so.

So the organism does have a comprehension of the color and heat of the sand which it darts across, and thus is impelled to action through movement, but that comprehension which we say is the comprehension of the being of externalities, isn’t the same comprehension which we are used to. Our comprehension is mediated and filtered through our perceptive abilities, and the mode of comprehension which is enacted upon by the lizard isn’t making the content of his environment explicit, or attributing it to the being of externalities, he is merely reorienting in much the same way we do with a hot stove, or when someone walks into the room.

Every being, in relationship to any other being which enters into our perceptual or even conceptual horizon, modifies the being which is present in response to its recognition (not conscious recognition, merely perceptive.) The manner in which we do so, the characteristics of such modes of being, how phenomena influence us, and how we come to perceive, comprehend, and are modified by such phenomena, is the role of the phenomenologist to attempt to uncover.

The manner in which organisms which are farther away from us do so, i.e. not Dasien, becomes less clear and more difficult their degree of removal of sameness they are from us, as we all know, even denoting our own fundamental characteristics in regards to any given phenomena, noema, and the underlying noesis, is difficult enough.

What stands, regardless of the being which is in question, is that if it is life, it has a set of values, instantiated at birth towards certain aims. These aims, whether conscious, unconscious, or merely perceptual and reactionary, inform the being of the organism in question as to how to orient itself in life. Whether to produce locomotion, cognition, action, or inaction. This evaluation of our environment, our modification in response to the gulf between ourselves and the environment, urges us in directions, towards objects of intentionality. This all is presupposed by a significance, a meaning, an evaluation, which, if uncovered, can provide insight into why we do the things we do. This system isn’t merely bottom-up, but can be effected significantly in a top-down manner as well, which is where the absurdist or existentialist conceptions come in play. As long as our subjective experience matters to us, we ought to pursue that which we value, re-examine our value system, and direct ourselves towards actualization of that content – that is – if we want a meaningful life, if we want to have a positive psychological experience. While none of this matters sub species aeternitus, from the universes perspective, or from any perspective outside our own, the fact remains that it matters to us, and that is more than enough to pursue what we value.

Phenomenological Analysis of Vipassana Meditation Noema

On March 24, 2020June 30, 2020 By Chris Shuttleworth1 Comment

While mindfulness requires diligent effort towards directing the gaze of conscious awareness towards the content of the present moment arising in consciousness, a phenomenological analysis requires much more psychologically rooted tools to perform at a truth revealing level (optimal/accurate/useful in degrees). While we can acquire the benefits of mindfulness through attention to the present, the requirements for a phenomenological analysis require intellectual clarity, knowledge of various scientific disciplines, non-contradictory logical reasoning, causal intuition, time and diligence directed by the mental gaze towards an authentic unravelling of the structure of the psyche, in short they require the ability to concentrate and pursue abstract correlates in their relation to the manifest contents discovered in mindfulness. This necessarily entails work, time, and discipline if one is to uncover the essential foundations for the noeses from which the noema (Husserl’s Terminology) are correlated and initially perceived as inextricably connected.

I wish to pursue the meaning, the noeses, the mode of Being, and its essential attributes for an experiential noema of, namely: entering into a Vipassana present moment meditation (Basic Vipassana Meditation). Now, first and foremost, I must recognize that the experience is of a specific differentiated nature, meaning, that I recognize my transition into a mode of awareness directed upon the present moment which is distinctly different from the previous mode of being, for which I conceptualize in my phenomenological analysis as an experience of mindfulness meditation. The goal for me, here, is to recognize the essence of the mode of Being which enabled and embodied such a subjective experience, and to uncover why.

First I analyze the situation for what it is, through recollection in memory and reflection upon the experiential content. Once I have clearly in mind the content I was experiencing in conscious awareness at the time of the period of mindfulness, I can circumnavigate the experience to get a clear view of the noema with which we are interested in attaining the correlated noesis. The multiple perspective exploration which ensues is the part of the work we must undergo to get a clear and authentic representation of the content. Here a reliance on clear, judgmental, unbiased memory is a preferred indifferent to us, as certain acts of reflection we may be unable to untangle from the truth of the matter. It is preferred in that it directly relates to an optimal outcome, and indifferent in that we recognize that the ability to do so is inherent in our intellectual capacities, and may…unfortunately…be out of our control in the time being, yet ultimately able to be improved through persistence and experience in performing phenomenological analyses, as well as with the increase of wisdom and knowledge in related mental faculties (logic / reason / intellectual concentration). To be able to perform such an endeavor we must “bracket” the “natural world” as described by Husserl, the degree to which we are able to separate the influence of a natural standpoint, or the unmindful mode of being, is crucial to the accuracy of the conclusion acquired. The amount of clarity in our recollection, and the resistance to any narrating and “Ego” driven defining of the content of the noema enable us to better or worse produce a clear, more accurate phenomenological result.

With the noema defined and held in our conscious gaze, that of the Vipassana mediation experience, we probe into our intuition to disclose what the intentionality of the acts performed in the noema are stemming from, or how the noematic content relates to the noetic content, their connection and formulation. For what purpose did we pursue such activity? From what mode of Being did it stem from? Why would we spend time doing such an act? Obviously the answer to these questions are differentiated in response to the individual, his circumstances, and the specific noema in space and time in which we are analyzing. Thus, my uncovering of the phenomena of mindfulness is related to this singular experience, and the work put in is towards the end in direct regard to that singular experience. The results therefore disclose information related to that mode of being intuited as being preliminary and underlying to the noema, but, also, they disclose a possible mode of being which can generally be stated as being able to manifest across the realm of future experience. While we discover the noesis of that singular noema in the analysis, we recognize it as an integral part of our psyche, and thus as having the potential of emerging again as a correlate to any future experience, and more specifically to acts of similar nature to the one inquired upon.

The intentionality in the case described is personally intuited in conceptualizations (word representations of “real” phenomena) based upon our acquired total synthesis of Being, containing specific knowledge with which the individual utilizes in his description and exploration of the phenomenological correlates to the experience. Language and its epistemology in regards to the individual is therefore an important aspect of any abstraction. Different perspectives and explanations are possible as being uncovered, as all being parts of the whole correlated explanation of the mode of Being relevant. Thus, we can expect always a partial conclusion, as the limit of knowledge and the kind of representation used (definition of words used in conceptualization is varied according to the individual). In my personal case I concluded, after work towards unravelling, a number of intuitions which may partially constitute the nature of the noeses underlying the phenomena of Vipassana meditation, in its manifestation and presentation in memory discovered by myself. The implications of such findings, and their relevancy towards further explanation across multiple disciplines, is later to be expounded upon.

I here wish to expound my personal findings to explore what I found, the implications, again, will later be preliminarily sketched out. In looking towards the intention I intuited that a mode of being of intentionality was prevalent throughout the experience. The conscious thought arose in which directed my being towards actualizing a mindfulness practice, and thus I habitually followed previous attempts at actualizing a Vipassana mediation, as I have up to this point acquired. The sitting still, eyes closed, and directing of the gaze into the present moment followed this consciously directed thought of wishing to perform a Vipassana meditation. Attention was focused upon the fleeting, transient contents of consciousness as it presented an awareness of perceptions of sensations and sensory content such as hearing, bodily pressure upon the chair, thoughts used in describing the present, attention brought to non-conceptually arising observation of the breath, sounds, feeling. I witnessed thoughts appear, I witnessed attention change. In retrospect there was always a content to which I could possibly be attentive to, although for brief moments my initial intention of pursuing a constant awareness of the present moment (a general guideline for Vipassana) was broken by forgetfulness of the practice as a thought or mental formation hindered my remembrance of the practice, but eventually was brought back to the attention upon the task at hand of being mindful. The variation in the content of consciousness in pursuing itself, varied in accuracy as it drifted between the awareness of the present, and non-awareness of its own content. These two poles make up a general description of the noema from start (that of entering into the mode of being) to end (that of exiting the mode of being and transitioning to a phenomenological analysis of the noema which had passed). The noema has been roughly, simply, conceptualized.

As there was a content connected to consciousness, there is a content of the underlying mode of being, the noesis, to that noema. Where consciousness was intent on pursuing Vipassana meditation, why was it pursuing Vipassana meditation? The answer lies in a multitude of phenomenological reasons relating to the nature of the mode of being which so desires such an experience (Phenomenology of Desire). This desire we will later expound upon. Several I will here explore as being uncovered in intuitional analyses. The mode of being is characterized by a will for character development, for becoming a better person, embodying the virtues with which to act upon in an optimal way for said character development. Upon investigation I discovered that from a doxological perspective (of my inherent intellectual belief structure) that I believe the pursuit of mindfulness to be relating and influential towards the goal of the improvement of character. Thus, part of the noetic content making up the whole noesis isn’t only of intentionality constitution, but also of doxic positionality (my Being’s relation to what I believe). I, through whatever reason (a causal chain of connectivity leads to our current belief structure), also hold as high in my meaning structure, or value hierarchy, the pursuit of character development (probably a conceptually acquired content stemming from content such as experiential knowledge and practical evaluation of Aristotle’s Nichomechean Ethics). Thus, the mode of being described as character development has revealed itself as containing noetic content of intentionality, doxic positionality (my relation to my beliefs), and value pursuit (my pursuit of a value which I have personally acquired as something hierarchical more important to me than other experiences). The result of such content in experience being the actualization of the underlying desire for character development manifest in the Vipassana meditation noema which I experienced.

Now we look to analyze why I contain such a doxic, value, and intentional structure. While the noema, the experience itself, is put into the highest position of concreteness, a relation to the recollection in the awareness of the memory of the experience would be in the second order of concreteness (it loses something of the initial concrete experience in the conceptual and mental formation), and in the third dimension of abstraction we have intuited the noetic structure which we believe to underlie the initial 1st dimension experience based upon the 2nd dimension experience (of recollection). The 3rd dimensional conceptual abstraction defines parts of the contents of the noesis available to us through the 2nd dimension and is itself able to be subject to phenomenological analyses, just as much as any other noema. But that’s a side note just to convey two things, namely, that each step in the phenomenological analyses is itself a moment which can be phenomenologically analyzed in its own noematic content, and also from that to conclude that the limit of content available to be phenomenologically analyzed is thus limitless in extension.

Continuing down our analysis we enter a 4th dimension of analysis, as to what purpose the noesis, the mode of being, which contains (in our partial exploration) the content of the underlying mode of being producing the noema, is itself produced by. To this we must enter into much broader and more profound territory, the full exploration of requires much scientific insight, and the space of which is open to further investigation in the fields of sociology, evolutionary biology, formal biology, psychology, and philosophy. As Merleau Ponty points out, there are many senses to which a phenomenon gives, multiple significant attributes that are interrelated and constituting of the phenomenon, many interrelated perspectives from which to gaze upon it, all of which simultaneously constitute the phenomena, yet we can find, that some give a broader defining of its characteristics than others do, although, in actuality, they cannot be separated. On a basic level it is an automatic habitual intuition, for me, to explain the noetic content thus described in evolutionary biological terms. Underlying all intentionality and modes of being, and in their modification, and their discovered content, is a persistent desire on behalf of the organism which I find myself as (Dasein (thrown)), as well as the genetic makeup, to “desire” (in affect) to preserve itself, recreate itself, and accurately recreate itself. By desire here in quotations we are referring to the biological correlate of the anthropomorphic sense of desire and its synonymous connotation of “willing/wanting/striving”, which, in effect, is attempting to achieve something. While we can view acquisition of character traits and thus modes of being underlying them in part to society, culture, past experience, the circumstances, time; I initially look towards the concrete and most fundamental underlying substratum for my personal exploration of this 4th dimension. This biological “desire” evolutionarily is beneficial in its manifestation in the mode of being of character development in that, (I believe), through making myself a better person I can better navigate existence (insight into nature of reality through Vipassana), enabling me to become a stronger, wiser individual (in my reduction of suffering and improving of wellbeing). This biological “desire” underlying the manifestation of the mode of being of character development also simultaneously allows the individual to be better able to avoid death, sickness, injury, in short, that which is contrary to the continuation of my genetic material, and necessarily the individual with which I am. The preservation and safety of the genome is thus satisfied in this explanation. Also, the second characteristic of genetic “purpose”, the procreation and replication of the genetic material, find their explanation in the noema and its coinciding noesis. By embodying what the individual believes to be character enhancing he is simultaneously embarking to become a more viable candidate for procreation, in thus manifesting the mode of being previously described, the individual (in my case unconsciously, yet consciously uncovered) “believes” (proof through action) in the pursuit of such activities which are produced by a character development mode of being, as being themselves tools towards character development and thus to the replication of his genes. This satisfies the second requirement in the biological imperative.

This rudimentary exploration towards the phenomenological underpinnings of a specific noematic experience is far from conclusive, but has provided information towards which I can use to understand how and why and from what mode of being the content of my experience is possible to be originating in. The conscious pursuit of ever more accurate descriptions of such a nature, indeed the meaning as to why the entire phenomenological investigation can be performed, is found in the insights gleaned by our own self-examination and realization, as well as has its utilization in the various scientific fields; psychology, biology, as well as obviously philosophy. With logic, reason, and intuition as our guides, following a phenomenological methodology, we are able to piece together the underlying characterizations of modes of being from a reduction from the “things themselves” experientially in any given noema. As the intuitions are discovered philosophically, the deeper explorations and explanations of the questions it is able to discover are thus open to pursuance by the various scientific disciplines. The verification of initial insights, the pursuit of answers to novel questions discovered in phenomenological analysis, and the subjective revelation of objective truths intuitive through persistent work in phenomenological analysis is something which can benefit anyone who contains the psychic imperative to seek the truth. The intentionality behind such an imperative leaves itself open to important and necessary research, across various disciplines, of which the answers can be valuable in their usefulness and beneficiality for us all (I believe).

On the Phenomenological Method

On February 14, 2020June 23, 2020 By Chris ShuttleworthLeave a comment

The phenomenologists method of discovering the in itself of an object within consciousness (any phenomena) isn’t properly explained through an empirical or rational methodology, but rather through using an eidetic (internal intuition) reduction to reveal the essential nature of an object. This is done through taking the known characteristics of a phenomena as they are understood by consciousness (science, philosophy, psychology aides us in discovering the attributes relating to an “object”), and discarding any attributes or perceptions or judgments which do not constitute the nature of the object so as to not alter its form. This means any characteristic that is able to be removed from or altered within the object, while the object is able to retain its structure and “Being” after the reduction, is removed, and the essential characteristics are what remains. By removing the transient, we can gain intuition into the concrete essence of a phenomena. We, in part, are able to do this through applied knowledge of the phenomenological method, in concordance with our developed logical and rational capacities, the data called into question acquired through our perceptive system selecting content through a value hierarchy structure. We must have knowledge of, and consciously employ a phenomenological method to properly carry out the eidetic reduction, and this, if carried out sufficiently, can provide us with foundational features which we can verify subjectively through experience. The ability to linguistically describe a process, and its accuracy in being a symbolic representation of that content, relies on our conceptual vocabulary and our ability to articulate the abstract essence into a relatable and meaningful content. Through the positing of a questionable concrete phenomena within the realm of consciousness, we are able to cognitively model the content and imaginatively vary its attributes until a limitation found within the object of desire is reached so that any further reduction or alteration would fundamentally not apply to the object, revealing the invariable, or essential necessary form or shape or pure essence of the content in question.

We must not mistake the Being of our own consciousness employed in the act of cognition with the content within consciousness, both are separate phenomena in which the phenomenologist is able to scrutinize. The mode of Being which is able to employ an eidetic reductionist method is itself an object which can be analyze by the phenomenologist, as is any other content that is able to be imagined by us. The conceptualization of objects allows us to properly bracket the content and organize it into our mental framework, allowing a ready-to-hand language in which to work with in our efforts. As we become aware of a content arising within consciousness (can even be the awareness of awareness in a meta sense) we can run that object through the eidetic reduction to be able to apply a description to the content in a fashion that reveals its essential nature in a way that is clear and objective, albeit, if experientially intuited then the content uncovered in the reduction is true to its nature, an symbolic representation is necessarily related to this true nature by degrees of precision according to our ability to articulate and preciseness of concepts in denoting their represented phenomena. This defining, or application of a description which relates the essence of a phenomena, isn’t a material or empirical fact, as science can discover, but more of a hypothesis into the nature of an “object”. This hypothesis can in turn be objectively validated in its externalizing through applying logic and reason, as well as philosophical argumentation, to prove its usefulness and beneficiality. This explanation of a phenomena produced through the eidetic reduction, due to its abstract nature, is discoverable solely by the philosopher in his ability to clarify an abstract phenomenon. It is the job of the philosopher to transmit a clear and articulate description, and must not, in my opinion, ever claim the depiction as being more than a hypothesis. While certain hypotheses properly discovered using this methodology are surely to be miscalculated, varied by biases and judgments, or wrongly concluded upon based on the limited perceptibility and the mental substratum’s natural limitations, we can conversely discover descriptions of essences which prove to be logically non-contradictory, as well as useful or beneficial within the philosophical realm of comprehension.

Thus the discoveries of phenomenology can be used to inform our belief and value structures, and reveal aspects of reality not able to be unveiled through a strictly empirical, deductionistic, inductionistic, or scientific methodology. This standard methodology, science of psychology, deals with facts and truth seeking of phenomena in their perception to us in the external world (also material phenomena constituting the foundations for our internal world – consciousness), what phenomenology allows us to do is take a lower resolution image of the Being which is engaged in scientific endeavors, analyze the theoretical explanations of scientific discoveries, methodologies, and allows us to conceptualize the makeup of scientific findings so that the content is more accurately represented to our human perspective, from the human perspective, to the human perspective. The perceptible system is the foundation for which datum arises in consciousness, the essence of which is discovered in phenomenology. This consciousness, therefore, is necessarily presupposed in any scientific endeavor, and always modifies the endeavor and interprets it through biological lens. The facts of science are truly external facts, while our conceptual representations of them are merely models. Phenomenology allows us to parse the data discovered in science while simultaneously analyzing the description which we apply to such data through the use of our language, or mathematical logic, in order to not only give a more truthful representation of it, but also to differentiate and isolate specific components in a way that gives insight into the specific nature of each separable piece, or as the whole (the totality of aspects which makeup the essentially of a concept if it has constituent parts).

While a particle can be scientifically and mathematically theorized to exist, and can be found in a laboratory to exist, the perception of such an object is always altered by the observer, not only in the conscious content arisen in experience, but in the very ability to perceive, and the necessary value structure through which it is filtered. The significance, or sense, that we don’t seek out, but for which we find to constitute the intentionality of our being towards the data, is posited in the revelation of the data, and we become aware of content through the system which selects for it. Aside from conceptualizing content discovered in the phenomenological lens, in the natural mode of being we also come across difficulty in parsing data and affecting it based upon the mode of being which we inhabit in our directedness towards it.The microscope used, the light interference upon the particle and upon the instrumentation used to record it, our own eye sight and mental reflection of it, our mental state of recognizing such data and symbolizing them consciously, is all variants in interpreting the particle. From every perspective, from every moment, the content of such depictions is altered, yet theoretically, the object exists objectively. To describe it as it truly is, being that we are humans located in time at which both us (our conscious mode of Being) and the object in its essential nature are constantly in a state of flux and impermanence, requires philosophical and grammatical cohesion with the application of logic to really nail down the underpinnings of what makes something what it is, the in-itself of an object thus can only be articulated, or the sense of it experienced, only in partial relation to the fullness of its actuality. The natural way of interpreting data, and thinking of scientific discovery, is by just taking the data as they are discovered at face value, without analyzing the aspect of human intervention which always is a variable in the perception of any content, being that we are limited to our human state. Recognizing the indeterminateness of our experience and how it relates to the analysis of scientific discovery, leaves us open to the normal way of viewing and describing phenomena, without taking into account the human experiential aspect which is side-by-side to the present moment awareness and creation of the object of inquiry. We ignore the essence of the content in our naturally progressing and transient conscious experience, and therefore lose our own possibility of deeper insight into the nature of the content of consciousness and the mode of Being which coincides with the awareness of such content. In science, this can amount to the improper conceptualization of phenomena, creating an obfuscated description (inarticulate, not properly described or defined concept or group of concepts) which misses out on the possibility of a more accurate representation, which would be, for us, possible through a phenomenological investigation.

The phenomenological conclusion, taken to its limit (the limit of an investigation with itself as object) produces a result that was discovered through a much less vigorous method – without our current understanding of logic and reduction (as well as a lack of science) – over two thousand years ago. The concluding remark upon the essential aspects of phenomena themselves prove to be unsatisfactory, as is the natural state of our conscious experience, by the very absence of integral essence to phenomena. All phenomena, outside of the bounds of our conceptualization, are at their core essence less, as they are interdependent with every other conceptually described phenomena. All phenomena are impermanent, transient, timeless, and lacking a core structure in their facticity. All phenomena as we discover them in our conscious experience are constantly in a state of change, and exist due to a causal structure predicated upon a conditioned nature. They appear as they do now because of factors which preceded them, and they are being altered within the present moment, and will be different in the future in regard to how they appear to us, as they are themselves not concrete entities. What can become a concrete entity, for us, in our experience, isn’t a truth about the content of reality (a phenomenon) but rather a truth about our mode of being as it represents phenomenon to itself, even if that intentioned content is itself. This is only stable in an abstract manner, about metaphysical concepts, such absolute truths appear foreign to the natural mode of Being, yet are discoverable through introspection and philosophical analysis – namely phenomenology. Such absolute metaphysical and representational truths are such as the statements “all phenomena are conditioned” “all conditioned phenomena are impermanent and subject to change” “all phenomena is absent of an essential nature” etc.

In conclusion, philosophy, and the phenomenological process, cannot produce a factual representation of the essence of a phenomena existing in reality or our experience, because by its very nature, it is a representation. That the representation works to provide a logically successful result, that is inherent within the structure, such as deductive truths, are rather abstract truths about logic, than being a phenomenon that exists in the world

What I refer to as the content that is unfindable as a fact in reality would be in reference to the essence or permanence of such phenomena such as the mode of Being which underlies the ability to produce the consciousness positing the logical truth aforementioned. The argument that a representation is factually in its alignment with reality is a perversion of the word fact, or truth, in the way I am using it here. While facts about the world do exist, their nature is purely abstract and general, and not existing in the conscious minds of humans. What this means is that phenomenology doesn’t produce facts, but logical descriptions in the correlation between conceptualized groupings of reality (into concepts, language, or mathematical formulations). These groupings or descriptions aren’t merely mental constructs, as their existence (such as mathematical numbering) isn’t merely a product of our mentality, but rather such things are merely to be taken as a mental construct arising in consciousness in the form of language and symbols which themselves (the symbols) are representative of an abstract way of perceiving reality. These symbols in their ordering and relation can produce a result that is logically true, but this isn’t the unfindable empty essence of a phenomena which phenomenological inquiry is aimed at discovering. Nevertheless, the inquiry isn’t fruitless, it can strip away the unnecessary and variable content to find an invariable shape of a concept which is representing a phenomenon, to better understand the phenomena, and how it relates to our picture of reality or how it relates to us in our lives, etc.

The mode of Being which is perceiving reality, must be understood as it is, as just that, a mode of our consciousness producing a perception using mentally constructed language (symbology) to represent a perceived phenomenon within the world. This is an accurate prediction. Now in the logical and seemingly objective venture of phenomenology to be able to produce conclusive statements as to the essence of a phenomena in its concrete invariable form, isn’t a fact, as all phenomena themselves are constantly changing, impermanent, and inherently “empty of an essence”, rather what phenomenology can profess to produce is the logical ordering and articulation of the symbology which is a mental representation as it relates to the phenomena as it appears to us in reality, to a greater or lesser degree, depending on its clarity and depth and scope of comprehension. This means that it can be beneficial and useful to us in our human endeavors, as we are a conceptualizing, experiencing, living, Being, with modes of consciousness that are able to use value systems and interpret reality in a more or less beneficial way to be better in line with its actuality. The phenomenological method aids us in progression along this path, and any deep inquirer can use it to better articulate the state of reality, but the point I wish to stress here is of the nature of its conclusion must not be posited as a fact, or as having concrete existence, but rather, its utility, or pragmatic usefulness, in aiding us in the human experience of understanding reality, which is great, considering were human.

If the contents herein seem to be contradictory, they are, as a progressive comprehension of the use of phenomenology itself is being presented. The contrast between our normal mode of intuiting (regular perception) and a phenomenological examination of a transcendent essence, necessarily refers to two different modes of Being, and consequently two different modes of Being, characterizes by different attributions. And thus different rules and conclusions support and follow from their exploration. The logical formulation of concepts which led to their conclusion is a building process, through which diametrically opposed beliefs are found in succession, and through a Hegelian dialectic, the contradicting truths are superseded to produce a picture which contains both truths within. This process occurs across the span of all conscious development, and this holds true for the process of phenomenological methodology and understanding, the discoveries found and understood through eidetic reduction might contradict the discoveries of other inquiries, and the summation of both contradictory “truths” may necessarily be transcended by a further conceptualization which in its formulation can include both aspects of reality. Thus in phenomenology we are absurdly (Camus’ definition) seeking the meaning to the essence of an object within a meaningless world, finding truths about aspects of reality in content which has no concrete immutable truths, without illogically being unreasonable in our discoveries. There is a place and a usage to these terms that is both deeper and more transcendental than immediately meets the eye. Phenomenology can find the essential structure to phenomena as to their representation in our consciousness, yet recognize the essence less of the actual phenomena themselves.

Heideggerian Overview, Personal Interpretation, and Terminology

On May 18, 2019June 18, 2020 By Chris Shuttleworth2 Comments

Heidegger set out to question what it means to “be”, what it means to be a Being, and what constitutes such a phenomenon. He took his approach phenomenologically, meaning from the approach of analyzing one’s own being, in what is commonly referred to as a subjective approach, analyzing phenomena as they appear within one’s own experience. He took this method and applied it in a broad ontological manner to the question of what is Being. Heidegger stated that we must develop a deep understanding of what it means to Be, what our Being is, prior to any objective pursuit, such as science or other intellectual activities. This phenomenological analysis, which seeks to give description and insight into the nature of our experience, and how it comes to fruition, what characterizes it, is necessary something which is presupposed in any scientific endeavor, without being explicitly stated. By continuing to ask scientific questions, in pursuing technological advancement, without clarifying the subjective mode, and the perspective and characteristics of it, we necessarily are engaging with material from a foundation that is unexplored. Heidegger sought out to explore this foundation, that which is the essential characteristics of our Being, in order to shed light upon anything which proceeds from it, which is all of our subjective experience, which, in reality, is all that truly matters to us. Heidegger discovered that our Being, the one we have access too, the one closest to us – so to say, itself is best understood through the many modes which are available to it, in general, the Being that we are, is a Being for whom his own Being is a problem for it, which is, what he termed “Dasein” or in general, the human condition, a Human Being.

The modes of being can be characterized as having distinct characteristics, arising, and being modified, by situations, environment, history, the present. In short, our experience is tempered by temporality itself, by time. Building off of Heidegger insight, Merleau-Ponty pointed out that this very being is deeply entwined with our perspective, which is primordially grasped and develops the contents of experience as an aggregation through time. The perspective which directly intuits and filters content of sensory input, through a signification structure, or a value structure, necessarily determines which information is manifest in consciousness. The development of datum in accordance with our inbuilt value structure, and modifications to the value structure, both from intuited pre-conscious perspective data collection, and conscious direction, mutually influence each other and reinforce the content which is manifest in our actions and conscious experience in the present moment. Heidegger makes reference to the nature of our being that of contained the threefold tenses of time, bundled up in the present. The present experience is tempered by historicity, the past, and is an intuition, and potentiality, of the future, both past and future, showing their modifications and effect within the manifestation of the present moment’s contents, in short, our being is modified by the unity of time, containing within it the past, present, and future.

The past isn’t following behind us, or a property making up who we were. It isn’t behind us, it is with us, it necessarily is us. This is so due to the past actively manifesting the future through our Being which is located in the present. Our past is characterized by humans thrownness, by us being here, in those times and places, in which we were thrown into, in which we existed without placing ourselves there. We relate to our present by being in a mode where we attempt to make sense of the world, where we try to feel comfortable, in satisfying desires, in short, we wish to be “at home in the world” in the present. Towards the future we are living as a projection of ourselves, we relate to the future by imagining the goals and aims wish we wish to accomplish. Now necessarily our present moment relation to each of these is contained in the present. This threefold nature of temporality is bundled in the present, and while there is a unity of the three, in the present, we, in our directedness, relate to each one differently. It is part of a humans very Being not in the conventional sense that we are using lessons learned through retrospective analysis or acting on habits formed in the past, but it is itself part of the becoming future, it is a functional perspective of making sense out of our being in describing our history as being us as we are, and even being within the present, as it not only causally produced this moment, but continues acting within every moment of being, in an abstract sense it is moved from implicit to Being to its truthful place implicitly located within the definition that we give Being.

Our fundamental mode of being, in general, is characterized by intentionality. This intentionality implies that consciousness is always directed towards something, or with an object, an idea, a thought, a Kantian “Idea”. In other words, our being is always in relation towards a content. Our conscious gaze is directed towards something, and that intentional directedness of consciousness, and the contents it points at, necessarily is predetermined by our value structure, or what Heidegger refers to as the nature of care. That which fills out conscious experience, is the product of inherited, nurtured, developed, perspectively tempered, systematically built up, content. This content which is the production of the filtration of the perspective system, based upon the significance, or sense of which we are in relation to content, and the hierarchy of importance discerned by our embodied Being, makes up that which influences our Being. Our conscious gaze, marked by the modification of temporality, directed by intentionality towards a content, is deciphered as containing content which we care about. In other words, we only pay attention to that which has been developed, systematically, by the entirety of our Being, as something that is important, as something significant, that has a sense, in which we “care” about. Our consciousness cannot be directed upon phenomena in experience that doesn’t matter to us. If we are conscious of it, it has presented itself as something with meaning which, in the present moment, is manifesting itself in certain significance, which is intuited an ingested by the perceptive system, displayed in conscious experience, and further modified by our conceptual linguistic system to be represented symbolically using language. Granted, this description isn’t necessarily all Heidegger, there is a lot of my personal connection between different phenomenological discoveries and their entwinement into a complete picture, but the discover of intentionality, and care, are fundamental to Heidegger, and displayed in this way, gives us an abstract description which is objectively true of our subjective experience, which, in short, is what phenomenology seeks to uncover to us.

Spatiality for a being such as we are, Dasien, is experienced not in the distantially of phenomena, but rather what is most proximally subject of our conscious awareness within the present moment. What is closest is not felt or seen or experienced as what is physically closest, but as that which is most ready to consciousness, as that which is occupying our present conscious state, or has the ability to be so. In this way London might be closer to the man who is contemplating England, than the shoes on his feet, phenomenologically speaking. We see our contact lenses before objects objectively speaking, but in analyzing our being and its relation to spatiality, we always see and experience entities farther away, and feel them as closer to our experience, than the glasses which we see, and objectively are much closer. This is what Heidegger means by the concept “closeness”.

Apart from the general characteristics which make up our Being, there are different modes of being, that are distinct and contain their own significations, apart from the generalized universal attributes described above. These different mode of beings are reflective of the way in which we inhabit the word, several of which, as described by Heidegger, I will out outline.

One such mode is what Heidegger refers to as ready-to-hand, indicating that being which we embody in relation to tools, or something which becomes an extension of our self, without much thought about it, the mode of being which pertains to me typing, is that the device I am using is ready to hand for me, I am not analyzing it’s being, nor questioning its composition, I am using it as equipment for a certain end, as an extension of myself. Its meaning as ready-to-hand is intrinsic in my relation to it as it fits into the broader structure of the purpose I have for it, for which I am directed. The object that is ready-to-hand is not a content which we are subjectively conscious of, or focused upon, it is like our shoes, we do not think about them while walking, yet they are ready at hand to us in relation to the action new have in “walking”. It is the primordial sense of the term, existing prior to any theorizing, and the object is seen in its significance towards us as something to achieve a theorized end.

The theorized end, or contemplated phenomena for which the ready-to-hand is applied, towards which the gaze of consciousness is intentionally directed upon, is the present-at-hand. The being of the object is in relation to us, and our perception of it is modified by the state it is in. When the state is something to be utilized, it is present at hand to us. When the state of the object is perceived in a fashion that it itself is the object of conscious intentionality, then it becomes present-at-hand, or that which is the intentional object of phenomenological experience. The ready-to-hand object itself goes relatively unnoticed, until it breaks, or becomes un-ready-to-hand, and it is recognized from the perspective of another type of being, where it presents itself as present-at-hand. Meaning, it no longer is a working tool for an end, but it itself has been made into an end, that must be fixed to continue what is meaningful work for me (which writing happens to be). This present-at-hand device now becomes analyzed and inspected as a problem, and the mode of being which grasps and experiences such a phenomenon is another state which us humans, Dasein, encounter. The intentionality of our being, that of the which we are directed towards, becomes the content which is present-at-hand within the moment, to us, subjectively. The “object” or Kantian “idea” is that towards which we are directed at, and is denoted by the term present-at-hand.

Present-at-hand and Ready-to-hand are what objects are in relation to our conscious perception of them, and are altered as the contents of consciousness are altered. An object that is, at one subject moment, being used towards an end, if phenomenologically analyzed (retrospectively) it would be admitted as being ready-to-hand for us in that moment. If the next moment, our conscious gaze becomes directed upon the object, and thus it becomes the direct object of our intentionality, it moves from ready-to-hand to present-at-hand, for us, in that moment.

The modes of being which are possible for us are large and range in uniqueness to a scale which is hardly possible to be enumerated, at least presently, but what we can realize is that a range of experiences, of modes of being, are available to us, and they change situationally, I believe, due to determinate causes, which we can also work to uncover, as well as work to develop the characteristics which enable certain modes of being which we care more about, to be more prevalent in our lives. Say the mode of being which strives to overcome something challenging to the entity, becomes appealing to Dasien due to its rewarding nature in overcoming. One can learn the prerequisites and the modes of being which lead to such further entailed modes, and by a greater understanding and ability to recognizing circumstances and situations as having a potential value of initiating said desirable mode of being, better produce them in their own experience.

Heidegger’s had a conception of Dasein being in a natural state of “guilt”. We are guilty due to our thrown projection into our existence. We exist due to our thrownness, we are thrown into the world, into our present moment. We didn’t choose existence, choose this moment, we didn’t create ourselves, but we find ourselves here. Thus, we are indebted, naturally, to existence itself, to the universe, for an existence unasked for, undeserved, unwarranted. Someone who is in debt is naturally guilty. Thus, we are always guilty. Not only are we guilty of contained something which we did not ask for, namely, our existence, our very Being, but we are guilty in not living up to the call of our conscience in acting authentically,we are always guilty due to not being what we have the potential for being. Heidegger notes in his Being and Time that, “when the call of conscience is understood, lostness in the “they” is revealed. Resoluteness brings Dasein back to its own most potentiality for being its Self. When one has an understanding Being-towards-death – towards death as one’s own most possibility – one’s potentiality-for-Being becomes authentic and wholly transparent.” As our nature has us constantly living in front of ourselves, striving to future possibilities, we never are what we are, we always are living in and for the future, projecting ourselves into it, and we are at fault for not Being this authenticity which we should be, ourselves. Most of the time we are consumed by the they-self, a product of being part of society, of the mass, of the crowd, which shapes us. We are guilty of not being our true selves, as that which stems from the inclination of our own individualized Being, but instead, is modified in accordance with the masses, and seeks to project a false version of ourselves, and thus is inauthentic, and thus guilty of deception. This guilt, coupled with a realization of our finitude, an “expecting” or anticipation of our own annihilation, death, can produce a somewhat original conception of morality, grounded from this guilt. This is comparable to the Buddhist notion of morality being founded upon moral guilt, and moral dread. Thus, we are punished for what our conscience shows us to be bad and are forewarned and enticed not to commit it again, in dread, out of fear for the same suffering we produced before. In this way, guilt, time, conscience, death, and our specific type of Being, Dasien, all are tied together to produce morality. This springs from a resoluteness, or steadfastness, not to act contrary to our authentic selves (uninfluenced by society / norms) (which itself must be influenced and dependent upon such prior influences) but nonetheless is ourselves, not our immersion in a hive mentality, but producing activity that is in reaction to our own developed conscience. This resoluteness, or the ability to heed the call of conscious, to recognize our temporality, both in time and the eventual end of our individual time, and act in a way that accords with our own conscience, is what produces morality. This is all possible due to Dasein’s essential foundational nature as “care”, or the ability to attach importance to phenomena, in the sense of concernful solicitude – valuing / judging.

The idea of being-with-others in the Hiedeggerian sense is a distinctively different state of Being than that of Being-alone, in a sense of your state of Being when other humans or even life forms enter your conscious experience through their being environmentally close (perceived in consciousness physically) as well as mentally close (perceived in consciousness as a mental manifestation). The radical change is immediately recognizable, and I will not go into the details or characteristics of such a change, just that it is manifest in a way many people don’t naturally recognize as a distinct state of Being, which we most of the time, every day, are in. Those who say they do not like being around other people, or don’t like being around a lot of people, really mean to say, they do not like their state of Being-with which is only manifest among others. It is not the others, but it is your own state of being-with which you may find to become uncomfortable if you have aggregated a personality trait of unsociability. It is a mode of yourself which you are not content with, not the imposition of outside forces upon you. The mode of Being-with-others is modified according to the environment, our developed perceptual response, and the individuals to whom are in our company. Only those that are consciously or perceptively intuited as being in our presence are included as causal factors towards the modification of our being, those that go unperceived, or those not in our immediate vicinity, are not causally related to our mode of being-with-others. The unperceived, or unintuited physical presence of another Being, if consciously gazed upon cognitively, in thought or in recollection, modified our being additionally, but is not included in the sense of this term as Heidegger poses it.

Intro to Phenomenology of Action, Spontaneity and Conscious Directedness

On July 17, 2018June 5, 2020 By Chris Shuttleworth4 Comments

Just because you have a perfect abstract knowledge of good and evil doesn’t mean you act from that knowledge. In our individual case we never have this perfect knowledge, but we often do have our conscience and rationality directing us towards a solution to a problem which is in contradiction with competing desires and emotions. Just because we have rationally conceptualized the more optimal path doesn’t mean we will take it, oftentimes we operate not under the intentionality of reason, and more so on the pressures of the moment, most notably due to emotional responses and instant gratification, but, I’ll argue, more subtly on the level of perceived bodily reactions, from which consciousness itself, and rationality, emerge from. To these situations, I designate the classification of “The Spinoza Effect” even though notably similar ideal conceptualizations of the situation has been recorded before his time, I think his conceptualization of it fully exposes the breath of the ideal.

To say that action stemming in contradiction to reason is necessarily bad, and that only action in accordance with reason is optimal, seems a reasonable claim to make, but I believe there is more nuance to be found in relation to our conscious direction, and the choices that “appear” to stem from it. It seems in line with rationality to suppose that certain situations may call for the relinquishing of reason in their optimal resolving, yet, to do so, necessary includes the rational interpretation of instantiating a non-rational approach. Would the action then be rational if it stems from a rational analysis? E.g. If I decide that given my next interaction with someone, I’m going to act spontaneously in the moment, so as to not overthink the best thing to say, or the best way to handle it, if I decide to relinquish logic and reason for spontaneity and emotion, then the decision to do so, is itself rational, yet the action in itself isn’t rational, but it stems from reason in its instantiation. So, in theory, there never could be situation in which conscious forethought antedated an emotional reaction in which the causal determinacy isn’t rational, by definition, yet the action itself, if characterized by emotion, or by lack of reason, in itself, is always emotional.

Conceptualizing a response to a situation that is predicated on emotions, is as much a representation of our Being as a response that is preceded by conscious contemplation attempting to reason out a logical explanation. This is due to depicting the degree to which someone has conscious awareness of situations, and their ability to have conscious forethought preceding their actions. The very quality of a Being of acting spontaneously or through conscious contemplation, in response to different stimuli, is itself a character trait. The discipline in restraint of spontaneity, the reluctance to move instinctual and habit formed responses to conscious cognizing, all tell you something about the Being which is the person in question. Any action that is manifest from an individual, regardless of its content, the situation presented, or the state of mind from which it stems from, will give a relational description that is always accurate in representing the individual. The conceptualization of the perception that enters consciousness in describing a person’s action isn’t the accurate description, as it is mediated by the perception and the developed biological system which filters and accounts for internal values in its representation into a linguistic account of which we are consciously aware, but rather, the action itself is the direct description, in the pre-conceptualized world. This action itself, regardless of its preceding instantiating cause, represents the type of Being which performs it, as much as someone would like to claim “it’s not me” or “if I had time to think, I would have acted differently” are impermissible excuses, as, it is you, and if things were different, of course things would be different, but they’re not, and therefore the action is descriptive.

In respect to the actual instantiation of any “action”, whether the motivation is predetermined by rational and non-contradictory forethought, i.e. conscious direction, or spontaneous embodied reaction, the resultant action is always, in any case, a reflection of internal values. Whether those values which are embodied are reflective of the consciously formulated hierarchy of importance, or not, is dependent on the action itself in comparison with the conscious values. To say that action which is preceded by reason is always reflective of these, also doesn’t follow. It is possible that spontaneous, emotionally driven responses to situations do, in fact, upon reflexive analysis, follow in alignment with our consciously uncovered value system. Any action, whether or not employed by conscious direction using our rational faculty, or motivated by emotion and perceptive embodied reaction, tells us something about ourselves. We are not merely our rational consciousness, nor are we merely our embodied reciprocal system, we are both, and both serve to provide data as to what it is we value, and to the nature of our character in general.

Are they the same thing? Our emotional and spontaneous reactions are built upon a biological system that has compiled “bodily perceived optimal responses” to the effects of situational encounters. These spontaneous reactions are the result of the biological system, built up by genetic information, which has incorporated perceptive datum, modified by the biological structure, in which forms the habitual response to situations and stimuli. Further experience serves to inform the optimality and development of these spontaneous reactions, which always present themselves in the actions our body performs within the present moment. Consciousness and its contents are presented to us, subjectively, under the same preconditions, resting on the formulations of our bodily perceptions in cohesion with the genetic instruction of evaluation and integration into the totality of the organism.

Our consciously developed state of mind and its contents are the active result of situational stimuli in the same manner that an unconsciously directed spontaneous reaction manifests itself. Both systems are created from the groundwork of genetic material, and modified through the perceptive lens that is outlined on the foundational structure. Body and mind are essentially undifferentiated in the method towards their state in the present moment, as the foot is conditioned to flex up or down in the movement of the body as it is “walking”, the mind is conditioned to manifest the content which it is currently manifesting, just as the heart pumps blood and the lungs inhale and exhale, our consciousness is also conditioned and tempered by the pressures of the world for which, like our body, being our body, is in the world.

We still make the fundamental differentiations in regards to parts of a whole, but we must acknowledge that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and that, being a whole, the parts (only differentiated conceptually) are essentially modified in a manner that contains a continuity and homogeneity. We often make a hard distinction between consciousness and the body, between sensory organs and the subjective experience of them, when, if looked closely enough, there is no fundamental distinction between these parts. Sure it is useful to delineate the roles and physiological underpinnings which give rise to consciousness, but the scientific endeavor of separating, slicing, differentiation, and defining, doesn’t lend itself to an accurate experience to the subjective Being in which we experience the embodiment of the totality of the organism which we perceive to “house” consciousness. The distinction that “I am that which is behind the eyes”, that “we” are this consciousness which directs and controls the body as a ship’s captain steers a boat, is missing the fundamental connection that predetermines and presupposes the very tool in which it is using to suppose such a distinction. Consciousness and subjective experience have qualities in which we can describe as to their arising through physiology, and through the ways in which “stimuli” affects us and how to “deal” with said stimuli in the science of psychology, but both are missing the mark as to what presupposes even these conceptualizations, even before the descriptive element of linguistics arises to describe something, the bodily perceptions in response to the situation which calls for such a description, plays the role of producing the thought through its habitual, “seemingly spontaneous” creation of mental content that has been developed over the lifetime of the individual in his evolved state of Being. The bodily perceptions which internalize the stimuli of the situation perceive in using the “sensory” tools, but these tools are mediated and imposed based upon an internal value system of importance, all of which developed based on the genetic blueprint and subsequent life experience development of the organism, as a whole and his parts, which presuppose the action which is presently appearing within our subjective experience. This subjective experience is no different in essence to the other aspects of the body in their perceiving based on underlying values that have been created throughout the lifetime of the organism. While physiological differences, material composition, and the functionality of parts of the whole of our physical body can be described and are individually quite different from each other, in regards to the Being which we find ourselves, and the subjective experience in which we go through life thinking we are, we must make the necessary connection towards what exactly makes up and is this subjective experience, in which case, I argue, it is merely what the organism intuits as being “who they are” due to the divisive and separational nature of concepts developed using language, but in actuality, it merely is what it is like to Be the Being which you are, that Being which is, currently, markedly differentiated as a human, which developed language, and developed the ability to have a describable experience.

Being that we experience ourselves under a certain conceptualized differentiation than the body, we intuit that the rational faculty is entirely different than the spontaneous capabilities, and that the two are separate by a gulf, the former which is us, the later which is not. While they both describe different situations, one in which conscious thought is allowed to arise, conceptualize, organize, plan, and decide, taking substantially more time, and the other in which the perception of a situation fails to be modified and internalized through the biological system to the point of arises into conscious awareness, and reacts before any “Idea” enters conscious awareness, while these two situations are, in their facticity, different, they both are the representation of the organism to equal degrees. The developed spontaneous reaction can be consciously modified by the conscious direction to repeat certain tasks, conditioning the body in a way that is in line with the thought. On the other hand, the very thought to do such a thing, and in fact, the totality of consciousness itself, is modified and created by the bodily perceptions which are filtered and modified by the nervous system and its genetic coding before being filtered through the internal value system and arising into consciousness. In this way, both systems, being conceptually differentiated, create each other, and in actuality, prior to any conceptual differentiation, necessarily are the same in their cohabitation, their cohesion, and their co-creation. Spontaneity is merely conceived as such in consciousness, and conscious deliberation or rationalization is an instinctively driven response to stimuli in the same manner as a bodily reaction is perceived to be a habituated response, they are, in essence, one and the same.

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Tag: Merleau Ponty