AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Feb 16, 2023 12:05 pm
Federica,
Let me clarify the sense in which I mean "unconscious", because that's not really the best term to use here. When we want to contemplate the 'conscious world content' of metamorphosing outer-inner qualia, we access memory. The accessing of memory is always a reaching into the subconscious to bring a certain flow of experience into consciousness. We don't have all remembered experiences in the aperture of our consciousness at any given time, yet it is absolutely necessary for that aperture to expand into memory for there to be any continuity of thinking experience of the world content. (there are also needs to be a certain conscious orientation towards our unmanifest potential states of being, which we could call supra-consicous). In a sense, what is given needs to expand with our phenomenology. There is no fixed given from the outset.
This is relevant because, in our ordinary cognition in which we allow our passionate Earthly life to continually condition our abstract thought from the bottom up, we can easily restrict the "given" to what amounts to an isolated photograph of our state of perceptual experience at any given moment. But such a photo is only an artifact of our intellectual consciousness which can abstract a static state of being out from the flow of experience and say to itself in full confidence,
this is the given. It idolizes that abstraction and convinces itself that is actually how the world is experienced from its first person perspective. Our phenomenology needs to dethrone that idol by unwinding the assumptions and bringing back attention to the actual givens which flow through the "I" perspective.
Normally I wouldn't phrase this in terms of the unconscious or subconscious, because it gets confusing. This is all generally what we should consider the aperture of given conscious phenomena experienced through our first person stream of becoming, because that intuitive stream of becoming is itself a given of consciousness. It is what allows for continuity of consciousness. So we need to keep "conscious phenomena" fluid and flexible, relative to the way we normally conceive it, so we aren't overly restricting the given in a way that cuts off the integrative concept-percept process which must take place for coherently expanding experience. Surely we need to reason to this given, because we must unwind the abstractions which have piled up on top of it, and continue reasoning to expand out once we realize our deeper reasoning is itself the given and the precondition for all givens to manifest.
Ashvin,
I'm following. This topic has turned out to be more taxing than expected! A few remarks:
""unconscious" not really the best term to use here"
First you didn’t like the field of percepts, now you don’t like conscious/unconscious. OK, but I just want to recall these are not my inventions, they’re concepts I picked from Max Leyf.
“The accessing of memory is always a reaching into the subconscious”. Is it? I must be very naive…
“We don't have all remembered experiences in the aperture of our consciousness at any given time”
Indeed, we don’t have them all at any given time, but you’ve just said “
always” two lines above.
“yet it is absolutely necessary for that aperture to expand into memory for there to be any continuity of thinking experience of the world content”
Exactly, but when I made this same remark in my first comment to this thread: “by asking the question of the continuous metamorphosis of conscious becoming, we have interfered time and memory with observation” you pushed it back.
"This is relevant because, in our ordinary cognition in which we allow our passionate Earthly life to continually condition our abstract thought from the bottom up, we can easily restrict the "given" to what amounts to an isolated photograph of our state of perceptual experience at any given moment..."
This is not the issue: I never implied that the given is a static picture. I always referred to it as moving, just like our perceptions are always moving.
So we need to keep "conscious phenomena" fluid and flexible, relative to the way we normally conceive it, so we aren't overly restricting the given in a way that cuts off the integrative concept-percept process which must take place for coherently expanding experience. Surely we need to reason to this given, because we must unwind the abstractions which have piled up on top of it, and continue reasoning to expand out once we realize our deeper reasoning is itself the given and the precondition for all givens to manifest.
Anyhow, I understand what you mean here, and in which sense you want to bring the precept-concept-process within the firm point of departure. You mean “unconscious” as “transformational” and in this transformation you include the full process of cognition of the perceptual sphere. Understood, but in this case I think the word given should be replaced. In my opinion it really is misleading, in relation to the meaning you have expressed here. I intend this in practical sense. When someone - like Lauriso recently did - asks a few questions as a newcomer, and you recommend the T-C spectrum essay as a response, it’s very unlikely that he/she will understand what is meant by “given” without further context.
But, ok, thanks for clarifying this. Now I have two reservations I need to check and further inquire on the topic:
- That when we say "Feeling" for example, the concept really arises from the given, as you intend it, not as an abstraction.
- That the understanding of the given as you have here explained is necessary to continue reading the T-C essay.