Re: The Time-Consciousness Spectrum
Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2023 2:34 pm
Thanks for your patience, Ashvin! Trying to keep it as short as possible here below.
Yes, that was understood. Which means that - because for you the given is in practice the short name of the phenomenology of standard cognition - you prefer not to use the term unconscious to describe that phenomenology. This is all I meant with my remark.
Yes, now it's clear, because you said you don't prefer to use 'subconscious' in broad sense.
Yeah yeah, I get what you are placing in the given. But it seems you believe I wanted to only place the field of percepts in the given. This has never been the case.
I would rather see the given as continuous revolving of final products (in the sense ML speaks of "products") under the eyes of our conscious observation. If I can borrow a Steiner metaphor you recently shared, it’s as if we were looking at a glass of soda water from above ('from above' was not in the metaphor). So we could see that the given of experience is indeed a process. It’s the process of transformation of the continuously bubbling surface. That is our given. The depth of the water in the glass is not experienced consciously, it’s not given, nor is given the process of bubble formation and traveling through the depth of the water to reach the surface. To get the whole story, we need to add reasoning (phenomenology of cognition) to the given of experience.
This would be, for me, the logical and easiest way to use the expression "immediate given of experience". This said, I do understand and of course accept your more extensive way to use it.
Right, one has to have enough thirst for knowledge and enough dissatisfaction with the broadly available 'systems', to persist and go through the iterative experience of testing the cognitive processes. Sure, I agree (not quickly ) with that. Certainly definitions can hardly be clear-cut, because we are pushing vocabulary to its limits, but understanding should aim to become clear-cut, I would say, although through an iterative process. In this sense, I feel that what really needs to be sacrificed is the expectation of the eureka moment. One has to accept that it's a progressive opening to the deeper meaning.
AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Feb 17, 2023 4:26 am Federica,
I meant that the 'unconscious' isn't the best way to speak of this aperture of first-person becoming which generally implicates a process extending into 'past' and 'future'. Normally I would use the unconscious or subconscious to mean that which is beyond even this aperture, like our experiences during sleep. That is where we normally have gaps in our stream of becoming, or before a certain time in our current incarnation. Of course these experiences are also critical to understanding our current state of being, but they are not within the aperture of conscious phenomena which I would call the "given".
Yes, that was understood. Which means that - because for you the given is in practice the short name of the phenomenology of standard cognition - you prefer not to use the term unconscious to describe that phenomenology. This is all I meant with my remark.
AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Feb 17, 2023 4:26 am We have to make certain thinking-gestures when we want to recall something in memory, right? That is what I would call a 'reaching into the subconscious', again with the caveat we are using 'subconscious' here in a broad sense. Or we could call it a reaching into the 'not immediately perceptual consciousness'.
Yes, now it's clear, because you said you don't prefer to use 'subconscious' in broad sense.
AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Feb 17, 2023 4:26 am Here is a passage from Steiner to consider:
(...)
So it is similar to imagining a 'pure field of percepts' without the concepts linking them into a harmonious whole. This 'inner feeling for time' is what I am placing within the given conscious aperture of intuitive becoming. I would not call this an 'interfering of time and memory with observation', in the sense that we are constructing a model which goes beyond the givens of thinking observation. If we want to call it an 'inner model', I guess that's fine, but I think it's misleading to imply that this is going beyond the givens of our normal intuitive stream of becoming. Or if by 'observation' we mean pure sense-perception in the present moment, then of course that can't be equated with the actual givens.
Yeah yeah, I get what you are placing in the given. But it seems you believe I wanted to only place the field of percepts in the given. This has never been the case.
I would rather see the given as continuous revolving of final products (in the sense ML speaks of "products") under the eyes of our conscious observation. If I can borrow a Steiner metaphor you recently shared, it’s as if we were looking at a glass of soda water from above ('from above' was not in the metaphor). So we could see that the given of experience is indeed a process. It’s the process of transformation of the continuously bubbling surface. That is our given. The depth of the water in the glass is not experienced consciously, it’s not given, nor is given the process of bubble formation and traveling through the depth of the water to reach the surface. To get the whole story, we need to add reasoning (phenomenology of cognition) to the given of experience.
This would be, for me, the logical and easiest way to use the expression "immediate given of experience". This said, I do understand and of course accept your more extensive way to use it.
AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Feb 17, 2023 4:26 am As said previously, I don't think the "given" is something to define with rigid contours from the outset of reading the essay. It refers to a background intuition we all have of our metamorphosing thinking states of being. The meaning of this intuition will be fleshed out in the process of reasoning through the phenomenology of thinking, if we remain flexible and open to normally unfamiliar configurations of our own thinking. This is the critical purpose of the phenomenology - it shouldn't only be an exercise in gaining a conceptual model of 'thinking as spiritual activity', but a living experience of our own thinking beginning to discern itself from the inside-out. A newcomer shouldn't really understand these things from the outset - if they feel that they have such an understanding right away, that would mean they are considering it all abstractly. Actually I find this to universally be the case when anyone "agrees" very quickly with something which is no doubt unfamiliar to modern habits of thinking. The desire for clear cut definitions of inner experiential activity is really what needs to be sacrificed for the phenomenology to reveal its deeper meaning.
Right, one has to have enough thirst for knowledge and enough dissatisfaction with the broadly available 'systems', to persist and go through the iterative experience of testing the cognitive processes. Sure, I agree (not quickly ) with that. Certainly definitions can hardly be clear-cut, because we are pushing vocabulary to its limits, but understanding should aim to become clear-cut, I would say, although through an iterative process. In this sense, I feel that what really needs to be sacrificed is the expectation of the eureka moment. One has to accept that it's a progressive opening to the deeper meaning.