Iser (5.2.1) The Act of Reading, ‘[The open structure of the intentional sentence correlates]’, summary

 

by Corry Shores

 

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Summary of

 

Wolfgang Iser

 

The Act of Reading:

A Theory of Aesthetic Response

 

 

Part III.

The Phenomenology of Reading:

The Processing of the Literary Text

 

 

Chapter 5:

Grasping a Text

 

5.2

The Wandering Viewpoint

 

5.2.1 [up to the first subdivision]

‘[The open structure of the intentional sentence correlates]’

 

 

 

Brief summary:

When we read a literary text, our eyes pass over its series of sentence clauses. Each clause tells us something about the literary work’s world and its unfolding. The way this happens is that when we read the sentence, our phenomenal, “intentional” consciousness constitutes that part of the world that the sentence describes. It performs this constituting act by means of interpretation, imagination, and inference. So, each sentence in the text is correlated with a part of the story world – which is constituted in our intentional consciousness – that the sentence is describing. Thus this phenomenalized part of the literary work’s world (which corresponds to some particular sentence evoking it in our phenomenal awareness) is called the “intentional sentence correlate.” Intentional sentence correlates, as parts of our phenomenal awareness, bear the tripartite structure of temporalized consciousness that holds for all acts of conscious awareness, namely, {1} a present intentional part directed at the currently given intentional sentence correlate (that is,  the presently described situation in the story world), {2} a protentional part that expects certain things (more or less concretely) about the future, and {3} a retentional part that keeps what was previously intended and protended in the background of our current awareness. The second two parts serve as connecting structures that allow the reader to find coherence among the fragmented intentional sentence correlates that call for connection but do not explicitly provide it. Normally in a literary text, not every new sentence fulfills the protentional expectations of the prior sentences. Rather, there is often a defiance of expectations (which means that there is a tension between the retentional part of the correlate, which retains the prior expectation, and the current intentional part, which contains something in defiance to that retained protentional expectation). The overall process of reading a literary work, on account of these twists and turns in the story development, is a “wandering viewpoint,” because the way the reader configures the story world is continually under variation, as it navigates through the swings in the story’s progress.

 

 

 

Summary

 

Iser notes that “the whole text can never be perceived at any one time” (Iser 108). Rather, “the text can only be imagined by way of different consecutive phases of reading” (109). This is different than how objects are given to us, since they are all given more in their wholeness [even though it might take time to explore all their aspects], and also, “We always stand outside the given object, whereas we are situated inside the literary text” (109). [So when we view an object, our viewpoint largely remains from a particular outside perspective on the object. (Of course however we do move around the object and perhaps look inside it and so on. I am not sure how this differs from the experience of a literary text except perhaps that we do this exploration to a much greater degree with literary texts and also the constitution of the literary text involves much more irregularity and dramatic modification. Iser also notes that we explore the literary work from inside it rather than from outside it. One exception to this distinction could possibly be things like puzzle boxes, where their constitution is something obtained through an active participation with it and where its constitution unfolds gradually and through a series of unexpected discoveries.)]

The relation between text and reader is therefore quite different from that between object and observer: instead of a subject-object relationship, there is a moving viewpoint which travels along inside that which it has to apprehend. This mode of grasping an object is unique to literature.

(109)

 

Iser then notes a complication with understanding texts as objects. The text does not simply denote objects in the empirical world. Rather, literary texts remove objects from this context, which invites us to reconsider them and perhaps even develop new judgments of them. “Instead of finding out whether the text gives an accurate or inaccurate description of the object, he [the reader] has to build up the object for himself – often in a manner running counter to the familiar world evoked by the text” (109, bracketed insertion mine).

 

Iser now refers to this moving viewpoint as the “reader’s wandering viewpoint” (109). We apprehend the object in phases, and it is always incomplete. [So we look at the text sentence by sentence. None of them is final (except perhaps the last, but even that last is not final in the sense that we might continue to reconsider the whole text upon further reflection and additional rereadings). This means that we must constantly synthesize each part with the prior and following parts. Because this is an act of consciousness, the synthesizing activity brings the text into the reader’s consciousness.] “The incompleteness of each manifestation necessitates syntheses, which in turn bring about the transfer of the text to the reader’s consciousness. The synthetizing [sic?] process, however, is not sporadic – it continues throughout every phase of the journey of the wandering viewpoint” (109).

 

Iser will examine this synthesizing activity in greater detail. He has us consider the “span of the text which can be encompassed during each phase of reading and from which we anticipate the next phrase,” and this has been called the “eye-voice span” (109-110). [Iser will then use the notion of ‘intentional sentence correlates’. The idea seems to be that when we read a sentence in a literary text, correlated to it in our phenomenal awareness is the part of that literary work’s world. All these partial determinations of the literary work’s world (that is, all these intentional sentence correlates) form connections (on the basis of the reader’s interpretative and imaginative interacting with the correlates) to constitute the entire world of the literary work.]

It may help us to understand the nature of this synthetizing [sic?] activity if we examine in detail one paradigmatic moment in the process of reading. We shall, for the present, restrict our analysis to the sentence perspective of the text, and here we may turn for support to the empirical findings of psycholinguistics. What is known as the “eye-voice span,”⁵  when applied to the literary text will designate that span of the text which can be encompassed during each phase of reading and from which we anticipate the next phase: “. . . decoding proceeds in ‘chunks’ rather than in units of single words, and . . . these ‘chunks’ correspond to the syntactic units of a sentence.”⁶ The syntactic units of sentences are residual ‘chunks’ for perception within the literary text, although here they cannot be identified merely as perceptual objects, because the denotation of a given object is not the prime function of such sentences. The main interest here lies in the sentence correlate, for the world of the literary object is built up by these intentional correlates.

Sentences join in diverse ways to form semantic units of a higher order which exhibit quite varied structures; from these structures arise such entities as a story, a novel, a conversation, a drama, a scientific theory. By the same token, finite verbs constitute not only states of affairs which correspond to the individual sentences, but also whole systems of very diverse types of states of affairs, such as concrete situations, complex processes involving several objects, conflicts and agreements among them, etc. Finally, a whole world is created with variously determined elements and the changes taking place in them, all as the purely intentional correlate of a sentence complex. If this sentence complex finally constitutes a literary work, then I call the whole stock of interconnected intentional sentence correlates the ‘portrayed world’ of the work.⁷

 

How is one to describe the connections between these correlates — especially as they do not have that degree of determinacy pertaining to a declarative sentence? When Ingarden speaks of intentional sentence correlates, the statement and information are already qualified in a certain sense, because each sentence can achieve its end only by aiming at something beyond itself. As this is true of all the sentences in a literary text, the correlates constantly intersect, giving rise ultimately to the semantic fulfillment at which they had aimed. The fulfillment, however, takes place not in the text, but in the reader, who must ‘activate’ the interplay of the correlates prestructured by the sequence of sentences. The sentence themselves, as statements and assertions, serve to point the way toward what is to come, and this in turn is prestructured by the actual content of the sentences. In brief, the sentences set in motion a process which will lead to the formation of the aesthetic object as a correlative in the mind of the reader.

[Footnote 5 on p.109 (quoting):

5 See I.M. Schlesinger, Sentence Structure and the Reading Process (The Hague, 1968), pp.27ff. The similarity between and indeed congruence of the “eye-voice span” and the span of short-term memory has been demonstrated with psycholinguistic experiments by Frank Smith, Understanding Reading A Psycholinguistic Analysis of Reading and Learning to Read (New York, 1971), pp. 196–200. His book also contains important observations on the part played by the “eye-voice span” in “identification of meaning”.

Footnotes 6 and 7 on p.110 (quoting):

6 Schlesinger, Sentence Structure, p. 42; see also Ronald Wardhaugh, Reading: A Linguistic Perspective (New York, 1969), p. 54.

7 Roman Ingarden, The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art, transl. by Ruth Ann Crowley and Kenneth R. Olson (Evanston, 1973), p. 31.]

 

 

Iser then notes Husserl’s notion of protention [the temporalized mode of intentional consciousness that is directed toward the future and by which we have expectations of what will later enter our present awareness]. Since all intentional correlates are structured with protentional expectation, this means that none of them will entirely fulfill our expectations [including even the final sentence correlate, which also will keep the literary text’s world open to further development, even if that development does not unfold by means of the text itself.]

The semantic pointers of individual sentences always imply an expectation of some kind – Husserl calls these expectations “protentions.” As this structure is inherent in all intentional sentence correlates, it follows that their interplay will lead not so much to the fulfillment of expectations as to their continual modification.

(111)

Iser locates the wandering viewpoint in this temporalized structure of intentional consciousness.

Now herein lies a basic structure of the wandering viewpoint. The reader’s position in the text is at the point of intersection between retention and protension [sic?]. Each individual sentence correlate prefigures a particular horizon, but this is immediately transformed into the background for the next correlate and must therefore necessarily be modified. Since each sentence correlate aims at things to come, the prefigured horizon will offer a view which — however concrete it may be — must contain indeterminacies, and so arouse expectations as to the manner in which these are to be resolved.

(111)

So, because each correlate has an open protentional horizon generating expectations that are either fulfilled or not, and also because even with every fulfillment there are indeterminacies that still call for further fulfillment, the reader’s viewpoint is always in a state of flux. Another consequence of this is that if the described object confirms expectations, that means “the range of possible semantic horizons will be correspondingly narrowed” (111). Normally writers use this pattern (of expectation fulfillment) for describing objects in the literary work’s world, because in these cases, “their concern is to narrow the range in order to bring out the individuality of that object” (111). But normally literary texts are formulated so that it is like a series of defied expectations [and perhaps we might think of it as a series of more or less drastic plot twists, with many being very subtle and others drastically defying expectations and causing significant retroactive revision of the reader’s configuration of the story world. (A notable film that is structured on the basis of these drastic sorts of turns is the original Total Recall. Kafka novels also seem to have a constantly reconfiguring story world.)] “In most literary texts, however, the sequence of sentences is so structured that the correlates serve to modify and even frustrate the expectations they have aroused. In so doing, they automatically have a retroactive effect on what has already been read, which now appears quite different” (111). [I am not sure, but I think the next point is the following. As we acquire new information about the story world, the prior information recedes into the background of our retentional consciousness. For, the new information takes precedence, as it is adding something that now seems most important to consider. However, since each new piece of information calls for us to reconsider something in the past, it also calls up from our retentional awareness something that we were only marginally attending to in the background.]

Furthermore, what has been read shrinks in the memory to a foreshortened background, but it is being constantly evoked in a new context and so modified by new correlates that instigate a restructuring of past syntheses. This does not mean that the past returns in full to the present, for then memory and perception would become indistinguishable, but it does mean that memory undergoes a transformation. That which is remembered becomes open to new connections, and these in turn influence the expectations aroused by the individual correlates in the sequence of sentences.

(111)

 

 

So as we can see, each new sentence we read can both revise what we have read and modify what we expect to transpire next: “throughout the reading process there is a continual interplay between modified expectations and transformed memories” (111). Iser then notes that the text does not tell the reader how to perform these modifications. It does not tell us specifically exactly what to expect nor how to connect our memories in the proper way to account for the present circumstances. Iser then describes the basic structural features of the intentional sentence correlates. It has two temporally connecting parts of its structure. One part is hollow, and it is the protentional expectation that is related to the forthcoming correlates, in that it “looks forward to the next correlate”. The other structural linking part of the intentional sentence correlate is the retrospective section, “which answers the expectations of the preceding sentence (now part of the remembered background)” (112). [This point about the retrospective section is a bit complicated. Let us take for example the Aesop fable of the fox and grapes. We first learn that the fox is thirsty and sees grapes somewhat high up on the vine. The sentence correlate to this is what comes into our mind as we form the story world in our imagination on the basis of that sentence. We might picture the fox standing underneath the grapes, looking longingly at them. Since this is the first sentence, the retrospective part is perhaps not as obvious. But we would also presume, by means of inference, that the fox was somewhere else walking toward the grapes and suddenly noticed them. We would also presume that in the past the fox had not had anything to drink. The important part in this first correlate is our expectation that the fox will see the grapes as an opportunity to solve its problem of thirst, and perhaps try to get the grapes. That is the protentional expectation section of the intentional correlate. Then we read the next sentence(s). It tells us that the fox tries over and over to get the grapes, and then quits. So here, the retentional part “which answers the expectations of the preceding sentence (now part of the remembered background)” is the part of it that recalls how the fox was thirsty and had the motivation for his current actions. Our expectations, which began vague, are now fulfilled by current correlate, which is thus continuous with these prior expectations. Let us for convenience lump into this correlate his quitting. We might now sense some uncertainty about what will happen next. Will the fox devise some clever trick to get the grapes? Will the fox accept defeat? Since the fox was thirsty at the beginning, and there is no indication yet of him being clever, we might just assume he will leave thinking that he failed. However, the final sentence tells us that he concludes regarding the grapes, “They looked sour anyway”. This implies that he never wanted them. It would be an example of our expectations being defied. How does that defiance of our expectations occur with regard to this structure? It is a conflict between our retained protention and current intention. Or more precisely, it is a tension within our current intentional sentence correlate between its retrospective section (which retains the prior protentional expectation of him regretting not getting the grapes) and its intentional section (which conflicts with that prior protentional expectation, now found in the retrospective section. So, instead of regretting his failure, he instead thinks it was not a loss anyway). We might also note in this example how even the final sentence leaves a lot open in this story world. Will the fox later realize it was being dishonest with itself? Did we misinterpret the beginning where it said he was thirsty? Did the fox actually learn by jumping and getting a better view and smell of the grapes that they really were sour? The final sentence of a story, by necessity of its structure, leaves parts of the story world open. Some endings, however, leave a lot more open and encourage further rereadings to explore all the interpretative possibilities. And perhaps that openness or ambiguity of the ending is itself something significant, as for example it captures an important way that things often work in life.]

It is clear, then, that throughout the reading process there is a continual interplay between modified expectations and transformed memories. However, the text itself does not formulate expectations or their modification; nor does it specify how the connectability of memories is to be implemented. This is the province of the reader himself, and so we have a first insight into how the synthetizing [sic?] activity of the | reader enables the text to be translated and transferred to his own mind. This process of translation also shows up the basic hermeneutic structure of reading. Each sentence correlate contains what one might call a hollow section, which looks forward to the next correlate, and a retrospective-section, which answers the expectations of the preceding sentence (now part of the remembered background). Thus every moment of reading is a dialectic of pretension and retention, conveying a future horizon yet to be occupied, along with a past (and continually fading) horizon already filled; the wandering viewpoint carves its passage through both at the same time and leaves them to merge together in its wake. There is no escaping this process, for — as has already been pointed out — the text cannot at any one moment be grasped as a whole. But what may at first sight have seemed like a disadvantage, in comparison with our normal modes of perception, may now be seen to offer distinct advantages, in so far as it permits a process through which the aesthetic object is constantly being structured and restructured. As there is no definite frame of reference to regulate this process, successful communication must ultimately depend on the reader’s creative activity.

(111-112)

 

Iser will “now take a closer look at the basic structures that regulate this process” (112). Iser’s first observation is that “on the level of the sentences themselves, it is clear that their sequence does not by any means bring about a smooth interaction of protention and retention” (112). Iser then quotes Ingarden on this issue, where Ingarden observes that often times the next sentence flows continuously from the prior one. But in some cases there is a gap that the reader must overcome somehow.

Once we are transposed into the flow of thinking the sentence, we are prepared after having completed the thought of one sentence, to think its “continuation” in the form of another sentence, specifically, a sentence which has a connection with the first sentence. In this way the process of reading a text advances effortlessly. But when it happens that the second sentence has no perceptible connection whatever with the first, the flow of thought is checked. A more or less vivid surprise or vexation is associated with the resulting hiatus. The block must be overcome if we are to renew the flow of our reading.⁹

(Iser 112, the above is entirely Iser quoting Ingarden)

[Footnote 9 on p. 112 (quoting except for curly brackets):

9 {Roman} Ingarden, {The} Cognition {of the Literary Work of Art, transl. by Ruth Ann Crowley and Kenneth R. Olson (Evanston, 1973),} p. 34.]

Ingarden thinks that there should not be such gaps and frustrated expectations. Iser assess this as a result of his classical notion of an art work “as polyphonic harmony” (Iser 112). However, “in literary texts, not only is the sequence full of surprising twists and turns, but indeed we expect it to be so – even to the extent that if there is a continuous flow, we will look for an ulterior motive. There is no need for us now to go into Ingarden’s reasons for demanding a ‘flow of sentence thinking’; what concerns us here is the fact that there is such a hiatus, and that is has a | very important function” (112-113). The important structure here is this gap or hiatus that “enables the sentence correlates to be set off against one another” (113). [The function it seems is to enable the literary work to unfold in a dynamic way:] “On the level of sentences themselves, the interruption of expected connections may not be of any great significance; however it is paradigmatic of the many processes of focusing and refocusing that take place during the reading of the literary text. This need for readjustment arises primarily from the fact that the aesthetic object has no existence of its own, and can consequently only come into being by way of such processes” (113).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. London / Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978.

 

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Husserl, Logical Investigations, entry directory

 

by Corry Shores

 

[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

 

[Central Entry Directory]

[Husserl Entry Directory]

 

 

Entry Directory for

 

Edmund Husserl

 

Logical Investigations

Logische Untersuchungen

 

Zweiter Band

Erster Teil

 

 

II. Expression and Meaning
(Investigation I, Volume II of the German editions)

 

I. Ausdruck und Bedeutung

 

 

 

 

 

Husserl, Edmund. Logical Investigations. Edited by Dermot Moran. Translated by J.N. Findlay. London and New York: Routledge, 2001.

 

Husserl, Edmund. Logische Untersuchungen, Zweiter Band, Erster Teil: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis. Edited by Ursula Panzer. Husserliana XIX/2. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1984.

 

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“Transcendental Reductions”, Ch1Sb4 of Nicolas de Warren’s Husserl and the Promise of Time

by Corry Shores

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[Husserl Phenomenology Series]

Nicolas de Warren

Husserl and the Promise of Time:

Subjectivity in Transcendental Phenomenology

Chapter 1

The Ritual of Clarification

Subsection 4

Transcendental Reductions

Brief Summary:

Husserl’s reductions are methods for bringing our consciousness to a state where we become aware of the phenomenal givenness of things, including our own transcendental subjectivity that is responsible for the constitution of our entire phenomenal world.

Summary

One methodological component of Husserl’s phenomenology are his transcendental reductions. They involve “a movement of questioning that unfolds without ever becoming entirely transparent to itself” (25). He continually reworked his reductions, because he was never fully satisfied with any of their forms.

The reduction is not an instrument that we bring to the world, but a mode of reflection that uncovers a way of questioning into the world that requires a fundamental shift in attitude, a breaking of our naïveté, through which the obviousness of experience turns into a philosophical problem. (25)

The world is given to us in its apparent self-evidence by means of our experiences of it. But the obviousness of the world should come into question when examining it phenomenologically (25-26).

In one form of the reductions, the epoché, we make a fundamental shift in our attitudes: first, we begin in the “natural attitude,” where we naïvely accept the world and attend to “what the world is;” next, we inhibit this attitude in order to move to the “phenomenological attitude,” where we attend to “how the world is at all given to me.” (26) To do this, we must withhold our acceptance of the world as given and bring into question the grounds of its givenness to us.

This shift to what Husserl calls the “phenomenological attitude” involves a self-induced modification of consciousness to the extent that consciousness withholds its own (implicit) acceptance of the world as given in order to see, and thus to question, itself as the ground of acceptance of the world. The reduction is as much a questioning of the world as a questioning of consciousness itself in relation to the world. (26)

We do not doubt the world, or exclude or destroy it. The world as it is continues to be what it is in our experience of it. All that changes is that we become aware of our intentional relation with the world. Doing so requires a transcendence of our consciousness (to a position of self-observation), which allows for a transcendental analysis of the conditions that make consciousness of the world possible in the first place.

the reduction transforms the traditional problem of knowledge into the problem of transcendence by way of a proper understanding of intentionality in and through which objects of experience are constituted. The defining insight behind the method of reduction is that the discovery of transcendental subjectivity functions as the counterpart to the discovery of the intentionality of consciousness. Transcendence belongs intrinsically to the sense of the world, yet this transcendence only acquires its sense as transcendence from my experiencing, as transcendence for consciousness. The connection between “transcendence” and “transcendental” is here clearly circumscribed: the basic problem of transcendental phenomenology is the problem of transcendence, and the ego, or consciousness, “who bears within him the world” is transcendental in this sense, as intentionality, as the ground of the world. (27)

When we are in the natural attitude, we do not notice our intentional relation with the world. The reduction allows us to observe that (a) our consciousness is given to us differently than the things of the world are (it is not worldly; it is transcendental) and (b) our consciousness constitutes the phenomenal world. (27-28)

The reduction also puts into suspension our normal taking-for-granted of our self-givenness in the world. (28)

Husserl developed three formulations for the reduction, each corresponding to a different dimension of transcendental subjectivity. (28)

The Cartesian path opens subjectivity as the field of transcendental experience, or immanence, and a “new idea of the grounding of knowledge” (CM, 66 [27]). Subjectivity is here conceived as a foundation. The Kantian path opens subjectivity as the transcendental prerogative of constitution, as centered on the | guiding question of how experience is at all possible for consciousness in the form of its possible intelligibility. Subjectivity is here conceived as world-constituting, but also, as we shall discover in Husserl’s unique brand of transcendental thinking, as self-constituting. The Brentanian path (i.e., through intentional psychology) opens subjectivity as a field of experience or givenness. Subjectivity is here conceived as the concreteness of experience, or “lived experience.” (28-29 boldface mine)

[…]

As indicated, all three tendencies stress a particular conception of subjectivity: subjectivity as foundation or origin; subjectivity as constituting; subjectivity as descriptive field of experience. (29)

Transcendental subjectivity is the grounds for the disclosure of beings, including consciousness itself, because it is the foundational activity of constitution (29). This makes it not necessarily inside or outside the world, for it is the constitutional unfolding of the world (29d).

The transcendental reduction uncovers our transcendental subjectivity, which is normally obscured in the natural attitude (29). Our transcendental subjectivity is not to be thought in spatial terms but rather in temporal ones.

The overcoming of Brentanian descriptive psychology through the problem of time-consciousness leads to the articulation of transcendental subjectivity in its self-constituting temporality. [...] | [...] The transcendental reduction is the reduction to a new sense of temporality or time-consciousness; it is as much the reduction of time to consciousness as of consciousness to time, both of which depend on overcoming, or seeing-through, the master metaphor of time as a stream. (30-31)

Nicolas de Warren. (2009)  Husserl and the Promise of Time: Subjectivity in Transcendental Phenomenology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge.

Ch. 6 of Dainton’s Stream of Consciousness: Unity and Continuity in Conscious Experience, “Broad and Husserl”, summary

 

by Corry Shores
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[All boldface, underlining, and bracketed commentary are my own. Proofreading is forthcoming; currently there are mistakes.]

Summary of

Barry Dainton

Stream of Consciousness: Unity and Continuity in Conscious Experience

Chapter 6: 
Broad and Husserl

 

Brief Summary: Broad and Husserl propose models of time consciousness with early and late versions. Dainton compares them to see how certain properties create and avoid problems in their accounts.

 

Summary

 

6.1. A curious tale

 

Dainton will examine the phenomenologies of time consciousness in Broad and Husserl. There pose similar theories, but also Husserl’s and Broad’s views on time consciousness changed throughout their writings. (136) Their views evolved invertedly, so later Husserl is more like early Broad and vice versa. “Broad’s early account is realist, his later account anti-realist; Husserl seems to have moved in the opposite direction” (136)

Both tried to combine the awareness-content model with the Principle of Simultaneous Awareness (PSA), but learned that together they are untenable, so one must be removed. (136) Dainton thinks the problematic component is PSA, but when we remove it, we as well take away the motivation for subscribing to the awareness-content model. (136d)

Dainton explains that his treatment of Husserl will necessarily be a simplification. (137a)

6.2 Broad: the early account

 

Broad’s early account of temporal awareness is simple but baffling. It is based on the awareness-content distinction. "in Broad’s terms, there are acts of sensing and their sensible (or phenomenal) contents, or sensa.” (137) This awareness senses change and persistence in our experiential contents. Quoting Broad: “There is no doubt that sensible motion and rest are genuine unanalysable properties of visual sensa. I am aware of them as directly as I am aware of the redness of a red patch, and I could no more describe them to anyone who had never sensed them than I could describe the colour of a pillarbox to a man born blind. (1923:287)”. (137) Broad also here thinks there is the specious present, quoting  him again “‘what can be sensed at any moment stretches a little way back behind that moment. This…the Specious present’ (1923:348).” (137) So Broad thinks there are no momentary acts of awareness, because “all actual acts have some small but finite duration.” (137) For the sake of argument, Broad assumes there are momentary acts. But they take as their object temporally extended phenomenal contents. Dainton then reproduces (with relabeling) Broad’s diagram.

[Image from page 138 of Barry Dainton, (2000).]

 

Line O1, O2, O3 are O’s successive acts of awareness. The bottom horizontal line A, B, etc. are the contents of these acts of awareness. O1 is O’s act of awareness at time t1. The content of this act is the line segment AC. So while O1 is a momentary act of consciousness, the content of O1 is a “temporally extended stretch of phenomenal content.” (138). “So in a single instant O is aware of a temporally extended phenomenal content, for example an enduring tone, or a patch of light moving some way across his visual field.” (138). And similarly this holds for O2 and so on. But notice how O2’s content overlaps with O1’s, as they both share content BC.  [Momentary acts O1 and O3 only share a moment of content C.]

[Image from page 138 of Barry Dainton, (2000), here modified with color]

But for Broad, there are not momentary acts but rather continuous processes. In this case there is awareness process O1-O2. Because they are taken as a pair, the contents exclusive to each are not a part of their joint awareness. So O1-O2 is aware just of BC. “Athough O2 apprehends content which occurs after C, right on up until D, since O1 ends at C nothing beyond this point is apprehended by O1. So the content which is sensed throughout the duration of O1-O2 is restricted to their period of overlap, BC.” (138) Imagine if the duration periods were shorter. This would make the overlaps more overlapping, and vice versa. (138-139)

 

 

 

Assessment

One problem with Broad’s model are obscurities. It is not evident how long a continuous process of sensing can last. Now regarding the content sensed through a continuous act, like O1-O2, let’s call it the ‘core content’ of the act. O1-O2’s core content is BC. The total content is everything that the act is aware of, even if it is not continuously shared. Dainton calls this the ‘total content’ of the act. So the total content of O1-O2 is AD. The smallest possible content would have the duration of the specious present and it could only be apprehended by a momentary act. Yet “One of the peculiarities of Broad’s account is that although core contents have the distinguishing property of specious presents, they are temporally extended and are sensed as a whole, Broad doesn’t call them specious presents. He reserves this label for the limiting case which can never occur.” (139)

[Recall The Principle of Presentational Concurrence, or PPC, which says that “the duration of a content being presented is concurrent with the duration of the act of presenting it” (134)] Another oddity results from Broad’s rejection of PPC, for he claims that the contents of the acts of awareness are longer than the acts themselves. Broad thinks that within acts there can be smaller acts of finite duration. But as we noted, shorter acts overlap more with each other. So in the diagram below, first consider the longer act O1-O4. There is just a tiny overlap, QR. However O2-O3 has a larger overlap, PS.

[Images from page 140 of Barry Dainton, (2000), color modified.]

But this does not match our phenomenological experiences. “It does not seem that over very short intervals I am aware of longer stretches of the process than I am over longer periods.” (140)

Another strange consequence. BC is apprehended throughout the temporally extended process O1-O2.

 

[Image from page 138 of Barry Dainton, (2000), here modified with color]

“Since the extended act O1-O2 does not even overlap B-C, we only start to be aware of BC as a whole from the moment when B-C is wholly in the past. The same applies to all extended contents: they enter our awareness only when they are completed and in the past. This is certainly counter-intuitive.” (140)

Dainton now notes a way that Broad’s theory is damagingly problematic. (141) First assume there are momentary acts of consciousness. Now imagine there is a constant auditory tone from A to E. If there is a single sharp click between B and C, it will be heard by two distinct acts of consciousness, O1 and O2; it will be heard twice when in fact it strikes only once. (141) 

Broad does not think there are momentary acts of consciousness. Still here the click will be heard by both extended acts O1-O2 and O2-O3. (141-142)

Dainton’s solution is to say that the acts are not discrete but rather overlapping. He will discuss this model more later, but first he will look at Broad’s solutions. (142)

6.3 Broad: the later account

Broad uses the concept of ‘prehending’, which means being directly aware of something, “having it immediately before one’s consciousness or awareness.” (142) Dainton will simplify the discussion and speak of “‘awareness’ and the objects and contents of awareness.” (142d)

Broad “begins with two assumptions. The first is that the present is a durationless instant, the second that we are directly aware of things changing and remaining unchanged.” (143a) But there is a problem if both are true. A momentary awareness is aware of singular moments and thus not changes or unchangings. So Broad says our awareness has a finite duration, extending “a short way into the past.” (143) Broad then introduces another idea, presentedness, which is “a psychological characteristic which comes in varying degrees from zero up to a maximum.” (143) If a content C is spread through time, then it as a whole cannot all be present, as the present is a durationless instant. So at one moment of C, we are directly aware of one instant of its presentation, and this part is the most present. Moving aware from that center-point, the moments diminish in presentedness with each movement down the chain. It tapers off to the point “where C no longer falls within the span of immediate awareness.”  (143) “As contents slip into the past, we sense them fading away, they appear less vivid, less intense; or perhaps it is because we are aware of contents losing their intensity that they seem to slip away into the past.” (143)

In the forgoing we have been examining “Broad calls the ‘extensive’ aspect of the specious present: how a single momentary awareness takes in a temporal spread of phenomena.” (143) We turn now to the ‘ transitory’ aspect of the specious present, which is “the manner in which specious presents succeed one another, and how they relate to one another when they do so.” (143) Broad makes three assumptions: 1) “all specious presents of the same subject are of the same duration,”

2) “the maximum degree of presentedness is the same for all specious presents,” and

3) “the degree of presentedness decreases continuously and uniformly to zero between the later and earlier boundaries of any specious present.” (143)

Broad also claims that there are no intervals between specious presents, and thus from moment to moment in one single stream of  consciousness, there are no sudden changes in presentedness (143-144). Dainton has us consider if specious presents were temporally adjacent but non-overlapping. In this case, each specious present is the apprehension of an extent of content that has the greatest presentedness in the instant of enaction but trailing from it is a continuum of diminishingly present prior moments. [So it seems we would imagine the triangle diagram as having triangles that do not overlap, and they diminish, but that means the high presentedness of the current moment is adjacent to the least present moment of the next specious present] (144a) This would also hold even if there was overlap but the specious presents were separated by gaps. [Thus we must think of the acts themselves as overlapping and proceeding continuously, fading in and out of present enactment, if we want there to be a continuous awareness of presentedness.] “Clearly, if presentedness is continuous, if we are continuously aware of a spread of content, stretching a short way back in time, with uniformly decreasing degrees of presentedness, then co-streamal specious presents must themselves be continuous, there can be no temporal gaps separating them. Thus successive co-streamal specious presents form a compact series: no specious present has an immediate successor, and between any two co-streamal specious presents, no matter how close together, there is an infinity of others.” (143)

[Image from page 144 of Barry Dainton, (2000)]

Dainton shows this with diminishing bands (fig. 6.3). “The diagram shows how the same contents are apprehended as possessing different degrees of presentedness in successive specious presents which overlap in content. […] Although a given content is sensed as a whole throughout some finite period of time, throughout this period it will be sensed as sinking continuously into the past.” (145)

6.4 Connectedness and presentedness

We now compare Broad’s early and later models. “Broad no longer believes momentary acts are mere fictions; he now takes the view that an extended stream of consciousness consists of a compact series of momentary acts.” (145) Where previously the same content is apprehended the same way at different moments, in the new model the same content is apprehended as diminishing in presentness as it trails away.

And because Broad now sees all acts as momentary, it no longer has the problem of shorter acts apprehending longer stretches of content, and it also does not have the problem of apprehending the same content more than once. (146)

But something is sacrificed for these gains, because Broad here moves from realism to anti-realism (with respect to the reality of phenomenal time; are there only durationless instants or are their temporal extensions of consciousness that extend outside an immediate punctual present?) “If a phenomenal tone Mi has different phenomenal characteristics when apprehended in different specious presents, it makes no sense to think that one and the same phenomenal object occurs in those specious presents. In the earlier theory, Broad held that Mi did not alter its phenomenal characteristics from specious present to specious present, but he now holds that that Mi would have different phenomenal characteristics in different specious presents: it varies in different degrees of presentedness. While this neatly avoids the repeated contents problem, it does make it difficult to see how it is one and the same phenomenal item that is being apprehended throughout this process of sensing.” (146)

One option to solve this problem is to “loosen the individuation conditions for phenomenal contents.” Consider for example how the same house appears larger or smaller depending on how far away we view it. Likewise, perhaps the same phenomenal content appears more or less present depending on how recently we apprehended it. (146d) But Dainton finds a problem with this. It cannot be that it is one and the same content that appears differently in the same moment [Perhaps Dainton is saying this: Mi right now appears to have a certain degree of presentedness, but in the prior moment it had slightly more. However since Mi is one and the same content, what it was in the past is still the same thing that what it is now, and in that way, both variations are present in its identity. But one and the same thing cannot contain contrary predicates, in this case having both one and another degree of presentedness, so the prior instance is right now a representation of Mi and not Mi itself.]

Suppose that Mi is first apprehended at t1 by act O1 with maximal presentedness. Can we make sense of the idea that this phenomenal tone undergoes changes in presentedness over time? Can an item that exists at a certain time t1 possess at this time different and incompatible properties? An item within a sense field, such as a red patch, can change over time; the patch could shrink or expand. We could view the expanding/shrinking patch as a phenomenal continuant, one and the same object possessing different properties at different times. But in supposing that when we apprehend Mi as possessing different degrees of presentedness we are apprehending one and the same tone-content, we are supposing that this content possesses different and incompatible intrinsic properties at the same time. This is impossible. We should conclude, I think, that as ‘Mi’ is apprehended by later acts O2, O3, etc., although it is apprehended as occurring at t1, given that these acts apprehend ‘Mi’ as possessing different degrees of presentedness, they are not apprehensions of the same phenomenal item as was apprehended by O1 But if O2 is not an apprehension of the originally sensed Mi, what is it an apprehension of? There seems to be only one answer: some kind of representation of the originally sensed Mi, a representation which is simultaneous with O2. (If this representation of Mi occurred simultaneously with the original Mi at t1, then presumably both contents would be apprehended by O1, which does not happen.) Instead of successive acts being apprehensions of numerically identical contents, successive acts must be apprehensions of representations of contents, with each representation being apprehended by only one act of awareness. It seems that, knowingly or not, Broad has adopted the second strategy for accommodating PSA we discerned earlier: the representational anti-realist strategy. In itself, this does not mean his theory is false, it just means it is not the kind of theory one might initially take it to be. (147)

Broad’s representationalist theory is similar to the nested short-term memory account we discussed in 5.3, and it shares the same problem: “a seemingly unrealistic degree of complexity.” (147)

Previously we noted how Broad claimed that sensible motion and rest are properties of the visual things we sense and we are directly aware of these properties just as much as we are directly aware of the redness of a red patch. But in Broad’s representationalist model, it seems we no longer can be directly aware of change. (148)

Another problem results from his representational model. “Given that the contents of two successive acts such as Ol and O2 are numerically distinct, what is it that connects these two experiences? It seems that there is no direct experiential connection at all.” (148d) “Broad’s theory has the consequence that a stream of consciousness consists of a succession of wholly distinct experiences. The theory thus fails to satisfy the phenomenal binding constraint: the successive phases of a stream of consciousness are not, on this theory, bound together by experience itself.” (149) And there is a deeper problem. “What holds the successive acts together? Are they bound together in experience? It seems not: each act of awareness is wholly discrete from its neighbours. These acts overlap in content, but this is all: within a given act, there is no awareness of the neighbouring acts. Successive acts of awareness are not aware of each other; all they have in common is their content, to the extent that this overlaps.” (149) “If Broad’s theory were true, a stream of consciousness would consist of a sequence of isolated acts, each having no direct awareness of the adjoining acts. It seems, then, that the theory fails to accommodate the experienced unity of consciousness through time.” (149)

Dainton now more closely examines presentedness. On the one hand, we apprehend contents as sliding into the past, while on the other hand, we apprehend them as possessing diminishing degrees of presentedness. “These two phenomena are not merely correlated: contents appear to be sliding pastwards because they are being apprehended as possessing ever-diminishing degrees of presentedness in successive specious presents.” (149) Dainton now wonders if the “variations in the strength of a phenomenal quality could have this effect.” (149) Since Broad does not clarify what presentedness is, Dainton will consider different options. One is “to equate presentedness with phenomenal intensity. Phenomenal qualities of the same type can vary in intensity, or what Hume called ‘force and vivacity’. A sound of a given timbre and pitch can be softer or louder.”  (149) But presentedness is not like this, because it is about how time manifests in our experiences [making something more or less timely, or close to the present moment]. “Take two contents, one with more presentedness than the other. The content possessing the lesser degree of | presentedness will seem to occur before the content possessing the greater degree of presentedness.” (149-150) But consider if we see a color chart showing blue diminish in intensity. The dimmer side does not seem more ‘past’ than the brighter side. Thus Dainton thinks that we cannot assume that diminished intensity is indicative of temporal pastness. (150) “We must conclude that it would be a mistake to equate presentedness with Humean force and vivacity.” (150)

Thus “Since there are no other obvious alternatives, we seem obliged to conclude that presentedness is a sui generis phenomenal property. This property would be such that, first, simultaneously presented contents cannot possess different degrees of it; second, any two co-conscious contents which possess different degrees of it seem to be non-simultaneous; and third, the content with the lesser intensity appears to occur before the content with the greater intensity.” (150) But Dainton sees this as being flawed. “As I noted earlier in connection with the idea that experiences possess a special quality of ‘presence’, when we hear a sound while seeing a colour, we are aware of the auditory and visual characteristics of these contents, but we are not aware of any additional phenomenal characteristic that is common to both. The same applies to other cases, e.g. touch and taste sensations. So the problem is that there just does not seem to be any such property.” (150)

6.5 Husserl on the ‘consciousness of internal time’

Husserl’s extensive and elaborate analyses of phenomenal time evolved over time and he never seemed to settle on one view. So Dainton will not summarize all the various positions but rather just with one account that he worked with, which is interesting in comparison with Broad’s model.

Dainton explains that the basic mechanics of this model by Husserl are similar to those of the later Broad model. Here the stream is made of momentary experiences that contain representations of previous parts of the stream. Moments of consciousness sink into the past, and in that process become representations. But recent representations are ‘retentions’ or ‘primary memories’. Our immediate momentary impression is called the ‘primal impression’, and it is the ‘source point’ in our ongoing temporal stream of awareness. And so simultaneous with the primal impression are the representations of past moments, the retentional modifications.

The basic mechanics of Husserl’s account are similar to that of the later Broad. A stream of consciousness consists of a compact succession of momentary experiences. Each of these momentary experiences contains a representation of the preceding stretch of the stream. As one momentary experience gives way to another, these representations change in a systematic manner, such that phenomenal items seem to occur in the immediate present and then sink into the past. However, unlike Broad, Husserl posits a clear distinction between present experience and the representations of recent experiences, which he calls ‘retentions’ (or sometimes ‘primary memories’). Each momentary experience comprises a momentary primal impression and a simultaneously apprehended sequence of representations, the retentional modifications of preceding primal impressions. The primal impression is ‘the source-point’: it is here that all experience of temporally extended objects originates. [quoting Husserl]

Now within the impression we have to call special attention to the primal impression, over against which there stands the continuum of modifications in primary memorial consciousness. The primal impression is something absolutely unmodified, the primal source of all further consciousness and being. Primal impression has as its content that which the word ‘now’ signifies, insofar as it is taken in the strictest sense. Each new now is the content of a new primal impression. Ever new primal impressions continuously flash forth with ever new matter. (Husserl 1991:70) [from On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, ed. and trans. J.B.Brough, Dordrecht: Kluwer.] (Dainton p.151)

 

The present moment recedes from the present and becomes a representational retention; likewise the other prior ones recede deeper into their nestings.

[Image from p.152 of Dainton (2000)]

Husserl's diagram shows each moment of consciousness C through G on the horizontal line. The vertical line underneath first has the most recent moment now as a retention, and the next most as a retention of a retention, and so on. But in between each lettering we suppose there being many other moments intervening, so the vertical is a continuum of retentions. "Each of these continuums of retentions is a representation of the immediately preceding stream of consciousness." Dainton then writes: "The length of the vertical represents the duration of the specious present: that stretch of the past that is available (in some form) to current awareness." [But of course he does not mean that the moment of conscious E has an extensive duration, that it itself lasts, for the amount of time of the prior rentended moments; for it is momentary in Dainton's interpretation. Thus he must mean it has a 'depth' as long as the vertical rather than a duration, I am supposing.] (152)

Some phenomena extend over multiple points (all probably do) and their retentional ‘tails’ (like comet tails) are found as stretches along the verticals. After the event, like after a musical note passes, no part of it is in our primal awareness. (153)

But unlike Broad, Husserl thinks we can have an awareness of the future, in the form of protentions. Thus Dainton includes the diagonal going up on the right of the diagram to represent protentional awareness. And although our experiences might surprise us, Husserl is right to say that we are not surprised to always find that our experiences continue forward in time. (153)

Husserl notes we are continuously aware of our experience’s continuity. This means 1) the contents of our experience are continuous. And although we perceive sudden changes, still there is continuously a flow of phenomenal content in our awareness. A continuous succession of acts of awareness allows for given contents to successively become ‘more past.’ (153) And 2) we are not only aware of the continuity of the contents, we are also aware of that our awareness of it is continuous as well. This means, for Dainton, that moments in Husserl’s model are aware not just of their contents but also of their neighbors. The retentions and protentions are nests, and

This entire complex undergoes successive modifications in the succeeding momentary experiences. As a result, we are aware at any given instant of not only our present perspective on a sensory object, but of our past perspectives on it as well—we are aware of how the object was apprehended by previous acts of awareness. Consciousness is thus unified over time at the level of acts as well as contents. (154)

6.6 New words, old problems

Dainton will now look at the critical objections leveled at Broad’s model and see how they apply to Husserl’s. We have seen how Husserl avoids one of them [the problem of the awareness of the continuity of the stream]. There are two others Dainton examines:

(a) Broad’s theory has the consequence that awareness of change cannot be as immediate as the awareness of simultaneity.

(b) How can different intensities of ‘presentedness’, a phenomenal quality possessed by contents present in awareness, give rise to the impression that these contents occurred in the past? (154)

Husserl notes Bretano’s theory of temporal experience, which is similar in ways to Broad’s. We have a sensation S and then it ceases. But when S occurs, it also triggers “the automatic production of a series of representations of itself, a process Brentano called ‘original association’.” (154) But because the succession of representations is also a succession of modifications, “to each successive representation of S is added a different ‘temporal determination’, the upshot of which is to make it seem that S occurred at a successively greater remove from the present.” (154) Brentano thinks that our immediate experience of change really happens in the realm of imagination-like ‘phantasy’ representations instead of in our immediate experience. (This is similar to objection a.) Another problem is that representations are apprehended as simultaneous with present ones, but then on what basis do we experience past representations as being past? How are they qualitatively different? Brentano (or his defenders?) say that past contents have a ‘sign’ of the past. Husserl is critical. How does a now consciousness change into a past one? “In response to the reply that the characteristic in question is a ‘sign’ of the past, Husserl is scathing: ‘But this only provides us with a new word’, it leaves unexplained how ‘a consciousness that is supposed to be now comes to be related to a new-now’ (1991:19).” (This is like objection b.) But Husserl’s model is still vulnerable to these attacks. (155)

So return to objection (a), “Broad’s theory has the consequence that awareness of change cannot be as immediate as the awareness of simultaneity.” But still for Husserl the only immediately given content of consciousness is found in the present moment and all the others are indirectly apprehended retentionally.

Now consider objection (b), “How can different intensities of ‘presentedness’, a phenomenal quality possessed by contents present in awareness, give rise to the impression that these contents occurred in the past?” Husserl says that we perceive or intend retentions as being past (unlike raw intentions) but they are intended as real (unlike memory or imaginings) and thus in a sense are present. (153) “Retentions present the past, memory represents it. That is, retentions provide us with access to the just-past in our current experience.” (155)

But Husserl does not explain how retention can give us the past in immediacy. (155-156)

Dainton then wonders if it is possible for us “to detect in our own experience the postulated complexes of retentions, primal impression and protentions performing their intricate dance?’ (156) Dainton does not think so, and he notes two problems: lingering contents and the clogging of consciousness.

Dainton thinks that present experiences do not linger in our consciousness after they are over, except as retentional images. So for example, if we snap our fingers, the only lingering impression would be from echoes in room, not in his head so to speak. He also says that waving his hand in front of his page makes the words disappear from view. (156) [[This is a curious example and point he is making. On page 129 he writes “Move your hand slowly but smoothly across your field of vision. At each moment you see your hand at a different position; you also see your hand continuously moving. Not only is the movement continuous, but your experience of the movement is continuous: you are directly aware of every perceivable change in your hand’s location in the same way.” He does not make the point here, but when we wave our hand in front of us, we see a blurry trail behind it. These are not memories in our imagination. The past positions of our hands are right there available to our sight in that immediate moment of visual experience. The position of my hand in the prior moment is so vivid in my actual field of vision that it is indiscernible from the present. It in actuality is less present but in virtuality it is equally vivid, or at least its lesser vividness is not discernible to us. We are not talking about a moment that is some finite extend into the past, no matter how small, but a moment that is infinitely close to this one, that cannot possibly be any closer. In the same way, I think in my own reflection that sounds have this trail in my auditory field as well, that even after the sound ends in reality, like when cupping a bell to stop it from ringing, true there is echoing in the room, but that sound is very dim. In my mind I think I hear in fact a very vivid trail of retended impressions. Yet maybe this is unique to my own experience.]] “There may be a faint echo of the snap that lingers on—this depends on the acoustic properties of the environment—but the echo is itself a sound that I am directly experiencing. This is not at all what the theory of retentions leads us to expect.” (156)

Dainton says that the problem is more evident when there are sudden qualitative transitions [[because in these cases prior moments do not bleed into current ones. But I wonder if maybe they do, and the shockingness of the event results from us having to perceive two qualitatively contrary impressions in the same primal impression.]] Dainton then gives another example [that is interesting to us given its similarities with the waving hand trail]

When I let my eyes sweep round the room, I do have an impression of past contents lingering. But this is explicable without recourse to Husserlian retentions. When I look slowly round the room, I continue to be aware of mostly the same objects; what can be seen at one instant overlaps to a large extent with what can be seen an instant later. This is due solely to the width of my visual field. If I turn my head to the right I will eventually lose sight of the coffee cup to my left. But I do not experience the cup fading into the past, rather I experience it moving to the left, towards the periphery of my visual field, until it finally moves out of view. When I lose sight of the cup, I do so completely and all at once. The only ‘fading’ that occurs is due to the blurring of perception at the peripheries of the visual field. But even the indistinct perception of the cup, as it lingers in my peripheral vision, is completely present. Those with tunnel vision will not have the same impression of contents remaining in consciousness: when they turn their heads what they see will change too quickly. To drive this point fully home, try looking round the room but shutting your eyes while doing so. The moment your eyes close, you will of course stop seeing your surroundings immediately. You may, however, experience something else: an afterimage—a | pattern of colour corresponding approximately with what you last saw. But once again, this is in no way the retention, in the Husserlian sense, of a previous primary experience. An afterimage only represents its preceding experience in the vaguest of ways and is itself directly experienced. According to Husserl (and Broad), momentary experiences enjoy their moment of full consciousness, then slip away, becoming less and less present before finally fading altogether—only then, after they have left direct awareness altogether, can they appear in the guise of ordinary memory. This does not seem to happen. Contents depart from immediate experience cleanly, leaving no residue, and become immediately accessible to memory. (156-157)

[[At first Dainton is not talking about afterimages. The cup does not fade into a visual trail like the trail behind a speeding car, which has temporal meaning to it as it leaves on us the impression of movement through time. It instead is receding out of view as his eyes are directed aware from it. But what is interesting is that he says he does not perceive it fading into the past. Even the blurry trail example is still just a fading into a different spatial location, and the temporal meaning is in a way inferred from it or perceptually implied in it, as all moving things of a great enough speed leave a trail of their prior locations. So we are not necessarily perceiving time itself in its continuous recession, but merely we see a record of the object’s prior locations, with the diminishing vivacity as an indirect indicator of the succession of moments during which the object was in those prior places. But his second illustration does discuss after images. We close our eyes and what we see leaves an afterimage. Dainton says it is not a retention in Husserl’s sense of the term, because it is just a representation of the prior experience and is not directly experienced. But if I wave my hand in front of me then close my eyes, in my after image there remains the blurry trail behind my hand. It is true that I am not perceiving the past itself but rather a retention of it. However, it is there in its relative perceptual freshness in immediacy.]]

One possible defense [assuming that we do not directly perceive prior moments of perception in the way I described with the trail behind the hand] is to say that we do have such retentions but they are too brief to notice. Dainton says that in that case why posit them in the first place? (157)

Now for the ‘clogging’ problem. Broad’s model had nesting. There is an awareness not just of the present but as well of the prior moments. Husserl’s nesting goes even further. [Say we have three moments of consciousness C-D-E, one coming after the other in succession. Let’s assume that C is the first moment of our consciousness, with none preceding it. C passes to D. Then at D, we are retentionally aware of C, but primally ware of D. Then D passes to E. We are primally aware of E, and the freshest retention is D, which just happened a moment ago, and next freshest is our retention of C, happening two moments ago. So E is retentionally aware of C even though it happened two moments ago. But consider D. When D happened, it was aware of C as being a moment that happened only one moment ago. So this means that E is directly aware of C being two moments unfresh, but also as being one moment unfresh, because the retended impression of D is an impression of a moment when C was only one moment unfresh. But imagine how complex this gets after many moments have transpired. And also consider that between C and D is implied a countless number of other moments that the diagram cannot display. That for Dainton is far too complex to be like what in our phenomenal experiences is a simple awareness of temporal continuity.]

Thus “a consciousness which contained this degree of internal complexity would be clogged with different contents to a nightmarish degree.” But Husserl does not think in fact there is actually an infinity of such modifications, because they blend into one another. However he does not elaborate more on how the blending happens. But Dainton invites us to suppose it does. [This would mean that the moments lose their discernibility, thus Dainton thinks their phenomenological reality] “His position is now open, once more, to the objection that his retentional complexes have no phenomenological reality; if they cannot be discerned in experience, why posit them?” (158)

 

6.7 Husserl’s change of view

Later Husserl developed his theory partly in effort to remedy these problems. He later becomes concerned with ‘absolute time consciousness’ or ‘the absolute, temporally constitutive flux of consciousness.’ (159)

Dainton now explains this absolute time consciousness. In Husserl’s model, there are two series of unifications within the stream of consciousness; one lies at the level of phenomenal contents and the other at the level of our awareness itself. (159) But such an act-object model needs to account somehow for the continuity of our own awareness. In this new model, our awareness each moment is not just aware of its immediate contents, or of the contents neighboring acts, but rather it is aware of those very neighboring acts themselves. This is because this unity between adjacent moments is a precondition for anything to appear. Other acts however produce synthesis by means of distinct acts of constitution. But this is not so for time consciousness, because it would lead to infinite regress. [If our current act of awareness needed to by linked to the rest by means of an additional act, then this one would be temporal and also need an additional synthetic act and so on. Rather, moments are pregiven already synthesized with their neighbors.] (159)

Husserl says we cannot describe the absolute time consciousness; we can only use metaphors. This is because temporal objects appear in time and we can describe them. However the absolute time consciousness does not itself appear in time. (159-160)

Brough’s interpretation is that Husserl abandon’s his earlier notion of retentions [at least with regard to absolute consciousness]. There are no contents on the level of absolute consciousness. Momentary consciousness does not have past or future contents in its retentional or protentional awareness; rather, it only has those acts themselves in its awareness. (160) So there is the upper level of absolute flux and it cannot be described. There is also the lower level in which there are temporally extended contents that the upper level apprehends. So while before when claiming that only the momentary instant of awareness is real, now he seems to say that phenomenal time is real, because the absolute flow is the continuum of time consciousness which extends beyond the present moment. “Husserl seems to have moved from a representational anti-realism to a full-blown realism”. (161a) Yet Dainton concludes “Unfortunately, since Husserl nowhere elaborates in any detail or with any clarity how at a given moment we can be directly aware of past and future phases of our experience, our positive understanding of time-consciousness could scarcely be said to have advanced.” (161)

 

 

Barry Dainton. Stream of Consciousness: Unity and Continuity in Conscious Experience. London and New York: Routledge, 2000.

 

Pt1.Ch1.Sb3 Somers-Hall’s Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation. ‘Sartre and the Transcendence of the Ego.’ summary

by Corry Shores
[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]
[Deleuze Entry Directory]
[Henry Somers-Hall, Entry Directory]
[Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation, Entry Directory]

[Note: All boldface and underlining is my own. It is intended for skimming purposes. Bracketed comments are also my own explanations or interpretations.]

 

Henry Somers-Hall

 

Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation.

Dialectics of Negation and Difference

 

Part 1: The problem of Representation

Chapter 1: Deleuze and Transcendental Empiricism

Subdivision 3: Sartre and the Transcendence of the Ego

 

Brief Summary:

For Kant, the transcendental field is the a priori synthetic unity of our self-consciousness (our transcendental apperception). Sartre shows how in Husserl’s phenomenology, a transcendental subject is not needed, because the unity of consciousness results from the unity of the phenomenal objects we are conscious of (that we are intending). For Sartre, the unity of consciousness results from the continuous unity of the phenomenal object that we aware of, and this is the basis for our unified subjectivity; and so it is not on the basis of a unified subject that we have consciousness of unified objects. Thus the transcendental field for Sartre is the unity of intentional consciousness and not Husserl’s transcendental ego.

What does the non-transcendentality of your ego got to do with you?

Perhaps our sense of our own unity and continuity results from the fact that we are continually conscious of objects that are unified, and so we are not inherently unified independently of our experiences.

Summary

Previously we discussed Kant’s transcendental field, the a priori unified self whose unity ensures the coherences within and between our concepts and our empirical intuitions. Now Somers-Hall (SH) turns to Sartre’s Transcendence of the Ego.

Deleuze critiques Kant’s transcendental subject “as the constituting principle that allows the isomorphism between the transcendental categories and empirical judgments” (23). Sartre’s The Transcendence of the Ego provides the “raw material” for this critique (23). SH notes 3 difficulties for reconstructing Deleuze’s “move from transcendental idealism to transcendental empiricism through Sartre's critique of the transcendental ego”. (23)

[1] Deleuze provides almost no commentary on Sartre’s text, and Sartre’s text is directed at Husserl’s transcendental ego rather than Kant’s.

[2] Sartre is not attacking Husserlian phenomenology but rather attempting to save it from certain criticisms. (24) And Deleuze is anti-phenomenological, but Sartre’s essay is in support of phenomenology.

[3] Deleuze does not agree with Sartre that consciousness itself can be preserved for the transcendental field.

Deleuze takes it for granted that Sartre's essay ends in failure, that "it is no more possible to preserve for [the transcendental field] the form of consciousness" (LS, 105) than it is to preserve the I. These difficulties can be resolved if we assume that the argument that Sartre deploys against the transcendental ego in fact cuts deeper than he had anticipated, and finally undermines the foundations of even the reinforced phenomenology he himself proposes. We thereby accept Sartre's argument for the revised specification of the transcendental field without accepting the formulation developed by Sartre to meet this specification. We accept the schematics provided by Sartre while arguing that phenomenology cannot itself provide a solution to the difficulties raised. Thus Sartre's argument would provide the negative critique that leads positively to Deleuze's transcendental empiricism. (24)

Kant’s transcendental ego is not under attack in Sartre’s text, from the phenomenological view, because Kant’s fundamental structures do not fit win a philosophy of description like phenomenology. (24) SH will now discuss “the differences between the transcendental ego and transcendental apperception” (25)

Both Kant’s and Husserl’s systems describe a priori laws of objects. However, Kant sought the conditions for the possibilities of experience. This led him to identify the conditions for the object with the conditions for knowledge of the object [both taking the form of judgment, predication]. (25) [The transcendental unity of apperception allows the intuitive manifold to become unified and to take the form of subject-predicate. Thus]

The identity of these two conditions is guaranteed by the fact that it is the transcendental unity of apperception that allows the categories to condition the object such that the understanding can know it as an object. Thus, the rules governing consciousness necessarily also cover the objects for consciousness. From a transcendental perspective, what consciousness 'knows' is already within consciousness. (25)

Kant is primarily concerned with synthetic a priori propositions, and not with a posteriori ones.

Kant's main preoccupation is therefore with the validity of propositions given in advance of our enquiry, rather than with a genuine description of subjective life . Once intentionality is seen as one of the primary characteristics of consciousness, consciousness becomes essentially "consciousness of" the object, rather than the Kantian consciousness that deals with representations of objects. The focus instead on intentionality allows us to explore not simply our representation of the object, but also our mode of relation to it. (25)

But when we look at things in terms of intentionality, we notice not just our representations of the objects but also our modes of relation to them, like love them, fearing them, hating them. But “One of the central ideas of moving to this conception of consciousness is that if consciousness refers to an object outside of itself, then the question of how the elements are to be synthesized together into a representation within consciousness does not arise.” (25d) “The object stands transcendent to consciousness and is thereby governed by its own conditions, which are the subject matter of the phenomenological method”. (26a) Kant’s method uses transcendental arguments to uncover the preconditions underlying some existent state, “thus space is an a priori condition for experience in general because it is impossible to conceive of an object outside of a spatial milieu” (27) But Husserlian phenomenology does not presuppose that the object is a function of the understanding. What is needed instead is a pure description of the object, setting aside such assumptions as the object’s existence or non-existence.

The point at issue between Sartre and Husserl in this essay is whether a Husserlian phenomenology presupposes the presence of the transcendental ego for the same reasons that it is required within the Kantian system, namely, to create a point from which various consciousnesses can engage in various acts of apprehension yet still maintain a coherent unity. (26)

But if consciousness arises from a transcendental ego, then Husserl would have the problem of explaining how consciousness makes contact with an object that is transcendent to it. Husserl explains such a connection with his notion of the hyle, which is the medium that “shares the properties of both consciousness and the object, which can thereby communicate between the object and the consciousness.” (26) But then,

Such a medium, or hyle, according to Sartre, undercuts the fundamental doctrine of phenomenology, "to the things themselves," as now consciousness is consciousness not of an object, but instead of the representation of the object through the hyle. Furthermore, in the work of Husserl, the hyle is a function of consciousness, returning us precisely to the theory of contained representations as put forward by Kant. (26)

Kant’s transcendental ego is a condition for the possibility of knowing objects, and is thus not given to empirical consciousness. But Husserl’s epoché suspends theoretical considerations like the notion of a presupposed transcendental ego that is not present to empirical consciousness. (27)

(1) Does in fact the I accompany all our representations? (2) Would such an accompanying I change the structure of the representation. (3) And why is it that the I must be able to accompany all our representations? Is it because it makes possible the unity of our representations? Or is it because our representations are structured in such a way that they may always have an I think prefixed to them?

The structure of Sartre's argument follows these three questions, with his answer to the first attacking the necessity of the transcendental ego, the second presenting an alternative theory of the unification of consciousness, and the third showing the impossibility of a transcendental ego. (27)

Sartre is considering a different possibility. It could be that the unity of our representations is caused by something other than our transcendental ego and nonetheless the ‘I think’ could still accompany all our representations. First SH will examine Sartre’s account of the unity of consciousness. (27)

Sartre thinks that in phenomenology there is a vital distinction between consciousness and the transcendental ego. We are conscious of many different states of affairs, objects, and events, so we Husserlian phenomenology must explain “how these fragmentary experiences in disparate locations and at disparate times can be attributed to the same individual” (27). Also, phenomenology tries to uncover the essence of objects, but they would be sharable by other consciousnesses, and thus “any idea of the individual itself dissolves. There is no way of differentiating one individual from another on the basis of consciousness” (27). Husserl introduces the transcendental ego for two reasons. [1] it guarantees the unity of acts of consciousness, because their unity arises from their common source, and [2] it accounts for personality, because the acts of consciousness form a coherent whole within the transcendental ego, even if they are individually replaceable. (27)

Thus we see that in Husserl

the role of the transcendental ego, as unifying consciousness, plays the same role as the transcendental unity of apperception within the Kantian system. The primary difference is that the transcendental ego for Husserl must be accepted as a factual existent, whereas for Kant, it is instead a necessary posit, a formal unity. (27d)

For Satre, consciousness itself can provide this unity. (28a) He takes a Spinozistic view. Consciousnesses are unlimited and yet necessarily separated from all others, and for this reason one person’s consciousness will not be confused with others. (28)

For Sartre, unity of consciousness can result from the unity of the object. For Sartre this is a fundamental tenet of phenomenology, but for Deleuze it is “an empirical thesis about duration derived from Bergson.” (29)

For Sartre then, the claim will be that Kant has misconstrued a fundamental phenomenological fact, namely, the durational experience of time, and so has derived conditions for the possibility of experience that do not relate to actual empirical experience. Sartre observes the fact that time appears to us not as a series of instants, but rather primarily as a continuum, through which the past and present are not separated from one another, but rather are undifferentiated. Consciousness "unifies itself by escaping from itself" (TE, 38) . That is, the unity comes from the order present in the object that is transcendent to consciousness. (29)

For Sartre, consciousness in this sense is seen as intending an object and not just synthesizing representations.

The flux of consciousness itself also participates in this unity through the retention of previous experiences. "It is consciousness which unifies itself, concretely, by a play of 'transversal' intentionalities which are concrete and real retentions of past consciousnesses" (TE, 39). The ego is not needed to unify consciousness as consciousnesses themselves traverse one another in such a way as to provide a decentered unity. (29)

Kant’s transcendental ego help explains the relation of our consciousness to the world. (29-30)

Without the synthetic activity of the subject, representations would "crowd in upon the soul." The distance between self and world would be lost as it is the active taking up of the world that allows the subject to conceive of himself as separate from it. (30)

For Sartre, our representations really do crowd upon our soul, as when we are enthralled by the world.

This does not mean that we cannot reflect on ourselves, but for Sartre, this reflection merely relates to an empirical self, which is itself constituted from the history of our relations to the world. This self for Sartre is real but is not in itself generative. (30)

For Sartre, the transcendental ego fulfills a practical rather than a transcendental function.

Without the ego, consciousness becomes equal to the transcendental field. When consciousness is revealed to itself in this respect, as utterly unbounded and ungoverned, it is struck by dread. Perceptions crowd in upon the soul, and consciousness becomes lost within the world. Without the background of a unity, consciousness is now without concepts such as passion and will, appearance and reality. Thus the transcendental ego becomes equated with the desire to become being-in-and-for-itself in the later terminology of Being and Nothingness, that is, to become a mixture | of passivity and spontaneity. (30-31)

For Kant, synthesis is enacted by the subject, and this validates the subject. Because Sartre has shown that consciousness can unify without needing a subject, this makes the subject merely an implication of the unity of consciousness rather than a transcendental presupposition. (31)

The transversal strands of consciousness provide this unity, and it is this unity of consciousness that permits the attribution of the 'I'. Thus, for Sartre, it is the unity of consciousness that forms the transcendental field, a consciousness that is impersonal through the removal of the concept of the 'I' from its foundational role . Sartre opposes Kant's unity of apperception to the inherent unity of the object itself and the transversal interrelations between specific acts of consciousness provided by protention and retention, which no longer require the centralized synthesis of the Kantian system. The ego still exists but is now a unity on the same level as any other object to which consciousness relates. (31)

Kant’s spontaneity for Sartre is found in consciousness itself, in its nonobjectival nature (its not having a subject-property structure, see ft.6 of ch.1).

For Sartre there are four consequences of his rejection of the transcendental ego, and they are also Deleuze’s conditions for a transcendentally structured empiricism.

First, the transcendental field becomes impersonal, or, if you like, pre-personal, without an I.

Second, the I only appears at the level of humanity, and is only one aspect of the me, the active aspect.

Third, the I Think can accompany our representations because it appears as the foundation of unity which it did not help to create; rather, this prior unity makes the I Think possible.

Fourth, one may ask if personality (even the abstract personality of an I) is a necessary accompaniment of consciousness, and if one cannot conceive of absolutely impersonal consciousnesses. (TE, 37) [32]

So our consciousness does not have a subject-property structure, because it is impersonal. It is merely the intentional awareness of unified phenomenal givennesses. And this impersonal awareness of objects is the condition for objects (to appear), so the conditions of objects themselves relies on the nonobjectival transcendental field (32). [The condition for the knowledge of objects, it seems SH is saying, is the I or the I think, which exists at the level of the empirical and no longer is identical with its transcedental correlate:]

The conditions for objects and the conditions for the knowledge of objects can no longer be identical precisely because the transcendental field is not quantitatively identical with the field of empirical states of affairs. As the transcendental field no longer has an objectival structure, knowledge of objects is now a matter of empirical correspondence of propositions to determinate objects, whereas the conditions of objects themselves rely on the nonobjectival transcendental field. This is because the I, which exists at the level of the empirical, or the human, no longer finds a transcendental correlate . (32)

The synthesis of the empirical is no longer the synthesis of the transcendental. The understanding and its concepts are on the side of the transcendental. Thus “Once the responsibility for the synthesis of the empirical is taken out of the hands of the subject herself, it becomes possible that the functions generating this synthesis are completely alien to the understanding of the subject.” (32) [For Sartre, the personal I results from a unity that is in the objects and not in itself.] “Thus, the personal becomes a signifier for the structures of the empirical world or, in the language of phenomenology, of the natural attitude.” (33) Recall the fourth consequence which is really a question. “Fourth, one may ask if personality (even the abstract personality of an I) is a necessary accompaniment of consciousness, and if one cannot conceive of absolutely impersonal consciousnesses.” (32) For Sartre consciousness is impersonal, but for Deleuze it is personal but preindividual.

what is logically prior to all individualized states of affairs is not itself individuated. Consciousness, while lacking content, is still an individuality. It is like a point in a geometrical space that automatically brings with it the axes through which it is specified. (33)

For Sartre, each of our transcendental fields can be shared by other consciousness in our encounters with others.

Thus, although the two consciousnesses share the same transcendental field, each one asserts his own right to be an individual, and this struggle between individuals itself takes place within the transcendental field. Each has the potential to "disintegrate" the other's relations to the world through "the unfolding about itself of its own distances." This means that I see the other as a part of the transcendental field, but as a part that individuates itself through the particular relations it holds to the world about it. The look is the attempt by each consciousness to subsume the other within its own synthesis of the transcendental field. The disintegration is literally the failure of this synthesis. The transcendental field therefore allows the possibility of multiple different syntheses. This is to say that consciousness is not merely an individuating but also a personalized presence within the transcendental field (syntheses are multiple and depend on the particular consciousness) . (34)

[So because our look attempts to subsume others within the syntheses of our own transcendental fields, we can say that in fact for Sartre our consciousness is personal. But this personality cannot come from a preunified transcendental ego but rather from the potential for it to distinguish itself from the consciousnesses it is trying to subsume.]

As this contradicts the first implication of the removal of the transcendental ego, we can now see that what guarantees the prepersonal nature of the transcendental field is precisely that it is also preindividual. The possibility of different syntheses implies that consciousness itself in some sense 'personalizes' the empirical in its synthesis of it. (34)

SH ends this section by noting that

We have therefore seen the reasons Sartre wishes to remove the notion of the transcendental Ego. Deleuze is much more of a classical metaphysician than Sartre, and therefore the implications he takes from the depersonalization of the transcendental field are very different from those of Sartre. (35)

Somers-Hall, Henry (2012) Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation. Dialectics of Negation and Difference. Albany: SUNY.