Simultaneous Successions of Melodic Sensations, Husserl, para 80-81, Supplementary B1 to: On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time

by Corry Shores
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Simultaneous Successions of Melodic Sensations

Edmund Husserl

On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time

B: Supplementary Texts

I "On the Introduction of the Essential Distinction between 'Fresh' Memory and 'Full' Recollection and about the Change in Content and Differences in Apprehension in the Consciousness of Time"

No. 12

The Evidence of Time-Consciousness

Paragraphs 80-81

Paragraph 80

Husserl previously explained that there cannot really be inextensive instants of perception. The now-point must extend if only by the smallest extensive magnitude.

Now Husserl says some interesting and critically important things. Our perception of the enduring tone is continuous. But within the now are already parts of the past and future, overlapping with it. He calls them “simultaneous” successions. One moment of tone A is still present even while its next moment begins to take its place. This is a ‘rule,’ which I relate to Leibniz law of continuity

If we hear only a single enduring tone, then we hear [it] continuously. As a rule, the tone fluctuates, or “simultaneous” successions bestow divisions on it, such that parts belonging to the now, even if obscurely contrasted and loosely delimited, are distinguished from the just past and from the future, which we expect in advance.

(172d, emphasis mine)

Paragraph 81

Hence, a law of continuity: the now is continuous with the past and future, and thus it extends somewhat in both directions, even if only by a little bit.

So we consider a chain of now points, A, B, and C. Even though their edges overlap, each time-point emerges and fades, and for a moment it is, in a sense, more now than its neighbors.

We therefore find an act of perceiving that is temporally extended, that perceives now A, then B, then C. And this act has perceived first the A in the privileged mode of the now, then the B in this privileged mode, in the course of which A is pushed into the background and assumes the status of what is “just before,” fulfilling an expectation or filling out an altogether indefinite empty intention aimed at the future; then C has the privilege of being now, B the character of being just before [C], and A the character of being “immediately before B,” and so on. (172-173)

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Husserl, Edmund. On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893-1917).Vol 4 ofEdmund Husserl: Collected Works. Ed. Rudolf Bernet. Trans. John Barnett Brough. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991.

Mathematical Melodies, Husserl, para 79, Supplementary B1 to: On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time

by Corry Shores
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Mathematical Melodies

Edmund Husserl

On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time

B: Supplementary Texts

I "On the Introduction of the Essential Distinction between 'Fresh' Memory and 'Full' Recollection and about the Change in Content and Differences in Apprehension in the Consciousness of Time"

No. 12

The Evidence of Time-Consciousness

Paragraph 79

Previously we discussed perceiving a melody. It’s an action that spans continuously through an extent of time. While listening to it, there is a now point. In relation to it are past and future intuitions of the melody.

In this next paragraph, our focus is the now point itself. If we only heard an infinitely small moment of a tone, we would not be perceiving anything at all. And if the now point were to be such a mathematical point, then we would be intuiting nothing in the present. Hence it extends.

the now is as little a fictitious mathematical time-point as the “previous tone,” as the first or second tone before the now or after it. Each now rather has its perceptible extension which is something that can be confirmed. (172c, boldface and underline are mine)

Husserl then discusses the possibility of considering an instant of our perception. Such an inextended instant could not be further divided. [But consider for example instantaneous velocity. Object movements always occur in time. But we can determine the velocity at a certain instant. Of course, you need time for velocity, because velocity is distance divided by time. And if time were zero, then we would be dividing a number by zero, which will not produce an answer. So we might consider instantaneous velocity more as the speed that the object is tending at that mathematically determined time-point. We would use differential calculus, which would consider not precisely that point but its limit. Finding instantaneous velocity is a useful tool in physics, but the velocities they find, as instantaneous, do not really exist in actuality in the same way temporal velocities do. In a sense, they are virtual velocities.] Husserl explains that such an instant of perception could only be obtained by means of mathematical abstractions. It would not be a real part of the phenomenal experience.

(It would be possible, of course, for the extensions of the objects in their temporal locations to appear as nonextended, namely, without sufficient breadth to permit of further division. The indivisible in this instance is an ideal limit, however, just as the indivisible spatial point is.) (172c, emphasis mine)

[Directory of other entries in this series.]

Husserl, Edmund. On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893-1917).Vol 4 ofEdmund Husserl: Collected Works. Ed. Rudolf Bernet. Trans. John Barnett Brough. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991.

Drifting Melodies, para 76-78, Supplementary B1 to: On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time

by Corry Shores
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Drifting Melodies

Edmund Husserl

On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time

B: Supplementary Texts

I "On the Introduction of the Essential Distinction between 'Fresh' Memory and 'Full' Recollection and about the Change in Content and Differences in Apprehension in the Consciousness of Time"

No. 12

The Evidence of Time-Consciousness

Paragraph 76

We perceive a melody during an extent of time.

I perceive a measure, a melody. I perceive it step by sep, tone by tone. Assuming that no direct interruptions occur, I hear and perceive continuously. Accordingly, there exists an enduring, temporally extended act of perceiving. (171d)

Paragraph 77

We do not hear the notes during discrete time points. We hear one. It fades into the past. But it diminishes continuously, because we are still partially aware of it as the next one gradually takes its place.

What do I perceive? The first tone sounds. I hear this tone. But I do not merely hear its quality in a timeless point. The tone endures and in the course of its duration swells in intensity in this way or that, and so on. And then the second tone follows. I continue to hear, and I now hear it. The consciousness of the preceding tone is not erased, however, I can surely observe, “see," that I still keep my intention directed towards the first tone while the second is actually sounding," is “actually" being perceived. And so it continues. (171-172, boldface and underline is mine)

And if we have heard the melody before, we expect what is to come at each moment, just as we retain what has immediately transpired. (172b)

Paragraph 78

We hear the melody during one continuous act. So the perceptive act extends gradually and continuously. The act involves a now-point. It is always moving temporally, so it is a new point along the continuum at each moment.

The perceiving of a melody is in fact a temporally extended, gradually and continuously unfolding act, which is constantly an act of perceiving. This act posses an ever new “now”-point. (172b, emphasis mine)

During the now point, we regard as an object what we are then aware-of, in this case it is the note we hear now. In that same moment, we as well consider the previous note as an object in the past, and the forthcoming note as a future object. (172b)

[Directory of other entries in this series.]

Husserl, Edmund. On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893-1917).Vol 4 ofEdmund Husserl: Collected Works. Ed. Rudolf Bernet. Trans. John Barnett Brough. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991.

Creative Analysis

by Corry Shores
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In section 5 of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche speaks of philosophers’ dishonesty in believing that they arrive at their conclusions through “cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic,” when instead “at bottom it is an assumption, a hunch, indeed a kind of ‘inspiration.’” We might consider such a hunch as the intuition used to propose and critique necessary and sufficient conditions in conceptual analysis. In other words, we may precisely determine a concept’s significance first by drawing a tentative definition out from our intuition, and further using our intuitive insights to detect the accuracy of our proposed definition and its refinements.

But this “inspiration” is more than an “intuition” for Nietzsche. It is “most often a desire of the heart that has been filtered and made abstract,” something perhaps more fitting to “the mystics of every rank.” In conceptual analysis, we presume that the concept is already analytically pure, but merely implicit, needing only proper explication to bring it to light. Yet perhaps the intuition or inspiration used for this purpose is more creative and arbitrary than it appears. And if not necessarily, so should it be. For, if the task of philosophers is the creation of concepts, and not merely their exposition, then something more need be expressed than mere definitions. Perhaps a true philosophical concept is one whose significance and development is pushed-and-pulled in many individually viable – but mutually incompatible – directions at once: a confused but explicit concept, one whose implicit intensity is so great that no amount of explicit definitional extension can exhaust its possibilities for unfolding.