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

by Corry Shores

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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.

Pt1.Ch1.Sb5 Somers-Hall’s Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation. ‘Conclusion.’ summary

by Corry Shores
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[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 5: Conclusion

 

Brief Summary:

Somers-Hall concludes chapter 1 by noting that Deleuze’s rejection of the transcendental subject is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to base the move to his transcendental empiricism. Later he will elaborate on the underlying metaphysics.

 

Summary

Previously we discussed the logic underlying Deleuze’s rejection of the transcendental subject. We can have a personal self who is undetermined. The same Adam has multiple incompossible predicates, like sinner and innocent, that are not yet explicated, so Adam is distinguished from other beings yet he need not be determinate.

Somers-Hall (SH) explains that Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism arises from this rejection of the transcendental subject. A unified self is no longer the ground for our syntheses, so that ground is found in the object itself. But Deleuze’s empiricism is not the classical naïve kind, because for Deleuze there is still a transcendental field. “transcendental empiricism still searches for the conditions of experience”. (38d) Recall how transcendental idealism seeks first the conditions of possible experience. Instead, Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism begins with states of affairs in the world [of experience].

In following empiricism in dealing with the actual world, Deleuze claims that what are sought are the conditions of real experiences. That is, what are sought are the conditions for the generation of specific phenomena, rather than the formal conditions for the possibility of phenomena in general. (39)

And unlike in  Kant’s case,

the conditions for the knowledge of the object are no longer identical with the conditions of the object themselves, to the extent that we see knowledge of the object in terms of our ability to make judgments about it. That is, whereas it is integral to the conditions of the object that there is a difference between the empirical and the transcendental, it is integral to the conditions of knowledge of the object that there is a structural similarity between the structure of the object (substance and properties), and the structure of judgment (subject and predicate ). (39)

But so far we have only seen Sartre’s rejection of the transcendental ego, which is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the move to transcendental empiricism; for, Sartre keeps the transcendental ego’s unifying function by locating it in consciousness itself. Later in chapters 3 and 4 SH will return to the grounds of Deleuze’s metaphysics.

For now we should note that Deleuze's philosophy is intimately engaged with the work of Kant and therefore must be understood in relation to the post-Kantian tradition. In the next chapter | we will tum to the philosophy of representation, specifically, the philosophies of Aristotle and Russell, in order to clarify the problems with which both Hegel and Deleuze will engage. In doing so, we will get a better idea of the issues prompting Hegel and Deleuze to make their respective moves away from Kant. (39-40)

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

Pt1.Ch1.Sb2 Somers-Hall’s Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation. ‘Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason.’ 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]
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[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 2: Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason

 

Brief Summary: Our concern is the transcendental field in Kant. This would be the conditions for the possibility for our concepts to correspond to our intuitions. For Kant, this correspondence revolves around a self whose own synthetic unity makes it possible for us to synthetically unify intuitive representations into a coherent object.

Summary

Previously we gave a preview of chapter one, [part of which discussed what according to Kant allows our cognitions to correspond to the empirical world given to our senses. Kant tries to find a new way to ensure this connection between our concepts and our (sense) intuitions. One older way says that God ensures that our cognized concepts will match up with the world we sense. But this theory requires that we posit such a God without very strong support. Another older theory argues that we obtain our concepts secondarily by means of processing our sense data. But Kant identifies a problem with this approach. He discovers a way to understand certain kinds of propositions, for example, 5 + 7 = 12. We do not learn from our senses that 12 results from the synthetic combination of 5 and 7, so the proposition is a priori rather than a posteriori. However, contained in the definition of 12 is not ‘5 + 7’. So it is not an ‘analytic’ statement like ‘all bodies are extended’ or ‘all bachelors are unmarried’, in which cases the subject cannot be defined without explicitly including the predicate, either with that exact terminology or with synonymous terms. So we might define a body as something that occupies space, but ‘occupies space’ is synonymous with ‘extended’. However, if we define 12 as “the combination of ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ ”, this is not synonymous with ‘5 + 7’.  For, ‘5 + 7’ requires an additional act of synthetic consciousness, that combines “ ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ ” to get 5, then combines “ ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ ” to get 7, and then additionally combines 5 and 7 to get 12. So 5 + 7 = 12 is a synthetic a priori statement. But if all our knowledge comes from experience as empiricists claim, then such a priori claims as this would not be possible. So Kant instead accounts for the correspondence of our cognitions with our empirical knowledge with a unified subject. It is called the transcendental apperception or the ‘I think’ that accompanies all acts of consciousness. But now we should first review Kant’s three syntheses of time: apprehension, recollection, and recognition. Each instant we apprehend representations given in intuition (by means of our senses), grouping them into tiny blocks of our awareness of the object we sense. Our reproductive imagination keeps all the parts together, maintaining the ones that have passed out of our immediate awareness, so that our productive imagination may synthesize the parts together in such a way that our understanding may recognize the synthetic manifold using its concepts. But note that what is being synthesized, the moments of our sense apprehension, are temporally exclusive, one disappears from our present awareness while the next one takes its place, however, the imagination’s act of synthesis and the understanding’s act of recognition (matching the proper concept to the synthesized sense-manifold) regard the temporally exclusive moments as being simultaneous, as if something in us stays the same while our moments of awareness change. Kant thinks that we have an a priori unified self-consciousness that remains the same despite the fact that it accompanies acts of consciousness that are always changing. So there is a synthetic glue that is already there in our ‘I think’ which assumes it is the same ‘I think’ as all ‘I think’s from before and all to come; and since it is already glued to its future instantiations even before they have manifested in empirical consciousness means that it is an a priori unity of consciousness. This constant self-consciousness is what allows us to glue together successive parts of our awareness and successive parts of our cognition, and so it accounts for the coherence within each realm. But, what glues together our concepts with our intuitions (our sense apprehensions of the world around us)? We may think of there being two self-apperceptions (two forms of our self-consciousness). There is our empirical apperception, which is our grasping of ourselves as being slightly different or slightly modified each instant. Our transcendental apperception, however, has no intuitive content. In order for the ‘I think’ to be cognitionally aware of itself, it needs the intuitive content of empirical apperception, its awareness of its temporal self-inconsistency. Regarding the transcendental apperception, we have a self-awareness not of our empirical apperceptive awarenesses, but rather just of the unified identity that any and all acts of self-awareness belong together to the same self-aware subject. So it is a consciousness that our transcendental subjectivity, on the side of concepts and understanding but not yet cognition, is always glued to any and all acts of empirical self-awareness, despite each one giving a differently modified intuition of the self. So the unity of the transcendental apperception is what guarantees that our concepts are always linked to our intuitions. This is because this a priori unity of the self ensures that every act of empirical awareness has an accompanying empirical self-awareness that is an awareness of a self who is the same self as the a priori unified self that unifies all these varying temporally exclusive empirical self-intuitions. Thus Somers-Hall opens chapter 1 with:]

Deleuze's break with Kant concerns the nature of the transcendental field and the isomorphism between the functions of judgment, which allow us to make judgments about the empirical world [ft.5] and the categories, which as transcendental allow the synthesis of the empirical manifold. For Kant, this parallelism of the operations of the understanding is essential, as it is this that allows us to attribute to the subject the power to condition the empirical manifold and therefore to know with certainty that the understanding is able to apply its concepts to this manifold. Since our consciousness of the empirical manifold is generated through categories of the understanding (the same understanding that employs the functions in order to form judgments), then the structure of judgment will mirror that of the world, thus allowing certain synthetic propositions about that world to be guaranteed valid. By showing that the categories apply to the world, Kant is able to follow Hume in granting that all knowledge begins with experience, while at the same time allowing contentful propositions about the structure of that experience to remain necessarily true, since these fundamental structures are imposed on experience by the subject as the conditions under which experience is possible at all. The transcendental for Kant therefore contains those structures that concern the nonempirical determinations of the object, those that make experience of the object possible . (14)

{footnote 5 explains that there are also judgments outside the empirical domain, but we will turn to this topic in chapter 6.} Deleuze is not a transcendental idealist like Kant, but is rather a transcendental empiricist [this terminology will become clearer as we continue the discussion in this chapter.] For Kant, the transcendental “contains those structures that concern the nonempirical determinations of the object, those that make experience of the object possible.” (14) What interests Deleuze regarding the transcendental

is not its ability to guarantee knowledge, but rather the generative principles that it provides for the empirical world. In this change of emphasis, what is at stake is both the structure of the transcendental field and the rules that govern this structure and through this the structure of empirical experience, these rules being what Kant would call "transcendental logic" (CPR, ASO/B74 ). [14]

For Kant there are two conditions for such a transcendental logic.

Kant’s 2 conditions for a transcendental logic:

[1] It contains only the pure thought of an object, and it excludes the modes of knowledge that have empirical content [thus it deals with a priori propositions]

[2] It deals with the non-empirical origin of our knowledge of objects [so it deals with the origins of our a priori knowledge] (14d)

Deleuze also holds these requirements for a transcendental logic. The only difference is that Deleuze removes references to the subject. For Deleuze

Kant has not shown the necessity of the transcendental field being generated in relation to a subject. Thus transcendental logic for Deleuze would first concern purely the Idea of an object, while still excluding those structures of the object as an empirical (actual) manifestation of that Idea, and second, | must concern itself with the origins of the object as experienced, insofar as this origin is not attributed to the object (or even of an objectival nature) (14-15)

{In ft.6, Somers-Hall explains that by objectival he means “an entity that has a subject-property structure, or a proposition or logic, that is isomorphic with this structure. Objectival therefore loosely means structured according to the classical conception of an object. A parallel meaning has been given to the term subjectival These neologisms have been coined to prevent confusion or conflation with the similar terms subjective and objective.” (249)} [Somers-Hall will later explain this.] Somers-Hall will first examine Kant’s account of the necessity for the subject “in the structuration of experience” (15b)

In the Transcendental Aesthetic of the first critique, Kant shows how sensibility deals with a priori forms of intuition, “that is, that space and time are ideal forms through which objects are presented to the subject” (15) [Because space and time are ideal forms, they are a priori, and so he is laying the groundwork for his transcendental idealism which will correlate a priori concepts to a posteriori intuitions.] So Kant first shows how objects may be presented to consciousness, and then he turns to his Transcendental Analytic to explain how objects can be thought by consciousness. He will then need to show how the faculty of sensibility and the faculty of understanding interact with one another. In the Metaphysical Deduction Kant relates the categories to the ordinary functions of the understanding. This for Deleuze is one of the most important sections of the first critique, because “it is here that the conditions for the possibility of objects are first equated with the condi- | tions for the possibility of knowledge of objects through their joint origin in the understanding.” (15-16)

This Metaphysical Deduction establishes “an isomorphism between the functions of the understanding and the categories, as shown in the tables of functions and categories.” (16) The understanding deals only with representations, and it relates representations in such a way that they are subsumed under other representations and in that way are unified. This is happens by means of judgments, which take the subject-predicate form. Consider this judgment: ‘all bodies are divisible’. There is a general representation that ranges over a wide range of entities, namely, [entities that are divisible] or ‘divisibility’ and a specific representation, a body, that relates directly to some object, like a body. Here the understanding unifies different representations of bodies together by subsuming them under the more general representation ‘divisibility.’ Because all thought takes on this structure more or less, all thinking is judging. For this reason, all thinking requires synthesis, [namely, the synthesis (a) of all the representations that will be grouped together and subsumed under a general concept and (b) of this unified manifold representation and the general concept it is subsumed under]. All judgments must enact a particular function from each of four [more general] functions: quantity, quality, relation, and modality. This means that some given judgment will relate to either all, some, or one entity in a class of subjects, and in this way express quantity. [And at the same time, the judgment expresses quality, relation, and modality too.] Now, “if we are to understand the nature of the pure concepts or categories of the understanding, as opposed to the functions, which Kant claims to have thus far discovered, we have to consider these functions in terms of transcendental logic.” (16d)

So, all acts of understanding require that the judgment take on the subject-object form. This means, our understanding of an intuition must also take on an objective (subject-predicate) form. (17) But this requires first that the intuitions be synthesized so that they may become the subject of judgments. But the functions of judgments, quantity, quality, relation and modality, deal only with judgments, so they do not help unify the intuitions, which are not judgments.

This unity must therefore be provided by concepts other than, but compatible with, the functions of judgment, if judgment is to be validly applicable to intuition at all. Therefore, the unification of the manifold will be carried out by categories, which correspond to the functions, while also containing a conceptual reference to intuition. Thus, for instance, the hypothetical function, if A then B, will be mirrored in the category of causality and dependence, which takes the form, if . . . then, and relates it to a manifold (17)

 

Thus we see that

for Kant the transcendental field is structured according to the model of classical logic, as this will allow Kant to explain the synthetic nature of the transcendental and to provide it with a differentiated structure. Deleuze's own metaphysical deduction will rest not on classical logic, but on the differential calculus, and will thus attempt to overthrow the double nature of the understanding as both synthesizing the manifold and formulating judgments upon which the Kantian model relies. (18)

What we have been dealing with so far is the metaphysical deduction. It shows relation of the categories to the understanding. We now turn to the transcendental deduction, where “this isomorphism rests on the presupposition of an 'I' that provides a point in the transcendental field around which the empirical field is unified.” (18)

For Hume, we do not derive the concept of causality from experience but instead a tendency of association arising from constant conjunction. [After every first glimmer of light on the day’s horizon we experience the sun rising. Thus the next time we see morning light our minds automatically tend to associate with all our prior impressions of sunrise. This is Hume’s version of causality. ] But “While Hume's notion may explain how the concept comes to be recognized by the understanding, such a derivation obviously cannot show us whether its application is justified (hence | Hume's skepticism).” (18-19) What Hume describes is an empirical deduction and only provide contingent truths. The alternative is a transcendental deduction, which “moves to the necessary preconditions of experience” (19); “we must ask whether there are any conditions that need to be met in order to ‘know anything as an object’ (CPR, A92/B125 ).” [In order for us to unify the manifold of sensible parts of an object into that object, we need already to have a concept of an object as unity of a manifold of representations, the object = x.] But this concept cannot come from experience. “the task that Kant faces is to show whether the concept of an object in general itself requires certain other a priori concepts in order to be comprehensible.” (19)

For Kant, in order to apply the categories, there must be an ‘I think’ that accompanies all our representations. (19 citing CPR, B131). [First requirement for the conceptual categories to apply to the intuitive manifolds is that all the parts of the manifold be available to the same self so that this self may unify them. Thus we need an “I”. The second requirement is that all the parts belong together amongst themselves so they may be synthesized into objects.  Thus we need a unified I. It cannot arise from our fluctuating experiences because then it is not unified, so it is an a priori I, and because it is the condition for thinking, it is transcendental.]

For my representations to belong to me, it is a minimal requirement that I be able to assert of them that it is I who thinks them. If this were not the case, there would be thoughts that both belonged to me (as they are my representations) and did not belong to me (I could not lay claim to them ). This 'I' has the further function of unifying my experience, for it allows perceptions at various moments to be integrated together, as the unity of the ' I' grants a unity to the various moments of experience, tying them together as they share a relation to the self-identical structure of the ego. This allows the subject to conceive of the manifold as a manifold. As everything empirical is itself within time, and thus is also affected by change, an empirical entity is unable to provide the identity that is required to effect this unification of the manifold. For Kant, this therefore excludes the empirical ego, which is the self of which the subject is conscious, from fulfilling this function. "No fixed and abiding self can present itself in this flux of inner appearances" (CPR, A107) . Kant believes, therefore, that the unity of apperception must be instead a transcendental structure, the source of Sartre and Deleuze 's opposition. Such a self cannot itself be intuited, but instead must | be posited as a presupposition of our having successive representations. (19 - 20)

This transcendental I is not a substance; it is precategorical. “It amounts simply to the correlate of the unity of experience to which it must be possible to attach the 'I think'.” (20) [However, it is still a subject]. This subject is aware of the synthetic unity of the objects it synthesizes and he is aware of that synthesis he enacts to generate it. (20) “The function it fulfills is related to the faculty of judgment, to the extent that it is simply a posited unity that allows judgments to be formed and perceptions to hold to a unified structure.” (20) It is free of all content. “The transcendental object must therefore be conceived, like the transcendental unity of apperception, as a self-identical, singular transcendental condition for the unity of the manifold for the understanding.” (21)

We still do not know why and how the transcendental subject and the transcendental object allow the categories to relate to intuition. (21) To answer this, we turn to the conditions for the possibility of the subject and object. The subject and object determine each other reciprocally. The subject makes the object possible, because as we noted we need a unified subject to unify the objects representations. The subject is grounded by the object, because it only comes to know itself  by being aware that it is the subject that unifies the objective manifold. And,

The concept of an object allows the subject to recognize representations as representations of the object and thus to distinguish itself from them. Thus the subject becomes aware of himself through the | unification of representations into an object, through his recognition of himself as a spontaneous consciousness. The subject therefore makes the object possible for Kant, and the object makes the subject possible. (21-22)

So we see that in the transcendental field for Kant, the presence of the subjectival invokes the presence of the objectival, and vice versa. Deleuze will try to provide an analysis of the transcendental field without appealing to the subjectival and the objectival.

This in turn will allow Deleuze to conceive of the transcendental field as generative, rather than merely conditioning, as the transcendental will no longer be structured analogously to the empirical but will instead give rise to the objectival from a nonobjectival field. Instead of the transcendental having the form of the empirical, therefore providing the merely formal conditions of the empirical, the structure of the object in general, we will be able to understand the transcendental as actually generating the empirical. (22)

 

We will now see the role of the categories in all this. The subject constitutes the object synthetically. He does so using rules. The rules cannot be derived from empirical concepts, because we are looking for the preempirical conditions for the possibility of experience. “The categories, as concepts which apply to an object in general and are transcendental, seem to be the only choice for the rules of this synthesis. The categories are therefore legitimated through the role they play in allowing the subject to actively synthesize the object.” (22) Yet also “The manifold is in fact synthesized by the schemata, which play the role of intermediaries between the conceptual and the intuitional, thus allowing the two heterogeneous matters to be brought into relation. They perform this role by sharing characteristics of both”. (22)

Somers-Hall concludes with a summary and lead into forthcoming topics.

We now see how Kant conceives of the understanding as both being responsible for synthesizing objects through the categories and uniting representations through judgments. We can also see how the transcendental subject is thus generated through the synthesis of objects and is also its precondition, through the reciprocal determination of the subject and the object. The subject's role in actively synthesizing the object is not given directly but rather is established through our knowledge of the subject's spontaneity, gathered through its ability to perform analogous acts of unification in the domain of judgment. These two threads reinforce each other, as the isomorphism of the categories and judgments guarantees the subject-object structure of the transcendental, because the categories extend the objectival logic of judgment into the transcendental domain, and the subject-object structure makes possible the isomorphism between transcendental logic and the logic of judgment, as it allows the analogous structures to operate in both domains. As we shall see, Deleuze will attempt to refute both theses simultaneously in order to move away from Kantianism while maintaining the concepts of the transcendental and the empirical, redesignated as the virtual and the actual. This would allow him to propose a transcendental philosophy that was generative, rather than just conditioning. We are now ready to analyze Sartre's critique of the transcendental ego, which is a transitional point on the journey to transcendental empiricism. (23)

 

 

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

Time & Method. Ch.2.2 of Williams' Deleuze's Philosophy of Time

summary by Corry Shores

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Time & Method

James Williams'

Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Time:
A Critical Introduction and Guide

Chapter 2: The first synthesis of time

Part 2: Synthesis and method in the first synthesis of time


In Deleuze's account of his first synthesis of time, what does his methodological shiftings from empirical to transcendental got to do with you?

Who are we? Does it have something to do with how we behave and view the world at any moment? Our minds put experiences together. So each time we let go of something heavy, we anticipate it dropping; so perhaps we automatically move our feet out of the way. This is on the basis of empirical observation. But would we not also say that part of being who we are is that this contracting process always is going on, because if new occurrences did not come into and merge with past ones, we would stay the same in a timeless way, which is like death in way. When we deduce that it is logically necessary that this process is at work, we are using a transcendental methodology: we are explicating the conditions of possibility for our lives to move forward in time.

Brief Summary

Deleuze mixes empirical and transcendental methods. We empirically observe our mind's tendency to contract. We transcendentally deduce the necessity of passive synthesis for this tendency to be at work.

Deleuze also does not limit his account to subjective and objective perspectives. The repetition of cases is not seen objectively, because the occurrences do not each already have contracted relations to the others (it must be performed on them). Yet, the repetition is not understood subjectively [perhaps because each contraction changes the mind itself, so the contractions are not based on some stable subjectivity; rather, that subjectivity is under alteration on account of the contracted occurrences].

There are three moments involved in repetition: succession, contraction, and representation.

There are two further ways to distinguish repetitions. The first regards additions. They are closed insofar as an addition will change it qualitatively, like how the fifth bell toll feels different than the fourth, and thus the fourth one was closed off to further addition. And they are open insofar as the addition strengthens quantitatively certain paths of anticipation. So the more times we hear the bells toll at five o clock, the more we anticipate the fourth toll being followed (and contracted with) the fifth toll. Another way to distinguish repetitions is on the basis of grouping status. Each new toll makes a new contraction, and this is the repetition of elements. But each toll is what it is on account of its paired contractions, and this is the repetition of cases.

When our sense impressions contract, they do so on the level of passive synthesis, but also we may more explicitly consider representations of occurrences not seen in terms of their mergence with others. The representational level is not adequate to capture everything about the immediate sense experiences, and so also thinking representationally about our habitual contractions is not enough to change them; we must instead somehow do so on the level of passive synthesis. Each contraction is a sign for how we might make future contractions. But interpreting the sign representationally misses implicit components of its meaning.

Points Relative to Deleuze:

Deleuze mixes empirical and transcendental methods. Also, he regards representation as inadequate for a description of what is going on in the syntheses of the lived present.

Summary

Deleuze's writings on the first synthesis of time also raise questions of philosophical method. Recall the role of retention and expectation in the 'living present' (from Ch.2.1). For example, we always find that heavy things fall when we let go of them in the air. We retain all these similar particular events retentionally in our mind. Then, just as soon as we see ourselves about to let go of a heavy object, all similar past occurrences contract together to make our mind anticipate the object falling. This much is empirical, because it is all based on experience. But what is not empirical is the very fact that synthetic processes are required for this contraction; for, "It is a logical deduction from the independence of instants" [For different instants to relate together in the contraction, they must first be different, thus they are not inherently related, and so an additional synthetic exercise is necessary to relate them contractively.] What is also not empirical is the fact that the processes involved are conditions for each other and also that that their relations are asymmetrical. [The conditions for example for possible future contractions are grounded in actual ones now, and because this concerns the conditions of possibility for other processes,] it is transcendental rather than empirical. However, we do not deduce logically that there are at work these process of the first synthesis of time; rather we observe them as such. Williams wonders why Deleuze turns to Hume's thinking when perhaps there might be more recent and convincing support in psychology, neurology or Merleau-Pontian phenomenology. (30bc.d)

Williams finds the first clue in Deleuze's distinction between the empirical and the formal with regard to processes. What makes Deleuze's argumentation different than scientific and phenomenological ones is that he moves swiftly from empirical to speculative remarks regarding the formal properties of these processes. So he begins with 'a sketchy empirical observation' [contraction of like causal pairings] in order to set out a 'speculative formal frame' [perhaps, an account of the necessity for these processes and their relations] with a transcendental element [describing the conditions of possibility for these necessary processes]. (31a.b)

"This partly explains the difficulty of setting down a label for his philosophy: it is empirical, speculative and transcendental. It also invites a deep worry, since there is a danger of failing in each of these moves and standing as poor (unscientific) empiricism, (non-rigourous) phenomenology and (logically deficient) speculative philosophy" (31a.b)

Deleuze makes use of the resources of all three, without falling victim to their dangers, through a careful analysis of them in the history of philosophy. (31b) To do so, Deleuze first "establishes the priority of passive synthesis and the living present." (31c) So it is not that what is most primary are the individuality of the instants, and then secondarily they are synthesized. Rather, it is only on the basis of the synthetic processes that they can be conceived as separate in the first place [perhaps because they would not be relatable as being different from one another if there were not some synthesis that brings them together into such a relation]. Also, the synthesis is the condition for the incompleteness and the secondary nature of our conception of the separations of occurrences [perhaps because the process is ongoing; or perhaps because the repetitions involved are not merely repetitions of the mind, but continuous new differences given to the mind and thus the mind itself is always changing with its contractions]. (31-32)

"What this means is that repetition cannot be thought of as either the repetition of objects, which explains why Deleuze presented such an approach as leading to a paradox, or as repetition in the subject, which explains why it would be a mistake to associate his reading of Hume with an interpretation of both philosophers as setting down the human mind | as the condition for repetition." (31-32)

So because Deleuze's theory of time avoids taking the objective and subjective perspectives, "Deleuze can appeal neither to brute empiricism, nor to simple phenomenology." (32a) This raises the question as to how we conduct or philosophical inquiries without basing them on objective or subjective grounds. Deleuze shows that the necessity for repetition is not found in any object alone. Instead, repetition is a matter ideal relations that provide the conditions for actual differences. (32d)

Deleuze proceeds then to show that:

"Time and synthesis, as well as the living present, cannot be subjective in the sense of properties of the understanding or memory of a thinking subject." (Williams 33b)

Deleuze reads Hume to be saying that our conceptually represented memory contains individual memories with their own distinct times and spaces. These separated memory representations is not the same as the retended past, because events in retention are inseparable.

Williams then discusses two 'far-reaching conclusions on time and repetition' that Deleuze draws from these ideas.

1) Repetition implies three moments:

1a) objective instants passing away because they cannot be repeated
1b) contracting through passive synthesizing
1c) representing (specific distinguishable occurrences) reflexively in the active memory and understanding (34a)

Each of these moments, however, reciprocally determine the others. (34b)

2) Each moment is necessary and has methodological facets:

2a) "expression of individuation in the living present (duration in Bergson and imagination in Hume)",
2b) "representation of identity in memory and understanding", and
2c) "creation of syntheses in a thinking of the relations of the other two and all presupposed ideal relations." (34c)

There are two sorts of dissimilarity in Bergson's and Hume's examples of repetition (the clock tolls and the AB causal parings) [see paragraph 3 and paragraph 4]

1) Closed vs Open repetition

1a) Closed [contraction changes qualitatively with addition] (Bergson's 4 tolls would change at 5)
1b) Open [contraction changes quantitative 'weight' or tendency for association with each new repeated occurrence] (oncoming Hume's AB parings are contracted together and can keep being contracted as more come) (35d)

2) Element vs Case

2a) Coupled [Case]: "Hume's involves cases of AB couples"
2b) Undivided [Element]: "Bergson has repeated undivided elements or strikes" (34d)

Deleuze notes that in Bergson's example where we hear the bell toll four times, the first and second toll were also contracted as an AB coupling, as was the second and third, and finally the fourth and fifth. So on the one hand, like with Hume, we just have recurrences of AB pairings, but like with Bergson, each pairing can be secondarily differentiated from the others representationally by means of spatializing duration. (35a)

Empirically we observe that the passive synthesis tends to experience the clock's ticking as having tick-tocks (contracted pairings). We know transcendentally that the condition that makes the contraction possible is the synthesis itself. In this way Deleuze integrates empirical and transcendental methods. (35b.d)

The relation between element and case is different on each of the three levels of its operation ("passing away of instants, contraction and representation"), in regard to sensibility and sensation. (36a) The contractions of our sense impressions happen automatically. [Here the elements, each occurrence, and the cases, their groupings, seem to coincide.] On the level of representation, we might inquire whether something will give us some certain sense impression. But doing this presupposes the passively synthesized contractions. [Here the elements are not yet cases, but it is on the basis of their having been contracted into cases that we can pick certain ones out representationally and anticipate the coming contraction of pairings.]

"on one level, our sensibility is just a contraction of organic syntheses, a series of sensations of warmth, say, prior to and independent of any representation or concept: ‘[. . .] a primary sensibility that we are’ (DRf, 99). On another level, though, we are intending beings who can intend towards an object and ascribe a given quality to it, for instance, when we reach out and ask the question, ‘Is it warm?’ From this point of view, contraction is prior to even that sensation, if sensation is defined as a conscious faculty. This is because we cannot have the sensation in that form until there has been a series of passive organic contractions." (36b.c)

According to Williams, each contractive synthesis is a 'level', and each level is a 'sign'. Because a contraction selects paths of how we might contract future occurrences, it is like a sign pointing to the future. (36-37) But to interpret these signs, we need to use representations, which for some reason will always miss something about the prior syntheses it is trying to interpret. So this poses a problem in Deleuze's thinking, because signs have an importance for helping us understand "how we are becoming what we are", while also it is impossible to fully represent and interpret those signs. So, "what is the right way of living with and living up to the passive syntheses constituting and driving us forward?" (37a.b)

If we want to change a habit, we will miss things about it if we remain on the level of representation; thus "learning and unlearning habits must not be seen in terms of the conscious repetition of movement, for instance, but instead must be seen as an interaction with processes that we cannot directly represent or act upon." (37d)





Williams, James. Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Time: A Critical Introduction and Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011.

Husserl Ideas §52 Supplementations. The Physical Thing as Determined by Physics and the "Unknown Cause of Appearances"

by Corry Shores
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We should not confuse the subjectivity that physics claims is involved in the merely sensuous appearance of physical things with the subjectivity that characterizes mental processes. Scientists do not really think that the physical thing's appearance is an illusion or faulty picture of the "true" physical thing. As well, appearances are not signs of the true determinations of physical things.

Husserl wonders if we may, in accordance with realism, say that we may infer from an appearance what it is an appearance of, as though the two were intrinsically different.

We only come to such theories if we ignore the physical thing-datum's sense, which is implicit in the essence of experience.

If there were some unknown cause for an appearance that is different from what is appearing, "it would have to be essentially perceivable and experienceable if not by us then by other Egos who see better and further" (119a). Moreover, such a perception would be demonstrated only by another perception, hence an infinite regress. To give an theoretical account for some unknown physical affair, such as planetary disturbances coming from an yet-known planet, is essentially different from giving an account of the way we experience physical things.

The scientist explores and scientifically determines the perceived physical thing.

The experienced physical thing, we noted, gives us the "mere This" or "empty X" that becomes the "bearer of the exact determinations ascribed in physics" that are not given in experience alone. Thus the "true" thing for physics would be determined in a much different way than how it is given in person by perception alone.

We will not fall victim to the picture or sign theories; for pictures and signs refer to things lying outside them which would "'itself' be seized upon were we to go over into a different mode of objectivation, into that of presentative intuition." But physical things are no different from what appears sensuously (120a).

Accordingly, even the sensuous determination-content of the X which functions as bearer of the determinations ascribed in physics is no clothing foreign to these determination and hiding them: rather, only because the X is the subject of the sensuous determinations is it the subject also of the determinations ascribed in physics which, for their part, make themselves known in the sensuous determinations. (120c)

Thus the sensuously appearing is not a sign for something else, but rather is, in a sense, "a sign for itself" (121a).

But even though physics considers the appearance of something to be a sign of the transcendent object, its transcendency does not "signify" a "reaching out beyond the world which is for consciousness" (121bc).

Physics is based on natural experiencing, and in accordance with reason, takes up certain modes of conception so to effect "the theoretical determination of sensuously experienced things" (121c). This is why the physicist finds contrast between the physical thing as object of the sensuous imagination and as object of the intellect, which assigns the ontological properties to the object.

Physics, then, points to a realm of being in Nature that is outside our perception and is thus "an unknown world of physical realities" that physicists hypothesize in order to explain the causality of appearances; hence physics engages in mythologizing.

Moreover, physics confuses the objects of the senses with the mental processes that constitute objects out of sense data, and thus Objective physics seems not to be engaged in explaining physical thing-appearances insofar as they appear, but rather inasmuch as mental processes constitute them. Causality is a product of these mental processes, and hence it has been "made into a bond between the being which physics determines and absolute consciousness" (122c). Thus physics purports to absolutize physical reality when in fact it absolutizes instead pure consciousness (122d).

The physical thing does not reveal all its properties to our senses, and hence physics wrongly interprets what is sensuously intuitable as a "symbolic representative of something hidden, which could become an object of simple intuition if there were a better intellectual organization; and the models are understood to serve as intuited schematic pictures in place of this hypothesized object" (123b). But at the same time, physicists do not take into account that such real entities are nonetheless constructed by consciousness (123c).

Thus the transcendency of the physical object lies in its constitution in consciousness (123d).

This is so for every other sort of object, for example, aesthetic objects and cultural formations (124a).

[perhaps incomplete]

Husserl, Edmund. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book. General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology. Transl. Fred Kersten. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1982.

Castañeda's indexical reference, first-person pronoun, and transcendental selfhood

by Corry Shores
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[The following was written prior to the release of James Hart's book, Who One Is.]

Corry Shores

Transcending Reference:

Will James Hart Point Us to Our Indelible Selves?

“I...”

“Who said that?”

One says “I” in reference to oneself, but who is this self-referring self? For Hector-Neri Castañeda, the question is not, “who is the I?” but rather: “what does the utterance of ‘I’ imply?” which he concludes to be a transcendental self and a transcendental noumenal world connected by means of the indexical mechanism of the first-person pronoun. Castañeda’s thinking might make its way into James G. Hart’s forthcoming text, Who One Is, judging from Hart’s recent seminar presentations at the Husserl Archives of Leuven. As preparation for his possible treatments of Castañeda, I would like to present the following exposition on the transcendentality of indexicality in Castañeda's thinking, by drawing from Hart’s seminars and some of his other writing on Castañeda to help determine the most potentially relevant material to explore. Regardless, on its own, this exposition still should serve to summarize and connect the ideas that allow Castañeda to account for the transcendental self implied in indexical reference.

To do so, I begin with his understanding of sameness and guise, before moving to his assurances that the first-person pronoun invariably “harpoons” a self. This point is crucial; for, merely from an analysis of the indexical properties of the first-person pronoun “I,” Castañeda believes we can conclude with certainty that there is a transcendental I grounded dually in a transcendental self and in a transcendental noumenal world.

To arrive at these conclusions, we need first to elaborate Castañeda's distinction between identity and sameness. He explains that identity – “the reflexive relation par excellence” – is no more than self-identity; and its “most important and crucial truth” is Leibniz’s law of the indiscernibility of identicals:

(LL) If x is identical with y, then whatever is true of x is true of y and whatever is true of y is true of x. (Castañeda “Identity and Sameness” 122-123)

Yet, Castañeda demonstrates that, although this law of identity applies to the properties, truths, and non-linguistic features of entities, it does not serve as the principle governing the substitutions of different nominations for the same entity (123). Castañeda offers the example of Oedipus: before the pestilence, he at least knew that the previous king of Thebes was dead; thus the statement,

(1) “Before the pestilence Oedipus believed that the previous King of Thebes was dead,”

is true. Yet, although Oedipus did not initially know the fact that

(2) “The previous King of Thebes was the same as Oedipus' father;”

it is nonetheless a true proposition; and thus the statement obtained through substituting the equivalent terms,

(3) “Before the pestilence Oedipus believed that Oedipus' father was dead,”

should also be true. However, on account of the story’s dramatic irony, a contrary statement,

(4) “It is not the case that before the pestilence Oedipus believed that Oedipus’ father was dead”

is also true (123). Thus, we see that although “Oedipus’ father” and “the previous King of Thebes” both refer to the main character of the play, they cannot always substitute each other, as Leibniz law might suggest.

Frege’s solution to this puzzle was to distinguish the common primary referent, Laius himself, from the different primary individuals, “Oedipus’ father” and “the previous King of Thebes” (The Phenomeno-Logic of the I 184).[1] Castañeda's solution is similar: he also differentiates the two nominations for Laius; however, he offers what he believes to be a more thorough and satisfactory account for how a self-identical entity can possess non-identifiable nominations, which he accomplishes by positing two crucial notions: 1) We reference primarily the guises of things; while the entities of which they are guises are referenced only secondarily; and 2) The guises of an object are the same as – but not identical to – one another, on account of the phenomeno-logical operation of consubstantiation, which establishes their unified sameness (“Identity and Sameness” 124, 145). “Oedipus’ father” and “the previous king of Thebes” are different guises; that is to say, they are “different possible ‘appearances’ of the one and the same particular – where 'appearance' means not visual appearance, but presentation to the mind, whether to sense or the intellect.” When we think or perceive an object, we have before our mind some guise of it, not that very entity of which it is a guise (125).

To understand the logical operation of consubstantiation, we also need to explicate the other related notions of identity and sameness. As we noted above, identity is “characterized by Leibniz's law and absolutely total reflexivity” (144). This would be a pure and unmediated non-linguistic self-relationship of something qua itself. All other forms of unity relations are more properly considered types of “samenesses.”

Castañeda believes that if we wish to solve Frege’s puzzle, we must see how the different types of samenesses become confused in it. He names one sort conflation, which is the logical identity shared by the different denominations of the same thing (144) (the different senses for Frege, the different guises for Castañeda, and perhaps we might venture to add, the different signifiers for the same signified in Saussure). Castañeda formulates the logical operation of conflation as

*C{x,x}

(if the nominations are the same, and)

*C{x,y}

(if the nominations are different)

(Thinking, Language, & Experience 245)

The ‘C’ refers to the relation’s “community of being,” and he prefixes the asterisk to the C, because this relationship holds a priori and independently to the contingencies in the world that are responsible for the differences between the guises for a same object (“Identity and Sameness” 144). Castañeda offers the following examples of conflation:

*C (the man who weighs 250 pounds and loves to hear Mozart's operas, the man who loves to hear Mozart's operas and weighs 250 pounds);

and

*C (the book nobody reads, the book which either both has red covers and nobody reads, or nobody reads).[2] (144)

In both cases, the conflated nominations are logically equivalent, and statements still remain true even after the substitution of one nomination for the other alters the sentence’s contents.

The next sort of sameness, consubstantiation, unifies nominations that are contingently the same. Castañeda explains that at the core of the actual existence of material and mental things is their contingency: an entity’s existence cannot be logically predicated, Castañeda argues, it can only occur contingently in the world (Thinking, Language, & Experience 239). Wittgenstein deals with a similar problem when distinguishing idle from non-idle statements. For example, if we analyze the terms in the statement,

“Paper is not edible,”

we see that it is a tautology; for, it is always true that paper has the property of inedibility (Moser “Language Idling and Language in Use” 175). Such a statement is empty and senseless for Wittgenstein, unless it is actually used. For example, if it is written on a piece of paper wrapped around a sandwich one is eating, then it means that one is “most likely in the United States and need not try to sue the company who produced the sandwich” (175). When not used, such tautologies are idle and senseless, although they have sense when they are non-idle, when they are in use.

Quine offers a different explanation:

Wittgenstein’s mistake is more clearly recognizable, when he objects to the notion of identity that “to say of two things that they are identical is nonsense, and to say of one thing that it is identical with itself is to say nothing.” Actually of course the statements of identity that are true and not idle consist of unlike singular terms that refer to the same thing. (Quine Word and Object, p. 117. qt in Béziau 6)

Castañeda “corrects” Quine’s explanation of this situation by inserting his own bracketed word substitutions:

Actually of course the statements of identity that are true and not idle

[i.e. contingent] consist of [i.e., are expressed by sentences consisting of]

unlike singular terms that refer [secondarily, I would add] to the same

thing. (Castañeda “Identity and Sameness” 132-133)

By placing the term “contingent” beside “true and not-idle,” Castañeda is suggesting that such statements of identity as “The king of Thebes preceding Oedipus was the same as Oedipus' father” are not empty tautologies, even though they refer (secondarily) to the same object; for, one entity has distinguishable manifestations (different according to the contingencies in context of their appearance), and to each manifestation belongs its own unique nomination. The manifestations are referenced primarily, but their respective object only secondarily.

The operation that unifies different nominations for the distinct guises of singular objects is consubstantiation, which he formulates as:

C*(a,b)

The asterisk following the C indicates that the relation is contingent and a posteriori (Thinking, Language, & Experience 242). Thus, it is more phenomeno-logical than logical, and it is the operation underlying the unification that brings about guises and that links these unified guises with each other. To understand the phenomeno-logical dimension of consubstantiation, we will examine how phenomenal experiences are involved in the construction and grouping of guises.

Castañeda claims that the fundamental reality consists of existing individuals, which we confront in experience (68), and to perceptually confront an object is to place it within the spatiotemporal structure that underlies the world’s causal order (The Phenomeno-Logic of the I 238). Perception’s spatiotemporal placing is a “mapping” of the objects in the field of perception (Thinking, Language, & Experience 77), through which “demonstrative tails” grow and serve to make up a “field of demonstrative referents” (238; 77).[3] Perception’s mapping differentiates the distinct objects according to their properties (62), which are the “ultimate components of the world,” and which we abstract from their respective individuals (239). Such a particular entity is apprehended when we “bundle” together the properties that differentiate it from all other objects (62). According to the Principle of Differentiation at work in this grouping operation:

Each ascertainable difference between two individuals consists in a difference in properties. Thus, every property possessed by an individual is a principle of difference, and the set of differences characteristic of an individual is tantamount to the set of properties possessed by the individual. (63)

The differences are grouped according to the law of consistence:[4] “only logically compatible sets of properties determine actualizable concrete individuals;” and the grouping operation is consubstantiation, which collects properties together according to the following principles, where (F) is a property, and x is an individual:

C*(x,x) ⊃ (x(F) ⊃ ~x(~F))

C*(x,x) ⊃ (x(~F) ⊃ ~x(F))

Also, it should be noted that the existence of an individual is defined as self-consubstantiation:

Def. x exists = def. C*(x,x)

(Thinking, Language, & Experience 243)

It seems perhaps that the first of the previous two principles indicates that the existence of individual x, (that is, its self-consubstantiation), implies that if property-F is a property of x, then it is not the case that it bears the property opposed to F (if the apple is red, then it is not not-red); and for the second, if an object lacks a certain property, then it does not bear that property (if the apple is not red, then it is not the case that it is red) (63). Yet, if a property is a differential relationship to another property that itself is such a differential relationship, then these above two principles, which determine the grouping of common properties, likewise establishes a relation of difference to other properties that themselves can be so grouped through consubstantiation, thereby constituting (co-constituting, co-consubstantiating) the existences of other individuals. For example, the apple that is (uniformly) red does not bear colors that are not-red, which means that it is encased by a field of properties that are not that color red; (even if the apple is in a basket with other same-colored apples, we might presume the air between them is not that color). Hence, it would seem that consubstantiation is a dual grouping/excluding process underlying the existence of individuals.

The set of such grouped properties is the “core” of a guise (“Identity and Sameness” 146), which is the individual thing’s presentation to the mind, its appearance to our awareness (Thinking, Language, & Experience 125). Presentation occurs when the objects that we perceive are non-differentiated from their respective perceptually-mapped representations, that came about through the consubstantive grouping of the perceived properties. When something is presented, rather than merely perceived, the “thinker thinkingly” confronts it; and, because presentation is the convergence of representations with the objects they represent, perceptual thinking is iconic (77). This sort of representational relationship is reminiscent of Pierce’s notion of the icon, whose significance is derived from its resemblance to its respective object, as for example the machinist’s scale drawing, which indicates the structural organization of a machine’s parts[5] (Burks “Icon, Index, and Symbol” 673).

Thinking, namely thinking nonperceptually, “bestows some vicarious presence to whatever is not available for confrontation” (Castañeda Thinking, Language, & Experience 77). Nonperceptual thinking makes something that is absent “somehow present,” by means of a representation, which is of a drastically different nature than the object it represents (77). On account of this drastic difference between the representation and the absent thing it represents, nonperceptual thinking is symbolic (77), and it must possess “symbolic mechanisms” capable of representing confronted objects and conveying confrontational references to other people. The fundamental “mechanisms” of reference to confronted particulars are indexical references (68), which refer to items present in our own experience. The primary objects of reference are the guises, and their respective objects in the world are only referenced secondarily (“Identity and Sameness” 128). Indexicals include such demonstrative expressions as ‘this,’ ‘that,’ ‘now,’ ‘then,’ ‘here,’ and ‘there;’ personal pronouns (‘I,’ ‘you,’ ‘he,’ ‘she,’ ‘it,’ etc.); and the verbal tenses used in direct speech constructions (Thinking, Language, & Experience 4-5). Indexical references may also be attributed to others by means of what Castañeda calls quasi-indexical-references, which are not strictly indexical references but rather depict the indexical references of other people (5). What is not present to us, but present to someone else, may be represented to us by means of quasi-indexicals. Where indexicals have the “executive function of placing items, so to speak, as confronted in person, in experience;” the executive function of quasi-indexicals puts “before one’s eyes a replica of the others’ indexical references” (4-5). Consider, for example, the statement:

A year ago watching the depression next to the huge oak tree planted by his great-grandfather, the Editor of Soul thought thus:

(D) “A treasure IS hidden HERE. I WILL BE wealthy if I dig it out NOW.” (Thinking, Language, & Experience 5)

Here we quote the Editor’s own declaration in which he uses indexicals to refer to himself and to things immediate to him. We may represent to ourselves the Editor’s indexical references by substituting quasi-indexicals and adopting a mode of indirect speech:

A year ago watching the depression next to the huge oak tree planted by his great-grandfather, the Editor of Soul thought that (S) a treasure WAS hidden THERE. HE (HIMSELF) WOULD BE wealthy if HE (HIMSELF) dug it out THEN.” (Thinking, Language, & Experience 5)

Indexical references are personal, because they refer to what one confronts in one’s own experience; and, they are as ephemeral as the world’s objects are fleeting: a “this quickly turns into a that, and soon enough it is lost to experience and is not even a remote that; a you goes away and is replaced by another, and then there is just oneself alone fretting about something or other” (69). Consubstantiation, which on the perceptual-thinking level collects the properties making-up an object, is also the relation that connects different guises of the same object; for example:

“The morning star is the evening star”

C*(a,b)

(Thinking, Language, & Experience 242)

This sort of consubstantiation is a synchronic sameness. Yet also, there is an operation that consubstantiates presently-appearing guises with ones that previously appeared as present but now appear as memories of previous guises, and he terms this operation transubstantiation. He explains that: 1) the “unity and order of the world is registered in the memories of the thinker” (The Phenomeno-Logic of the I 243); 2) these memories of previously-presented object-guises and I-guises may appear to present-thought by means of their remembrance, thereby becoming available for consubstantiation; and 3) “the time of an experience is a specious present (referred to indexically as now) within which sub-experiences have their own now’s, overlapping experiences belonging to overlapping I-guises”[6] (“The Self and its Guises” 62). For these reasons, we may connect our guises that are spread across a “spacetime vector” by means of transubstantiation (Thinking, Language, & Experience 251). A self, Castañeda explains, is an enduring entity, and thus to refer to it is to index both A) the networks of synchronic consubstantiations anchored to the I uttering “I,” and B) the diachronic transubstantiations of the numerous I’s “overlapping through a sequence of shared specious presents” (The Phenomeno-Logic of the I 210). With these phenomeno-logical notions of guise, consubstantiation, and transubstantiation, we may now examine how a transcendental self is implied almost merely from the utterance of the word “I.” Yet before this, we will first see how Castañeda argues for the necessity that the first-person indexical be the sole demonstrative whose execution invariably references the self who utters it.

Castañeda offers thought experiments to illustrate how his notions of guise and consubstantiation can explain why in certain exceptional cases of perceptual self-misrecognition, the first-person pronoun would be the sole indexical that invariably refers to the self uttering it. For one example, we imagine a man, Gaskon, who believes that people bearing a certain facial appearance have a fatal illness, “Fness.” Gaskon himself acquires this altered appearance, and hence when he sees himself in a mirror, he does not immediately recognize his reflected image. Instead, he attends mostly to the symptoms of the dreaded illness Fness, and states out loud, “He (or this person, or that man [pointing to the man in the mirror] is F.”[7] Gaskon thereupon dies of a heart attack, never arriving upon the true conclusion I am F (Thinking, Language, & Experience 72).

Without the notions of guise and consubstantiation, we might not be able to explain such situations where A) one correctly perceives the set of features constituting oneself, which implies one cannot use second- and third-person indexicals to refer to those sets; yet, B) on account of special circumstances, one is led to misrecognize oneself, and thus rightfully uses these non-first-person pronouns. One might not consubstantiate oneself-as-perceiver with oneself-as-perceived, even when clearly perceiving oneself, and thus we can see the phenomeno-logical compatibility between such sentences as “Gaskon is F” and Gaskon’s statement “I am not F,” despite their logical contrariety.

To elaborate more on the way perceptual consubstantiation externally predicates certain features to a guise, Castañeda utilizes the notion of F-protraction (“Identity and Sameness” 146). In his formulation for this operation, a is a guise and F is a property of that guise, and a[F] is the union of a, (which is consubstantially made up of its core set of properties), with the property F, (which presumably belongs to that set of core properties). According to F-protraction, the predicative observation that

a is F

has the deeper form,

C*(a,a[F])

which perhaps means that when we perceptually predicate a property to a guise, we consubstantiate 1) the guise taken wholly as the set of all its properties, with 2) the guise taken wholly but also as featuring especially one of its constituent properties, brought to our attentive awareness on account of the contextual circumstances surrounding its presentation to us. For example, when seeing that a pencil one holds is yellow, is to see that

C*(the pencil in my hand, the pencil in my hand [yellow])

(“Identity and Sameness” 146)

This formulation perhaps indicates that, by noticing the pencil’s yellowness, one consubstantiates a guise for that pencil, (which perhaps could also be a mental representation or a remembered past guise for it), with the guise of the pencil as it appears when one especially notices its yellowness. We also could have attended more to its length, or its relations to other objects, for example. In the case of Gaskon and the mirror, he correctly predicates F-sickness to the guise he perceives; yet, on account of certain circumstances, he rightly does not consubstantiate the F-predicated guise with his I-guise, (which is perhaps predicated by the property of looking-at-someone-with-F). Instead, it seems, he consubstantiates the F-predicated guise with another one bearing the predicate ‘appearing-to-be-at-a-distance,’ hence his rightful third-person reference to that guise.

For Castañeda, the Gaskon example establishes the principle I*:

I* First-person reference is not reducible to demonstrative third-person reference to an entity spoken of, even if this is oneself. (Thinking, Language, and Experience 71)

Castañeda explains that we may imagine similar examples for:

I-Y* First-person reference and second-person reference are mutually irreducible (71).

For this principle, I would suggest the example of Gaskon seeing himself in the mirror without recognizing this apprehended guise as himself, instead only seeing that this guise has the property of F-illness, and declaring to the supposed person he perceives, “You are F.” In this case we see that only the execution of the indexical reference “I” would successfully “harpoon” Gaskon’s I-guise, because he has just-cause to use second-person indexicals to refer to his own image, which do reflexively harpoon his I-guise. However, if he were to express statements correctly using “I,” such as “I see that you have F,” then his indexical “I” successfully harpoons himself as the one doing the seeing, even if it does not refer to himself as also the one being seen.

Castañeda then addresses the possible criticism that these examples do not deal with true self-perception, because Gaskon sees his reflection and not his actual self. In response, Castañeda offers another thought experiment: future technology allows people to obtain a visual vantage-point placed externally to – and directed toward – their own bodies, in such a way that one may see oneself as though from another person’s visual perspective. Certain factors can move the location of this vantage-point, for example, certain foods one has digested (72). Gaskon makes use of this technology by positioning his visual vantage-point at his left side and pointing it toward his body, while sitting before a circular table in a symmetrical room. He falls asleep (and let’s presume he has just eaten a perspective-altering food), and while asleep he develops a rash on his forehead; also, his vantage-point switches over to the right side his body. When he awakes, he sees himself from this opposite perspective; yet, because he does not initially recognize himself, he declares, “This person (or, here is a self that) has a blister on his forehead.”[8] If we apply this example to similar cases, we can derive the above principles of irreducibility while still maintaining a strong criterion of identification. However, Castañeda believes such a strict criteria to be unnecessary anyway, because we normally make correct identifications from much more limited perceptions of objects, as for example recognizing someone merely by seeing her face or hearing her voice (73).

Likewise, we can discover the irreducibility of the indexical “I,” and its invariable reference to its proper I-guise, merely from certain exceptional propositions alone. Castañeda’s examples often involve people who do not yet know something about themselves, as was the case with Oedipus and Gaskon. Another such example he offers is of a millionaire who will soon learn that he has been promoted to the editorship of Soul,[9] replacing the bankrupt gentleman who hitherto held the position.[10] Thus he might rightfully say,

“I believe the Editor of Soul knows he is not a millionaire,”

because he does not yet know that he, a millionaire, is the Editor of Soul. The “I” successfully harpoons his I-guise; for, truly it is he himself who believes this. However, the equivalent nomination “Editor of Soul” does not successfully refer, because he has not yet consubstantiated this guise with his I-guise. Also, by substituting this logically-equivalent nomination for “I,” we derive the statement,

“The Editor of Soul believes he knows he is not a millionaire,”

which is logically false, because the true Editor knows and thus believes he is a millionaire. However, he also could rightfully utter this false statement, thinking he was referring to the prior editor. Thus we cannot always substitute logically-equivalent nominations for the “I” and consistently derive statements with the same truth-value. Moreover, when “I” substitutes its conflated nominations, we obtain:

“I believe that I know that I am not a millionaire,”

which is a statement that the Editor would not utter, and whose truth-value cannot be determined until it is uttered. Thus the “I” cannot always substitute for its logically-equivalent nominations.

The first-person indexical has only one guise it invariably harpoons – the I-guise uttering “I” – and the I-guise can only be invariable harpooned by one index – the “I” that it utters. Thus in its execution, the first-person indexical “picks out” a “self qua self” (The Phenomeno-Logic of the I 90).

We should note briefly the role of the “qua itself” or “as itself.” Castañeda explains that something “conceived as in some way or other” is a gross individual guise, which he formulates as:

An ordered pair (x,G) where x is conceived as, qua, the G. (221-222)

When someone correctly uses the first-person pronoun, one references oneself qua oneself, that is, one invariably indexes one’s own empirical gross I-guise (222).

This guarantee of the referential reliability of first-person reference helps explain why the statement “I do not exist now” is self-contradictory. On account of the executive function of the first-person reference, there cannot be such a person who makes this statement: an existing person saying it contradicts the fact of her existence; she does not index her I-guise. Moreover, there can never be an instance of a truthful declaration of this sentence in which the “I” of the statement harpoons its empirical I-guise, because such a pronunciation would require a non-existing person to exist in order to execute the utterance (90).

Now having established the guarantee that the execution of the first-person indexical successfully harpoons the self who utters it, we will now see how a transcendental selfhood and transcendental world follow from this principle.

Castañeda maintains what he calls a Minimal Transcendental Realist perspective, and makes use of Kant’s transcendental I think and Descartes’ radical doubt to articulate his unique ontology. An Evil Demon may deceive us into believing anything except: 1) that I think, and 2) that these thoughts are real; because even the act of doubt is a thought, and from the I think of this doubt (or the I think not, if you will), we may know that I exist as the one who is thinking. Castañeda explains that we may conceive all the alleged truths regarding the external world as a set or whole, which he calls “The Balloon” (The Phenomeno-Logic of the I 214), following “the convention of portraying the thoughts of characters in comics with sentences printed in a white bubble or balloon” (Hart “Castañeda” 19). We may doubt the alleged worldly truths of the Balloon, even altogether;

I think that (The Balloon) [is false],

yet, by doing so, we have affixed a transcendental prefix, “I think that,” which is akin to Kant’s principle of the transcendental I-think: “It must be possible for the ‘I think’ to accompany all my representations” (Kant Critique of Pure Reason B131, qt in Castañeda Phenomeno-Logic of the I 214). The components of the transcendental prefix are the transcendental Thinking I and the transcendental Think, which both “reach metaphysical ‘rock bottom.’” What exists in The Balloon might be a fiction, but “I exist thinking The Balloon or parts thereof” is no fiction whatsoever. Hence his principle:

(mTR*) There is a minimal transcendent dimension of experience underlying what is thought through the transcendental Thinking I. (215)

This transcendental I is not internal to The Balloon; yet, it does not go beyond the experience of The Balloon either; for, to think what is in The Balloon is to have a thinking experience with it. Castañeda follows Kant’s distinction between the transcendental and the transcendent: the I transcends The Balloon minimally, because it must be outside The Balloon to think it, thereby qualifying it as “transcendental;” however, it cannot be totally disconnected from – and thus transcendent to – The Balloon, for otherwise the thinking-I could not have the experience of thinking The Balloon. On account of this minimal transcendence of thought, we may think about our empirical embodiments without always thinking them as our own, which we saw in the Oedipus, Gaskon, and Editor examples: in order for one to initially think “I am not the so-and-so,” and then later learn that one is, there must be a transcendental I who either consubstantiates its empirical I-guises with itself, or does not do so.

The thinking that thinks The Balloon has two transcendental sources on opposite ends of a two-directional dimension of ontological dependences: on the one end is the world of real things, which only appear to us through guises; and we presume that the real entities exist as the sources for the guises we confront. Thus they transcend our thoughts and perceptions. On the other end of the dimension is non-reflexive thinking that serves as the transcendental source for the thinking of the I (216). On account of their transcendences, both of these ontological sources are unknowable; however, Castañeda offers an explanation for why he thinks they must exist.

His defense of the physical world as the ontological “ground floor” of The Balloon is that even if we are deceived about (all or some of) the facts in the world, and even if (all or some of) our perceptions are hallucinations, we still would try to sort-out which thoughts and perceptions are veridical and which are not. Underlying this effort would be our “deeply seated taking it for granted that there is beyond a noumenon,” which is somehow responsible for our having perceptions, veridical or not, and for the content of those perceptions (219). And if we are deceived by the Evil Demon, we may still presume that the Demon has a noumenal existence, for otherwise it would not be real, and thus would not have been able to deceive us in the first place. Hence, we may know that there is a transcendental noumenal ground for the empirical I-guises in The Balloon, and that they are invariably harpooned by correct uses of the first-person indexical.

Likewise, we may know that the “I” in transcendental prefixation in thinking acts, in the

(1) I Think that (The Balloon),

points us to a transcendental self (222). This is because when we think of proposition 1, we are thinking of ourselves as without The Balloon. However, this transcendental without is not a transcendent without, because when we think 1, we apprehend the I-Thinking-that as being at The Balloon’s boundary, but by thinking it we have also internalized it within a larger Balloon:

(2) I Think that {I think that (The Balloon)}

Thus when we think of our thinking The Balloon, we have created the larger Balloon, {I think that (The Balloon)}.

What is crucial to Castañeda's notion of the transcendental self is his claim that this expansive ballooning process is “iterative with no end:”

This iterativity makes it clear that the Thinking I is already in (1) a Thought-of I. In a sense, then, the true Thinking I is the unthought of I, which thinks (1), or (2), or any other more encompassing proposition of this sort. The iterative embodying of (1) or its successors in a more encompassing Extended Balloon merely introduces another thought-of I, thus, revealing by adumbration a semi-internalistic, inexhaustible reservoir of Thinking I’s of it which Thinking-Thought-of I’s can be extracted. Let us call that inexhaustible reservoir the transcendental I. (222)

This transcendental I is consubstantially the same as the Thinking-Thought-of I whom it thinks, and is also that which “underlies from beyond experience its thinking a Balloon,” which he calls the transcendental self (223). Hence, the infinitely iterable chain of Thinking-Thought-of I’s “have the unity of one and the same underlying unthought-of transcendental self” (223).

Likewise, each empirical I-guise within The Balloon is consubstantially the same with an empirical self; and as well, each empirical I-guise in The Balloon is consubstantially the same as each transcendental I corresponding to it (223). Thus, each transcendental self is the ‘same’ as its empirical self (223).

Moreover, each utterance of the first-person indexical “I” strictly denotes the empirical I-guise being thought of, and mediately denotes the transcendental I thinking it (224). Hence, we can see how the execution of the first-person indexical links the transcendental self with the empirical self, both of which are minimally transcendent to our experiences.

Of course, one might object that the supposed infinite iteration of thinking-thought-of I’s terminates, or originates, in a self-reflexively self-thinking thought. Castañeda rejects this as being absurd, and holds instead that there is a hierarchical structure of reflective thinking: episodes of reflective thinking 1) rest on episodes of non-reflective thinking, and 2) do not engender reflective thinking upon themselves (Thinking, Language, & Experience 65). The claim that there is self-reflexive thought would be viciously circular: to ground thought in self-reflective thinking is to say that self-consciousness is presupposed for consciousness, but self-consciousness also presupposes consciousness, for else it would not itself be an act of consciousness to begin with.

The first of James Hart’s two recent seminar presentations at the Husserl Archives of Leuven, “The Uniqueness of the Transcendental I,” makes use of Castañeda's notion that the first-person pronoun “I” refers to “myself as myself,” without also assigning any properties to myself (Hart “Uniqueness”). This sort of selfhood, he seems to suggest, is not reducible to the properties of its empirical embodiment. The second presentation, “The Beginninglessness and the Endlessness of the Transcendental I,” examines the way Husserl’s notion of the now-consciousness’ flowing protentional and retentional horizons suggest that there is a “whiling” I that has neither begun nor will ever end (“Transcendental I”). However, for Castañeda, the first-person indexical refers primarily to a transcendental I-guise; and, the transcendental self that provides the metaphysical ground for thought is non-reflexive and non-reflective. Thus, Castañeda's transcendental self is not something that is qua itself, because it cannot be consubstantiated with (taken as) itself to begin with; for, these relations can only hold between guises. If one were to make use of Castañeda's notion of the transcendental I that is implied in first-person indexicals, while also utilizing Husserl’s immortality of the transcendental ego, then the sort of immortal selfhood that might result could neither think about itself nor relate to itself, nor even perceive anything else; because, after its death it is “bereft of worldly hyle” (Hart “Transcendental I”). If this immortal ego is neither self-conscious nor aware of an embodiment of itself, then I wonder how we can still consider it to be one’s “own,” when neither itself nor anything else may be made available to it for it to own.[11]

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[1] Consider Frege’s famous example of the planet Venus as the referent, with “morning star” and “evening star” as two different senses for it.

[2] The text from which this passage is taken, Thinking, Language, & Experience, happens to have red covers.

[3] It not clear how Castañeda would like us to understand these tails, yet I imagine they could be the objects’ orientational relations to us and among themselves, resulting from the specific way we happen to be confronting them. In this sense, to perceive a field of objects is to also be “pointed-to” each of them in a different way, which provides the bases for our using demonstrative terms to single out and reference items by indexing them.

[4] I presume this term means: “Coherence in one body, union, combination.” OED def.6.

[5] May I thank Geert Gooskens for suggesting this illustrative parallel.

[6] In his introduction to The Phenomeno-Logic of the I, James Hart suggests we might explore similar Husserlian issues in Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis (Hart “Castañeda” 25); and in his review of that text, he remarks that Husserl’s notion that “one I’s immanent time can never go unfilled or have gaps” corresponds to Castañeda’s view that even the amnesiac’s self-reference cannot fail, even without her knowing who she is (“Review” 151).

[7] Here Castañeda insists that Gaskon pronounce this statement aloud, presumably to emphasize that it is being executed. However, if he were to make the statement, then he would also see that the image in the mirror does the same. This may not necessarily be a problem, because he can still, in his state of horrified shock and confusion, somehow think that this is another person who simultaneously makes the same declaration; and, because Gaskon dies immediately (perhaps either from the shock or illness), he never has the chance to reflect on the event and come to the more sensible conclusion that he is looking at himself in a mirror.

[8] I am a bit confused that he would not notice the vantage reversal. Even though the room is symmetrical and thus would appear the same from either side, I would think that this opposite vantage-point would invert the orientation of the objects in the room: when in the first case he would see himself pointed to the left, in the second I would think him to be pointed to the right side of his visual field. Of course, we can also imagine that both the vantage-point changed, and also the visual field inverted from side-to-side as well.

[9] Castañeda was the editor of Noûs.

[10] For brevity we alter some details of his example.

[11] Of course, without having read the book, I cannot really know if the Castañeda material we addressed is relevant, or if even Hart makes use of his ideas in the text. Hopefully even in the worst case, our exposition gives a helpful account of the principles underlying Castañeda's intriguing and complex philosophy of transcendental selfhood.

Works Cited

Béziau, Jean-Yves. “Quine on Identity.” Principia 7 (1-2), Florianópolis, June/December 2003, pp. 1-15.

Burks, Arthur W. “Icon, Index, and Symbol.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 9, No. 4. Jun., 1949, pp. 673-689.

Castañeda, Hector-Neri. “Identity and Sameness.” Philosophia Vol. 5 Nos. 1-2, January-April 1975, pp.121-150.

Castañeda, Hector-Neri. The Phenomeno-Logic of the I: Essays on Self-Consciousness. Eds James G. Hart and Tomis Kapitan. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.

Castañeda, Hector-Neri. “The Self and Its Guises.” Noûs, Vol. 17, No. 1, 1983 A. P. A. Western Division Meetings. Mar., 1983, pp. 60-62.

Castañeda, Hector-Neri. Thinking, Language, and Experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.

Hart, James G. “The Beginninglessness and the Endlessness of the Transcendental I.” Husserl Archives, Leuven. 14-Nov-2007.

Hart, James G. “Castañeda: A Continental Philosophical Guise.” in Castañeda, The Phenomeno-Logic of the I: Essays on Self-Consciousness. Eds James G. Hart and Tomis Kapitan. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.

Hart, James G. “Review of Edmund Husserl’s Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis.” in Husserl Studies 20. 2004, pp.135-159.

Hart, James G. “The Uniqueness of the Transcendental I.” Husserl Archives, Leuven. 13-Nov-2007.

Moser, Anna Aloisia. “Language Idling and Language in Use: Wittgenstein on Following Rules.” The 25th International Wittgenstein Symposium of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society (ALWS): Austria, 2002.

Quine, W. V. O. Word and Object. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1960. qt in Béziau.