Phenomenology Explained by David Detmer

Author:David Detmer [Detmer, David]
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780812698053
Publisher: Open Court

Profiles

We see objects always partially, always in profile, and yet they are given in experience as having other sides that are not currently visible. The object is a unity of the inexhaustibly many different ways it can be perceived. In one sense, we never see the object itself, since we cannot see all of these perspectives at once, but rather see only a profile. But from the standpoint of phenomenological description, it is not accurate to say that we see a profile. Rather, we see the object itself in the very act of seeing its profile. We see the object, right from the start, without additional acts of perception or conception, as a whole, complete object, that is, as a unity, as comprising sides that we cannot now see. Every perceptual act points beyond what is given in that perception, and anticipates what would be given in further perceptions of the same object. We can move about the object, seeing different aspects of it, investigating it in different ways, but there is no way, in principle, ever to complete this task. Perception is thus an “infinite task.”

“Retention” and anticipation are important here. As I move about an object, or in some other way scrutinize several of its aspects sequentially, one at a time, I retain in my stream of conscious experience the aspects or profiles I have already seen, and synthesize those with the ones I am seeing now and with those I anticipate seeing (as in the back side of the house which I am now viewing from the front). The consistency and coherence of these profiles (also called “adumbrations”) confirms the object’s unity, just as inconsistency can falsify our assumption of the objective unity of the thing. The object is the ideal unity of the combination of all of the infinite possible appearances of it. The Kantian idea of a thing in itself, that is, a thing outside of, or underlying, the phenomenal field entirely—for example, a thing outside of space and time—is an absurdity.

All of this is eidetically necessary. The idea that a perceived object could be given in all its aspects all at once, or be seen from no particular perspective, proves, upon examination, unthinkable and absurd. The object is given as having other sides that are presently inaccessible. Our knowledge of these unseen sides is never perfect, even when dealing with very familiar objects, but neither is it ever absolutely nothing. What is presented is always sufficiently determinative as to rule out some possibilities as to what will be revealed when the object is examined from other standpoints, and to suggest others as “open possibilities.” We will expect what is currently unseen to be compatible with what is currently seen, and also to cohere with what we know about the perceived object from earlier encounters with it. (Or, if we have had no such encounters, our expectations will be constrained, though to a lesser degree, by knowledge we have gleaned from experiences with objects that are similar to it in ways that are relevant to the expectation in question.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.