The Dresden Gallery example; Ideas 1 Part 6

I'm not looking at the Dresden Gallery. I'm not looking at its pictures. I'm looking at the idea that I'm looking at something. I'm out of my mind...in my mind.

The last post dealt with the division between the Noetic "really inherent" part of the mental composition and the "Noematic" side as a correlate of the mental processes of the Noetic, as that which is the sense for us. The Noematic was not just the intentional object though. It was the "asing" of an intention. It was the sense of the intention. It was the perceived as the perceived. It wasn't just the apple tree for example, but the fact that something called an "apple tree" is being perceived. The emphasis lied in this "is-being-perceived". If the emphasis lied just in whatever the intentional object was (Ingarden) then this would fail to satisfy the sense that really lies nowhere for Husserl in an intentional act of any sort. With this distinction established it was stated that this wasn't close to the phenomenological explanation that was to be done in regards to conscious experience. A mental phenomena is not simply mental processes with a pointing-towards the sense of it's intention. There are divisions amongst the Noetic and Noematic division itself. In particular there are levels which Husserl elaborates on after making the initial distinction between the Noesis and Noema. "All types of objectivation-modifications previously dealt with are always accessible for always newer hierarchical formations of such a kind that the intentionalities in the noesis and noema are hierarchically built up on one another or, rather, in a unique way, encased in one another". There are different levels in the way in which what was called raw "Hyletic" data becomes modified (by objectivation). For example, "There are presentiations simpliciter, modifications simpliciter of perceptions. But there are also presentiations of a second, third and, essentially, of any level whatever. Remembering 'in' rememberings will serve as an example." The phenomenology of "Remembering in rememberings" is what we will address today by Husserl's example of The Dresden Gallery and a childhood experience. These examples I think are necessary to make sense of what Husserl wants to make sense of. Husserl gives his examples in a very casual style as if the examples weren't needed. Without these examples though, his theory would be more impenetrable than it already is to any "beginner" of phenomenology. For me, the idea of elucidating phenomenological experience rests on easy-to-understand examples. As was said in the post regarding the experience of rejoicing, his examples are far and few in-between. As a reader of Husserl, it's crucial to catch the examples he gives and mediate on them for a long time. His theory is more understandable with examples given first and then the theory given second. This is not how he proceeds and I do find the methodological value in not proceeding this way because it can easily give too much of an existential connotation to phenomenology that wants to operate independent of existential experience in something called "pure reason". Nonetheless I will try to make sure that the theory independent of the examples lives in the examples that are first presented. With that being said, lets move into the levels of the noesis and the noemata by way of theory and example.

Lets go back to what Husserl stated when he said "Rememberings as rememberings will serve as an example". What does this mean? When we are presently remembering something, we can modify this remembering by remembering something in the memory itself. While being in the remembering we "effect" a series of mental processes in the "mode of presentiation". First off, everything that's being remembered is a presentation. We are being presented something. It's not as if nothing is happening. We are being presented something. Secondly, rememberings can occur as "rememberings having been lived". We can direct ourselves to this second level of remembering. Here is where an example will give us clarity on the issue. As promised in the introduction to this post, I said I would give examples for theory rather than the other way around and will start with the example of The Dresden Gallery. Husserl states "A name reminds us of the Dresden Gallery and of our last visit there: we walk through the halls and stand before a picture by Teniers which represents a picture a gallery (The painting that Husserl is referring to I put as the picture of this post). Lets flow into the phenomenological example from the start. A name comes to mind, "Dresden Gallery" comes to mind in which I put in inverted commas in order to establish the sense of the concept independent of it's actual picture seen (rather, we are thinking of the Noema "Dresden Gallery" here). In the memory is the us walking through the halls in which we stand before a specific picture by Teniers which not so ironically is a painting of a picture gallery. Within this memory, there are different levels in which the noema of "The Dresden Gallery" occurs. We can remain at one level. We can simply remain in the remebering of "The Dresden Gallery" with it's walk through the Gallery of Dresden. In this first level of remembering we have a memory simpliciter. We were given the simple memory of the Noema "us walking through Dresden Gallery." This just came to us and nothing else is attached to it at this first level. But this spontaneous memory need not stop. It can operate at different levels. "We can, again within memory, live in the observations of pictures and find ourselves in the world of pictures". Lets stop for a moment. We first (at one level) remembered something immediately and spontaneously. Now, we are again using this spontaneous memory to "consciously" recollect further into the spontaneous memory. Maybe there was something pleasurable about the memory in which makes us want to think more about the spontaneous memory. We are now in a world of pictures. We are consciously recollecting back to all the pictures in the gallery. The is a second level of the Noema. A third level can exist also. "We look at the paintings themselves". In this third level, we are not just in the picture gallery consciously after the initial memory, but are looking at a specific picture in the gallery in which we were just consciously walking in. In all these memories we were "just" doing something. This "justness" is a temporality "function". What happened was something that just happened and now is something different and hence is established as another level of remembering. The sense of these statements are very simple. We have the option to take our initial memory, our noema, and throw it into different directions. We can take the initial noema and judge it, recollect on it, make a predicated statement about it, ect. We can do many things with the noema. The noema then operates on many different levels. It doesn't have to be as simple as we are stating it right now either. Husserl throws in this sort of funny idea of even "reflecting hierarchically upon the noeses". Not only can we reflect upon The Dresden Gallery and all it's particular significations that represent different levels of the noema, but we can reflect (which we are doing right now) on the levels of rememberings that are occurring in all these reflections. We can number them and this is a reflection of another level. We have a level of the noema where we aren't looking at anything specific but simply numbering the amount of times we have different memories of the first level and all the modifications that are "correlates" of that first level. To take this a step further, I can even reflect on the reflection of numbering the amount of times that this noema is taking on different levels. I can do all this ad infinitum. "This multiplicity of possible directions of the regard essentially belongs to the multiplicity of intentionalities related to and founded in one another; and wherever we find analogous founding relationships-and in what follows we will become acquainted with many different kinds-analogous possibilities of changing reflection are brought out." All of the descriptions we gave above are intentionalities founded in and related to an original noema. Does each level represent it's own noema? Each level is it's noema in which it may find another noema but it does come from a spontaneous noema of a memory in this example. In each case in this example, we find a seeminly infinite amount of possibilities of changing reflections from what we currently have our mind on. This almost has to be the case because of time. Can I stand still in the Dresden Gallery in one noema? Can I stay put in the noema of "walking in the Dresden Gallery" without focusing on a specific picture in the Dresden Gallery (a second level). Can I stay put in this initial memory without thinking of how I got to this first noema in the first place? It seems that the temporality of the mind would make this possibility of no no-possibilities impossible. This is going to be a crucial issue that will have to be addressed; the temporality of consciousness. For now though, we have endless possibilities of changing reflections about something present. We have different levels of what's happening. This is part of the noetic-noematic character; to have levels of experiencing, to have levels of mental processes, to have levels of regards of where these mental processes take us.

Lets give a second example to fully clarify these levels or stages that characterize Reflections that allow us to give the eidetic insight that consciousness in general is hierarchical. "If we recall how yesterday we remembered a childhood experience, then the noema, 'childhood experience,' in itself has a characterization as something remembered at the second level". Lets take a close look at this example. At one time we remembered a childhood experience. We didn't think of it as a "childhood experience". It just came to us. It was a spontaneous memory. Now today, we remember how yesterday we had a memory of a "childhood experience". This second level memory attains the noema of "childhood experience." We remember the memory as being about "Childhood Experience". It could have been the case that when we first remembered it we were simply "in it", without any direction to give it another level. We could have just drifted away from that spontaneous thought to nothing. In this case, we don't know that what we were in was a "childhood experience." Something may have been pleasant about that memory though. Today we think back to the memory of that experience and like it. We consciously think about it rather than be in it like we were in the first remembering. At this second level we are elaborating on the first level memory. We are thinking more of the "childhood experience" specifically as "the childhood experience". We can verbally or non-verbally say to ourselves "That childhood experience I had yesterday was amazing. Walking through trees, hiding behind stumps, running away from my friends while we were playing an amazing game of Capture the Flag". This "analytical" memory is a second level since it's remembering a remembering. We are actively pursuing it's original "train/picture of thought". Of course, a third level comes into play here. I can look at the fact that I had an original memory, and a consciously "analytical" reflection on that memory, making two memories (two levels). I can say to myself verbally or non-verbally that "I had two memories about the same thing. In one instance something came to me spontaneously. The next day I thought about that memory to myself. I thought about all the details in it that were fun". We are reflecting on pure hierarchy here. This is a third level. There's a seperation here. I can keep thinking of object-predicates that further define the experience, and I can think of the logico-phenomenological process that is allowing this noetic-noematic process to happen. I can reflect on the actual pictures of the scene and elaborate further in detail or I can elaborate on the numbers, sets, hierarchies (the phenomeno-logic) that constitute the possibilities of these processes. Lets focus on the logic of the phenomena here that can be elaborated here since we are working within phenomenology as a discipline for consciousness. "To every level belong possible reflections at that level, so that e.g., with respect to remembered things at the second level of remembering, there are reflections on perceivings of just these belonging to the same level". The ideas here are fleshed out really well by Husserl. He distinguishes between perceivings and and reflections. We can reflect on our perceptions and give them a logical place such as a place in a numbered order or a place in a manifold of sets. Another eidetic insight is made by Husserl when he states "each noematic level is an 'objectivation' 'of' the data of the following level". Each noematic level has it's own characteristic which sets itself as the index for its level, in which other noemas can "spring" from them, and other noemas from the past can be refered to by this index character of the noema. A noema can "spring" to another noema in which the data of the previous noema was its "springboard". It takes a past noema and does something with it, it changes it. Each noema is it's own level, has its own characteristic which defines it as an index, and can be referenced back to a past noema, and changed into another noema. These are eidetic truths. What's eidetic here is the purity of hierarchy, referential-processes (Derrida's concept of the trace becomes enormously helpful here which I wish I had more time to go into now), flux/change by way of intentionality, and the taking of something into something else for example (which was our first eidetic insight when we entered into this text).

The Dresden Gallery and the childhood experience are things we can remember that are not simply things we remember and this is the point of phenomenology; to explain everything else that happens beyond what is the "dead" concept in just "remembering". There are levels, characterizations of each level which make each level it's own index for previous and future levels. These things do happen to us immanently. The fact that there are a seemingly infinite amount of possibilities that can happen in the noetic-noematic consciousness gives credence to the possibility of a science of phenomenology, as a descriptive science like what we just wrote about above. It's not the case that everything above had to be written about. It could have been the case that everything written about above happened without us expressing it linguistically, in word or writing, but we are writers and thinkers. As writers and thinkers, we have the possibility for elaborating on what goes without saying. This going without saying that escapes both the "hard" and "soft" sciences alike is precisely what grounds any science in general. The scope of phenomenology is to work within the possibility given to us as writers, readers, and thinkers on elaborating on what always goes without saying for thinking being to happen. It's not within phenomenology's jurisdiction to answer "why" we are given over to "thinking being" in which we are given the possibility to elaborate on how "thinking being" happens. The teleological presupposition that one could place on phenomenology would be it's dependence on writing as a form, and it's psychological desire for elaboration, maybe even it's sadistic desire for creating complexity, ect. There may be something to these psychoanalytical/deconstructive explanations. But however this "desire" would determine phenomenology, it wouldn't take away from the fact that the experiences that we elaborated on above with the the Dresden Gallery and the childhood experience actually happened independent of the phenomenologists desires. All the possibilities that we laid out are just that, real possibilities independent of anyone who wanted to write on them. With that being said, it's obvious how large the field phenomenology is and can be. As a descriptive science it has endless possibilities relative to the endless possibilities exhibited by and happening in human consciousness.




new Coral single. Ridic.

The Noetic-Noematic Division; Ideas I Part 5

Diagrams are made when concepts are just too difficult to put into words alone.

In the last post we went into a general example of a phenomenological description with Husserl's example of rejoicing. Now with his first example in tow, we move onto the substance of phenomenology and easily the most difficult part of Ideas I. As a warning to readers, don't read further if you're not ready for the precision in which Husserl details experience. What will be written about next is the first depths of phenomenological examination. It's a reduction and a dividing of what experience normally was (naively understood). The phenomenological reduction done by Husserl has lead to this point where experience gets dispersed into parts. It's here where experience isn't seen as holistic but surrounded by differences, modifications, multiple descriptions on each modification, and detailed analysis in general. This detailed analysis is phenomenological analysis. At once what was thought of as "going without saying" for phenomenology now becomes something different from what was "going without saying". It's here where we learn that what we find is different from what "immediate intuition" would like to present (immediate intuition understood in the naive empirical sense). We are given concepts about immediate experience that aren't realized in immediate experience. We are given an immediate experience that is not understood quickly but is incessantly detailed. The first division will happen with Husserl's concepts of Noesis and Noema. Before going into these concepts first though, lets take a look a more general view of the detailed description he is about to go into.

The general view of a phenomenological experience is given by the terms "sensuous" and "intentive". A sensation content is the actual data of say a "color". "Color" here needs to be put into inverted commas to signify that something is being talked about that nonetheless we are trying to abstract to get at the pure mental phenomena of an act. There is data being taken in when one is under a "tactile" sensation also for example. These data are not to be "confused with appearing moments of physical things-coloredness, roughness, etc." The data of these after-the-moment sensuous distinctions are independent from the appearance of a color or how something feels for a time (The question of temporality needs to be addressed in these distinctions. Are they to be understood as causal?). Now, "sensuous data" present themselves as stuffs for intentive formings, or sense-bestowings, belonging to different levels". This data, this stuff which Husserl will also call "hyletic" (raw data), is to be formed for an intention. This stuff is to be given a sense which is not simply a sense, but has its own multiple levels of explanation. There is something that forms this stuff into intentive mental processes. Pure mental forms (cogitationes) create intentive mental processes of anything whatever. From stuff moments come the objective moment. These appear in the apprehension of stuff moments. These are "physical color, shape, and the like". This most general description will serve us as a sketch for what will happen in the Noetic-Noematic divide. At its core, there are stuff moments where data is "perceived" which is then modified to objective moments which are the actual recognition of color, shapes, "and the like", that still need not be expressed. Keep in mind, everything is not to be expressed under the phenomenological reduction. There is unexpressed hyletic data that is apprehended into the objective moment for consciousness. This description though is too vague. It's too open ended and this is where phenomenology comes in; to try to close the openings and gaps that are testified in any theory of experience. These gaps will be filled in the description of the Noetic and Noematic components of experience.

All that we will be investigating now are "really inherent" moments pertaining to mental processes. First is the noetic moments. These are "directions of the regard of the pure Ego to the objects 'meant'". These noetic moments seize upon an object, hold it fast while the regard adverts to other objects which appear in the "meaning". Noetic moments take hold upon "stuff moments" and produce "explicatings, relatings, comprisings, multiple position-takings of believings, valuings, and so forth". "All these are to be found in the mental processes in question, no matter how differently structured and varied they are". Every mental process will have an aspect to it where it will do something with raw hyletic data. What will it do with this data? It will take it into noetic mental processes whereby they will be modified into various intentionalities. Stuff can be explicated on. Stuff can be related to... (can't finish sentence yet). Stuff can be valued and so forth. Stuff's modification is on it's way towards being something other than what it is by these noetic mental processes. All these possibilities represent inherent moments of consciousness but "nevertheless also refer to what is not really inherent, namely by means of the heading of sense". This is where sense becomes a pure abstraction. Sense is not a mental process nor does it appear outside in some world with intentional objects (physical objects). Instead, sense is given the noematic moment; A mediating space where the really inherent noetic mental processes are given sense. "Perception for example has its noema, most basically its perceptual sense, i.e. the perceived as perceived". This is where the difficulty lies, in the noematic differentiation. We can understand the noetic distinction as that which are mental processes that make up the intentionality sphere without sense and without direct object, meaning the inherent mental processes that produces its believings, valuings, judgings, and so forth. But the noetic is differentiated into a part of the whole structure of an experienced moment. It's without its sense and without its object. Husserl is considering it in the abstract as these intentionalities independent of the idea that they are 1. intentional and 2. have an object into which they are intended to. The noematic distinction however is where sense happens independent of mental processes. Sense comes to us not in a mental process (although caused by it. Again the question of causality comes up.) but after it, if after can be used at all in any temporal sense (The problem of temporality will need to be addressed and will be in a later post. In general, questions with this theory that are not yet explained are the relation of the Noetic-Noematic division in regards to temporality and causality). For the noema though, this outside sense that gives sense to us, what is the perceived as perceived for example? What would it be like to faithfully describe the "appearing as appearing" in complete evidence and description? What is a noematic description? How can we make a statement about this sense? Husserl states "We find the perceived as perceived, to be expressed as a 'material thing', 'plant, 'tree', 'blossoming' and so forth". The key here is that we find it in it's expression. Classically speaking the noemata by Greek definition is simply the object of one's mental process (the mental process being the noetic), but for Husserl it's much more detailed than this "dead-concept" of perception-object. To bring back alive the moment of experience the details of the noemata will be necessary. So then, the noemata in an experience can't simply be the direct object as "tree" for example which we place under inverted commas in order to signify both the fact that we have something in view, but that this having-something-in-view is not yet expressed. Husserl goes on to an insightful statement where he says "The tree simpliciter can burn up, be resolved into chemical elements. But the sense of this perception, something belonging necessarily to its essence- cannot burn up; it has no chemical elements, no forces, no real proprieties". It's here where we see that sense has no external existence. It's not made of any properties. Regardless, we have a sense of a "tree" even though the "tree" may no longer be there. We can be in front of a "tree" and it can vanish right before us, but we still had a sense that something was before us. Afterwords we can describe what was once before us as a "tree" but at first it's a sense independent of expression and this is proved by the fact that one can experience something that then vanishes but this experiencing of this vanished thing is not vanished itself. If the tree were to burn, my sense of the tree won't burn. The sense of the "tree" doesn't have the properties necessary to make it flammable. It doesn't exist in the classical conception of existence. "The perceived as sense includes nothing of itself other than what "actually appears" in the mode of giveness in which it is precisely something intended to in the perception". This actual appearance for us is nothing expressible or idealized. It's an absolute zero-point where something is appearing to me in which I have no idea of what it is. This is not that difficult to understand. Any time I space out, I have a perception right in front of me of something. This actually appears but nothing is going in my mind that's focusing on the appearing and modifying it into an idealization, an expression such as the "tree". I may not even be "spacing out". I may just be walking by something where my attention is directed to it, and that is all. So this is the noema. It's the percieved AS percieved. It's the remembered AS remembered. It's not the expressed perception of "tree" although this expressed perception is a correlate of it. It's the idea that the tree is something percieved. Again, to reiterate, in any moment I can be walking by a "tree" and not recognize it. If an outside observer was watching me he may see me turn towards a "tree". Chances are, I'm not saying to myself "That's a tree". Chances are I'm given a perception of something absolutely in general. This is what it means to put the emphasis on the fact that the unexpressed direct object is a perception, a judging, a valuing, a believing, ect. It doesn't matter what I'm valuing, the sense of the valuing doesn't come from the "signified" or the direct object. The sense of the valuing comes from what valuing actually is, essentially what the definition of "valuing" is, which generally speaking is to place a judgment. The noematic moment includes both the expressed "material thing" AND the idea of the perceived as the perceived for example. The noematic content at one time is the tree simpliciter (and it can't be stressed enough how important it is to see the tree as simpliciter which is essentially seeing something that's not understood at all as a "tree", but you're facing something like a "tree". The evidence of the experience could be corroborated by a third party. Essentially someone following you around asking you if the third "tree" on the right you ran by and happened to turn to made you think of a "tree". If you are able to say "I didn't even recognize it", then you had a noematic moment independent of the expressible object. Now, the idea of the noema is a concept that is of contention within phenomenology (so it's OK for it to be difficult to understand at first). Roman Ingarden saw it simply as the direct object of anything whatsoever that was intended in an experience. In this sense he had a "classical" interpretation of noemata, simply as the object of ones mental experience (which could also include a fantasized object for example) . Robert Sokolowski on the other hand in his Introduction to Phenomenology maintains that the noema is the percieved as perceived for example. It is exactly that. It's not the object of perception, but the fact that in one instance I can see a chair by perception. It's this phenomenological moment that is stressed by Sokolowski and I think is faithful to the Husserlian project; essentially to detail the fact that an object of a mental process is not just an object that can forever be elaborated on by language, but a phenomenological moment of perception when something, whatever it is, is a perception-sense, and when enough perception beyond the 1-sideness that is now happening, happens, then it becomes idealized into lingustic formulation. But I think it's helpful for Husserl to stress that the noematic moment is expressed as a "meterial thing" E.G. a "tree", but at the same time the noematic emphasis is on the fact that is was a perception-sense in the first place, not an expressible concept. Nonetheless I would personally combine both Ingarden and Sokolowski's views here based on the fact that Husserl referred to the noema both as being something expressed and as something of the intentional act soley as its sense. It must be said though that he absolutely stresses the fact of the noema being the object of the noetic intention (E.G. perception). In this case Husserl's emphasis is on the perceived as perceived. The actual linguistic object isn't the sense. The lingustic object is the dead represented term that will be immediately meaningful based on definitions. The sense though for the noema is the absolute simplicity of being able to see something NOT as something, but simply "as". This "asing" in the noema is the pure representation operation that's is on it's way to represent something, to give its something its sense by representing it, judging it, perceiving it, etc.

Husserl appropriately expands the concept of the noema into negating the idea of it being some sort of "Cartesian theater". Two realities aren't given. We don't have a reality that is happening outside ourselves and then one which the noema represents as an "internal image". "No internal image is given. Only the tree simpliciter". The noema is an operation of "asing" an intentional process into something else, maybe a "semblance to what was prior to the intention, but this is beyond our scope and pure speculation which is not the work of phenomenology. While phenomenology may always be at the limits of possible reason in terms of human experience it won't conjecture into whatever a raw hyletic data is (except for an empty variable). Basically, when I see a "tree" without recognizing it as a "tree", it's not a "tree", its a tree simpliciter meaning I have no sense of it other than it's something that's being perceived. It's object is my intentional perception of "it", and this is an example of the noema. Now, with all these quotations being made about a perceived "tree" that can't really be perceived, and even the "perceived as the perceived" that can't be understood in it's simpliciter sense, we are left to thinking if we can understand anything at all regarding Husserl's claims to phenomenological elucidation. He answers this though in a sort of "welp-that's-true" kind of way. He states "The parenthesis undergone by perception prevent any judgment about perceived actuality. But it does not prevent the judgment about the fact that perception is consciousness of an actuality and doesn't prevent it from appearing 'actually' in the particular ways intended to E.G. one-sidedly". Here we are given eidetic truths. Husserl won't allow us to understand something we can't understand. But what we can know is that what was parenthesized in order to show that the concept under parentheses can't be understood in it's "perceived actuality" nonetheless shows that something actual is being perceived even if we know nothing about it's actuality and can never know anything about it. We can even know that we see something one-sidedly. We can know that when we are running past a tree unknowing that what we see is a "tree", that we are only seeing one side of it, until we run a little further and see another side of it. None of this we know in the presence but we can logically infer this is the case. We can apply deductive logic to phenomenology. If a tree has an infinite amount of parts (or possible perceptions) to it and I run by some parts of it, then it's not the case that I see an infinite amount of parts to it. From this deductive logic, we can infer that we only see some parts of the "tree" even though we were never aware of it in the presence of the "tree".

Every post after this will be further elaborations on the Noetic-Noematic divide. This post certainly tried to flesh out the idea of the noema in regards to Husserl's conception of it. As beginners, I made a basic diagram at the top of this post in order to flesh out the Noetic-Noematic divide. It may be an over simplification for now but nonetheless will acquaint one with the idea of what Husserl is trying to convey (Please bear with the terrible penmanship. I whipped it up in 10 minutes) . What is missing is a detailed analysis of the Noetic-Noematic division (in the diagram). This detailed analysis will be done in further posts. There will possibly be more diagrams. I have a feeling at this point though that it will simply be loads and loads of descriptions in regards to the relationship between the noetic and nomatic components of mental phenomena.