?

[Sean Gaffney]

Folks,

I would like to use this lull in the Husserlian storm to ask a question about Edith Stein. 

I finally got past page 5, though I still find myself re-reading it, as if there is something there I need to understand better. Anyway, I got to page 17, and had to stop: I am uncertain whether my understanding of "primordial" and "non-primordial" is consistent with what Edith Stein means by them. I cannot find a clear definition in her own text, McIntyre doesn't treat the topic. Calcagno does, page 38, though this adds to my confusion. He seems to treat these terms as if they are common currency in philosophical circles, with no added Steinian dimension.

Can someone point me in a useful direction?

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Philip Brownell]

Hi Seán,

I'm glad you asked that.  I had to look up primordial to see I really understood the word, and every time I run across it, I have to remind myself what that means.  I could use a bit more development of the concept.

Phil

PS I have now added Mette Lebech to the group, who will looking in on us to see how this operates before deciding to remain or not

[Dan Bloom]

Hi:

What do guys say the meaning is?

I might be missing something.

Doesn’t it mean “in the beginning”? And as used, it means before anything else? Original. From which everything else develops.  It is unfiltered or modified. 

PE p 7 — Stein talks about things being “primordially given.” I read that to mean “immediately.”

The word connotes a primitive state or quality from which more complex states will develop. It is a ground.

A non-promoridal experience, as she uses it, is not immediate, original, or unmodified. Her examples are memory, expectation, and fantasy.  She says they involved representations, and for her, representations cannot be primordial because they are developed from something else, not an immediate given. 

In Heidegger’s terms, the world is primordially given. We don’t create it for ourselves, we are thrown into it. I wake up in the morning to a Mood that I experience as already there.  It is the tone of the moment. 

This is how I think about the term. 

I may be way off. I haven’t spent much time with PE.

Dan

[Philip Brownell]

Well, Dan, I think you nailed it as far as my understanding went anyway.  This is the pre-reflective givenness of experience as well, isn't it?  Would this what Jean-Marie Robine calls the "Id of the Situation?"

Phil

[Dan Bloom]

Phil, yes, that’s it.

This is also Husserl’s pre-reflective consciousness or close to it. Isn’t there a primordial basis from which consciousness develops and which flows beneath consciousness? I need to check. But I’m pretty sure Husserl has a primordial basis for experience. 

Id function is primordial. I think.

Since id is of the situation (world?) it is primordial to our differentiation as subjects (egos). Peter says that this means id function is not a self function, but a field function. I don’t agree. Self is of the world and is primordially undifferentiated. We need an other to be an I. But that is a later functioning of self. Self includes a primordial sense of the situation since we are beings-in-the-world. 

Empathy, then, is a function of our worldednesss. We immediately have a sense of one another before we reflect on the situation. 

I am trying to work-out the distinction between “world (lifeworld)” and “situation.”  Situation is the current term of the moment. I think it is more precise than “field,” but it seems to me that situation is developed from world. We are in-the-world prior to being in a situation. 

I am also playing with “lifeworld” and “world.” This is murky and takes me between the lines of Husserl and Heidegger. Then to Stein, Schütz, Lewin, Gurwitsch, Welton  and so on.

This is relevant to my EAGT  presentations.   

I can’t get rid of this underline. 

It means nothing other pointing at my confusion.

Dan

[Sean Gaffney]

Dan & Phil,

I can see where you're coming from...and find myself nodding in agreement...and then find myself going back to her own note, 21, on page 121. I think this note is one of the things that throws me off target a little. "Act of experience"...surely equivalent to "experiencing"? I need to think this through a bit more...

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Sean Gaffney]

Folks,

The best way for me to check if I understand something is to explain what I think I understand, and see if it works.

So: "primordial" has to do with origin, from where/whom something originates. If Phil is happy at some recent event, then his happiness originates with him, is primordial to Phil. If I empathise with Phil's happiness, then the act of empathy, the experience is primordial to me. This is a connection of two subjectivities.

So Edith Stein was describing intersubjectivity in a publication of 1916. 

She was also proposing Lifepower simultaneously with Freud's proposal of libido. Yet somehow, of the two of them, she would seem to connect via Bergson's elan vital to Lebensphilosophie more than he. 

Making sense?

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Sean Gaffney]

Just reading Sawicki on "Husserl's Early Treatments of Intersubjectivity" in her Body, Science and Text.

"In terminology later adopted byHusserl and and by Edith Stein, this is the distinction between "originary" and "non-originary" live experience. Here Husserl counts two acts and two different contents (i.e., "data"). Stein will count two acts but only one content, although that content ("datum") will be entertained in two slightly different versions."

Hmmm.

Seán

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www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Philip Brownell]

I don't get that part.  Can you describe it in another way?

[Sean Gaffney]

This is a direct quote from Sawicki, page 67, footnote 45.

I am inclined to believe that Marianne Sawicki is pointing to Edith Stein's position which is - in the example I quoted earlier - that you and I are sharing a feeling of happiness (content), though your experience is primordially yours and mine is mine. 

I think....

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Philip Brownell]

Okay. I get it.  And I like it, especially that part about "entertained in two slightly different versions."  This, to me, is related to the subject of projective identification.  I always balked and the idea that somehow someone could "put" their unfinished business in me, so that I would then begin to struggle with it (so that they could then watch me and figure out how to be comfortable with it through observing my struggle).  HOW did it get from inside them to inside me?  It always seemed like mumbo jumbo.  This, especially with the bit about a slightly different version, allows the second person to pick up on what the first person is going through and deal with it in their own way, see in their own slightly different way, make it their own empathic experience.  Does this makes sense?

Phil

[Sean Gaffney]

Phil,

Fine! Two thoughts:

1) Yes - the "two versions" is attractive. A concrete example: I publish my first book. I am excited, happy, proud. You know what it is like to publish your first book, you remember your excitement, happiness and pride. At the same time, you are Phil and I am Seán. Excitement, happiness and pride are uniquely experienced by each of us - our "two versions" (if I am understanding this properly!).

2) I see you adding a dimension to projective identification: it is not that the other offloads psychic material into/you - it can also be you who empathises with the other's content! How's that for new theory?

3) Thought two was not in my head when I wrote "Two thoughts:" above! Anyway, I use Lewinian field theory to replace the mechanics of projective identification. Strong emotion is an energy, a force of the social field emergent from our sharing the same temporality and spatiality. If an energy is of our co-created field and not being directed appropriately by the person in whom it originates, then it is possible (in my extrapolation of Lewin) for this energy to emerge elsewhere in that social field. So, hmm. Again, this notion of originary. Hmmm...not to mention lifepower!

Seán

 

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Philip Brownell]

Dear Seán,

I like what you've done here, and perhaps we could say that field dynamics include the empathetic response.

Phil

[Sean Gaffney]

Phil,

I'm kind of inclined towards at least entertaining the notion that, in social fields, field dynamics are emergent from empathetic responses.

This sets off all sorts of tangential side-roads: was Edith Stein heading into similar existential territory as Heidegger? Is Edith Stein giving us a philosophical support for exploring aspects of Lewin (who anyway knew his Brentano and Husserl)?

So how about this, also from Sawicki, page 103:

"(Husserl) yearned for a knoewledge automatically produced, tamper-proof, untouched and undetermined by any quirks of the knower. (Stein) finds that that's a doomed quest in the case of knowing people as people."

I think this is where both you and Sylvia have been, on and off...

Anyway, onward...em...yeah, onward!

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[LG Brownell]

P, S, D,...enjoying these short blurbs between you and learning fr them...L



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[Dan Bloom]

Perfect. “Originary” and “non-originary.” 

I think that Heidegger also uses “primordial” along with “originary” to mean different but similar things. 

“Originary" refers to something epistemological, such as an "originary experperience”? “Priomordial” is ontological, such as in a “primordial basis” for experience. I don’t know enough to say any more. Except that I may be completely wrong.

What is it in German.

On Jul 31, 2010, at 6:01 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

[Dan Bloom]

This makes sense.

[Dan Bloom]

How could field dynamics NOT include the empathic response?

[Dan Bloom]

Seán and Phil:

I don’t understand how you separate empathic responses from field dynamics in the first place.  Isn’t empathy one of the ways we are in the phenomenal field.

I like the quote from Sawicki.  That surely was Husserl’s quest. But did it remain his quest? I’m not so sure. By the time of the Fifth Cartesian Meditation, in which he addresses intersubjectivity and empathy, I don’t think we was  understanding other subjects in that way. 

This doesn’t matter, really. He wasn’t thinking that way in 1916, unless someone finds evidence to the contrary in the archives.

What does Sawicki mean in her last sentence “knowing people as people”?  

And if Husserl’s quest is doomed in that case, is it not doomed otherwise? That is, can we have any knowledge untouched by the knower?

Tell me more, Seán, about the existential territory.

Dan

[Dan Bloom]

Seán:

I don’t follow this.

Are you suggesting that this “energy” can be unattached to a person, “elsewhere in the social field.”

How is energy appropriated? 

Is this a deliberate action?

Dan

On Jul 31, 2010, at 6:52 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

[Dan Bloom]

Makes sense!

On Jul 31, 2010, at 6:21 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

[Dan Bloom]

I agree!

Lebensphilosophie was not appealing to neo-Kantians or to any thinker who wanted to be scientific. Freud was a scientist.

[Sean Gaffney]

Dan,

See below...

On Sat, Jul 31, 2010 at 2:33 PM, Dan Bloom <d...@djbloom.com> wrote:

Seán:

I don’t follow this.

Are you suggesting that this “energy” can be unattached to a person, “elsewhere in the social field.”

No. Read it again, and connect it back to the empathy/field comments and exchanges, including those around projective identification. I am reluctant to use a Lewinian construct here as you are likely to let it come between you and the rest of my content...so...here goes: Lewin borrows the term vector from physics. A vector is a force/energy with an origin, a direction and a magnitude, If expressed, that is directed by the origin to the other, with the relevant magnitude, then fine: it is now grist for the field dynamics mill. If not, then it is an constituting energy of that shared social field and may well empathetically felt or sensed. I see this in groups, for example, when a member expresses an emotion or judgement which seems misdirected or over-reactive; or a member is confused by feeling something though unsure of what and how and why, etc. So: NO! Not unattached, just attached to a secondary origin.

Is this making sense?

How is energy appropriated? 

Empathy! 

Is this a deliberate action?

Probably out of awareness and thus mildly confusing... 

Dan

On Jul 31, 2010, at 6:52 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

If an energy is of our co-created field and not being directed appropriately by the person in whom it originates, then it is possible (in my extrapolation of Lewin) for this energy to emerge elsewhere in that social field. So, hmm. Again, this notion of originary. Hmmm...not to mention lifepower!

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Sean Gaffney]

I have seen the German, which gave me the Swedish - though in one of the commentaries, I think. I am in Stockholm. Apart from PE and Sawicki, all the rest of my books are in my country house, 2 hours away...

So more later!

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

I got it! 

Thanks and it makes sense.

Hey, don’t mistake me for a person hostile to that Lewin character! I want to know more about his ideas.

[Dan Bloom]

I am in the country for the next week. 

I thought I took all the books I needed... but I just felt the need for Palmer’s Hermeneutics.  I read that it’s a classic. I need it now!

[JOHN.H...@nuim.ie]

Hi all,


Have been particularly busy lately. Now, the German that is used for primordial is - 'Originarität' and non-primordial is 'Nicht-Originarität'. (ZDE, p. 6) 


When I feel primordial joy - it is a feeling that is, as it were, 'live' experience - so I publish a book and am filled with this 'joy' which is given 'live' in the 'present' moment of experience (rather than say memory which is not an experience of a present experience but a present experience of a 'past' experience in time), but then if I see a child who falls on the street and cuts his/her legs really badly and she's crying, this may raise the experience of 'sadness'. So I am primordially experiencing joy - in present experience, but suddenly 'within' a non-primordial or 'Nicht-Originarität' experience arises of sadness or 'pity' or whatever because I am empathising after experiencing the child who had that horrible fall. So, there is no reason for me to be feeling 'sad', because I am primordially happy after the publication of my book and this joy runs through me, but because of this incident that occurs with the child - a 'non-primordial' experience arises which is given in response to my experience of the 'Other' - (fremdem Bewusstsein). 


Primordial is a particularly important term alright. 
 
Haydn 

[Dan Bloom]

Haydn:

Welcome back. 

 I have a question and then some discussion of your example with more questions.

I see the German “Originarität.”  Primoridal. Excellent. 

Is there a different German word for “originary”? 

What was the transition from the use of “primordial” to “originary.” Was this merely a matter of translator-choice? 

Let me give another example similar to yours for our discussion.

A miracle happens and I too get a book published  and am flushed with primordial joy. Immediately felt and non-derivative, it is a primordial experience. 

I see a child get injured and crying in sadness. I feel sad — non-primordial experience, an em-pathic feeling. 

All well and good.

But:

My primordial feeling of joy was about my good fortune and also  about my relationships to others. 

My joy is inextricable with my sense of peoples' joy for me, how I will make my family proud, my teachers happy and so on. Even deeper and unaware, this joy might involve complicated tangles of unresolved feelings that are surely not original but come to the foreground with my good news.

And to the extent that every experience I have is of me in-the-world with others, no experience can be primordially mine. Every experience is situated. Never purely given. (Do you know Sellars “The Myth of the Given”? This is a rare case of me referring to an analytic philosopher!)

My joy at that moment had  a social-personal context without which “I” couldn’t be an “experiencer.” That joy is as affected by its temporal surroundings, context, as it is by its social context. 

I question the possibility of primordial experience. 

“Questioning is the piety of knowledge.” Heidegger

Now to the child.

 I can feel my empathic instantiation of her sadness. 

But isn’t it also true that I feel sadness without any involvement of empathy.

I am sad because I am sad when a child is hurt — that is, my sadness is not dependent on this child’s sadness empathically experienced by me.

I read a newspaper story about an injured child and become sad. No photo in this instance.

My sadness when I witness a sad child would be stronger than when I read about it, but isn’t that a function of the vividness of the medium by which I am made sad? Eyewitness versus newspaper.

If this is so, how can we separate empathy from other feelingful reactions if the experience is the same? If the experience is felt to be the same?

Thanks for giving me this to think about on this unusually cool morning.

Dan

[Sean Gaffney]

Your humble servant, sir!

Methinks Lewin will make a reurn visit here...

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

Sehr gut. 

Ich werde ihm welkommen.

I will welcome him.

(One month until Germany.)

[Sean Gaffney]

Thanks, Haydn - this helps me to separate "originating" from "primordial". The joy originates in me, the sadness originates in the child. My act of empathy with her and my experience of this empathy, orginate in me.

Yes, all falling into place...

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Sean Gaffney]

Dan,

I believe that reading Edith Stein of 1926 in the light of Heidegger of 1927 is a little distracting, at the same time as there might just be more of a connection between them than meets the eye...so I look forward to following this thread...

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Sean Gaffney]

Dan,

That actually was my point. I think I made it anyway, though in another "version"!

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

Seán:

I’m not sure that I was approaching her this way. But  I must have been since I am reading from my current understandings, which include Heidegger.

It may be that my questions distract you and me from learning ES on her own terms. 

Or this is how I do it.

Dan

[Dan Bloom]

Great.

You know that I am being very conservative in how I use the concepts of field. 

I do this with all of GT ideas. I throw away how I had been understanding them and re-think, re-apply, them. 

[Sean Gaffney]

Dan,

Let's just do it as we're doing it: my comment is a process comment, not a critical remark.

Let me add to here: if anyone can unlock the similarities and distinctions between Edith Stein and Heidegger, it's you. Okay? (Just now, as I press SEND, I can experience non-originating warmth...).

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

Seán:

And I feel that warmth and my warmth and smiles and laughter and oh, shall I say, yes, yes, this is the way for us to go for there is no other go another way.

Dan

[Sean Gaffney]

And, Dan, I am increasingly appreciating both your conservatism in some areas and radical innovation in others. Keeps me on my toes!

And at the moment, I am also taken up with the explicit intersubjectivity of PE and the later works - how many young and in those times female philosophers tackled the subject of individual-community-state, for example. 

She seems to me to be very being-in-world.

Anyway - this has been an exciting series of exchanges. I feel energised to dig into PE again. 

Thank you all who participated in my learning what I was learning!

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Sean Gaffney]

Dan,

Just had a thought: you like primordial. I find myself preferring originating.

Primordial seems so...Heideggerean, somehow.

Originating seems so Lewinian, don't you think?

We just never give up, do we?

And I notice how I am wondering whether Edith Stein can give me the philosophical support for a deeper appreciation of Lewin as a social-psychologist.

And now for some dinner and the European Athletics Championship. So far, Ireland has a fifth placing...well, maybe two! WOW! What a sporting nation!

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

Seán:

I like what you say about female philosophers. I wonder if this is true for Hannah Arendt. If we are looking at the unsung woman phenomenologists, she is one of them. (I am waiting for the movie, “Martin and Hannah: fire and brimstone” or something like that. It would be a scorcher.)

Individual-community-state was a question for Rosenzweig, Buber, and Heidegger. 

Community and the individual was a central concern for them. R and HD focused on a special relationship of community and history. Buber was differently oriented. 

As I read more about Stein in this area, I see how she fits with them. For R, B, and H, the Volk was the context within which a person finds meaning. I don’t know enough to say more.

Aggressive conservatism leads to radical innovation. :)

Intellectual stubbornness makes me a slow learner. I really ask things to be proved to me.

Dan

[Dan Bloom]

I love “originary.”  Very much.

I also like “primordial." 

I think we can use them to mean different things.

Enjoy dinner and the athletic thing.

D.

[JOHN.H...@nuim.ie]

Hi Dan, 

Sawicki's commentary on Stein is very good in terms of explaining her idea of empathy, I'll just quote her before going on to comment on your questions below. I think it's good to get a view from many sides especially given Sawicki's careful exploration of Stein's work.

'[Stein] describe[s] empathy as an appearance without any "coming in" or "going out" of personality or information. The feeling registers entirely within one's own consciousness, but it registers there in a way that announces a foreign life. I feel the feeling of another, as such, in that I am aware of something about my own feeling that directly presents the other human being. I feel myself led (geleitet) in this feeling. My awareness is magnetized and configured to a pattern not of my own design. To become aware of this aspect of awareness - its having been led - requires a reflective act [...] You [i.e. Stein] concur here with Husserl's account of the 'doubling' of the i as it engages in such experiences as remembering, expecting, pretending, [...]. In the last chapter, this doubled i-experience was indicated with the formula now/"now". This serves as shorthand notation for events such that, in my flowing lifestream, I now experience what is a 'now' elsewhere in some lifestream -- either an alien lifestream, or my own lifestream at some other time. With such events, the other 'now' cannot become a live now for me because, as Husserl insisted, there are no canals between streams of i-hood. Your monadic model obeys the no-canal rule, because it finds the complete and definitive essence of its target -- one's inward awareness of others -- entirely within the registrations of appearances occurring within one's conscious life.' (Marianne Sawicki, Body, Text and Science, p. 96). 

and

In empathy,  'i' would register a 'live' experience - an experience in which 'someone' lives, and that this 'i' living there is not recognizably identical to my own i. Thus an alien i appears. Second I can go on to discover just who that alien i might be. (But this second step is a matter of empirical investigation and is therefore beyond the remit of Stein's eidetic study) (see, Sawicki, p. 97). 

> Welcome back.  Thank you.

>  I have a question and then some discussion of your example with more questions. > > I see the German “Originarität.”  Primoridal. Excellent.  > Is there a different German word for “originary”?  > What was the transition from the use of “primordial” to “originary.” Was this merely a matter of translator-choice?

* I think it was the translator's choice, but I would think probably in the context of Husserl's philosophy, but I'm not totally sure, would need to explore the origin of the term.

> > Let me give another example similar to yours for our discussion. > > A miracle happens and I too get a book published  and am flushed with primordial joy. Immediately felt and non-derivative, it is a primordial experience.  > I see a child get injured and crying in sadness. I feel sad — non-primordial experience, an em-pathic feeling.  > All well and good. > But: > > My primordial feeling of joy was about my good fortune and also  about my relationships to others.  > My joy is inextricable with my sense of peoples' joy for me, how I will make my family proud, my teachers happy and so on. Even deeper and unaware, this joy might involve complicated tangles of unresolved feelings that are surely not original but come to the foreground with my good news. > And to the extent that every experience I have is of me in-the-world with others, no experience can be primordially mine. Every experience is situated. Never purely given. (Do you know Sellars “The Myth of the Given”? This is a rare case of me referring to an analytic philosopher!)

*I did an M.A. course on Sellar and his myth of the given, the rylean ancestors, where one becomes self-aware and the rest of the group become conscious etc. but I would probably need to read over his stuff to recall his arguments.  Well in relation to the above, if there were no primordial experience - no experience that is 'mine', that I can realise as my experience in my lifestream given to my 'i' then can there be an 'I' at all? How would we differentiate ourselves from the group? It would just be a bundle of experiences without an order? Or we wouldn't be capable of reflecting on my 'i' and another 'i' so no empathy?

> My joy at that moment had  a social-personal context without which “I” couldn’t be an “experiencer.” That joy is as affected by its temporal surroundings, context, as it is by its social context.

* I don't think it's possible to be so affected that the 'I' cannot realise that this experience is its own primordial experience, otherwise as above, the 'I' could not differentiate itself from another 'i' and the 'We' of community. Stein will later talk about an 'I/We' constitution in terms of her studies on community.

> > I question the possibility of primordial experience.  > “Questioning is the piety of knowledge.” Heidegger > > Now to the child. >  I can feel my empathic instantiation of her sadness.  > But isn’t it also true that I feel sadness without any involvement of empathy. > I am sad because I am sad when a child is hurt — that is, my sadness is not dependent on this child’s sadness empathically experienced by me. > I read a newspaper story about an injured child and become sad. No photo in this instance. > My sadness when I witness a sad child would be stronger than when I read about it, but isn’t that a function of the vividness of the medium by which I am made sad? Eyewitness versus newspaper. > If this is so, how can we separate empathy from other feelingful reactions if the experience is the same? If the experience is felt to be the same? >

*Well empathy would work in many situations, not just in 'seeing' the child as you quite rightly point out. I think if you are reading a book, you would still need to be able to empathize. The text would cause you to have feelings for the various characters but you would probably need to hide from yourself the fact that the feelings we feel in these cases are not originary (Stein, 1917/ 1980 p. 35-36).  Sawicki states:  'To read is to take on the subjectivity offered by the writer: to ride along on the author's i and vicariously to move through the course of an emotional process, an argument, or a story. To write is to display an 'i' as model and guide for such a joinery. if one could not feel-into the experience of another human being, one simply could not learn to read or write. Your Einfuehlungslehre is a theory of literacy. (Sawicki, p. 106).

> Thanks for giving me this to think about on this unusually cool morning.

You ask difficult questions, the cold is not stalling your thinking :-).  > Haydn

[Dan Bloom]

Haydn:

You’ve moved me (us) along in understand ES.

Let me reply to your replies, below:

On Jul 31, 2010, at 11:09 AM, JOHN.H...@nuim.ie wrote:

Hi Dan, 

Sawicki's commentary on Stein is very good in terms of explaining her idea of empathy, I'll just quote her before going on to comment on your questions below. I think it's good to get a view from many sides especially given Sawicki's careful exploration of Stein's work.

'[Stein] describe[s] empathy as an appearance without any "coming in" or "going out" of personality or information. The feeling registers entirely within one's own consciousness, but it registers there in a way that announces a foreign life. I feel the feeling of another, as such, in that I am aware of something about my own feeling that directly presents the other human being. I feel myself led (geleitet) in this feeling. My awareness is magnetized and configured to a pattern not of my own design. To become aware of this aspect of awareness - its having been led - requires a reflective act [...] You [i.e. Stein] concur here with Husserl's account of the 'doubling' of the i as it engages in such experiences as remembering, expecting, pretending, [...]. In the last chapter, this doubled i-experience was indicated with the formula now/"now". This serves as shorthand notation for events such that, in my flowing lifestream, I now experience what is a 'now' elsewhere in some lifestream -- either an alien lifestream, or my own lifestream at some other time. With such events, the other 'now' cannot become a live now for me because, as Husserl insisted, there are no canals between streams of i-hood. Your monadic model obeys the no-canal rule, because it finds the complete and definitive essence of its target -- one's inward awareness of others -- entirely within the registrations of appearances occurring within one's conscious life.' (Marianne Sawicki, Body, Text and Science, p. 96). 

and

In empathy,  'i' would register a 'live' experience - an experience in which 'someone' lives, and that this 'i' living there is not recognizably identical to my own i. Thus an alien i appears. Second I can go on to discover just who that alien i might be. (But this second step is a matter of empirical investigation and is therefore beyond the remit of Stein's eidetic study) (see, Sawicki, p. 97). 

> Welcome back.  Thank you.   >  I have a question and then some discussion of your example with more questions. > > I see the German “Originarität.”  Primoridal. Excellent.  > Is there a different German word for “originary”?  > What was the transition from the use of “primordial” to “originary.” Was this merely a matter of translator-choice?  * I think it was the translator's choice, but I would think probably in the context of Husserl's philosophy, but I'm not totally sure, would need to explore the origin of the term. > > Let me give another example similar to yours for our discussion. > > A miracle happens and I too get a book published  and am flushed with primordial joy. Immediately felt and non-derivative, it is a primordial experience.  > I see a child get injured and crying in sadness. I feel sad — non-primordial experience, an em-pathic feeling.  > All well and good. > But: > > My primordial feeling of joy was about my good fortune and also  about my relationships to others.  > My joy is inextricable with my sense of peoples' joy for me, how I will make my family proud, my teachers happy and so on. Even deeper and unaware, this joy might involve complicated tangles of unresolved feelings that are surely not original but come to the foreground with my good news. > And to the extent that every experience I have is of me in-the-world with others, no experience can be primordially mine. Every experience is situated. Never purely given. (Do you know Sellars “The Myth of the Given”? This is a rare case of me referring to an analytic philosopher!) *I did an M.A. course on Sellar and his myth of the given, the rylean ancestors, where one becomes self-aware and the rest of the group become conscious etc. but I would probably need to read over his stuff to recall his arguments.  Well in relation to the above, if there were no primordial experience - no experience that is 'mine', that I can realise as my experience in my lifestream given to my 'i' then can there be an 'I' at all? How would we differentiate ourselves from the group? It would just be a bundle of experiences without an order? Or we wouldn't be capable of reflecting on my 'i' and another 'i' so no empathy?

There is a primordial  experience that I know is mine.  I am questioning the structure of  “primordial” to suggest that it might be sedimented even though immediately known to me as “mine.”  In fact, I suggest that while the experience seems originary, it occurs against a “more” originary background.  There is no givenness that doesn’t have its context which shapes it. I feel joy because of my relational history along-with-others who taught me my feelings (so say social psychologists).   My “I” is contextualized with a “we,” so no experience I can have stand outside the social world.  There is always an other within my experience, whether or not she “stands” before me.    I am able to know I am an “I” apart from a group and I am able to self-reflect  because I am emergent of a primordial intersubjective foundation and I live in a world where others see me. This is outside ES, but there are lots of philosophers who address the question of the origin of “I” — whether we call it self, subject, ego, or I.  You know them better than I do,.

> My joy at that moment had  a social-personal context without which “I” couldn’t be an “experiencer.” That joy is as affected by its temporal surroundings, context, as it is by its social context.  * I don't think it's possible to be so affected that the 'I' cannot realise that this experience is its own primordial experience, otherwise as above, the 'I' could not differentiate itself from another 'i' and the 'We' of community. Stein will later talk about an 'I/We' constitution in terms of her studies on community.  >

I am interested in learning more about Stein’s I/We. I can recognize this feeling as my own. We do it all the time — at least, in mental health. I think I responded to my questioning of “primordial."

> I question the possibility of primordial experience.  > “Questioning is the piety of knowledge.” Heidegger > > Now to the child. >  I can feel my empathic instantiation of her sadness.  > But isn’t it also true that I feel sadness without any involvement of empathy. > I am sad because I am sad when a child is hurt — that is, my sadness is not dependent on this child’s sadness empathically experienced by me. > I read a newspaper story about an injured child and become sad. No photo in this instance. > My sadness when I witness a sad child would be stronger than when I read about it, but isn’t that a function of the vividness of the medium by which I am made sad? Eyewitness versus newspaper. > If this is so, how can we separate empathy from other feelingful reactions if the experience is the same? If the experience is felt to be the same? > *Well empathy would work in many situations, not just in 'seeing' the child as you quite rightly point out. I think if you are reading a book, you would still need to be able to empathize. The text would cause you to have feelings for the various characters but you would probably need to hide from yourself the fact that the feelings we feel in these cases are not originary (Stein, 1917/ 1980 p. 35-36).

I’ve read that. I need to be convinced that all “feeling for” is empathy. When I feel sadness for the Haitians, am I being empathic to their suffering even though they are a Generalized They?

Sawicki states:  'To read is to take on the subjectivity offered by the writer: to ride along on the author's i and vicariously to move through the course of an emotional process, an argument, or a story. To write is to display an 'i' as model and guide for such a joinery. if one could not feel-into the experience of another human being, one simply could not learn to read or write. Your Einfuehlungslehre is a theory of literacy. (Sawicki, p. 106).  > Thanks for giving me this to think about on this unusually cool morning. You ask difficult questions, the cold is not stalling your thinking :-).

LOL.  It really is shocking how the temperature is 25 degrees cooler than last week’s. > Haydn  Thanks again for helping me think.

[Sean Gaffney]

Dan and Haydn,

My warm thanks and appreciation for your recent exchanges - illuminating and evocative.

Please see my two US/EURO cents' worth below...

Seán

On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 1:40 AM, Dan Bloom <d...@djbloom.com> wrote:

Haydn:

You’ve moved me (us) along in understand ES.

Yes - enough for dan to write in green! 

Let me reply to your replies, below:

On Jul 31, 2010, at 11:09 AM, JOHN.H...@nuim.ie wrote:

Hi Dan, 

Sawicki's commentary on Stein is very good in terms of explaining her idea of empathy, I'll just quote her before going on to comment on your questions below. I think it's good to get a view from many sides especially given Sawicki's careful exploration of Stein's work.

'[Stein] describe[s] empathy as an appearance without any "coming in" or "going out" of personality or information. The feeling registers entirely within one's own consciousness, but it registers there in a way that announces a foreign life. I feel the feeling of another, as such, in that I am aware of something about my own feeling that directly presents the other human being. I feel myself led (geleitet) in this feeling. My awareness is magnetized and configured to a pattern not of my own design. To become aware of this aspect of awareness - its having been led - requires a reflective act [...] You [i.e. Stein] concur here with Husserl's account of the 'doubling' of the i as it engages in such experiences as remembering, expecting, pretending, [...]. In the last chapter, this doubled i-experience was indicated with the formula now/"now". This serves as shorthand notation for events such that, in my flowing lifestream, I now experience what is a 'now' elsewhere in some lifestream -- either an alien lifestream, or my own lifestream at some other time. With such events, the other 'now' cannot become a live now for me because, as Husserl insisted, there are no canals between streams of i-hood. Your monadic model obeys the no-canal rule, because it finds the complete and definitive essence of its target -- one's inward awareness of others -- entirely within the registrations of appearances occurring within one's conscious life.' (Marianne Sawicki, Body, Text and Science, p. 96). 

and

In empathy,  'i' would register a 'live' experience - an experience in which 'someone' lives, and that this 'i' living there is not recognizably identical to my own i. Thus an alien i appears. Second I can go on to discover just who that alien i might be. (But this second step is a matter of empirical investigation and is therefore beyond the remit of Stein's eidetic study) (see, Sawicki, p. 97). 

Yes - I am becoming more and more attached to Sawicki's commentaries. And I am impressed and delighted by her solution to how to address Edith Stein. So she goes for the second-person "you" - in a monumentally academic thesis! Well done, Marianne! 

> Welcome back.  Thank you.   >  I have a question and then some discussion of your example with more questions. > > I see the German “Originarität.”  Primoridal. Excellent.  > Is there a different German word for “originary”?  > What was the transition from the use of “primordial” to “originary.” Was this merely a matter of translator-choice?

I like this Dan, and have another comment on this issue below... 

* I think it was the translator's choice, but I would think probably in the context of Husserl's philosophy, but I'm not totally sure, would need to explore the origin of the term. > > Let me give another example similar to yours for our discussion. > > A miracle happens and I too get a book published  and am flushed with primordial joy. Immediately felt and non-derivative, it is a primordial experience.  > I see a child get injured and crying in sadness. I feel sad — non-primordial experience, an em-pathic feeling.  > All well and good. > But: > > My primordial feeling of joy was about my good fortune and also  about my relationships to others.  > My joy is inextricable with my sense of peoples' joy for me, how I will make my family proud, my teachers happy and so on. Even deeper and unaware, this joy might involve complicated tangles of unresolved feelings that are surely not original but come to the foreground with my good news. > And to the extent that every experience I have is of me in-the-world with others, no experience can be primordially mine. Every experience is situated. Never purely given. (Do you know Sellars “The Myth of the Given”? This is a rare case of me referring to an analytic philosopher!) *I did an M.A. course on Sellar and his myth of the given, the rylean ancestors, where one becomes self-aware and the rest of the group become conscious etc. but I would probably need to read over his stuff to recall his arguments.  Well in relation to the above, if there were no primordial experience - no experience that is 'mine', that I can realise as my experience in my lifestream given to my 'i' then can there be an 'I' at all? How would we differentiate ourselves from the group? It would just be a bundle of experiences without an order? Or we wouldn't be capable of reflecting on my 'i' and another 'i' so no empathy?  There is a primordial  experience that I know is mine.  I am questioning the structure of  “primordial” to suggest that it might be sedimented even though immediately known to me as “mine.”  In fact, I suggest that while the experience seems originary, it occurs against a “more” originary background.  There is no givenness that doesn’t have its context which shapes it. I feel joy because of my relational history along-with-others who taught me my feelings (so say social psychologists).   My “I” is contextualized with a “we,” so no experience I can have stand outside the social world.  There is always an other within my experience, whether or not she “stands” before me.    I am able to know I am an “I” apart from a group and I am able to self-reflect  because I am emergent of a primordial intersubjective foundation and I live in a world where others see me. This is outside ES, but there are lots of philosophers who address the question of the origin of “I” — whether we call it self, subject, ego, or I.  You know them better than I do,.

Dan, I refer back to a recent mail where I commented on how primordial may be more Heideggerean and originary more Lewinian. This is my sense of how to understand the careful unravelling of experience above by you and Haydn. Allow me to test something by writing it, a little before I have understood it fully myself...primordial seems to be a perfect way to describe the process of empathy; and originary a way of describing the experience. I am using primordial here to cover our full social embeddedness as you describe it - my joy at publishing was as much what I was socially and professionally expected to feel, so yes: primordially mine. To use Gestaltspeak (apologies, Haydn), we are here taking id/out of awareness. Moving to originary, we maybe can shift to ego/personality where Self is concerned, contact with awareness where the Sequence is concerned, and the move from Sensory awareness to Figural awareness where the Cycle is concerned...

I am writing out loud here, in a manner of speaking...anyway, distinguishing this way between primordial and originary is supporting my understanding. They are certainly two terms that warrant a watchful reading...

> My joy at that moment had  a social-personal context without which “I” couldn’t be an “experiencer.” That joy is as affected by its temporal surroundings, context, as it is by its social context.

Yes, see my remarks above... 

* I don't think it's possible to be so affected that the 'I' cannot realise that this experience is its own primordial experience, otherwise as above, the 'I' could not differentiate itself from another 'i' and the 'We' of community. Stein will later talk about an 'I/We' constitution in terms of her studies on community.

And it may be that this "differentiation" is possible and most contextually relevant when I can know that my socially embedded (being-in-world) primordial process ALSO is originary to me. So that while I am inextricably of the community, I can comment on my experience of being other than my community, I can experience being an "I" amongst other "I's". As you know, Dan, this is a distinction I make in relation to Lewin's field and life-space.

> I am interested in learning more about Stein’s I/We. I can recognize this feeling as my own. We do it all the time — at least, in mental health. I think I responded to my questioning of “primordial." > I question the possibility of primordial experience.

Surely not if it can be seen as "id"? 

> “Questioning is the piety of knowledge.” Heidegger > > Now to the child. >  I can feel my empathic instantiation of her sadness.  > But isn’t it also true that I feel sadness without any involvement of empathy. > I am sad because I am sad when a child is hurt — that is, my sadness is not dependent on this child’s sadness empathically experienced by me. > I read a newspaper story about an injured child and become sad. No photo in this instance. > My sadness when I witness a sad child would be stronger than when I read about it, but isn’t that a function of the vividness of the medium by which I am made sad? Eyewitness versus newspaper. > If this is so, how can we separate empathy from other feelingful reactions if the experience is the same? If the experience is felt to be the same? > *Well empathy would work in many situations, not just in 'seeing' the child as you quite rightly point out. I think if you are reading a book, you would still need to be able to empathize. The text would cause you to have feelings for the various characters but you would probably need to hide from yourself the fact that the feelings we feel in these cases are not originary (Stein, 1917/ 1980 p. 35-36).  I’ve read that. I need to be convinced that all “feeling for” is empathy. When I feel sadness for the Haitians, am I being empathic to their suffering even though they are a Generalized They?

Why not? 

Sawicki states:  'To read is to take on the subjectivity offered by the writer: to ride along on the author's i and vicariously to move through the course of an emotional process, an argument, or a story. To write is to display an 'i' as model and guide for such a joinery. if one could not feel-into the experience of another human being, one simply could not learn to read or write. Your Einfuehlungslehre is a theory of literacy. (Sawicki, p. 106).  > Thanks for giving me this to think about on this unusually cool morning. You ask difficult questions, the cold is not stalling your thinking :-).

Haydn: NOTHING stalls Dan's thinking. I seriously that sleep does, for example, based on the profound early morning thoughts he can have! 

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Philip Brownell]

Seán and Dan,

On Aug 1, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

To use Gestaltspeak (apologies, Haydn), we are here taking id/out of awareness. Moving to originary, we maybe can shift to ego/personality where Self is concerned, contact with awareness where the Sequence is concerned, and the move from Sensory awareness to Figural awareness where the Cycle is concerned...

At the moment when sensation becomes awareness of figure, we have the forming of an intentional object–what this sensation is about.  In the cycle although awareness is throughout, it is a particular kind of awareness that is in view; it is the aboutness of the sensory stream.  So, are you guys saying that "primordial" is sensory experience, raw experience, without awareness?  And originary is with awareness?  Primordial is pre-intentional?  Really?

Phil

[Sean Gaffney]

Phil,

"We" are not saying anything.

I prefaced my remarks by saying that I was "writing out loud" (think "thinking out loud").

I am pondering, not proposing. Exploring. Wondering.

Also, please see below:

On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 1:32 PM, Philip Brownell <philbr...@logic.bm> wrote:

Seán and Dan,

On Aug 1, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

To use Gestaltspeak (apologies, Haydn), we are here taking id/out of awareness. Moving to originary, we maybe can shift to ego/personality where Self is concerned, contact with awareness where the Sequence is concerned, and the move from Sensory awareness to Figural awareness where the Cycle is concerned...

At the moment when sensation becomes awareness of figure, we have the forming of an intentional object–what this sensation is about.

No. What this sensation MAY be about for me. Your formulation - intentionally or not! - could suggest that there is a particular something. And yes, I know to my peril of the ambiguities of language...anyway, just wondering. 

 In the cycle although awareness is throughout, it is a particular kind of awareness that is in view; it is the aboutness of the sensory stream.  So, are you guys saying that "primordial" is sensory experience, raw experience, without awareness?  And originary is with awareness?  Primordial is pre-intentional?  Really?

What I am saying is I that can ponder upon such thoughts as a possible distinction between the two terms, recognising that there may be room for both with minor refinements of meaning.  

And no - I do not believe that any experience is pre-intentional. Any experience is an experience of something and so I do not think that awareness is a pre-condition for intentionality

If you think otherwise, please say so. I would find that more of a contribution and more open to a considered response than an extract taken totally out of context...and a "Really?"...

Welcome to Sunday...mine is almost 13 hours old according to the clock, and almost 5 + 3 cups of coffee for me...

Phil

Seán 

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

I want to respond to this before I get some coffee and think through the longer, wonderful, comments from Seán.

 I like Seán’s primoridial-originary distinction. I have to think about it some more, though.

I think there can be awareness that is pre-intentional.

Phil, one of the attributes I claim as id functioning is the unfocused, unformed, undirected sense of urge, sensation, and so on. The self-functioning of id functioning is without immediate direction.  

I awake this morning into a cloud of sensations prior to a gathering clarity that it was I awakening to this day in this room.

In my GT template, awareness and consciousness are on a continuum. Awareness remains as the sensible and felt dimensions to experience. Consciousness is our more deliberate acting and knowing.  They are both dimensions of experience. You guys know my model. 

We can be aware without being conscious and conscious without aware (ie really out of touch !)

“Awareness” is from the Old English and the root “waer” also means “alert.”

“Consciousness” is Latin and has knowledge, “conscius,”  in it.

In English, words with the Old E Germanic roots describe  more primitive parts of life than do those with Latin.

So, aware experiences begin without a stream, a flow, or a sense of time. Begin. I awake, for example. 

But these intransitive experiences focus as the sequence of contact proceeds along the awareness-consciousness continuum. Intentionality emerges from the intransitive awareness as awareness becomes about someTHING. “I” notice a sensation and identify “I itch” and scratch it. 

Intentionality gains more and more clarity as consciousness, ego and personality functionings, becomes more active. 

Intentionality is co-existent with time-consciousness. (Husserl worked this out.)

Simple awareness is outside time since ego function is  the self structure that marks/experiences time.

So I think there can be simple awareness that is pre-intentional, but not non-intentional. By being “pre-,” the experience has the beginning “momentum” for intentionality. Intentionality doesn’t come from nowhere or is created by willing. It is emergent, and the pre-intentional aware ground is the condition for its emergence. 

This was too long an answer, probably.

I am working these things out as I write.

[Dan Bloom]

Seán:

I love the what you are working out.

Comments below.

On Aug 1, 2010, at 7:02 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

Phil,

"We" are not saying anything.

I prefaced my remarks by saying that I was "writing out loud" (think "thinking out loud").

I am pondering, not proposing. Exploring. Wondering.

Me too. I use declarative sentences that make me sound, well, declarative. Isn’t that one of the meanings of  “cogito ergo sum”? :)

Also, please see below:

On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 1:32 PM, Philip Brownell <philbr...@logic.bm> wrote:

Seán and Dan,

On Aug 1, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

To use Gestaltspeak (apologies, Haydn), we are here taking id/out of awareness. Moving to originary, we maybe can shift to ego/personality where Self is concerned, contact with awareness where the Sequence is concerned, and the move from Sensory awareness to Figural awareness where the Cycle is concerned...

This is where I add consciousness — sensory (id/f) and figural  — focused! — (ego f) = on consciousness

At the moment when sensation becomes awareness of figure, we have the forming of an intentional object–what this sensation is about.

No. What this sensation MAY be about for me. Your formulation - intentionally or not! - could suggest that there is a particular something. And yes, I know to my peril of the ambiguities of language...anyway, just wondering. 

I agree with Phil, but the forming of an intentional object is  from the unfocused to the focused.  Intentionality is a process. To us.

 In the cycle although awareness is throughout, it is a particular kind of awareness that is in view; it is the aboutness of the sensory stream.  So, are you guys saying that "primordial" is sensory experience, raw experience, without awareness?  And originary is with awareness?  Primordial is pre-intentional?  Really?

What I am saying is I that can ponder upon such thoughts as a possible distinction between the two terms, recognising that there may be room for both with minor refinements of meaning.  

And no - I do not believe that any experience is pre-intentional. Any experience is an experience of something and so I do not think that awareness is a pre-condition for intentionality

The self-structure for which an experience is an experience of something is the identifying “I.” Simple awareness has no directionality. The further emergent self is directional and temporal.

If you think otherwise, please say so. I would find that more of a contribution and more open to a considered response than an extract taken totally out of context...and a "Really?"...

Welcome to Sunday...mine is almost 13 hours old according to the clock, and almost 5 + 3 cups of coffee for me...

Sunday morning, squawking birds, and 1 cup down, many more to go.

Phil

Seán 

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

So “primordial” is ontological, having to do with being, and “originary” is ontic, having to do with this being’s experience?

Maybe.

I don’t know how the words are used by others. 

I’ve been reading Bauman’s Postmodern Ethics. He uses “primordial” a lot. I’m not sure how his usage fits in.

Then there are Levinas and the rest of the French.

But this is worth considering.

Heidegger. He has a different project from Husserl or Stein. His is an analytic of being in order to find a fundamental ontology. He thinks he is correcting everyone from Plato to Kant, 

etc. This is the appeal of the pre-Socractics to him - that is, Parmenides and Heraclitus. 

In that regard, he adds a different perspective and way of thinking. I bring that to this discussion — to the extent I understand it. 

Ha! 

You ought to see the disagreements of Heidegger scholars on the Heidegger Circle list! They are a model of thinkers working their different ways through things. 

Dan

On Aug 1, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

[Sean Gaffney]

Dan,

See below...

On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 1:58 PM, Dan Bloom <d...@djbloom.com> wrote:

I want to respond to this before I get some coffee and think through the longer, wonderful, comments from Seán.

Flattery will get you everywhere with me! 

 I like Seán’s primoridial-originary distinction. I have to think about it some more, though.

I like it too, even if I'm still pondering the complexities and consequences. I like the way primordial can fit into a sensory perspective, with originary as possibly more graspable. Or, to use the distinctions another way: primordial has to do with i, originary has to do with I, so yes - moving towards the consciousness end of Dan's awareness - consciousness continuum. I've probably said this before in another way...and I'm enjoying how I feel like an American Indian war party circling the tighter and tighter circled wagons...(what a strange metaphor!).  

I think there can be awareness that is pre-intentional.

Have you ever woken up to find that you (= your body) have moved the bedclothes? I tend to think that my body's sensing of warmth (where "warmth" is an intentional object), is influential enough for me (=my body) to re-arrange the bedclothes.  

Phil, one of the attributes I claim as id functioning is the unfocused, unformed, undirected sense of urge, sensation, and so on. The self-functioning of id functioning is without immediate direction.  

I awake this morning into a cloud of sensations prior to a gathering clarity that it was I awakening to this day in this room.

Try this one on for size: primordial you awoke into "a cloud of sensations" which originary you slowly recognises as you, on this day, in this room... 

In my GT template, awareness and consciousness are on a continuum. Awareness remains as the sensible and felt dimensions to experience. Consciousness is our more deliberate acting and knowing.  They are both dimensions of experience. You guys know my model. 

We can be aware without being conscious and conscious without aware (ie really out of touch !)

As in the bed example above... 

“Awareness” is from the Old English and the root “waer” also means “alert.”

“Consciousness” is Latin and has knowledge, “conscius,”  in it.

In English, words with the Old E Germanic roots describe  more primitive parts of life than do those with Latin.

So, aware experiences begin without a stream, a flow, or a sense of time. Begin. I awake, for example. 

But these intransitive experiences focus as the sequence of contact proceeds along the awareness-consciousness continuum. Intentionality emerges from the intransitive awareness as awareness becomes about someTHING. “I” notice a sensation and identify “I itch” and scratch it. 

For me, you are moving too fast here, and discounting our experience and behaviour out of awareness. This is truly Cartesian: cogito is king! 

Intentionality gains more and more clarity as consciousness, ego and personality functionings, becomes more active. 

Intentionality is co-existent with time-consciousness. (Husserl worked this out.)

Simple awareness is outside time since ego function is  the self structure that marks/experiences time.

So I think there can be simple awareness that is pre-intentional, but not non-intentional. By being “pre-,” the experience has the beginning “momentum” for intentionality. Intentionality doesn’t come from nowhere or is created by willing. It is emergent, and the pre-intentional aware ground is the condition for its emergence. 

So we agree: not non-intentional.

This was too long an answer, probably.

I am working these things out as I write.

On Aug 1, 2010, at 7:32 AM, Philip Brownell wrote:

Seán and Dan,

On Aug 1, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

To use Gestaltspeak (apologies, Haydn), we are here taking id/out of awareness. Moving to originary, we maybe can shift to ego/personality where Self is concerned, contact with awareness where the Sequence is concerned, and the move from Sensory awareness to Figural awareness where the Cycle is concerned...

At the moment when sensation becomes awareness of figure, we have the forming of an intentional object–what this sensation is about.  In the cycle although awareness is throughout, it is a particular kind of awareness that is in view; it is the aboutness of the sensory stream.  So, are you guys saying that "primordial" is sensory experience, raw experience, without awareness?  And originary is with awareness?  Primordial is pre-intentional?  Really?

Phil

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Sean Gaffney]

Dan,

Much of what I want to say is in my previous mail...though maybe a new thought or two will emerge as i and I re-read your mail below...

On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 2:46 PM, Dan Bloom <d...@djbloom.com> wrote:

Seán:

I love the what you are working out.

Comments below.

On Aug 1, 2010, at 7:02 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

Phil,

"We" are not saying anything.

I prefaced my remarks by saying that I was "writing out loud" (think "thinking out loud").

I am pondering, not proposing. Exploring. Wondering.

Me too. I use declarative sentences that make me sound, well, declarative. Isn’t that one of the meanings of  “cogito ergo sum”? :)

Yes - we are really the products of our language, gender and academic traditions...or something! 

Also, please see below:

On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 1:32 PM, Philip Brownell <philbr...@logic.bm> wrote:

Seán and Dan,

On Aug 1, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

To use Gestaltspeak (apologies, Haydn), we are here taking id/out of awareness. Moving to originary, we maybe can shift to ego/personality where Self is concerned, contact with awareness where the Sequence is concerned, and the move from Sensory awareness to Figural awareness where the Cycle is concerned...

This is where I add consciousness — sensory (id/f) and figural  — focused! — (ego f) = on consciousness

Yes - and now your addition of consciousness seems to have a context which is supportive of it. 

At the moment when sensation becomes awareness of figure, we have the forming of an intentional object–what this sensation is about.

No. What this sensation MAY be about for me. Your formulation - intentionally or not! - could suggest that there is a particular something. And yes, I know to my peril of the ambiguities of language...anyway, just wondering. 

I agree with Phil, but the forming of an intentional object is  from the unfocused to the focused.  Intentionality is a process. To us.

See previous mail...and, sure, yes: there is a movement from less to more. For me, "less" of something is not = 0. 

 In the cycle although awareness is throughout, it is a particular kind of awareness that is in view; it is the aboutness of the sensory stream.  So, are you guys saying that "primordial" is sensory experience, raw experience, without awareness?  And originary is with awareness?  Primordial is pre-intentional?  Really?

What I am saying is I that can ponder upon such thoughts as a possible distinction between the two terms, recognising that there may be room for both with minor refinements of meaning.  

And no - I do not believe that any experience is pre-intentional. Any experience is an experience of something and so I do not think that awareness is a pre-condition for intentionality

The self-structure for which an experience is an experience of something is the identifying “I.” Simple awareness has no directionality. The further emergent self is directional and temporal.

Again, discounting the "i" in favour of "I"??? 

If you think otherwise, please say so. I would find that more of a contribution and more open to a considered response than an extract taken totally out of context...and a "Really?"...

Welcome to Sunday...mine is almost 13 hours old according to the clock, and almost 5 + 3 cups of coffee for me...

Sunday morning, squawking birds, and 1 cup down, many more to go.

Another cup or so...and awaiting the Cocktail Hour at 5 p.m., while confirming my choice of tonight's dinner and an evening of athletics. By the way, Haydn and I got a bronze yesterday, women's 100 metre hurdles. Éire abú! 

Phil

Seán 

Seán


--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Sean Gaffney]

Dan,

So “primordial” is ontological, having to do with being, and “originary” is ontic, having to do with this being’s experience?

Now there's a thought...certainly adds a useful dimension.

So, whatever your state as you emerged from sleep, you seem to be fully conscious now!

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[John Gurmin]

Hi Dan and Seán,

Seán did you see Dublin play yesterday, they are now through the q-finals after beating Tyrone!, and  Derval O' Rourke got a silver at the European Games, great to see her finally reach her potential but I think we'll see more from her. 

Okay, I think that for Stein as long as you can differentiate primordial experience from non-primordial then you are capable of following her thesis, she merely needs to show that we experience primordial and non-primordial experience. She is descriptively analyzing her experience of these feelings and aiming to eidetically describe the act of empathy as such within the phenomenological reduction. 

But I can see what you mean - that perhaps there is no private feeling, that the feeling of joy might be made up of other people's feelings of joy and the community's delight at your book publication. I think here we are forced to move back to the initial differentiation of an 'I' from another 'I' in the first instance, because we'd have to move back to the first time we connected with the community. We would have to imagine the first human being unconscious of their experience - in this state pain states and the like would not register to an 'i', but then somehow we become conscious (perhaps on the lines of Sellars as you mentioned yesterday), I think the moment we would realise we were an 'i', there would be a recognition of a 'you'. It wouldn't be possible to just become self-conscious without some 'other', perhaps it's possible to do so in relation to a 'tree' but we would only unfold in terms of the tree, we'd need another human to fully unfold an 'i'. 

Okay, so we now establish an 'i' and when we do so we recognise the other 'i'. Now we reflect on what is given to ourselves in the very first few seconds or being self-conscious. I might experience 'cold', so I'd have these primordial feelings of cold. Then I might look out and see the other person and notice they were shivering too, and thus I'd have non-primordial experience arise inside, that would signify another 'i' being 'cold'. 

So I'm really just trying to go back to the very first time and try to imagine how it might have been like - and surely my primordial experience would have been just that, a realisation that this immediate feeling of 'cold' was running 'live' from my 'i'... having just come to self-consciousness a moment previously thus it would be without any other person necessarily affecting or influencing my primordial feelings in this first primary hypothetical condition. As long as we can say we have primordial experience and non-primordial experience then this allows Stein to continue her argument for her description of the 'act of empathy'. 

Hope the above makes some sense ... 

h. 

[Dan Bloom]

Here comes some more:

On Aug 1, 2010, at 9:24 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

Dan,

Much of what I want to say is in my previous mail...though maybe a new thought or two will emerge as i and I re-read your mail below...

On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 2:46 PM, Dan Bloom <d...@djbloom.com> wrote:

Seán:

I love the what you are working out.

Comments below.

On Aug 1, 2010, at 7:02 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

Phil,

"We" are not saying anything.

I prefaced my remarks by saying that I was "writing out loud" (think "thinking out loud").

I am pondering, not proposing. Exploring. Wondering.

Me too. I use declarative sentences that make me sound, well, declarative. Isn’t that one of the meanings of  “cogito ergo sum”? :)

Yes - we are really the products of our language, gender and academic traditions...or something! 

Heidegger. This is our throwness. Our facticity.

Also, please see below:

On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 1:32 PM, Philip Brownell <philbr...@logic.bm> wrote:

Seán and Dan,

On Aug 1, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

To use Gestaltspeak (apologies, Haydn), we are here taking id/out of awareness. Moving to originary, we maybe can shift to ego/personality where Self is concerned, contact with awareness where the Sequence is concerned, and the move from Sensory awareness to Figural awareness where the Cycle is concerned...

This is where I add consciousness — sensory (id/f) and figural  — focused! — (ego f) = on consciousness

Yes - and now your addition of consciousness seems to have a context which is supportive of it. 

You got it.

At the moment when sensation becomes awareness of figure, we have the forming of an intentional object–what this sensation is about.

No. What this sensation MAY be about for me. Your formulation - intentionally or not! - could suggest that there is a particular something. And yes, I know to my peril of the ambiguities of language...anyway, just wondering. 

I don’t follow. There has to be a particular something. Contacting is toward something and within something.

I agree with Phil, but the forming of an intentional object is  from the unfocused to the focused.  Intentionality is a process. To us.

See previous mail...and, sure, yes: there is a movement from less to more. For me, "less" of something is not = 0. 

How can there be a 0 when there is being that experiences a 0?

 In the cycle although awareness is throughout, it is a particular kind of awareness that is in view; it is the aboutness of the sensory stream.  So, are you guys saying that "primordial" is sensory experience, raw experience, without awareness?  And originary is with awareness?  Primordial is pre-intentional?  Really?

What I am saying is I that can ponder upon such thoughts as a possible distinction between the two terms, recognising that there may be room for both with minor refinements of meaning.  

And no - I do not believe that any experience is pre-intentional. Any experience is an experience of something and so I do not think that awareness is a pre-condition for intentionality

The self-structure for which an experience is an experience of something is the identifying “I.” Simple awareness has no directionality. The further emergent self is directional and temporal.

Again, discounting the "i" in favour of "I"??? 

I don’ get the i-I thing.

If you think otherwise, please say so. I would find that more of a contribution and more open to a considered response than an extract taken totally out of context...and a "Really?"...

Welcome to Sunday...mine is almost 13 hours old according to the clock, and almost 5 + 3 cups of coffee for me...

Sunday morning, squawking birds, and 1 cup down, many more to go.

Another cup or so...and awaiting the Cocktail Hour at 5 p.m., while confirming my choice of tonight's dinner and an evening of athletics. By the way, Haydn and I got a bronze yesterday, women's 100 metre hurdles. Éire abú! 

I may have lost track of these comments!

[Dan Bloom]

On Aug 1, 2010, at 9:13 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

Dan,

See below...

On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 1:58 PM, Dan Bloom <d...@djbloom.com> wrote:

I want to respond to this before I get some coffee and think through the longer, wonderful, comments from Seán.

Flattery will get you everywhere with me! 

 I like Seán’s primoridial-originary distinction. I have to think about it some more, though.

I like it too, even if I'm still pondering the complexities and consequences. I like the way primordial can fit into a sensory perspective, with originary as possibly more graspable. Or, to use the distinctions another way: primordial has to do with i, originary has to do with I, so yes - moving towards the consciousness end of Dan's awareness - consciousness continuum. I've probably said this before in another way...and I'm enjoying how I feel like an American Indian war party circling the tighter and tighter circled wagons...(what a strange metaphor!).  

I am cautious about the distinction.

I think there can be awareness that is pre-intentional.

Have you ever woken up to find that you (= your body) have moved the bedclothes? I tend to think that my body's sensing of warmth (where "warmth" is an intentional object), is influential enough for me (=my body) to re-arrange the bedclothes.  

“The" body doesn’t sense. It responds — when it is an “it,” the biological body. The livedbody is senses. A sensation is phenomenal, per se.

Phil, one of the attributes I claim as id functioning is the unfocused, unformed, undirected sense of urge, sensation, and so on. The self-functioning of id functioning is without immediate direction.  

I awake this morning into a cloud of sensations prior to a gathering clarity that it was I awakening to this day in this room.

Try this one on for size: primordial you awoke into "a cloud of sensations" which originary you slowly recognises as you, on this day, in this room... 

Not sure. I can have a primordial experience. A primordial I is a paradox?

In my GT template, awareness and consciousness are on a continuum. Awareness remains as the sensible and felt dimensions to experience. Consciousness is our more deliberate acting and knowing.  They are both dimensions of experience. You guys know my model. 

We can be aware without being conscious and conscious without aware (ie really out of touch !)

As in the bed example above... 

“Awareness” is from the Old English and the root “waer” also means “alert.”

“Consciousness” is Latin and has knowledge, “conscius,”  in it.

In English, words with the Old E Germanic roots describe  more primitive parts of life than do those with Latin.

So, aware experiences begin without a stream, a flow, or a sense of time. Begin. I awake, for example. 

But these intransitive experiences focus as the sequence of contact proceeds along the awareness-consciousness continuum. Intentionality emerges from the intransitive awareness as awareness becomes about someTHING. “I” notice a sensation and identify “I itch” and scratch it. 

For me, you are moving too fast here, and discounting our experience and behaviour out of awareness. This is truly Cartesian: cogito is king! 

I don’t think so. Out of/in awareness is a function of attention.  Try as I might, I can’t experience my pancreas.

This isn’t Cartesian. The biological body and my lived body are one.

[Sean Gaffney]

Haydn,

Unfortunately, missed the Dublin game but saw Dervla O'Rourke's bronze...

I like and appreciate your clarification here. It is helping me to focus...it is so easy to forget Edith Stein's purpose: to apply phenomenology to the "problem" of empathy. And yet - how richly she does so!

Will be into my next burst of reading tomorrow - so watch this space!

Áth Chliath Abú!

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Philip Brownell]

Take it easy, will you?  Since when are you the only one who gets to think out loud?

On Aug 1, 2010, at 7:02 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

[John Gurmin]

Thanks Seán,

I think our Dervla got silver in fact, she was very close to gold two hundreds of a second...

 

http://www.rte.ie/sport/athletics/2010/0731/orourked.html

So you'll have to up the celebrations at Cocktail hour.

H. 

[Philip Brownell]

Dan,

On Aug 1, 2010, at 7:58 AM, Dan Bloom wrote:

> I think there can be awareness that is pre-intentional.

Of course. There is a pre-reflective awareness, or else we would no sensation at all. However, what I believe is that the rawness of pre-reflective experience becomes intentional when a particular KIND of awareness emerges (out of the raw stream). That, to me, is when the awareness of what this experience-sensation is about. It can be about sensing and nothing more I suppose, but to me that would not be a very well formed intentional object, and certainly not a clear gestalt.

Phil

[Dan Bloom]

On Aug 1, 2010, at 9:33 AM, John Gurmin wrote:

Hi Dan and Seán,

Seán did you see Dublin play yesterday, they are now through the q-finals after beating Tyrone!, and  Derval O' Rourke got a silver at the European Games, great to see her finally reach her potential but I think we'll see more from her. 

Okay, I think that for Stein as long as you can differentiate primordial experience from non-primordial then you are capable of following her thesis, she merely needs to show that we experience primordial and non-primordial experience. She is descriptively analyzing her experience of these feelings and aiming to eidetically describe the act of empathy as such within the phenomenological reduction. 

Got it! Oh that eidos!!! Oh that reduction. God bless them, so to speak

But I can see what you mean - that perhaps there is no private feeling, that the feeling of joy might be made up of other people's feelings of joy and the community's delight at your book publication. I think here we are forced to move back to the initial differentiation of an 'I' from another 'I' in the first instance, because we'd have to move back to the first time we connected with the community. We would have to imagine the first human being unconscious of their experience - in this state pain states and the like would not register to an 'i', but then somehow we become conscious (perhaps on the lines of Sellars as you mentioned yesterday), I think the moment we would realise we were an 'i', there would be a recognition of a 'you'. It wouldn't be possible to just become self-conscious without some 'other', perhaps it's possible to do so in relation to a 'tree' but we would only unfold in terms of the tree, we'd need another human to fully unfold an 'i’. 

Yes and maybe.

Some say the Other precedes the I. We develop in the arms of the Other. In the womb, if we have to go there. 

If by ‘i’ you mean something like how Buber describes self emergence via distance etc and once the i comes against an other, the i become I, then I get it. 

Okay, so we now establish an 'i' and when we do so we recognise the other 'i'. Now we reflect on what is given to ourselves in the very first few seconds or being self-conscious. I might experience 'cold', so I'd have these primordial feelings of cold. Then I might look out and see the other person and notice they were shivering too, and thus I'd have non-primordial experience arise inside, that would signify another 'i' being 'cold’. 

Yes. 

Once I had an uncomfortable sensation on my arms. I was distracted while watching a movie so I didn’t pay much attention to it. Then I noticed the person in front of me putting on a sweater. THEN I realized I was cold. 

How would Stein describe this?

So I'm really just trying to go back to the very first time and try to imagine how it might have been like - and surely my primordial experience would have been just that, a realisation that this immediate feeling of 'cold' was running 'live' from my 'i'... having just come to self-consciousness a moment previously thus it would be without any other person necessarily affecting or influencing my primordial feelings in this first primary hypothetical condition. As long as we can say we have primordial experience and non-primordial experience then this allows Stein to continue her argument for her description of the 'act of empathy’. 

You make sense.

We are all trying to imagine “the very first time,” and it is a chimera. I don’t even think it existed. :)

I still won’t grant a monadic primordial experience. 

I’m a tough sell.

Hope the above makes some sense ... 

I love it. You are as clear as can be.

[Philip Brownell]

Dan,

On Aug 1, 2010, at 7:58 AM, Dan Bloom wrote:

> So, aware experiences begin without a stream, a flow, or a sense of time. Begin. I awake, for example.
> But these intransitive experiences focus as the sequence of contact proceeds along the awareness-consciousness continuum. Intentionality emerges from the intransitive awareness as awareness becomes about someTHING. “I” notice a sensation and identify “I itch” and scratch it.
> Intentionality gains more and more clarity as consciousness, ego and personality functionings, becomes more active.
> Intentionality is co-existent with time-consciousness. (Husserl worked this out.)
> Simple awareness is outside time since ego function is the self structure that marks/experiences time.
> So I think there can be simple awareness that is pre-intentional, but not non-intentional. By being “pre-,” the experience has the beginning “momentum” for intentionality. Intentionality doesn’t come from nowhere or is created by willing. It is emergent, and the pre-intentional aware ground is the condition for its emergence.

To some degree I think you and I are saying the same thing by mixing our terms around.
Phil

[Sean Gaffney]

Dan,

New colour...

On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 3:34 PM, Dan Bloom <d...@djbloom.com> wrote:

Here comes some more:

On Aug 1, 2010, at 9:24 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

Dan,

Much of what I want to say is in my previous mail...though maybe a new thought or two will emerge as i and I re-read your mail below...

On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 2:46 PM, Dan Bloom <d...@djbloom.com> wrote:

Seán:

I love the what you are working out.

Comments below.

On Aug 1, 2010, at 7:02 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

Phil,

"We" are not saying anything.

I prefaced my remarks by saying that I was "writing out loud" (think "thinking out loud").

I am pondering, not proposing. Exploring. Wondering.

Me too. I use declarative sentences that make me sound, well, declarative. Isn’t that one of the meanings of  “cogito ergo sum”? :)

Yes - we are really the products of our language, gender and academic traditions...or something! 

Heidegger. This is our throwness. Our facticity.

Gotcha! 

Also, please see below:

On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 1:32 PM, Philip Brownell <philbr...@logic.bm> wrote:

Seán and Dan,

On Aug 1, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

To use Gestaltspeak (apologies, Haydn), we are here taking id/out of awareness. Moving to originary, we maybe can shift to ego/personality where Self is concerned, contact with awareness where the Sequence is concerned, and the move from Sensory awareness to Figural awareness where the Cycle is concerned...

This is where I add consciousness — sensory (id/f) and figural  — focused! — (ego f) = on consciousness

Yes - and now your addition of consciousness seems to have a context which is supportive of it. 

You got it.

Worth waiting for, huh? 

At the moment when sensation becomes awareness of figure, we have the forming of an intentional object–what this sensation is about.

No. What this sensation MAY be about for me. Your formulation - intentionally or not! - could suggest that there is a particular something. And yes, I know to my peril of the ambiguities of language...anyway, just wondering. 

I don’t follow. There has to be a particular something. Contacting is toward something and within something.

The topic here was intentionality, not contact... 

I agree with Phil, but the forming of an intentional object is  from the unfocused to the focused.  Intentionality is a process. To us.

See previous mail...and, sure, yes: there is a movement from less to more. For me, "less" of something is not = 0. 

How can there be a 0 when there is being that experiences a 0?

PRECISELY the point I was trying to make! Thank you! 

 In the cycle although awareness is throughout, it is a particular kind of awareness that is in view; it is the aboutness of the sensory stream.  So, are you guys saying that "primordial" is sensory experience, raw experience, without awareness?  And originary is with awareness?  Primordial is pre-intentional?  Really?

What I am saying is I that can ponder upon such thoughts as a possible distinction between the two terms, recognising that there may be room for both with minor refinements of meaning.  

And no - I do not believe that any experience is pre-intentional. Any experience is an experience of something and so I do not think that awareness is a pre-condition for intentionality

The self-structure for which an experience is an experience of something is the identifying “I.” Simple awareness has no directionality. The further emergent self is directional and temporal.

Again, discounting the "i" in favour of "I"??? 

I don’ get the i-I thing.

 

Try Sawicki and the index. i and I am/are sorting this one out at the moment...

If you think otherwise, please say so. I would find that more of a contribution and more open to a considered response than an extract taken totally out of context...and a "Really?"...

Welcome to Sunday...mine is almost 13 hours old according to the clock, and almost 5 + 3 cups of coffee for me...

Sunday morning, squawking birds, and 1 cup down, many more to go.

Another cup or so...and awaiting the Cocktail Hour at 5 p.m., while confirming my choice of tonight's dinner and an evening of athletics. By the way, Haydn and I got a bronze yesterday, women's 100 metre hurdles. Éire abú! 

I may have lost track of these comments!

You mean you lost track of a Dublin victory over Tyrone and Dervla O'Rourke's bronze medal? What a philistine! Oooops - sorry, Phil... 

Phil

Seán 

Seán

Seán
--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

I agree.
I once referred to intentionality as the arc of contacting. It was in my Manchester presentation. I described it developing within self emergence,

[Dan Bloom]

Yes!

[Dan Bloom]

Contacting and intentionality — see my reply to Dr B.

Margh uses the phrase “intentionality of contact.”

[Sean Gaffney]

Thanks, Haydn - absolutely right! maybe we better calm down - our American colleagues might think we are boasting!

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

We’d have to know what you are boasting about to care. :)

[John Gurmin]

Thanks Dan,

I'll have to think about the womb - which would require me to go back even further, and perhaps chicken and egg would arise there... here's just a piece I'm working on at the moment on the constitution of the 'I' as a pole of experience. 

Having discussed Stein’s understanding of empathy which has opened for her an avenue into the ‘foreign’ the ‘other’ there is a perhaps  a necessity now to consider the interior experience of our ‘I’, the ‘I’ that is given to us as an indispensable condition for our ability to ‘constitute’ anything. Stein outlines in On Empathy that we are capable of differentiating the primordial and non-primordial experience of joy and by doing so we come to realise or identify my ‘I’ as the pole of experience. This distinction is considered to be prior to my constitution of myself as self. Constitution in this regard rests on foreign experience, in relation to the other.  As Lebech explains:

The phenomenological reduction reduces experience in its entirety to being approached as ‘the stream of consciousness’. This stream is not always constituted, i.e. it is not always structured and intelligible, but when it is, it is polarised by an I.[1]

The ‘I’ is necessary for intelligible experience it is as ‘selfness’ and this experience of ‘selfness’ is brought about in contrast to the ‘otherness’ of the other.

---

[1] Mette Lebech, The Identification of Human Dignity, p. 214

As Stein states: 

This ‘selfness’ is experienced and is the basis of all that is ‘mine’. Naturally, it is first brought into relief in contrast with another when another is given. […] The otherness is apparent in the type of givenness; it is other than ‘I’ because it is given to me in another way than ‘I’. Therefore it is ‘you’. But, since [this ‘you’] experiences itself as I experience myself, the ‘you’ is another ‘I’. Thus the ‘I’ does not become individualised because another faces it, but […] its selfness is brought into relief in contrast with the otherness of the other.[1]

---

[1] Edith Stein, On Empathy, p. 38

This is great it footnotes and all in gmail,

h. 

[Philip Brownell]

Dear Haydn,

I am curious if you include non-humans in the "other."  Much of what we end up talking about is inter-subjective, where it is one human being to another.  However, I believe human consciousness is active in the cloister, in retreat, in solitude.

Phil

[John Gurmin]

Hi Phil,

Stein doesn't talk about animals as such in On Empathy, but yes one could apply it to 'reading' as Sawicki said in her analysis and to the cat, the dog etc. My dog was involved in a scuffle with another bigger dog a while back, she came in and was a bit distressed, so we knew something was wrong with her, although there were no cuts or signs of injury. She walked the floor that night, and didn't eat the next morning which made us wonder about her teeth, so  when I went to check her teeth there were a number loose, and she winced. Of course I was having an 'inter-subjective' experience with our dog, which allowed me to understand why she walked the floor the previous night. While I can have these sort of experiences of the dog and its feelings of 'pain' etc , the dog wouldn't engage on the same level with my delight at solving a mathematical problem. 

Also my 'i' has been unfolded with others of the same 'type' i.e. other subjects. If I was a feral child and had no exposure to other humans, my 'i' would probably unfold in relation to the animal that I was raised by, so perhaps I'd dig with my 'hands' as the wolf and howl to communicate. 

We have in fact two dogs, one of the dogs was brought up with us  (Bonnie) and around us and it is interesting to see how she 'communicates' with everyone in the house, her twin brother (Dino) was given to someone else but he was left outside with other dogs. But unfortunately the people that had Dino moved to a different house with smaller yard and had to give up the dog, so we took him in. It was interesting to note the differences in terms of how the dogs communicated with us. One can see Bonnie who was brought up with humans all along has unfolded perhaps more in relation to human experience than the other dog who was outside with other dogs. But now I could just be projecting here of course, so it would be interesting to hear other experiences of this. 

Best wishes,

Haydn 

[Sean Gaffney]

Haydn,

Your story of Bonnie and Dion awakened a memory. Maria MacManus is a Gestalt colleague and poetess from Strangford Lough, in the North.

She has a wonderfull poem called "Reading the Dog" about how she and her siblings would know that their hard-drinking father was A) down the bend in the road and B) what state he was in. If the dog hid behind the sofa or under the table, then their father was drunk and angry. If the dog hung about near the hall, then their father was drunk and in a good mood...

Hmmm...so maybe it works both ways?

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[John Gurmin]

Hi Seán,

Amazing really what they can do, and even when they want to get out they stand at the door expecting it to be opened - an 'intentional stance' perhaps? 

In fact there is an interesting essay by Lévinas called 'The name of the dog' where he speaks about a stray dog 'Bobby' that recognised the jews who were in a concentration camp as 'being human'... but while the 'dog'  - bobby, for Lévinas, has a face it wouldn't be in pure form as a human face. See, Lévinas, 'The name of a dog, or natural rights' in Animal Philosophy, ed. Peter Atterton & Matthew Calarco, (London: Continnum, 2005) pp.45-50. 

Derrida also has an interesting article on animals but he talks about a 'cat' - 'The animal that I therefore I am (More to Follow)'  - Derrida seems quite shocked about the gaze of his cat looking at him  when he is caught naked and how embarrassed he becomes! (Ibid., pp. 113-128).

The editors of the book outline that phenomenology has been preoccupied with the question of the human and has not give due attention to the animal. It's an interesting volume with a preface from Peter Singer, and extracts from Nietzsche, Heidegger, Bataille, Lévinas, Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, Cixous and Irigaray on the animal.

On another notes seems that the Meath team got its just deserts and were beaten by Kildare so no 'Sam' for us this year. But it probably was justice given the win over Louth.

Best wishes,

Haydn 

[Sean Gaffney]

Haydn,

Oh dear - another book! Looks interesting.

I am also reminded very fondly of my own dog - Fritz (yes, after Fritz Perls). One very cold, snowy winter's night, I stayed at the T.V long after Fritz's walk...and came out to the hall to find that he had expertly dumped his load into EACH of my shoes! 

I am also reminded of his exquisite sensitivity to my partner's illness. The usual morning procedure was that I would get up, open the kitchen door where he slept, and put the coffee on. When I came back to the bedroom, Fritz could be in a number of places: lying alongside my partner, licking her face = she was not well; On the bed and a metre or so away from her = she is not at all well. In under the covers, and close against her = she is fine today.

Yeah...gotta order that book!

Go, Dublin, go!

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[CROC...@aol.com]

Hi Dan, Sean, and Phil,

 

I haven't had time to participate for the past several days, and I'm still catching up, but I want to respond to some of this.

 

First, as to "primordial" and "non-primordial" in Stein and in empathy.  "Primordial" essentially means "the first in time," which can also be thought of as "original," or according to the Latin roots, the first as we begin to weave [what comes later] (primus ordiri).  I agree with Dan that much of our experience is colored by our social context, so that the nuances of a given term or situation are often complex and vary from person to person, depending on the social influences they have been exposed to.  However, there are some fundamental or primordial experiences that require immediate experience and cannot be communicated in any mediated way.  A person born blind cannot conceive of blue as a sighted person experiences it; similarly someone born deaf cannot experience specific sounds.  I suspect that sadness, grief, shame, horror, desire, sweet/sour/savory, orgasm, respect, etc are primary experiences, and that we cannot learn how they feel through learning from someone else.  When Stein speaks of empathy she says we experience a primordial feeling in a non-primordial way when empathize with someone who is, say, ashamed, in pain, filled with joy, etc.  So far what I don't hear anyone talking about in this discussion is the fact that we can put ourselves in the other person's place and, drawing on our own (primordial) experience, imagine how it feels for that person to be in that situation. Several references have been made to "fantasy" but nothing of significance has yet been made of it. Yet it seems to me that empathy is our capacity to imagine ourselves in the situation of the other person, and to call into awareness the feelings we have experienced in our lives and likely would experience if we were in that person's situation. Even when I am not imagining a specific person, I can imagine what it must be like to be hopelessly homeless, hungry, and confused in Port au Prince Haiti.  Sometimes when I have dealt with people who seem unmoved by the suffering and pain their behavior inflicts on other people they seem to me to be lacking in moral imagination, where they cannot/will not imagine themselves in the other's place, i.e. on the receiving end of their behavior.  When I experience someone else's suffering I literally have emotion-laden physical sensations running through parts of my body.

 

The second point I wanted to make is that I disagree with both Dan's notion that there can be awareness without an object; or that the experience of id is either outside of awareness or non-specific.  I think id may be in principle and as a capacity similar to care in Heidegger, i.e. the fundamental human capacity to be non-indifferent to what is happening in one's own actual experience; more positively, the ineluctable tendency to evaluate whatever happens in a positive or negative way, and to live through time constantly with an orientation toward (large or small) goals of some kind.  For me ego is our practical capacity to devise means to ends, with personality as the skills and habits we've developed through lived experience.  I realize that there are differences of opinions in these matters, but I don't think a case can be made for id's being outside of awareness, or that awareness can be totally without an object.

 

Sylvia

 

In a message dated 8/1/2010 5:58:06 A.M. Mountain Daylight

 

Time, d...@djbloom.com writes:

I want to respond to this before I get some coffee and think through the longer, wonderful, comments from Seán.

 I like Seán’s primoridial-originary distinction. I have to think about it some more, though.

I think there can be awareness that is pre-intentional.

Phil, one of the attributes I claim as id functioning is the unfocused, unformed, undirected sense of urge, sensation, and so on. The self-functioning of id functioning is without immediate direction.  

I awake this morning into a cloud of sensations prior to a gathering clarity that it was I awakening to this day in this room.

In my GT template, awareness and consciousness are on a continuum. Awareness remains as the sensible and felt dimensions to experience. Consciousness is our more deliberate acting and knowing.  They are both dimensions of experience. You guys know my model. 

We can be aware without being conscious and conscious without aware (ie really out of touch !)

“Awareness” is from the Old English and the root “waer” also means “alert.”

“Consciousness” is Latin and has knowledge, “conscius,”  in it.

In English, words with the Old E Germanic roots describe  more primitive parts of life than do those with Latin.

So, aware experiences begin without a stream, a flow, or a sense of time. Begin. I awake, for example. 

But these intransitive experiences focus as the sequence of contact proceeds along the awareness-consciousness continuum. Intentionality emerges from the intransitive awareness as awareness becomes about someTHING. “I” notice a sensation and identify “I itch” and scratch it. 

Intentionality gains more and more clarity as consciousness, ego and personality functionings, becomes more active. 

Intentionality is co-existent with time-consciousness. (Husserl worked this out.)

Simple awareness is outside time since ego function is  the self structure that marks/experiences time.

So I think there can be simple awareness that is pre-intentional, but not non-intentional. By being “pre-,” the experience has the beginning “momentum” for intentionality. Intentionality doesn’t come from nowhere or is created by willing. It is emergent, and the pre-intentional aware ground is the condition for its emergence. 

This was too long an answer, probably.

I am working these things out as I write.

On Aug 1, 2010, at 7:32 AM, Philip Brownell wrote:

Seán and Dan,

On Aug 1, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

To use Gestaltspeak (apologies, Haydn), we are here taking id/out of awareness. Moving to originary, we maybe can shift to ego/personality where Self is concerned, contact with awareness where the Sequence is concerned, and the move from Sensory awareness to Figural awareness where the Cycle is concerned...

At the moment when sensation becomes awareness of figure, we have the forming of an intentional object–what this sensation is about.  In the cycle although awareness is throughout, it is a particular kind of awareness that is in view; it is the aboutness of the sensory stream.  So, are you guys saying that "primordial" is sensory experience, raw experience, without awareness?  And originary is with awareness?  Primordial is pre-intentional?  Really?

Phil

=

[CROC...@aol.com]

Dan,  As pertaining to a given individual's actual experience I do not think the distinction between ontological and ontic holds up in this context.  It's true that the basic experiences of sadness, shame, horror, desire, joy may be fundamental to human life, in a way directly analogous to  the capacity to experience specific colors or sounds.  That might be the basis for saying that these are universal kinds of experience that must be gotten immediately, never mediatedly.  If we take that point of view, then whenever we use these fundamental experiences as elements in subequent experiences we could consider them to be ontic.  I think taking this tack, however, may get in the way of our being able to understand the experience of empathy.

 

Sylvia

 

In a message dated 8/1/2010 7:28:40 A.M. Mountain Daylight Time, sean...@gmail.com writes:

Dan,

So “primordial” is ontological, having to do with being, and “originary” is ontic, having to do with this being’s experience?

Now there's a thought...certainly adds a useful dimension.

So, whatever your state as you emerged from sleep, you seem to be fully conscious now!

Seán

On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 2:55 PM, Dan Bloom <d...@djbloom.com> wrote:

So “primordial” is ontological, having to do with being, and “originary” is ontic, having to do with this being’s experience?

Maybe.

I don’t know how the words are used by others. 

I’ve been reading Bauman’s Postmodern Ethics. He uses “primordial” a lot. I’m not sure how his usage fits in.

Then there are Levinas and the rest of the French.

But this is worth considering.

Heidegger. He has a different project from Husserl or Stein. His is an analytic of being in order to find a fundamental ontology. He thinks he is correcting everyone from Plato to Kant, 

etc. This is the appeal of the pre-Socractics to him - that is, Parmenides and Heraclitus. 

In that regard, he adds a different perspective and way of thinking. I bring that to this discussion — to the extent I understand it. 

Ha! 

You ought to see the disagreements of Heidegger scholars on the Heidegger Circle list! They are a model of thinkers working their different ways through things. 

Dan

On Aug 1, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[CROC...@aol.com]

Hi Haydn, Sean, and Dan,

 

I think a baby experiences hunger and dislikes being wet and cold before he has a sense of himself actually feeling these sensations and urges.  Similarly, a person without much self-reflection, or without much education, may simply speak without much self-awareness, but when he learns he is speaking prose he has a different attitude toward himself as he speaks.  Some people have more self-reflection than others do, and many people mostly look outward toward the others or toward tasks to be done.  A lot of this is culturally determined.

 

Sylvia

 

In a message dated 8/1/2010 7:34:29 A.M. Mountain Daylight Time, h.gu...@gmail.com writes:

Hi Dan and Seán,

Seán did you see Dublin play yesterday, they are now through the q-finals after beating Tyrone!, and  Derval O' Rourke got a silver at the European Games, great to see her finally reach her potential but I think we'll see more from her. 

Okay, I think that for Stein as long as you can differentiate primordial experience from non-primordial then you are capable of following her thesis, she merely needs to show that we experience primordial and non-primordial experience. She is descriptively analyzing her experience of these feelings and aiming to eidetically describe the act of empathy as such within the phenomenological reduction. 

But I can see what you mean - that perhaps there is no private feeling, that the feeling of joy might be made up of other people's feelings of joy and the community's delight at your book publication. I think here we are forced to move back to the initial differentiation of an 'I' from another 'I' in the first instance, because we'd have to move back to the first time we connected with the community. We would have to imagine the first human being unconscious of their experience - in this state pain states and the like would not register to an 'i', but then somehow we become conscious (perhaps on the lines of Sellars as you mentioned yesterday), I think the moment we would realise we were an 'i', there would be a recognition of a 'you'. It wouldn't be possible to just become self-conscious without some 'other', perhaps it's possible to do so in relation to a 'tree' but we would only unfold in terms of the tree, we'd need another human to fully unfold an 'i'. 

Okay, so we now establish an 'i' and when we do so we recognise the other 'i'. Now we reflect on what is given to ourselves in the very first few seconds or being self-conscious. I might experience 'cold', so I'd have these primordial feelings of cold. Then I might look out and see the other person and notice they were shivering too, and thus I'd have non-primordial experience arise inside, that would signify another 'i' being 'cold'. 

So I'm really just trying to go back to the very first time and try to imagine how it might have been like - and surely my primordial experience would have been just that, a realisation that this immediate feeling of 'cold' was running 'live' from my 'i'... having just come to self-consciousness a moment previously thus it would be without any other person necessarily affecting or influencing my primordial feelings in this first primary hypothetical condition. As long as we can say we have primordial experience and non-primordial experience then this allows Stein to continue her argument for her description of the 'act of empathy'. 

Hope the above makes some sense ... 

h. 

[CROC...@aol.com]

Hi Everyone,

 

I think there really are primordial experiences that cannot be mediated but must be experienced first-hand.  Colors and sounds are good examples.  But there are others, many of which are deeply personal.  I remember shortly after my first child was born that I became aware of a feeling that was emerging in me that if anyone tried to hurt my child I felt completely capable and willing to kill them, with my bare hands if necessary.  I had an absolute feeling of conviction about that.  The intensity of the feeling has faded, but I still feel in myself the capacity to kill to protect each of my children.  The other example I'm aware of is of being a teenager and hearing a lot about orgasms, and it all sounded very interesting and exciting.  But I really had no idea what was referred to until later when I experienced it for myself. At that point I realized the gulf between talking about something like that and actually experiencing it.  The social stuff colored what I had heard, but the actual experience was an almost complete surprise.  I think shame, humiliation, actually confronting death in a realistic way, and many others, are immediate experiences, never mediated. 

 

If we have never experienced these immediate experiences empathy would be impossible, since we bring with us to the witness of another's suffering our own affective memory and our caring for the other of what it would be like to be in the other person's place.

 

Sylvia

 

Sylvia

 

In a message dated 8/1/2010 7:55:21 A.M. Mountain Daylight Time, d...@djbloom.com writes:

On Aug 1, 2010, at 9:33 AM, John Gurmin wrote:

Hi Dan and Seán,

Seán did you see Dublin play yesterday, they are now through the q-finals after beating Tyrone!, and  Derval O' Rourke got a silver at the European Games, great to see her finally reach her potential but I think we'll see more from her. 

Okay, I think that for Stein as long as you can differentiate primordial experience from non-primordial then you are capable of following her thesis, she merely needs to show that we experience primordial and non-primordial experience. She is descriptively analyzing her experience of these feelings and aiming to eidetically describe the act of empathy as such within the phenomenological reduction. 

Got it! Oh that eidos!!! Oh that reduction. God bless them, so to speak

But I can see what you mean - that perhaps there is no private feeling, that the feeling of joy might be made up of other people's feelings of joy and the community's delight at your book publication. I think here we are forced to move back to the initial differentiation of an 'I' from another 'I' in the first instance, because we'd have to move back to the first time we connected with the community. We would have to imagine the first human being unconscious of their experience - in this state pain states and the like would not register to an 'i', but then somehow we become conscious (perhaps on the lines of Sellars as you mentioned yesterday), I think the moment we would realise we were an 'i', there would be a recognition of a 'you'. It wouldn't be possible to just become self-conscious without some 'other', perhaps it's possible to do so in relation to a 'tree' but we would only unfold in terms of the tree, we'd need another human to fully unfold an 'i’. 

Yes and maybe.

Some say the Other precedes the I. We develop in the arms of the Other. In the womb, if we have to go there. 

If by ‘i’ you mean something like how Buber describes self emergence via distance etc and once the i comes against an other, the i become I, then I get it. 

Okay, so we now establish an 'i' and when we do so we recognise the other 'i'. Now we reflect on what is given to ourselves in the very first few seconds or being self-conscious. I might experience 'cold', so I'd have these primordial feelings of cold. Then I might look out and see the other person and notice they were shivering too, and thus I'd have non-primordial experience arise inside, that would signify another 'i' being 'cold’. 

Yes. 

Once I had an uncomfortable sensation on my arms. I was distracted while watching a movie so I didn’t pay much attention to it. Then I noticed the person in front of me putting on a sweater. THEN I realized I was cold. 

How would Stein describe this?

So I'm really just trying to go back to the very first time and try to imagine how it might have been like - and surely my primordial experience would have been just that, a realisation that this immediate feeling of 'cold' was running 'live' from my 'i'... having just come to self-consciousness a moment previously thus it would be without any other person necessarily affecting or influencing my primordial feelings in this first primary hypothetical condition. As long as we can say we have primordial experience and non-primordial experience then this allows Stein to continue her argument for her description of the 'act of empathy’. 

You make sense.

We are all trying to imagine “the very first time,” and it is a chimera. I don’t even think it existed. :)

I still won’t grant a monadic primordial experience. 

I’m a tough sell.

Hope the above makes some sense ... 

I love it. You are as clear as can be.

=

[CROC...@aol.com]

Phil and Dan,

 

I think the kind of unfocused awareness you are speaking of occupies very little of our experience.  When we are first waking up, either from a night's sleep or from a nap or from anaesthesia, we are not very focused.  But most people's awareness very quickly becomes practical, entertaining what is to be done.  I think this is where id is most active. Then we get specific about how to go about getting these things done, relying on a combination of habits and skills, plus our ability to devise new methods for peculiar situations. Here is where our natural capacity for intentionality comes out strongest, since we already know or go about discovering what is connected to what, i.e. what steps we have to take to accomplish whatever our goal is.  I think that is the way most people live most of the time. 

 

 Personally, I don't like the old Freudian terminology and think it ought to be abandoned as misleading.

 

Sylvia

 

In a message dated 8/1/2010 7:56:16 A.M. Mountain Daylight Time, philbr...@logic.bm writes:

Dan,
On Aug 1, 2010, at 7:58 AM, Dan Bloom wrote:

> So, aware experiences begin without a stream, a flow, or a sense of time. Begin. I awake, for example.
> But these intransitive experiences focus as the sequence of contact proceeds along the awareness-consciousness continuum. Intentionality emerges from the intransitive awareness as awareness becomes about someTHING. “I” notice a sensation and identify “I itch” and scratch it.
> Intentionality gains more and more clarity as consciousness, ego and personality functionings, becomes more active.
> Intentionality is co-existent with time-consciousness. (Husserl worked this out.)
> Simple awareness is outside time since ego function is  the self structure that marks/experiences time.
> So I think there can be simple awareness that is pre-intentional, but not non-intentional. By being “pre-,” the experience has the beginning “momentum” for intentionality. Intentionality doesn’t come from nowhere or is created by willing. It is emergent, and the pre-intentional aware ground is the condition for its emergence.

To some degree I think you and I are saying the same thing by mixing our terms around.

Phil=

[CROC...@aol.com]

Phil, Sean, and Dan,

 

I doubt that there is a "raw stream" that has no objects--except in those few moments when we are waking up.  I am not aware of such a "raw stream" except when I am barely awake and in the process of either falling asleep or waking up.  My objection to the Cycle of Awareness/Experience is the assertion of "sensation" before "awareness."  I don't think that is an empirically grounded distinction.  On the other hand,  I think we can be aware of a problem that motivates and even agitates us, e.g. a bill to be paid, a meeting to attend, a paper to hand in, a relationship to end, but we have not yet planned/discovered how we are going to do it.  I think full intentionality comes in when we start to work out what is connected to what in ways that permit us to deal with the problem at hand.  Or to put it another way, we can be aware of an object with such a focus that we do not yet know how to deal with it.  Here we have gotten no further than Brentano's position that awarenes is always of an object.  But when we begin to see how to move with respect to the object--about which we have a feeling that we must deal with it in a practical way (not in Brentano)--then we employ our capacity for intentional processing a la Husserl, i.e. by seeing what kinds of implications the figure/problem at hand points us to. 

 

Sylvia

 

 

 

In a message dated 8/1/2010 8:01:11 A.M. Mountain Daylight Time, d...@djbloom.com writes:

I agree.
I once referred to intentionality as the arc of contacting. It was in my Manchester presentation. I described it developing within self emergence,

On Aug 1, 2010, at 10:51 AM, Philip Brownell wrote:

> Dan,
> On Aug 1, 2010, at 7:58 AM, Dan Bloom wrote:
>

[CROC...@aol.com]

I think Daniel Stern's (with many others) research shows that the infant is aware of the other from or nearly from birth.  The infant doesn't come to the sense of "I" "my" "mine" in anything like a cognitive awareness until later on.  We enrich our experience of ourselves as we engage with others in many significant ways, but the research shows that the sense of "not me" or "otherness" exists non-cognitively almost from the beginning of life.

 

Sylvia

 

In a message dated 8/1/2010 8:32:11 A.M. Mountain Daylight Time, h.gu...@gmail.com writes:

Thanks Dan,

I'll have to think about the womb - which would require me to go back even further, and perhaps chicken and egg would arise there... here's just a piece I'm working on at the moment on the constitution of the 'I' as a pole of experience. 

Having discussed Stein’s understanding of empathy which has opened for her an avenue into the ‘foreign’ the ‘other’ there is a perhaps  a necessity now to consider the interior experience of our ‘I’, the ‘I’ that is given to us as an indispensable condition for our ability to ‘constitute’ anything. Stein outlines in On Empathy that we are capable of differentiating the primordial and non-primordial experience of joy and by doing so we come to realise or identify my ‘I’ as the pole of experience. This distinction is considered to be prior to my constitution of myself as self. Constitution in this regard rests on foreign experience, in relation to the other.  As Lebech explains:

The phenomenological reduction reduces experience in its entirety to being approached as ‘the stream of consciousness’. This stream is not always constituted, i.e. it is not always structured and intelligible, but when it is, it is polarised by an I.[1]

The ‘I’ is necessary for intelligible experience it is as ‘selfness’ and this experience of ‘selfness’ is brought about in contrast to the ‘otherness’ of the other.

---

[1] Mette Lebech, The Identification of Human Dignity, p. 214

As Stein states: 

This ‘selfness’ is experienced and is the basis of all that is ‘mine’. Naturally, it is first brought into relief in contrast with another when another is given. […] The otherness is apparent in the type of givenness; it is other than ‘I’ because it is given to me in another way than ‘I’. Therefore it is ‘you’. But, since [this ‘you’] experiences itself as I experience myself, the ‘you’ is another ‘I’. Thus the ‘I’ does not become individualised because another faces it, but […] its selfness is brought into relief in contrast with the otherness of the other.[1]

[1] Edith Stein, On Empathy, p. 38

This is great it footnotes and all in gmail,

h. 

On 1 Aug 2010, at 15:06, Dan Bloom wrote:

We’d have to know what you are boasting about to care. :)

On Aug 1, 2010, at 10:05 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

Thanks, Haydn - absolutely right! maybe we better calm down - our American colleagues might think we are boasting!

Seán

On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 3:52 PM, John Gurmin <h.gu...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks Seán,

I think our Dervla got silver in fact, she was very close to gold two hundreds of a second...

 

http://www.rte.ie/sport/athletics/2010/0731/orourked.html

So you'll have to up the celebrations at Cocktail hour.

H. 

On 1 Aug 2010, at 14:45, Sean Gaffney wrote:

Haydn,

Unfortunately, missed the Dublin game but saw Dervla O'Rourke's bronze...

I like and appreciate your clarification here. It is helping me to focus...it is so easy to forget Edith Stein's purpose: to apply phenomenology to the "problem" of empathy. And yet - how richly she does so!

Will be into my next burst of reading tomorrow - so watch this space!

Áth Chliath Abú!

Seán

On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 3:33 PM, John Gurmin <h.gu...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Dan and Seán,

Seán did you see Dublin play yesterday, they are now through the q-finals after beating Tyrone!, and  Derval O' Rourke got a silver at the European Games, great to see her finally reach her potential but I think we'll see more from her. 

Okay, I think that for Stein as long as you can differentiate primordial experience from non-primordial then you are capable of following her thesis, she merely needs to show that we experience primordial and non-primordial experience. She is descriptively analyzing her experience of these feelings and aiming to eidetically describe the act of empathy as such within the phenomenological reduction. 

But I can see what you mean - that perhaps there is no private feeling, that the feeling of joy might be made up of other people's feelings of joy and the community's delight at your book publication. I think here we are forced to move back to the initial differentiation of an 'I' from another 'I' in the first instance, because we'd have to move back to the first time we connected with the community. We would have to imagine the first human being unconscious of their experience - in this state pain states and the like would not register to an 'i', but then somehow we become conscious (perhaps on the lines of Sellars as you mentioned yesterday), I think the moment we would realise we were an 'i', there would be a recognition of a 'you'. It wouldn't be possible to just become self-conscious without some 'other', perhaps it's possible to do so in relation to a 'tree' but we would only unfold in terms of the tree, we'd need another human to fully unfold an 'i'. 

Okay, so we now establish an 'i' and when we do so we recognise the other 'i'. Now we reflect on what is given to ourselves in the very first few seconds or being self-conscious. I might experience 'cold', so I'd have these primordial feelings of cold. Then I might look out and see the other person and notice they were shivering too, and thus I'd have non-primordial experience arise inside, that would signify another 'i' being 'cold'. 

So I'm really just trying to go back to the very first time and try to imagine how it might have been like - and surely my primordial experience would have been just that, a realisation that this immediate feeling of 'cold' was running 'live' from my 'i'... having just come to self-consciousness a moment previously thus it would be without any other person necessarily affecting or influencing my primordial feelings in this first primary hypothetical condition. As long as we can say we have primordial experience and non-primordial experience then this allows Stein to continue her argument for her description of the 'act of empathy'. 

Hope the above makes some sense ... 

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

=

[CROC...@aol.com]

Hi Haydn, Dan and All,

 

Many of my experiences of empathy have been experiences of the suffering of animals.

 

Sylvia 

 

In a message dated 8/1/2010 9:02:30 A.M. Mountain Daylight Time, philbr...@logic.bm writes:

Dear Haydn,

I am curious if you include non-humans in the "other."  Much of what we end up talking about is inter-subjective, where it is one human being to another.  However, I believe human consciousness is active in the cloister, in retreat, in solitude.

Phil

On Aug 1, 2010, at 10:31 AM, John Gurmin wrote:

=

[CROC...@aol.com]

Hi Haydn,

 

My younger cat was very close to my old cat, and when the old cat died of a heart attack my young cat was somber and withdrawn for several months.  I thought he must be grieving the loss of his companion.

 

Sylvia

 

In a message dated 8/1/2010 10:29:40 A.M. Mountain Daylight Time, h.gu...@gmail.com writes:

Hi Phil,

Stein doesn't talk about animals as such in On Empathy, but yes one could apply it to 'reading' as Sawicki said in her analysis and to the cat, the dog etc. My dog was involved in a scuffle with another bigger dog a while back, she came in and was a bit distressed, so we knew something was wrong with her, although there were no cuts or signs of injury. She walked the floor that night, and didn't eat the next morning which made us wonder about her teeth, so  when I went to check her teeth there were a number loose, and she winced. Of course I was having an 'inter-subjective' experience with our dog, which allowed me to understand why she walked the floor the previous night. While I can have these sort of experiences of the dog and its feelings of 'pain' etc , the dog wouldn't engage on the same level with my delight at solving a mathematical problem. 

Also my 'i' has been unfolded with others of the same 'type' i.e. other subjects. If I was a feral child and had no exposure to other humans, my 'i' would probably unfold in relation to the animal that I was raised by, so perhaps I'd dig with my 'hands' as the wolf and howl to communicate. 

We have in fact two dogs, one of the dogs was brought up with us  (Bonnie) and around us and it is interesting to see how she 'communicates' with everyone in the house, her twin brother (Dino) was given to someone else but he was left outside with other dogs. But unfortunately the people that had Dino moved to a different house with smaller yard and had to give up the dog, so we took him in. It was interesting to note the differences in terms of how the dogs communicated with us. One can see Bonnie who was brought up with humans all along has unfolded perhaps more in relation to human experience than the other dog who was outside with other dogs. But now I could just be projecting here of course, so it would be interesting to hear other experiences of this. 

Best wishes,

Haydn 

On 1 Aug 2010, at 17:00, Philip Brownell wrote:

=

[Philip Brownell]

On Aug 2, 2010, at 7:50 PM, CROC...@aol.com wrote:

My objection to the Cycle of Awareness/Experience is the assertion of "sensation" before "awareness."  I don't think that is an empirically grounded distinction.

I do.

[CROC...@aol.com]

I don't think it's a helpful distinction (and I still doubt it is empirical except in those moments before we are altogether awake).  How do you find it useful?

 

Sylvia

 

=

[Philip Brownell]

I have seen trainees labor on and on trying to maximize their awareness by focusing on this and that sensation without ever coming to a focus–what it's all about.  Whether you call it "just Brentano" or not, I think that simple aboutness is key.  Before it, people are lost in their circumstances.  I routinely offer the following exercise to clients:

Imagine you are in an art gallery.  You are standing with your nose two inches from a painting.  All you can see are blurry object.  Step back.  Now you can see paint blotches and brush strokes.  Step back. Step back again.  Now something comes into full view.  It is the picture, the painting. Now you see it.  Take it in.  What is it.  At face value this is your situation.  What do you see?  How does it make you feel?  Based on what you feel, what do you want?

Often, I believe, people are living at the level of brush strokes without actually stepping back to take in the whole picture and let it really affect them.  That is the level of sensation.  They have not really grasped what the situation is and what it is about.

Phil

[CROC...@aol.com]

Phil,

 

I agree that people often don't quite "get" what the situation is that they're facing.  And yet their minds are not blank or filled with a confetti of sensations.  Even the person standing near the picture in the art gallery is aware or being in a situation in which they are so close to the picture they can't make it out, and they are aware of the situation itself. If it is an exercise you are having them do in training, they are aware of the situation of doing an exercise at your direction.   Also they are probably aware of intelligible sounds and background noises as they are aware of what they are doing.  The point I'm making is that as long as a person is wide awake they are aware of any number of sensory objects and thoughts that they can identify, bodily feelings that they identify as in their head, kneeds, shoulders, etc.,m plus any number of specific thoughts they may be having during the span of time involved.  The closest we can come to sensations without definite objects during a waking state is in meditation or something of the kind.  A person's existential situation may not be clear for a time until they change perspectives, but always during this time they are aware of a variety of objects, probably attending to various needs/necessities in their everyday life, dealing with other people, remembering situations, worrying about practical matters, etc.   I don't think your example is apt if the topic is whether or not people have sensation without objects in waking experience.

 

Sylvia

 

=

[Philip Brownell]

Dear Sylvia,

You don't have to think it's apt.  Yet, I can't help but think that in your list of things people are "aware" of, that you made my point.  I did not say people have NO awareness at the stage of sensation.  People must be aware of sensation.  However, the awareness of what that sensation is about is the second stage in the cycle of experience, and to me that is also a more clearly established gestalt/more well formed intentional object.  We don't have to agree.

I am curious if you are reading On the Problem of Empathy along with the rest of us right now?

Phil

[LG Brownell]

Haydn,

Oh dear - another book! Looks interesting.

I am also reminded very fondly of my own dog - Fritz (yes, after Fritz Perls). One very cold, snowy winter's night, I stayed at the T.V long after Fritz's walk...and came out to the hall to find that he had expertly dumped his load into EACH of my shoes! 

I am also reminded of his exquisite sensitivity to my partner's illness. The usual morning procedure was that I would get up, open the kitchen door where he slept, and put the coffee on. When I came back to the bedroom, Fritz could be in a number of places: lying alongside my partner, licking her face = she was not well; On the bed and a metre or so away from her = she is not at all well. In under the covers, and close against her = she is fine today.

Yeah...gotta order that book!

Go, Dublin, go!

Seán

On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 11:05 PM, John Gurmin <h.gu...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Seán,

Amazing really what they can do, and even when they want to get out they stand at the door expecting it to be opened - an 'intentional stance' perhaps? 

In fact there is an interesting essay by Lévinas called 'The name of the dog' where he speaks about a stray dog 'Bobby' that recognised the jews who were in a concentration camp as 'being human'... but while the 'dog'  - bobby, for Lévinas, has a face it wouldn't be in pure form as a human face. See, Lévinas, 'The name of a dog, or natural rights' in Animal Philosophy, ed. Peter Atterton & Matthew Calarco, (London: Continnum, 2005) pp.45-50. 

Derrida also has an interesting article on animals but he talks about a 'cat' - 'The animal that I therefore I am (More to Follow)'  - Derrida seems quite shocked about the gaze of his cat looking at him  when he is caught naked and how embarrassed he becomes! (Ibid., pp. 113-128).

The editors of the book outline that phenomenology has been preoccupied with the question of the human and has not give due attention to the animal. It's an interesting volume with a preface from Peter Singer, and extracts from Nietzsche, Heidegger, Bataille, Lévinas, Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, Cixous and Irigaray on the animal.

On another notes seems that the Meath team got its just deserts and were beaten by Kildare so no 'Sam' for us this year. But it probably was justice given the win over Louth.

Best wishes,

Haydn 

On 2 Aug 2010, at 20:10, Sean Gaffney wrote:

Haydn,

Your story of Bonnie and Dion awakened a memory. Maria MacManus is a Gestalt colleague and poetess from Strangford Lough, in the North.

She has a wonderfull poem called "Reading the Dog" about how she and her siblings would know that their hard-drinking father was A) down the bend in the road and B) what state he was in. If the dog hid behind the sofa or under the table, then their father was drunk and angry. If the dog hung about near the hall, then their father was drunk and in a good mood...

Hmmm...so maybe it works both ways?

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

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www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Sean Gaffney]

Linda,

In Ireland we play two traditional Irish sports: Gaelic football and hurling. Each are kind of beyond comparison with anything else you might know...anyway, each are played by county teams. To play for a county, you or your parents need to have been born there. So highly charged. "Sam" is the Sam Maguire Cup, the most desirable trophy in Ireland. I have seen grown men weep when they realised that their playing days were over and that they would never hold "Sam".

I am from County Dublin, so Dublin is "my" team. Haydn is from County Meath, so Meath is "his " team. Dublin is in the quarter finals...Meath is in the also-rans...(apologies, Haydn...just trying to bring Linda up to scratch!).

Okay?

Seán

On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 7:46 PM, LG Brownell <rea...@juno.com> wrote:

OK Guys:)....who the heck is Meath and Kildare and Sam...I assume Soccer?

L:)


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www.egenart.info/gaffney

[John Gurmin]

Hi Sylvia,

Yes I would think the cat was grieving alright. Some dogs never get over the death of their owners either.  It's difficult losing a pet too, lots of grief for their owners, like a member of the family that has gone really. 

I think Stein will eventually talk about three types of empathy, the first is the ability to in-feel the 'foreign' - the 'other'. The second will be to do with empathizing at the level of 'feeling' (sensate realm) and the third in relation to empathizing on the 'spiritual'  (or mental) realm as some beings won't have a body necessarily (e.g. an alien that might be pure 'spirit')... 

• Empathy belongs to consciousness that identifies other I’s. (cat’s, dog’s)
• Spiritual empathy belongs to spiritual beings
• Sensual empathy belongs to sensual beings.  

[Dan Bloom]

I just got back from a week of un-plugged vacation.

Given all the deadlines that are coming down on me now— and that I to prepare for 3 presentations in Berlin — I doubt I can stay active here.

Stein will have to wait.

Sylvia:

Two things.

One, we disagree about id functioning and “awareness.” 

To my thinking, awareness is a process that emerges without focus and which further develops. 

When unfocused, awareness has no or virtually no object. The organizing of awareness toward an object is a temporal development as awareness becomes focused and consciousness itself emerges. 

Second: Care.

I agree with you, mostly.

 

“Care” has three formal structures of Dasein’s being-in-the-world. Befindlichkeit, (Dispossedness, Mood, or Attunement) is the affective givens of Care as Dasein is thrown into a world that always already has an affective component. To that extent, id functioning can parallel Care. 

Otherwise, I don’t see the connection.

“Care” is how Dasein is in-the-world, and, yes, it is the structure/function of Dasein’s having its own being be of concern to it. 

Dasein is always already practically engaged. 

This fits well with our theory of self. 

Dan

On Aug 2, 2010, at 6:50 PM, CROC...@aol.com wrote:

The second point I wanted to make is that I disagree with both Dan's notion that there can be awareness without an object; or that the experience of id is either outside of awareness or non-specific.  I think id may be in principle and as a capacitysimilar to care in Heidegger, i.e. the fundamental human capacity to be non-indifferent to what is happening in one's own actual experience; more positively, the ineluctable tendency to evaluate whatever happens in a positive or negative way, and to live through time constantly with an orientation toward (large or small) goals of some kind.  For me ego is our practical capacity to devise means to ends, with personality as the skills and habits we've developed through lived experience.  I realize that there are differences of opinions in these matters, but I don't think a case can be made for id's being outside of awareness, or that awareness can be totally without an object.