The Experiment
Appendix 1: Language and Self-Presence
Sections below:
Introduction
Language and Self-Presence
Presence and Self-Presence
…and Language
Reading, Seeing-Hearing-Sensing, and Meaning Development
Understanding, Misunderstanding, and Self-Transcendence
An Application
Conclusion
Introduction
All aspects and facets of our mind’s operations work within the framework of our self-presencing structure. That is, when you are present to this page, as you are now, and as you read this text, you also are present to yourself, at the same time, and as a correlative to your being present to anything else.
By present I do not mean as a book is present to the next book on a shelf, or a table to a chair. Rather, I mean this sort of presence as: to be aware of, or to be mediating, or to be in communication with, in some way, or to be able to respond intelligently in some way, to what or who is other to me. As beings endowed with a self-present structure, we are other to ourselves in some way as condition for becoming present to anything or any other-else.
As a larger-context aside, then, we should couch our reflection on self-presence and language in the act of meaning that any intelligible object is involved in; that is, objects mean themselves to other objects. In this most basic way, the book on the shelf is already involved in the act of meaning itself to the books around it. In quite concrete terms, one book cannot lean itself past or into the book next to it, though in a very long-term sense, they are both involved in decay where, we can assume, at some point their meaning will be that of “dust to dust,” as will our own physical presence.
In this most basic physics-way, however, the books and the table and chair, are present to one another and are involved in the basic meaning that physics is in its common and relatively predictable way. So we can regard that such physical (non-conscious) meaning-presence (or presencing) is basic to all other kinds of presence, including to those that we refer to as conscious awareness and the self-presence we are exploring here. In this most basic way, I can shake hands with you if I am physically present with you, and our hands will experience the same physics that the book is involved in when leaning on another book on the shelf.
Far beyond the above sort of physical presence, then, as conscious and thinking beings (unlike the book or the chair or the basic physics of hand-shaking) (a) we are already involved in, and can become aware of and present to, such basic meaningful relationships; (b) we can become aware of and present to other persons who are themselves aware of me; and (c) we can become aware of what it means to be present and aware.
Further, as we will explore below, besides conditioning for other-else presence, for human beings, our being self-present (in the way that we experience ourselves and others when we think, speak, and listen) is the conditioning factor for us to have language in the way that we do.
Language and Self-Presence
First, a baby begins by wondering-about and then learning-about her world of light and motion, and later of her hands, Mommy and Daddy, blocks, pets, keys, grass, floors, cribs, and kitchens, etc., and of the experiences of being carried, fed, and comforted, in an ever-expanding array of meaning accumulation (qualified or not). Such meaning constantly flows through our complex of cognitional processes, and builds up in our understanding complex (our schema), in ways that we are yet to know about in any critical way (Duchant 1991).
In that complex, however, what is newly quested-for and insighted-in our primitive development (early infancy and pre-language) is constantly being related-to and integrated-with what we have insighted-to-our understanding before or, as we say, our understanding or under-meaning. We include here in our reference to this early development an expanse of image development and a correlative wealth of feeling associations that we generally assign to early responses to what we refer to as primitive insights.
Similarly, when you read (as you are reading now), your internal desire-quests (chapter 2) spontaneously seek and probe for external meaning (insights-to-understanding, knowing, valuing) in that presencing and self-presencing experience. In this case, the words you are reading on this page are present to you and mean to-with you in the reading/other-presence experience. Intelligence is this passive awareness-of- external, and resonance-with-internal, meaning—accompanied by our spontaneous and active probing for new meaning that will then inspire new insights.
In this way, as you observe or read, you spontaneously desire-quest for new meaning to insight and, as you do, your insights-to-understanding build up to lay a foundation for further desire-questing and insighting; and the process goes forward—in exponential, integrative, and spontaneous fashion. Key here is the spontaneous dynamism of our desire-quests in either active or passive mode and, as active, almost making what would otherwise seem obsessive into normal human-intelligent activity.
Second, your array of already-understood meaning spontaneously resonates-dissonates with meaning floes, forms, and relations in the present situation or, in our case, in the text here as you read it. For instance, you already know what all of the letters and most of the words here mean. Or you know the term text, in this common con-text and, most probably, what I mean by it, along with a plethora of other meanings that I have expressed here, and with some burgeoning grey areas around its central meaning. I have used hundreds of words to write this text; and you have brought your prior understanding of all or most of them to your reading of what I have to say in writing. That is, if you understand anything at all, you are already spontaneously resonating-dissonating with what I have written. In the case of my writing a technical document (as is common for such writing), I am endowing some words here with more technical meaning for definition and clarity in this context.
However, such a phenomenon as your reading this text indicates that, at some time in your life, you had to learn (going through a long desire-questing, to-insighting, to understanding process) what the marks A-B-C and a-b-c mean (and much more about letter and words), phonetically, alphabetically, and in terms of complex contexts of meaning, all with those gray areas of meaning all-around. And it indicates that you may modify, but you need not re-learn the meanings of the letters or their order and relation, over and over again, in order to read this text with any modicum of qualified understanding. That learning (yours) grew to include quite nuanced meanings of names, phrases, sentences, contexts, etc. What you are trying to understand now as you read this page is no longer the letters, but what I might mean by how I have arranged the letters and terms in this particular order rather than some other. The build-up of meaning from that beginning basis is really quite complex.
However, you could not be reading this page with even a mild interest, or as raising further questions about my meaning (from your experience of dissonance), without already having desire-quested-insighted-understood (stored away for resonant purposes) a wealth of meaning in your long journey of building up a meaning-foundation of understanding for yourself. In our example, you look at the page and, through the auspices of your prior understanding of the word text, you are already present to, in communication with, or presencing, the letter-meaning (and my meaning “behind” it), and then the whole word text, in its larger con-text, while you quickly and spontaneously probe (desire-quest) to understand what I mean by the arrangements on the page with other letters, words, and sentences.
Further, and again, such a development is also underpinned and infused with already-developed and probably long-held (a) images and (b) feelings—all of which we will give some treatment to here and in other appendixes (appendixes 15 and 22).
Third, such a phenomenon also indicates that merely looking at something, where looking means we employ our ocular capacities—at this text, for instance—does not instantly produce understanding on its own. Rather, the phenomenon of learning briefly developed above indicates that our understanding of anything new is utterly dependent on a build-up of prior understanding that we, then, spontaneously bring into resonance-dissonance with the continuum of our new experiences of meaning (some of which we are apt to avoid so well).
Thus, merely looking at text, for instance, as you are doing now, is never merely looking, but is already a process of conjuring up, and bringing forward, in lightening-fast and extraordinarily selective fashion, all of the related (and-or conflicting) meaning of this and all the other letters and terms on this page—you need not learn these meanings again, as you did when you learned the alphabet and word-sounds as a child. Now, the meaning is already present in and to you—at-the-ready and beyond the speed of light (because we may anticipate meaning)—to inform your reading for you. Thus, we say that newly presented meaning, like opening a new book, resonates spontaneously with already-learned meaning.
As you look at the text, then, that inner meaning can now, instantly and spontaneously, resonate with the marks on the page that spell out and mean text, etc., and you can flow yourself and your own meaning across the words and sentences with a modicum of faster-than-time understanding that is specific to you and your background of under-meaning. (That meaning is specific to you, but not necessarily singular.)
Thus, as suggested above, reading is not just looking at the words on the page or being present to them as a book is present to another book on the shelf; nor is hearing of language the same as merely sensing decibels. Rather, when you read, you are both conjuring a wealth of internal meaning spontaneously (and ever-so-quickly) and employing your ability to think-about new meaning through your desire-questing-to-insighting activities, more generally known as your multi-layered cognitional activities as set out in our experimental text, Finding the Mind: Pedagogy for Self-Appropriation.
Presence and Self-Presence
First, through the self-presencing structure that we are endowed with, such reading and thinking-about what we are reading is in part saying the text to my self in my minded activities.
Reading = Thinking = Saying the text to myself in my internal dialogue
Second, such internal saying also implies a listening. Or, the saying-to-myself that I experience as a part of my thinking implies an already-constituted internal speaker, but also a quieter and commonly-unnoticed internal listener in me; and both are aspects of what we mean by thinking.
Hence, the structure of self-presence emerges with our exploration of the thinking-reading process and the experience of being physically and also meaningfully present to a speaking person, or a page and the writing on it and, behind the page, the author’s intended meaning. Namely, saying internally (or thinking about something or someone) implies a me who speaks and a me who listens in the one me, I, or you (Piscitelli, 1977).
I-Me Includes: (a) Me who speaks (b) Me who listens
Commonly, it is easy to locate our internal speaker for, beyond the images and feelings we can find in our internal lives, I refer to the voice we can notice that is constantly saying in our minds as we experience thought—about anything. We easily and commonly say, when describing our thinking about something, “I can hear myself saying…,” or, “I can hear my mother saying ….”
Perhaps not so oddly as we might think as we self-reflect, we do so even though we are not employing the physical apparatus of our hearing; nor are we creating external sounds when we think, or when we say-to-ourselves, or when we listen to ourselves speaking internally.
However, internally—in our minds—the speaker in that sentence is speaking to you or me also—and thus that speaker in us is accompanied by an implied hearer-listener who is, by definition, quiet and open to the meaning that is being said internally.
Thinking, then, in a very real sense, is I-myself speaking to myself, who, we can assume, is also listening. And so we must infer that internally, when we speak to ourselves in the way that is so common to our experience of the thinking process, we are also listening to ourselves at the same time. Thus, in this presencing process, meaning flows in and through us, and as one and the same speaking-listening person: I-me. Hence, the basic structure of thinking is that:
(1) I-me speaker-speaks (2) about something/someone (3) to I-me speaker-listener
(Piscitelli, 1977)
Third, the about in the speaker-about-listener structure is what or whom we are thinking of or about; or the about is the object of thought that we are internally conversing for ourselves. The thinking-about is any content-what-or-whoever that is present to us as object in our thinking, e.g., the text, the book, the table, the event, a person, or what another person-speaker-listener is talking about. In this way, I can be sitting in a chair, and be present physically to that chair as I am physically present to the table in front of me. However, at the same time, I can be present in my thinking to my son who lives across town, or Aristotle (through his writing), who lived over 2000 years ago.
Further, in a way, I am still physically present to my son (who is across town at present) in the very basic way that I can be aware of the (also intelligible) spatial distance between us. We are still connected in some way through that known-intelligibility of things, other persons, and events.
Also, the development of technology has brought us to question the common notion of being present to someone (if not something) where that presence means we can see, hear, or touch someone. My point here, again, is to refer to the basic intelligibility (and vast meaningfulness) of physics, its laws, and our assumptions about it. In common parlance, I am not present to my son precisely because he is across town at present and, thus, I cannot be aware of the nuances of his physical presence. For instance, he may have a sunburn since I saw him last, but I cannot see it to become aware of it. However, he can tell me about it on the phone or in an e-mail. In this way, I can change my internal imagery of him and I can draw on my sympathetic feelings for him. I can become more present to him as an intelligible presence, if not a physical one. The physics of space (he is across town) is present to me within the changing but intelligible context of my relationship to him; but not in a way that I can observe his sunburn with my own eyes.
In this way, then, and while we can presence and read the text in front of us, as you are doing now as you read this page, the text is only one example of any what or whom that we can think about or object-ify, or become present to, in the way human beings do. The about-object in the subject-object-subject tri-part structure can be anything under the sun or beyond.
On the other hand, the self-present structure—the speaker-listener aspect of the structure we briefly explored above—is already there as a prior condition to objectifying (thinking about) anything or anyone, regardless of about-content, again, in the way that human beings do—in language.
Self-Present Structure
SUBJECT—-OBJECT—-SUBJECT
(speaker)(about)(listener)
About-Object (any) Presence Other-X
Any Object-X is present to me as an intelligible what-whom I am thinking about, e.g., a book, an event, or another person
Subject as self-presencing structure: I am present to myself as an abiding internal structure regardless of what X-object I presence: I listen to the other-X who is also saying-listening to me and through me. As I listen to others’ in conversation, I am allowing them to take up the speaker position as external-prevalent so that I as listener become internal-prevalent, and as my resonant-dissonant functioning and my desire-quest-dynamism spontaneously engage in my search for new insights.
Furthermore, precisely because we are constituted by this basic and abiding self-present structure, we are able to objectify many things, including even our own selves as object-X. That is, we can think about or other ourselves as object-X in the same way that we think about or other a text, a chair, an event, or another person—from within that basic self-presencing structure. That is, in speaking to my self (thinking), I can objectify myself as the about-X in the content of my thought, as if I were another person or thing. Similarly, I can be speaking with another person, and the about-X can be either-both of us and-or any other X. For instance, if together we are planning a party for next week, we spontaneously think ourselves into that event--as others.
In this way, you can say out loud or internally to yourself, for instance, I was riding my bike. Here the any-x-content also can be me as I think about myself as object-X in a self-referential way.
Thus, we are basically and already self-present—in being constituted by the tri-part structure and subject-to-subject self-present. However, from within that self-present structure we can also object-ify-X our own selves—or take ourselves within that structure as the object of it. The subject-to-subject structure is what allows me-subject to also be an object-X from within that structure. Only if I can speak to myself as another subject-speaker in my thought processes can I other myself as object-X.
Such abilities allow you to dialogue-with, free-image-think, question, and thus other the meaning-content of the text, placing any X whatsoever in the about-X thought-space between myself as first speaker, and then as listener. That dynamism includes your own self-as-object-X. In so-objectifying, we can merely contemplate any meaning whatsoever for the sheer joy of it, and we can invite new questions and insights as we go. Suspending the plausible and engaging in fictional stories or film is a product of the vast potential creativity opened-up to us through our being able to (a) be self-present as structure and (b) object-X anything whatsoever from within that basic structure.
Again, when we speak with another person, we are allowing the other person to be our speaker where what the other person is saying (a) resonates with our full field of under-meaning and-or (b) introduces dissonance—introduces questionable data that we can either overtly ask about or leave to “fester” in our arena of under-thought where questions we may not want to address have already been raised but then shunted away from our field of open awareness.
Also, saying I-Me is an identity of self-to-self—at once, implying a unity of self: (1) as listener, (2) as a subject (to subject) who can also be an object, and (3) as speaker (Piscitelli, 1977). Thus, I can say to myself (think) that the air is cool this morning; and-or I can free-image myself (and think-about or other discursively). For instance, as object-X I can image-think myself walking in the coolness under the trees somewhere in New York’s Central Park or on the moon. As a symbolic "I" (unified subject-object-subject in humans) and as our basic given structure, I have the ability to both be present to myself as subject who is reading a text (in this case, the text is meaningful object-X) and, at the same time, to objectify-other myself with and into the text.
To say this another way, we can be self-consciously present in the meaning of the text (I can objectify myself or think myself as a part of object-X). When we think ourselves into an object-X situation, we do so while remaining self-present in the basic constancy of our internal speaker-listener relationship.
Being able to read, as simple as it may seem, is already wholly dependent on this one-and-the-same structure and on our ability to language-self-as-object that is part and parcel to being human. Using I or We is already a way of holding all of this process together as a symbolic, integral unity.
…and Language
Integral with our ability to language as human, we need do nothing to make basic self-presencing happen. Rather, we are already structured to be self-present in the speaker-listener aspect of our constitution as human. That basic self-presence is part and parcel to the structure of language itself. This is so because the differentiated structure provides the prior conditions for us to throw meaning into an object form separate from ourselves and identify it with other sensible forms. Language manifests from our ability to throw meaning as object-X, and to say that same meaning to ourselves and to other subjects.
Through the basic tri-part structure, we can also throw ourselves into that objective place. In doing so, we become not only present to ourselves as a matter of merely being human, but we become present to ourselves as thrown-object in our consciousness, ready to take on the dressing of language as expressions of us, but also as separated from us for our own understanding, appraisal and ultimately, for our own formation. I can not-only say to myself, but I can say about myself as other-object.
We are self-present, then, not only as I (subject-speaker) am already present to Myself (subject-listener) but, also as Me (as-object-X) as a spontaneous part of my thinking, or at will. The high development expressed in a self-reflectie person springs from our more basic ability to (1) already be self-present and, thus, to say to myself and (2) to be able to put our own selves into that object-X place for our own consideration. That is, as a part of my thinking, I can become present-as-object-X to the already self-present self.
In other words, because of the basic self-presencing structure that we are, and just as we can think the chair-as-object-X as apart from ourselves, we also can think ourselves-as-object-X—also as apart from ourselves. Language and communications in it (as we know it as human), then, is not only what we do, but what we are as human.
Further, we can think ourselves-as-object anywhere, anytime, and in any meaning, for example, far and away from our immediate surroundings (on the moon, or in Italy, etc.). Just as we speak-to-ourselves and to others about some object-other-thing-X (thinking-about) so we can speak to ourselves and to others about ourselves. We can objectify or think about ourselves. Further, again, we are open to vast ranges of development through such thought processes. That is, we can learn in highly developed fashion and, in that learning, we can develop our self-reflective capacities. We can speak to ourselves (and others) about our selves, reflecting and expanding our thought-arena with regard to our understanding, our identities, our learned principles, and our speaking-acting in the world.
Furthermore, our qualitative concerns emerge with regard to the vast range of choices that accompany our ability to intelligently objectify and speak-to-ourselves that objectification. At the very least, the good and the bad are rooted in our developmental patterns associated with speech and complex communications, and around our need for a refining principle or set of principles that will govern our abilities and the choices that surround those abilities.
Through our basic and dynamic tri-part structure we can express ourselves—who and what we are—but also we can objectify-other in language—ourselves and anything else, again, under the sun and beyond. The self-directed and meaningful sounds, and written words, take objective-other form in and as that language. As such, our four generalized questions (developed in Part II) can approach any meaning-X; and that any-meaning-X can also be me, in or out of the company of any other X that I choose to think about or subject I choose to speak with. Again, the fact that we can grow our moral horizons (the question of the good-bad applied to ourselves) and change ourselves according to newly established meaning depends entirely on our innate specifically-human ability to think of ourselves as an entirely different-object-X other, e.g., when we compare ourselves to another person and come up wanting.
As example, think of yourself riding on an elephant across the San Francisco Bay Bridge with a stream of cars behind you on a sunny afternoon, waving and swaying with the slow movement of the elephant’s strides. Here, you are thinking of yourself as an other, and you can think yourself, as it were, into this sunny afternoon. However, such other-thinking is not the basic self-presencing aspect of our constitution we are exploring here. It is not the same basic self-presence that conditions our fantasy elephant ride or any other self-othering that we do in the first place. That is, instead of ourselves riding the elephant, we as easily can leave ourselves out of the othering situation and imagine the Queen of England riding on that elephant.
In either case, we are still self-present, placing either ourselves or the Queen of England on the elephant in the object-X place of our tri-part structure. In either case, our speaker-listener self-presencing structure conditions that we can do such self-as-other thinking, and-or place anyone or anything on that elephant in our imaginative-thought processes—and we have done so just by suggesting it here in print that, through your own resonant-dissonant dynamism, means itself to you—and behind that, me writing this document. Thus, in lightening-speed fashion, by inner direction and-or resonance, or by outer suggestion (in this case, my writing this document and you reading it), we can place anything or anyone in that about-X place in the self-presencing structure, including ourselves or the Queen of England.
This kind of language-oriented thinking—objectifying ourselves into any place or situation, fictitious or not—is so commonly available to us as to seem uninteresting to most. However, the flexibility of our self-presencing structure to other-objectify persons, things, events, and our own selves in this way, as fully developed, is constitutive of human language. The self-to-self, speaker-to-listener structure enables us to resonate-with the othered-X as spontaneous re-cognition. It enables us to desire-quest—to raise questions and speculate about new meaning-data dissonant or not recognized in, or not yet constituted in that other, including in ourselves. And it enables us then to say-to-ourselves new meaning for the othered-objectified X–as potential new insighting activity. Without our speaker-to-other-to-listener structure, we would not be potential to experience the vast range of self-development that human beings do.
Finally, new meaning that is insighted is spontaneously added-to and integrated-with our dynamic, fluid, and developing schematic field of under-meaning. In this way, what is objectified can remain object, but it also can become the catalyst for internal growth and a change of being in ourselves, e.g., the identification with principles of intelligence and excellence and the establishment and growth of our moral horizons. We see the concrete visible, audible, and touchable (sensible) material—in our case, we see the dark forms on a white background that concretely fix the contrasting tones, and hold in place the more nuanced meaning of the learned word text here. The ordering contrast holds the ordered, learned, and communal meaning in place for us to transfer to other times, places, and persons—in this case, in print or via computer screen.
In this way, the structure of human self-presence allows you to bring the text-meaning that I am writing here into your active self-presence as the conversed other—the object-about-X of that basic self-presence in you—to resonate-dissonant with and to say the text to yourself (to read), to experience the meaning I am writing about and that you are open to and ready to experience for yourself. According to that openness and readiness—openness that is staffed with our four layers of desire-quests—we insight-to-understand the new intelligibility and meaning of the words as we read and, ultimately, we in-fluence the subjects that we are.
Reading, Seeing-Hearing-Sensing, and Meaning Development
Our study reaches further back into our understanding of the difference between (a) sensing sensible items and (b) understanding vast fields of meaning. That is, meaning may be of the sensible; however meaning is not able to be sensed. Though our tri-part structure manifests in the sensible sounds of words and visible writing of speech, it is neither sensible nor is it about the sensible as sensed. Rather, the tri-part structure and the desire-quests that work within it are about meaning development, even about the meaning of what we sense. The structure is about what, through our desire-quests, we are so intent on understanding and, ultimately, on saying and doing.
Being able to read, then, or hear what others have to say, is a manifestation of our basic self-presencing structure and the throwing-meaning-into and through language that emerges from it. For hearing others, we first contrast sound with silence. For reading, we first contrast light and dark. We pay our attention-to (attend to) the distinctive sounds, and the distinctive marks on the page, with our spontaneous wonder. Then hearing others speak and reading words on a page are saying-to-myself in my tri-part structure the expressions that mean a generally-communally-learned-X and that have come in its particular form from the writer-other. Without the dynamism of the tri-part structure, then, we could not read or understand the nuanced languaged-meaning of the sounds we hear or sights we see on the page.
Further, our intelligent paying-attention-to, in part, is equivalent to our resonance-dissonance on-the-move. Being ready to understand what we are reading is to have a certain build-up of meaning all-ready with which to resonate-dissonate and an openness to further meaning development.
As we become more consciously directive of such paying-attention, we bring about further resonance-with-between our already-learned understanding and presented other-meaning in the world, and the more our spontaneous self-expressions reflect that inner meaning development of dynamic combinations of feeling, image, and meaning-rich language.
Such resonance-with is not commonly or necessarily discursive, but can be symbols and, again, feelings and images that blend into discursive forms depending on our state of development and habits of thought (Hutchinson, 1950, Article: The Nature of Insight). Through resonance, we lift the meaning out of our experience, off the page, as it were, and out of the merely sentient, or out of the silence, and the disordered or pre-ordered noise and dark around us, as it were. We speak that meaning as object-other to my self as subject (we say to ourselves) and we insight what we are ready to understand. As subject, we are already self-present and a part of the convers-ation with that meaning as we insight to understand it.
Thus, we develop that meaning through the thin veil of merely sensing the sensible on the page or screen, in the instance of reading this document, which we have also understood at some point in our past. Even that sensing is more than a book against a book on the shelf. Built on the dark against light is the meaning of the shape and order of the letters—all that is its meaning and far from sensed, and all that we had to learn at some point in our lives, way beyond merely seeing dark against light or hearing sound against the backdrop of silence. Recall the child fascinated with all tactile objects around her. Again, such an understanding of self-presencing and then presencing-X suggests that seeing is never merely an ocular experience:
Seeing … is not a passive process, ... ‘Seeing’ is itself a process of formulation; our understanding of the visible world begins in the eye. All sensitivity bears the stamp of mentality. … Visual forms are not discursive. They do not present their constituents successively, but simultaneously, so the relations determining a visual structure are grasped in one act of vision. Their complexity, consequently, is not limited, as the complexity of discourse is limited by what the mind can retain from the beginning of an apperceptive act to the end of it. (Langer, 1942-1993, pp. 90 & 93)
Seeing, understanding, and knowing, then, are not just “taking a look” (Lonergan, 1958 & 2000). Even our first year of infancy is about finding the meaningful distinctions within the whole that is presented to us as intelligible. The infant and baby are not books on shelves. Nor do they merely sense, but rather they seek to understand what they are sensing of the sensible world around them; and they build a meaning-foundation for more mature and nuanced understanding and language to continue building on in their imagery (a product of primitive insights) and in the feelings that become attached to that foundation. Again, that understanding becomes a resonant source within us. Sights and sounds by definition are sensible; however, what we have understood of them—their intelligibility-meaningfulness—is what appeals to our intelligence for desire-questing-insighting-to-understanding through symbol (see Finding the Mind: Foundational Review, Chapter 1).
Hence, we use the metaphor of a thin veil or strip not only to suggest a difference between prior and present understanding, but to regard the difference between the “sensed world” and sensibility, on the one hand, and its meaningfulness, or what we can understand of its intelligibility, on the other. For what we sense is what we seek to understand, or what we have already understood and spontaneously bring forward in resonant fashion.
Bernard Lonergan puts it this way:
Is this universe of being, known by true judgment, the concrete universe? I should say that it is. To know the concrete in its concreteness is to know all there is to be known about each thing. To know all there is to be known about each thing is, precisely, to know being. For me, then, being and the concrete are identical terms.
However, this view of the concrete has a presupposition. It presupposes that concepts express insights and that insights grasp forms immanent in sensible presentations. To put the matter the other way about, it presupposes that the sensible has been intelectualized through schemes, sequences, processes, developments. On that supposition, human knowledge forms a single whole, and the totality of true judgments is necessarily knowedge of the concrete. On the other hand, if one ignores or neglects insight, then human knowledge splits into two parts.... (Collection 4, 1988, 148)
Let us explore a brief example of the process and, with it, the notion of internal resonant meaning: We hear the noise of a cell phone going off. However, we have already understood it not only as some distinct noise in the background of silence, but also—now instantly, resonantly, and spontaneously—as a cell phone going off.
Rather than asking questions like: What is that?, with my resonant meaning in place, now I can ask questions like: Whose phone is that? Or: Why didn’t they turn off their cell phone? Or Who’s calling? (These are what-type questions emerging from our desire-quest-1.) Without that pre-established and now-resonant understanding of the noise’s meaning (prior insights in a burgeoning presentational and discursive field of understanding), we only hear noise—with more or less meaning to be inquired about for insight-to-understanding. What is that intrusive noise?
You hear a barking dog. If your resonance (from your prior understanding) affords that you already recognize the sound as the neighbor’s dog, your wonder may start at: What is he barking at? If you recognize it as your own dog, you already know it probably means that he is ready for his walk, and your wonder begins at whether or not the weather requires that you need a jacket, and a myriad of other thought processes. Upon first hearing a dog bark, however, a 2-year-old will wonder about the noise as such--What is it?
Further, your presently reading this text rests on a plethora of your prior insights and answers, etc., and-or on your schematic contents, coupled with the constant and lively awareness—your background resonant presencing—of the intelligible and meaningful things-persons-events around you in your regular human living—the chair you sit in, the table, the computer, the window, the carpet, your pet wagging his tail, a newspaper, your friend speaking to you, and yourself, taking a walk, reading, etc.—all at-the-ready, providing a present resonant meaning base, and creating the potent conditions for new resonance-dissonance, and for new questions to emerge within that presencing arena of meaning as your desire-quests spontaneously manifest their dynamism. Without that prior meaning, and without the implications of intelligibility in everything around you, you would be a lost person—worse than Helen Keller, who was without sight or hearing, but who at least had a mind that provided here with great feats of understanding.
Reading a text, or having a dog-moment, or even being involved in a full blown crisis, does not happen in a meaning vacuum. Rather, all that is prior, already integrated, and relevant in your past learning spontaneously, and in remarkably quick fashion, springs to inform the newly presented meaning that emerges in each situation—for your to experience and, in that experience, to say to yourself. Otherwise, we would have no notion of the order of events or what anything might mean to us.
Understanding, Misunderstanding, and Self-Transcendence
Thus, people often understand the same things differently. All conversations with others, then, begin with the dynamism of resonance-dissonance, and with the resultant potential for understanding, for misunderstanding, and for creative self-transcendence.
Especially if you are drawing from our fuller version of Finding the Mind: Foundational Review, you may begin to understand that the method of the mind is dynamic, fluid, organic, ongoing, presentational, symbolic, and discursive and, as we are developing here, quite knowable as real—manifest in the sensible, but not itself sensed. This is especially so, again, if you understand that reality is not merely what we look at “out there” via seeing alone, or by otherwise sensing, but what we have understood and (in many cases) verified about what we look at and hear, and about what we presence. The method of mind stands on the necessary conditions of a healthy brain; however, studies of the brain are not sufficient to explain the mind’s method, or the vastness of human reality that the method is open to and can come to know.
Further, the method of mind is the very process that you are using already to address and comprehend (become present to the meaning of) these words. You are not merely looking at these words. You have consciously directed or turned your attention to this text with a wealth of schematic under-meaning at your resonant-spontaneous call. Beginning with your paying attention to the text—your meaningful-presencing of it—your desire-quests cum questions continue to operate through your awareness, or your more active attending to it—through your in-tending of the meaning of what I write here, and as you read or discuss this appendix. Your desire-quests, or wonderings, are embedded in and constitute, in part, your very awareness of anything and anyone, old or new, resonant-similar and-or dissonant. Further, such awareness varies and has different degrees; and depends in good part on your prior development and, germane to any new understanding, on the openness of mind that you harbor, that is your habit, and that you bring to any situation (Piscitelli, 1985).
An Application
In our Introduction above, we said: "Far beyond the above sort of physical presence, then, as conscious, aware, and thinking beings (unlike the book or the chair or the basic physics of hand-shaking) (a) we are already involved in, and can become aware of and present to, such basic meaningful relationships; (b) we can become aware of and present to other persons who are themselves aware of me; and (c) we can become aware of what it means to be present and aware."
We commonly experience all three above in one way or another. However, the tri-part structure is revealed most clearly in (c) above because, in becoming aware of what it means to be present and aware, we have used that tri-part structure to throw-objectify that same tri-part structure. We have "conversed" it in our thought as we would any object-X, questioning it and looking for new insights in order to understand it--or to say it to myself. The tri-part structure as object, then, can remain so--an X and concept among all other X's and concepts in my thought. Or in self-reflection, I can begin to bring the actuality of it to my conscious self-awareness and, thus, bring a critical clarity to my own self-understanding.
Finally, one way to explain, in part, the dilemma of post-modern man and our dalliance with positivism is to regard ourselves in the light of the tri-part structure. That dalliance can be understood as (a) a focus on the content of object-X aspect of our intentions and (b) an obscuring of or even rejection of the subject-to-subject aspect of those same intentions and the substantial part that the whole structure plays in knowledge formation and acquisition. The outsider (metaphysical) view is a product of this two-part distortion where, in order to acquire objective knowledge focus on the X and reject the subject who knows.
On the other hand, the insider's (metaphysical) view begins from an awareness of the subject (-to-subject) as a being who, through our questions, anticipates further knowledge of all-X; and where that object-X also can be the reality of ourselves.
Conclusion
The range of our ability to develop intellectually and morally gets its flexibility from the constitution of our tri-part self-presencing structure. Only because we can objectify, and through it objectify ourselves within this subject-object-subject structure, can we lie or tell the truth, self-reflect and develop as human, become good or bad and know about it, self-transcend, or become self-conscious in the way that we do. The fact that we can tell a lie or the truth indicates that we have a moral choice to make in every telling and doing situation. Finally, history—the past, another present, and the future—becomes open and available to us because we are already self-present and because, through that self-presence, we can other-object ourselves and anything or anyone as object-X within the same subject-to-subject structure.
Subject (speaker) Object-X (anything/person) Subject (listener)
In the broader context of consciousness, then, you are already self-present; as you read, you are present to—or in the process of presencing—this text as object-X, and I am meaning to you across meta-time as I write—regardless of where or when you are.
Again, given the variety of learning that goes on in any given set of persons, is it any wonder that there is so much misunderstanding in the world. Without the possibility of mis-understanding, however, self-transcendence would not be a possibility for us either.
For a fuller exploration of self-presence and language, see Finding the Mind—Foundational Review (unpublished manuscript at this writing).
Complete set of appendixes will appear here before publication of Finding the Mind: Pedagogy for Verifying Cognitional Theory. Publication slated for late 2010 or early 2011.
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