Читать книгу Phenomenology of Productive Imagination: Embodiment, Language, Subjectivity - Saulius Geniusas - Страница 14

One might object that, in my foregoing reflections, I was too quick to interpret the claim “perception as apperception is itself a particular sort of ‘memory’” as the claim that perception is a particular sort of phantasy. Even though Husserl qualifies “memory in the widest sense” as the re-presentational modification of the simple perceptual appearing” (Husserl 2005, 363) and thus, in a broad sense, as phantasy, nonetheless, a closer look at Husserl’s concept of apperception makes clear that the concept of memory is not interchangeable with the concept of phantasy.

In Husserl’s phenomenology, “apperception usually refers to the co-present but unseen viewings of objects entering one’s visual field” (Biceaga 2010, 104). In the course of experience, these implicit viewings can be either confirmed or disconfirmed, which means that these empty perceptual intendings can, in principle, be transformed into originary presentations.17 The question from here is how and why the act of mere apparency is lived along with an apperceptive horizon of sense, or, in other words, how it is to be formulated in terms of another neologism that Husserl employs in his manuscripts on the imagination, that is, how and why the act of prehension can be given within the horizon of apprehension. Husserl’s answer points to motivation18: it is the actual appearance itself, as it is given to consciousness, that motivates consciousness to apperceive it as an appearance of a certain type of objectivity. For example, what is actually given in the act of mere apparency when I see a person swimming in the sea? Although I see nothing more than the back of a human-like head as well as the movement of two human-like arms, what I see nonetheless motivates me to apperceive the given appearance as an appearance of a human body. Yet, why do these particular appearances in the sea motivate me to apperceive them as the movement of a human body and not, say, of a fish, a dog, or a mannequin? In light of this question, Husserl’s passing remark that “perception as apperception is itself a particular sort of ‘memory’” (Husserl 2005, 700) gains its significance.

Let us remind ourselves that, according to Kant, productive imagination produces schemata, while reproductive imagination produces images. In his noteworthy study of Husserl’s type and Kant’s schemata, Dieter Lohmar writes:

Husserl did not take up Kant’s concept of the schema productively, although it certainly could have been put to use in a phenomenological conception of object-constitution. In his later, genetic phenomenology, however, Husserl developed his notion of the pre-conceptual type, which plays the same role as the schema in Kant. (Lohmar 2003, 105)

According to Husserl, mere appearances motivate consciousness to apperceive them as appearances of particular types of objectivities. A type is an idea derived from experience that joins together, in a rather loosely associated way, various modes of appearances characteristic of a particular kind of objects of experience. Thus, I recognize what appears to me in the water as an object of a certain type, be it a human being, a fish, or a dog. Herein lies the answer to the question raised above: to claim that appearances awaken particular motivations is to suggest that they awaken the anticipation of particular types of experience. These types admit of various levels of generality: besides very general types such as “something in general” or “substrate of determinations,” there are also more specific types of general objects of experience, such as human beings, dogs, and fish; last but not least, there are also types of singular objects, which characterize a particular person or a particular thing (see Lohmar 2003, 2005, 2008).

It is especially important to stress that types are not just passively pregiven structures of experience. Rather, “types come into being in concrete experience and they change constantly in further experience” (Lohmar 2005, 158). Husserl explains this when he writes, “with each new kind of object constituted for the first time (genetically speaking) a new type of object is permanently prescribed, in terms of which other objects similar to it will be apprehended in advance” (Husserl 1973, 38). It thereby becomes understandable in which sense perception, conceived as apperception, is a particular type of “memory”: as apperception, perception reawakens the “memory” of the preconstituted types of experiences, which, in turn, determine the sense of appearing objectivities.

Husserl’s phenomenology of typifying consciousness thereby corroborates the view that consciousness bridges the gaps that separate diverse fields of experience by means of transference of sense, which occurs not at the founding level of the acts of mere apparency, but at the founded level of the constitution of meaning. In the case of consciousness of typification, what is at stake is not a concrete memory of a particular event that took place in past experience, but the reawakening of a horizon of sense, whose origins derive from past experience. It is thus not by chance that when Husserl qualifies apperception as a type of “memory,” he uses the term “memory” in quotation marks. What is reawakened is not a set of episodic recollections, but types, or schemas, that fit the currently given experience.

We can consider Husserl’s account of typification as a further and much-needed clarification of the “apprehension—content of apprehension” schema, which Husserl employed in his early account of intentional consciousness and to which I have already referred above. Husserl’s earlier reliance on this schema did not successfully clarify the constitutive function of the content of experience. Husserl’s analysis of typification invites one to claim that the presently experienced content awakens in consciousness the “memory” of the past experience of similar contents, which, taken together with the forms of apprehension that enlivened them, motivate consciousness to apperceive the content in a similar way. It is crucial not to overlook this point: the awakening and motivation of which we speak here are given at the level of passive constitution. This allows us to say that the very functioning of typifying consciousness remains concealed in the framework of everyday experience. Here we can recall Kant’s characterization of schematism as a secret art residing in the depths of the human soul (See Kant 2007, A141/B181). In this regard, one would be right to characterize typifying consciousness as a blindly functioning consciousness, that is, as a consciousness that in its daily functioning remains non-reflexive of its own passive accomplishments. It is a consciousness that shapes the objects it experiences, while at the same time remaining unaware of its own achievements. This, one could further remark, is the natural blindness of the natural attitude. As Andreea Smaranda Aldea so elegantly puts it,

What presents itself in everyday intelligibility processes under the guise of metaphysical necessity is actually naturalized contingency. This is a claim Husserl himself does not make, but his analyses of typification clearly point to it: types understood as passively constituted, classifying, abstractive empirical generalities become sedimented through historical, communal confirmation processes. Thus, what we come to deem “normal” through the guidance of types, what we deem “optimal” (satisfactory) for practical purposes, what we deem worthy of epistemic and/or ethical pursuit, is very much the product of historical, conceptual, discursive processes. (Aldea 2019, 209)

The foregoing analysis of typifying consciousness introduces some doubts about my claim that phantasy is productive in that it constitutes dimensions of sense, which are subsequently carried over into the field of actuality. Is it not obvious that consciousness of typification can only originate in positional and not in neutralized experiences? Clearly, the mere fact that I like to phantasize about mermaids or unicorns might affect how these magical creatures are given in my phantasy in the future. Nonetheless, these phantasies will not form a typifying consciousness, which will absorb my subsequent positional experiences. Small wonder that when I see the back of the head and the moving arms in the water, I will quite likely apperceive these appearances as the movement of a human body, yet I will not apperceive them as appearances of a mermaid. The world of phantasy is cut off from the world of actual experience. How, then, can phantasy be productive in the sense of co-constituting the world of actual experience?

We can answer this question in a twofold way. First, this objection presupposes a restricted conception of phantasy. It seems obvious that besides “seeing” mermaids or unicorns, I can also “see” Peter wandering through the streets of Berlin; besides “seeing” unicorns, I can also (as the modified version of the ventriloquist illusion demonstrates) “see” various shapes that will affect my apperception of actually heard sounds. Just as it is incontestable that phantasy can intend objectivities, which have never been and, most likely, never will be given in actual experience, so it is also undeniable that phantasy can intend appearances, which are, at least in principle, actualizable.19 Second, the outlined objection is an instance of a misplaced criticism. I do not claim that phantasy is productive in the sense that it shapes phantasmatic appearances, which can be subsequently transferred into the field of actuality. Rather, my claim is that phantasmatically formed unities of sense can be transferred from the field of phantasy into the field of actuality in that they can co-constitute the sense that absorbs actually appearing objectivities.

In this regard, Text No. 20 from Hua XXIII once again proves to be highly helpful. After drawing a sharp distinction between acts of phantasy, on the one hand, which are conceived as purely neutral acts, and perceptual acts, on the other hand, which are conceived as positional experiences, Husserl goes on to suggest that “there are, however, mixed experiences, and they are very common” (Husserl 2005, 696).20 According to one type of these mixed experiences (gemischte Erlebnisse), “every phantasy consciousness, hence every pure phantasy consciousness as well, can be converted into a positional act…” (ibid). Conversions of this nature occur when one transforms a neutralized experience into a consciousness of pure possibility. Under such a scenario, what was initially given phantasmatically (as something neutral) is subsequently converted into a positional experience (as something possible). Moreover, while all phantasies can be transformed into pure possibilities, some of these possibilities are conceived as actualizable (as in the case of Peter wondering through the streets of Berlin), while others are conceived as non-actualizable (as in the case of mermaids swimming in the sea).

I should stress that such mixed experiences do not rely on a fusion of phantasy acts and perceptual acts. Rather, mixed experiences occur at the level of meaning-constituting consciousness. They are accomplishments of what I have called above a transference of sense. In the case under consideration, the sense of a phantasmatic object is transferred from the field of phantasy into the field of actuality. Unities of sense, which are derived from meaning constituting acts, form the bridge that binds perception to phantasy, and vice versa.

Yet, what can we make of Husserl’s claim that such mixed experiences “are very common?” In the next section, I want to defend a perspective which Husserl does not explicitly endorse, but which can be conceived of as motivated by Husserlian phenomenology. Building on the basis of Husserl’s writings, I would like to develop a position that such mixed experiences, which rely on the transference of sense from the field of phantasy into that of actuality, perform an essential and irreducible role in the constitution of cultural worlds, conceived both as homeworlds and alienworlds. In other words, in the absence of productive phantasy, consciousness cannot constitute intersubjective cultural worlds, within which we always already find ourselves. This suggests that it is not perception, conceived as a specific form of intuitive consciousness, but rather cultural worlds, conceived as specific configurations of meaning, that are shot through with dimensions of sense that in diverse ways are derived from productive phantasy.