Do Situations Exist?: A View from the Inside-Out

Do Situations Exist?: A View from Inside-Out

What precisely is a situation? The Cambridge English Dictionary defines “situation” as “...the set of things that are ​happening and the ​conditions that ​exist at a ​particular ​time and ​place.” (Italics mine)^* Of course this is just one of many definitions but this particular one serves our purposes. It contains the term “happening” which will play an important role in our inside-out project.

How do we know what constitutes a situation? We have defined the term, but that does not help us to come to terms with what “situation” means as a possible component of human experience. (In fact, as we shall eventually come to appreciate the word “situate,” like all other nouns, does not refer to a something or other in an independently existing world. A matter we will take up in more detail later in the project.) What inside-out thinking demands is that we remain loyal to a way of thinking that takes experience as fundamental, the basic, the essential. The definition of the word “situation” provides little help in determining whether this word will be of much use to us when it comes to inside-out thinking. Let us delve a bit deeper into what “situation” means from our perspective. In this blog, we will at times continue to use the word “situation” as we normally would while further unpacking some of its explicit and implicit (inside-out) meanings.

Situations include both a spatial and temporal dimension. These two components of a situation are both necessary, but as we shall see, insufficient. From our perspective, space and time are inseparable and yet distinguishable. Normally, when we hear the word “space” we think of it in purely physical terms, at least at the level of our most explicit thinking and saying. When pressed to say what space is, our initial reply is usually put in physical terms as in “The ball is in the closet.” Space is a kind of container, a metaphor that has a long history. The preposition “in” functions to indicate a physical space containing the ball. There are about one hundred and fifty prepositions in the English language and their function is to convey spatial and temporal relationships, time, and location. “The car is across the street” indicates that the car is located or situated in some definite place. The prepositions “before” and “after” serve to situate in time. “Via” and “across” situate in directions. “Over” and “under” situate in a spatial or temporal sense. These examples may serve to refresh our schoolbook memory regarding the functions of prepositions. Using as our model the preposition “here,” we may note that it usually situates something—be it an event, thing, or spatial location. However, it is fairly easy to see that this situating is a bare-bones situating. “Here” says little about the actual living presence (and present moment) that “here” implies. It’s like the difference between a map and an actual place. The actual place is vastly more rich than the word “here” indicates—at least to our conscious mind. Our language reveals and conceals time and place. Temporal and spatial experience is infinitely more plenteous than words can convey. Our conscious mind can only abstract^* from a living situation static details or particulars. Think of the body-mind immersed in [as] each living situation. This immersion is universal in scope experiencing the fullness of each moment without our necessarily being conscious of its animate totality. Yet, we live the movement of time and space in the richest sense; a sense we might refer to as the origin. If we could glimpse into the wholeness of our living time and space, what might be some of the “conceptual takeaways,” including significant analytic structures, be? What “abstractions” would serve to help us return to the fundamental and live in the wholeness of the womb of space -time? We may find that this “return” is a huge leap, an animate immersion, into a realm that is inherently more satisfactory than the partial, derivative perception we most commonly exercise. We must exercise a type of memory (smrti/sati)^** that makes a re-turn to the origin possible. All of our analytic structures and themes must serve to return us to the non-conceptual and sentient origin. Our exercise or project must signal and encourage a direct return to the origin as opposed to a more theoretical project, i.e., one that seeks to find “the truth” about our experience, or life as lived. Seeking the truth is seeking a propositional knowledge that, while valuable in many contexts, is not the embodied knowing of our origin. Our project (as well as propositional knowing) is always a tentative one. First, because it is always subject to further completion and second, because it is meant to serve the return to origin. Let’s begin by taking space and time and attempt to determine how these terms may serve the return.

Our word “space” has far too many common meanings for us to elucidate. Therefore, we must settle for a model usage and hope that it will serve to demonstrate, in the most general sense, how our use of the word is similar and yet very different from more common usages. It is similar in the sense that “space” aims to locate, contain, measure, reveal, hold, embrace, make room, subtract, etc. Moving “closer” to our intended meanings, “space” must be seen as fluid, alive, malleable, yielding, revealing, etc. In every situation, living space pliantly provides the animate context for sensory and conceptual experience—as illustrated in the sentence before this one. We live, breathe, and think in and as space as the life-giving and omnipresent context for sensorial and conceptual realities, i.e., qualia. At one “moment” open and expansive, at another restricted and enclosed, space presences everything; it bears all experience. Space yields that which is given in experience. Our bodies are alive, at their most subtle levels, in sentient adaptation to the evanescent pliancy of space. Its dimensions are a seamless correlate to the body’s animating, feeling processes. At every turn, space yields all things anew and dynamic. It is truly alive. These are just several of the originary meanings of “space.” We will be forced to elaborate further as we proceed.

“Time,” in its most common usage, is, boldly stated, space. One cannot abide without the other. Space is the reciprocal of time. Time is the reciprocal of space. At least this is so when we see time as the “progression” of experience. What arises as a configuration of space is also true of time. Time, viewed from experience outward takes on a meaning wherein it cannot be separated from space. Time is the movement of experience, i.e., the movement of the totality—body, mind, self, world, and universe (BMSWU). Space and time can only be seen, within our operational framework, as two when we abstract (or create) from experience two of its essential structures and distinguish them in analysis. In their living, space and time are not thematically differentiated. Time and space, like so many other living realities, can be distinguished via abstraction but never separated. We spoke above about the “evanescent pliancy” of space. We are now in a position to look at the significance of this phrase for indicating the inseparability of space-time. Both space and time are evanescent and pliant, i.e., they are alive with and as experience. Their evanescence is indicative of their processual nature. They are moving as space-time in a dynamic abundance of experiential content, impermanent and anonymous. (More on their anonymity later.) Their pliancy indicates the ever-changing flux of life’s diversity. Time spent in the doctor’s office is different from time spent making love. Space lived making love is different from space lived in a busy grocery store. These examples point to the pliancy of space-time and their sentient symbiosis.

In this initial movement of an abstraction procedure that serves to return us to the origin, time and space co-indicate each other. Thus, these terms serve our quest for a living, i.e., evanescent, satisfaction that abides (in its abiding) as the wholeness of all experience. Rather than distinguishing between the “living” and the “non-living,” or the “sentient” and “insentient,” our analysis presents the evanescent as the living and the static as the insentient. It is from this perspective that we may say that all of life as experience is sentient. Qualia are living—and even propositional knowledge is alive as experience. This appears at first sight to smack of panphychism, the view—with many variations—that all that exists exists in some sense as a mental entity. In our view, the qualia, or contents of experience, are not experienced as mind but are experience itself. It is only in retrospect that the term qualia is useful.

In our next segment, we move on to space-time as humanized, i.e., as circumstance or our lived and living environment. It is in this context wherein we will discuss what it means to be fully alive as the conscious environment.

* http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/

*The word “abstract” is from late 14c., originally in grammar (of nouns), from Latin abstractus "drawn away," past participle of abstra here "to drag away, detach, pull away, divert;" also figuratively, from ab(s)- "away" (see ab-) + trahere "draw…”. Etymoline.com http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=abstract&allowed_in_frame=0

**Occasionally, I will note the Sanskrit and Pali words that bear a close relationship to the English terms that precede them. This is to encourage the reader familiar with Eastern philosophy to make connections that may bridge the gap between say Buddhism and Yoga and our project here.   

The Threat of Solipsism: Can You Insult Me?

     “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

                                                  ―Eleanor Roosevelt in This is My Story  

When, in the blog entry entitled “Are there Really Seven and A Half Billion Human Beings in the World,” we discussed a possible corrective to the notion that reality exists independent of human experience. By pointing out that the real is what is experienced we attempted to lead the reader to understand that all metaphysical theories or theories regarding reality, even those such as realism which claim that reality is mind-independent, must still accept the fact that when we experience others as independent of ourselves, it is still us that is experiencing this. The human other is an experienced other. Experience is how we know that the other exists! In point of fact, we do not even ignore nor do we question whether the other is. The other simply arises in our experience against the uniqueness of our subjectivity--again something we "take for granted" and do not thematically encounter.* We can not know this in any other way. Please note that I say “human experience,” is what is necessary to know the other as other. I did not say that the other exists in our mind or self. This is an important distinction. What we are saying is that solipsism, the view that all that exists must exist in mind (or self) only, is not the view that our project supports. If one has arrived at that conclusion that we have fallen prey to solipsism, it is hopefully a product of a lack of the proper elucidation of our project or the incomplete elucidation of our project and not the result of the erroneous nature of our view.

The answer to our question posed as the title of this blog entry may provide us with a way into a lucid and more complete understanding of our view. “Can you insult me? It would seem that if our project was in fact solipsistic in nature, we would probably be compelled to answer “no.” How could the other as an aspect of my mind or an aspect of my self, insult me? Would it not seem absurd to answer “yes” to our question? I don’t see how I could insult myself, without first qualifying to myself that I am seeing myself both as an object to be insulted and as the subject who insults. As we know, the self is always a subject, never an object. Can a self insult and simultaneously be insulted? Only in some weird fabrication of what a self or what an insult is. It would have to be a fabrication which takes us far afield from our usual way of talking about subjects and objects. However, within the framework of our project, the other can certainly insult me precisely because the other is being experienced as other not as my self or my mind. Yet, Eleanor Roosevelt’s aphorism is not without value. It is certainly the case that I must be vulnerable, i.e., in a mental state of self-doubt or some such state, enough to receive the others insult as such. If I am not in a condition of vulnerability at the moment of receiving the insult, however we account for that invulnerability, I cannot receive the insult as such. I have not given my consent. The insult would probably not be experienced as a painful event. It may be viewed as a failed intent on the part of the other to hurt me.

Now that we have become a bit more informed about our present project, I hope we can understand how we may avoid the pitfall of solipsism. No matter how objectively independent a reality seems to us, it is this “seems to us” that reveals the necessity of its seeming being experienced. The other is as real as we experience it, her, or him to be. We may conclude from this that nothing remains outside of our experience except another’s experience. Is this last possibility truly the case? Can our experience of another’s experience be experienced? (The awkward phrasing is intentional.) Why not? Must we say that this is impossible even if I truly experience that I have experienced another’s experience?

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*This is a most significant point. We will, of necessity, explore this in detail in a subsequent blog. This will be discussed as "existence as a predicate."

Are There Really Seven and A Half Billion Human Beings in the World?

To begin with, let us assume that all that “exists” in the most radical sense of the term is experience. Borrowing a phrase from William James, let us call this the view of “radical empiricism.” Now, I’m not using this term in precisely the same way as James, but we may say that the intent of using such a phrase is pretty much in keeping with James’ project. Our discussions will attempt, at every turn, to stick as close to experience as possible in our treatment of the fundamental, i.e., human life as it is lived. We have, in earlier entries, given at least perfunctory treatment to this fundamental reality. Now, in this entry, we will be using the term “radical empiricism” to point to some rather curious and perhaps unsettling issues.

Let us say for the moment that the ultimately real is experience, the experience of each one of us. We must also take note of the fact that there are approximately seven and a half billion people in the world. However, take the death of one of those people, say yourself. What exactly is it that disappears from this world? Or, to lead us into a more curious position, we may ask what is it that disappears from human life or fundamental reality? See how the questions differ? It is rather obvious, no? Yet, when we speak of the “disappearance” of someone, namely ourselves, are we speaking of something happening to us other than the loss of experience? (Let us say for argument’s sake that death is presumably the loss of experience on the part of the dead. In fact, there may be no loss or gain at all other than the loss experienced during the dying process. So, as each of us dies, we lose the capacity for experience.) If as we die we experience the dissolution of universe, world, sensation, mind, self—in a word, “consciousness"--it is our experience that comes to an end. What about the others who may become, in one sense or another, witnesses to our death? What happens to them? Well, we are compelled to say that their experience of us changes. It must be the case what changes for them is their experience, that’s all they ever had of us the dying. This change may be all-encompassing if they were our friends or enemies, or may be quite minimal if they were mere acquaintances. Therefore, from the point of view of radical empiricism, we, the dying, experience a loss of experience and they the witnesses experience a change of experience in relation to us. Has the world changed? What world?

If we posit a world wherein seven and a half billion human beings exist, then we may say there is one less person inhabiting the world. However, this world is an abstract world, a world conceived, i.e., a conceptual or imaginary^*world. From the perspective of inside/out thinking, the reality of the inside, i.e., experience, is the most fundamental and in our sense most “real” and most lived dimension. It is what can be said to truly “exist.” When we move the initial step of taking account of our experience, we have entered the imaginary* or theoretical dimension. Some might refer to this as the phenomenal world as opposed to the noumenal or “world-in-itself.” Our project of radical empiricism demands that we stick to that which is experienced. The content of this experience is not “to be gotten hold of,” but to be lived. To get a hold of experience is to render it theoretical. While the project of getting a hold of experience is a purely cognitive one and valuable to many an explorer of living, by the process of abstraction, we run the risk of losing sight of the real and becoming seduced by the theoretical to remain in the abstract. This often takes the form of a forgetfulness of the real that replaces the real with a theory that is all too frequently a poor substitute for the living. We will be addressing this issue further later in our work.

So, to ask the question “How many people are there in the world?” is to miss the nature of the living assumptions that frame the question. As a critical move, we must ask of the questioner “What world?” and proceed to elicit the foundations of such a question. These foundations, or sedimented beliefs, are only revealed by an appeal to experience itself. If what may be said to truly exist is experience alone, then we are able to understand that such a question presupposes a world that exists independently of experience, a world that we enter upon birth and depart upon death. This world is reduced by one member when we die, and has a member added when we are born. Such a world is not a living world, but a purely theoretical one that has little to do with direct experience. The world that we experience is experience. The is no outside of this world. There is no separation of self, mind, body, world, and universe in this world. This world that is experience is fully alive. It is the source of satisfaction. (This satisfaction is something that will concern us more later in the project.)

So, are there seven and a half billion human beings in the world? Or, are there seven and a half billion worlds? What question would we choose to answer to bring us closer to an understanding of the way things really are?

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* We are using the term “imaginary” not in the restricted sense of being inferior to the real, but of qualifying the nature of the world produced by theorizing as conceptual.