Babu Thaliath

Kant famously claimed that all our representations must be of a spatial as well as temporal kind. However, this spatiality and temporality is nothing accessible to experience itself, but precedes it logically, as it’s a priori condition. Babu Thaliath’s remarkable book stands in a Post-Kantian if not altogether Neo-Kantian tradition inasmuch as it attempts to bring back this a priori into experience itself. In doing so, he materializes and empiricizes the apriori. As The Embodiment of Senses demonstrates, the scaffolding undergirding our corporeal orientation in the world is not merely a logical necessity: perception itself offers the cues about how it is organized. Emmanuel Alloa, Chair of Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art at the University of Fribourg This book is an important addition to the growing literature on new approaches to the senses. It combines a deep understanding of a historical philosophical tradition with contemporary scientific approaches to perception, particularly vision. By critically analysing the problem of spatialisation of the senses and the aporias of vision in Western modernist philosophy, Thaliath successfully develops a valuable argument for the embodiment of the senses. Sundar Sarukkai, Formerly Professor of Philosophy, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore This book provides a comprehensive understanding of the prevailing problems in the study of the spatiotemporal extension of sensory perceptions, especially vision. The actual extension of the senses remains an unresolved problem in the history of modern philosophy and science, after Descartes subsumed the senses under the non-extended soul, the res cogitans, and Kant subsequently conceived of space and time as purely a priori forms of sensibility. The book re-examines the prevailing problems of sensibility, especially of the sense of sight, within a historiographical and scientific-philosophical framework. It is a valuable resource for graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers working in the fields of philosophy, perception theory, psychology, and cognitive science in both basic and advanced research. The book is an English translation of the author’s work, originally published in German by Verlag Karl Alber in 2017 under the title Die Verkörperung der Sinnlichkeit.

Paul Ricoeur derives his theory of metaphor from the referential relationship of language to the world, to its reality. In the seventh chapter of his seminal work The Rule of Metaphor (title: Metaphor and Reference), Ricoeur extends Frege's idea of reference in semantic and hermeneutic frameworks from nominal to sentential or synthetic-predicative and finally to textual, i.e. pertaining to discourse. Ricoeur points out, on the one hand, how the semantic and hermeneutic referentiality is opposed to the semiotic confinement of language and, on the other hand, the gradation of this referentiality according to the proximity of the reference to the world, which constitutes an extra-linguistic reality: “Grounded on the predicative act, what is intended by discourse [l'intenté] points to an extra-linguistic reality which is its referent. Whereas the sign points back only to other signs immanent within a system, discourse is about things. Sign differs from sign, discourse refers to the world. Difference is semiotic, reference is semantic.” Furthermore, Ricoeur attributes to metaphor—as a linguistic possibility and crisis at the same time—the unique function of freeing the language from its characteristic extra-worldliness caused by its semiotic closure, which should consequently enable the language to have closer referential access to the world. However, according to Ricoeur, the metaphorical reference is a “suspended reference”; it also forms a second-level reference when the literal or first-level reference is suspended. Ricoeur develops the idea of suspended reference based on his original ideas of literal reference as non-ostensive reference, null reference and as refiguration, which he introduces and discusses in the work Time and Narrative (Temps et récit, Vol. 3). In my paper I try to show how Ricoeur's idea of suspended reference, which seems to indicate the extra-worldliness of metaphor or metaphor's impossible referential access to the world, actually suggests its worldliness. The referentiality of metaphor in the mode of a referential access to an extra-linguistic world also requires a reversal of the epistemic directionality of concept formation (Begriffsbildung), to which Nietzsche's theory of metaphor, introduced in his early work On Truth and Lies in an Extramoral Sense (Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinne), points. Such a reversal of epistemic directionality should complement Ricoeur's idea of metaphorical reference as suspended reference and thereby decisively secure the worldliness of metaphor.

The extension of senses remained an unresolved aporia throughout the history of the theory of perception. An appropriate example of the historical persistence of this aporia would be the priority-dispute between extramission and intromission theories of vision prevailing since the ancient philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus and others. The resurgence or rehabilitation of the intromission theory of vision in the early Cartesian modernity strategically reversed the predominant position of the sense of touch, which had prevailed in the medieval scholastic philosophy, in favour of the sense of sight. Since then, the external extension of vision has remained an aporia, as problematized and discussed in the works of Descartes, Locke, Molyneux, Berkeley, Condillac, Helmholtz, Gibson, and others. The present treatise is an attempt to reconsider the aporicity of the bodily and extra-bodily extension of senses and resolve it by means of a methodological analogy between the bodily extension of sensations and the extra-bodily extension of the senses of sight and hearing. On the theoretical level, this investigation tries to establish a complementarity between philosophical and scientific epistemologies. This may lead to a scientific proof, on the basis of which the real extension of the bodily and extra-bodily senses could be dictated by a philosophical epistemology and confirmed by a scientific-experimental investigation.

In his magnum opus Temps et Récit, Paul Ricouer diagnoses three aporias of time in Husserl’s phenomenology. Of these, the first aporia is the most decisive, as it serves as the basis for the other two aporias. The first aporia identified by Ricœur refers to the retentional and protentional extension of “now” (jetzt), the present. The aporia of the present has its origin in the contrary conceptions of time by Aristotle and St. Augustine. The Aristotelian world time, as represented chiefly in the harmonious movement of celestial bodies, seems to contradict the Augustinian conception of time, namely the time of soul – as distentio animi. In Husserl’s attempt to extend the punctiform “now” by a retentional and protentional time-consciousness, Ricœur sees the inevitable aporia of a fusion of two modally opposed representations of time, namely, movement and stasis. In my paper I try to show how the first aporia of time identified by Ricœur can be seen not merely as an aporia of the present (Gegenwart), but as the aporia of the presentification (Vergegenwärtigung) of secondary memory, as represented in Husserl's propaedeutic explanation of the retentional extension of a time-object (Zeitobjekt) in subjective time-consciousness. The time-object and its intentional in-existence in consciousness, which is primarily conceived by Brentano in a temporal ‘original association’ and later by Husserl in retentional and protentional extension, is thereby extended in a mnestic and furthermore historical framework. It is primarily an attempt to establish the existential autonomy of the in-existent time-object in consciousness. Memory as an in-existent temporal phenomenon seems to contradict the tacitly assumed primacy of noesis or noetic construction in phenomenology and thus illustrate its equally autonomous presentification in consciousness in the form of a temporal aporia.

As widely acknowledged, the epistemological turn of early modernity was based on the Cartesian method of doubt and negation, which primarily relates to the world of objects. The methodological negation and separation of sensible qualities and subjective attributes of objects left behind residual entities, which, from the Cartesian res extensa to the Kantian thing-initself, explicates an important basic feature of a historically unfolding transcendentalism: the reduction of objects to a mere givenness and the directional conditionality of epistemology that presupposes it. The following paper examines how and to what extent modern epistemology tacitly assumes an epistemic directionality, and accordingly reduces the world of objects to its mere givenness by subordinating the objects to a hierarchical structure of cognition. The investigation is carried out both in a theoretical-philosophical as well as in a historical framework.

In the framework of Husserl's phenomenology, intentionality is regarded as the main feature of every act of consciousness. Our consciousness is directed towards objects immanent in it, however in a variety of epistemological functions and operations, such as sensory perception, judgment, cognition, volition, imagination, etc. Husserl uses the technical terms noesis and noema to designate the intentional acts of consciousness and their outcome in the constitution of objects in consciousness. At the same time, the persistence of a hyletic data is emphasized, which as pure sense data escapes the phenomenological reduction and remains as such a residuum in the consciousness. In my lecture I try to work out the clear implication of epistemological referentiality in the phenomenological basic notion of intentionality. Among other things, I rely on the conceptual history of intentionality, i. e. on the earlier theories of intentionality in the Middle Ages and the philosophical revival of this notion in the late 19th century by Franz Brentano. Referentiality defines itself as the referential access of consciousness to objects of sensory perception, judgment, cognition, etc., in which the objects form the final referents. In the phenomenological framework, intentionality refers to the intentional access of consciousness to objects irrespective of their consciousness-immanence or -transcendence. The analogy between intentionality and referentiality is therefore based on the act-character as well as the directionality of consciousness which suggests the characteristic attempt of consciousness to gain intentional-referential access to objects. The directionality of consciousness in every intentional act ultimately marks and confirms the referentiality i. e the referential access of consciousness to the object. Intentionality as intentional-referential access to objects becomes a problem, when the access of consciousness to the object proves to be inadequate. I try to show how this problem of referentiality inevitably arises in Husserl's phenomenology of inner time-consciousness, especially in his conception of a time-object (Zeitobjekt). The consciousness-immanence of a time-object, such as a melody, points to a problem, that the intertwining of the temporality of consciousness and that of time-object necessarily results in various aporias of time, as Paul Ricœur observes and discusses in detail in his seminal work Temps et Récit. Moreover, the residual persistence of hyletic data, that survives all phenomenological reductions, would establish an actual interface between consciousness and reality, as Jaakko Hintikka emphasizes in his essay The phenomenological dimension. The aporicity of time refers to the autonomy of time and, thereby, to the autonomy of time-object in its intentional in-existence in consciousness. The hyletic data as interface between consciousness and reality points to the necessary referential extension of consciousness to objects that are otherwise excluded in the context of phenomenology. From these and similar premises, I would like to demonstrate how the problem of referentiality in Husserl's philosophy of time inevitably presupposes a reversion of referentiality within the prevailing noesis-noema structure that underlies the consciousness-immanence of objects.

Die Wissenschaften entstehen und entfalten sich innerhalb von historischen Kontexten. Dabei vollzieht sich die Kontextualisierung einzelner Wissenschaftsdisziplinen durch die historisch-kontextuale Ausweitung und Abgrenzung gegenuber anderen Wissenschaftsdisziplinen. Die vorliegende Abhandlung ist ein Versuch, in der Entwicklungsgeschichte einiger fruhneuzeitlicher Wissenschaftsdisziplinen eine zweifache Wurzel der Kontextualitat festzustellen: Einen internen bzw. einen der Wissenschaftsdisziplin innewohnenden Prozess der Kontextualisierung kann man aus ihrer Entwicklungsgeschichte herleiten. Diesen gilt es von einem externen, durch aussere Faktoren und neue Erkenntnisse auf anderen Feldern bedingten Prozess der Kontextualisierung abzugrenzen. Aus diesem kontextualen Wechselspiel heraus lassen sich etliche Paradigmenwechsel in der fruhen Neuzeit besser verstehen. Die Untersuchung geht von Fallstudien aus, wie sie in mechanischen und naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften von Descartes, Kepler, Galilei, Newton, Hooke und Boyle zu finden sind.

As is generally known, Newton’s notion of universal gravitation surpassed various theories of particular gravities in the early modern age, as represented mainly by Kepler and Hooke. In his seminal work “Hooke and the Law of Universal Gravitation: A Reappraisal of a Reappraisal” Richard S. Westfall argues that Hooke could not reach beyond the concept of spatially bounded particular gravities, as he deployed the method of analogy between the material principle of congruity and incongruity and the extension of gravitational spheres and their action at a distance. However, the doctrine of universal gravitation does not exclude the nature of particular gravities; it is predicated on the notion of an infinite expansion of individual-gravitational spheres and their uniform nature, namely the mutual and centripetal attraction. In my treatise I attempt to reinvestigate the nature and structure of gravitation, as established historically in the framework of Newtonian Classical Mechanics, by a method of structural intuition. It examines how the structural intuition, as represented in the celestial-mechanical intuitions of Hooke and Kepler, could unfold into an innovative process within the context of early modern mechanical philosophy, attaining thus a historical significance and legitimacy as against the prevailing Newtonian method of geometric-mathematical axiomatization of mechanical principles. It also explores the actual demonstrative features of the tidal phenomenon with regard to its lunar- and solar-gravitational causation, which has been considered to date to be an important piece of empirical evidence for the theory of universal gravitation.

Like cognition, the language in which the cognition finds expression has, in principle, a function of synthesis, that is, a function of connecting the cognizing subject with the object of cognition. The language enables the human subject to have epistemic access to the object; in its form and function this epistemic access constitutes the necessary referentiality of the language itself. Cognition must inevitably refer to the object of knowledge in the mode of pre-linguistic sensory and abstract-conceptual accesses, as clearly highlighted by Kant in his basic notion of the synthetic nature and structure of conceptual knowledge. This points to an aporetic ambiguity of the epistemic referentiality of language. In the process of cognition the subject should have an epistemic access to the particular. However, the conceptual cognition departs from the particular and is directed to a general universal idea. The ambiguity between the referential access and the referential departure in cognition necessarily requires a supplementation of the abstractlogical through the pre-linguistic-sensory or aesthetic knowledge, as emphasized by Alexander G. Baumgarten in his doctrine of sensory cognition (cognitio sensitiva) and the aesthetic-logical truth. Such a supplementation within the framework of a theory of perception seems to establish a unique form of epistemological reference, in which the subjective-epistemic access to the particular object does not terminate in the ontological finality of a concept or conceptual cognition, but transcends the cognition into the infinity of an aesthetic perception.

The Cartesian distinction between res extensa and res cogitans initiated in the early modern age the philosophical discourse with regard to an adequate explanation of the nexus between the body and the mind. The causal closure of the body (as essentially a physical phenomenon) seems to exclude both the physical and neuronal causation of mental states and operations as well as the mental causation of bodily states and processes. The following treatise is an attempt to re-examine the causal connectivity between the body and the mind and thereby to explain the mysterious interaction between these two entirely distinct modes of existence and reality. The neuronal causation of the mental existence of human beings, and conversely the mental causation of bodily volition seem to surpass the framework of ordinary causal processes which are primarily conceived as temporal sequences of causes and effects in natural phenomena. The existence of the conscious subject – as res cogitans – can hardly be reduced to momentary neuronal processes of causation; it implies a constant ontological causation in which the elementary physical and material modes of being cause constantly and ontologically the mental states and operations – which eventually form higher and unitary modes of being. This dual nature of a neuronal-ontological causation, namely the constant and existential causation of the mind and the momentary causation of mental processes (sensation, perception, cognition, thinking, etc.), seems to resolve the problem of the causal connectivity between the body and the mind. However, the ontological causation cannot be restricted to the causal interaction between the body and the mind; it can be extended to the modes of existence of the overall physical i. e. material reality.