Gurwitsch, Piaget, and Recursive Equilibration
By Joe E. Dees

   This paper is an attempt to address a question which is of central and fundamental interest to anthroposemiotics in particular and to philosophy in general; the question of the conditions of possibility of semiosis.  What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for socially transmissible signification, that is, the voluntary assignation of systemically communicable meanings to things, to occur?  I am not here speaking of signals, such as pheromones for sexual receptivity or smoke for fire, but specifically of sign systems, where the relation between sign and signified, the relations between signs within a system, and the means of sign communication are arbitrary and by mutual convention, rather than being either materially or causally necessary.  This is not to say that sign/sign and sign/signified relations do not impose mutual constraints, but rather to say that an indefinite number of such complexes may be created, each containing an internal interplay between these two sets of relations.  Such meaningful and symbolic systems include the languages of common discourse, written languages, mathematical and logical languages, etc.

   It is immediately obvious that the use of such a system in communication requires that the communicants possess a common conception of the system in use, in both the relations between the system’s signs and the relations between signs and those referents that they signify.  Likewise, it is obvious that the communicants must possess both the capacity to perceive the signs of the system in at least one manner, and the capacity to communicate them in at least one manner.  Since such systems are not innate, they must be created, learned, and taught.

   This characterization of symbolic systems allows us to delineate some conditions for their existence.  First, one must be able to perceive the intersubjective world.  Second, one must be able to act upon it.  Third, one must be able to learn from one’s experience.  Forth, one must be able to represent to oneself and to others what one has learned in a symbolic form.  In short, there must be a dynamic interrelation between mind and world, and a communicable representation of the cognitively abstracted products of their interrelation.  But what must be true of mind and world for these capacities to inhere?

   Before proceeding further, it is necessary to clarify the concept of relation.  Relation has its limits, outside of which we speak of nonrelation.  One such nonrelation is identity.  Things are not related to themselves, they are themselves.  The correlative opposite of identity is absolute disparity, which is an ideal limit rather than a real possibility, for all experienced things are at the very least related as perceived or conceived objects of consciousness.  In the same manner, simultaneity is a real limit of succession, while its correlative opposite, separation by infinity, is an ideal construct (Alfred Schutz, Reflections of the Problem of Relevance, 1970, p. 182).  If A and B are related, we cannot speak of AB as either a unity or a duality, but as a system.  For relation to be dynamic interrelation, there must be threshold, to preclude unity, and exchange, to avoid bifurcation.  If a method can be developed to quantify where between unity and duality the numerical value of a particular bipolar system would reside, it will most probably resemble Mandelbrot’s fractal geometry.

   Dynamic mind/world interrelation entails that there be exchange between mind and world above a lower threshold and below an upper one, and indeed, that mind and world comprise neither a unity nor a duality, but a system.  In other words, the structures of the mind-world interrelation is dependent upon the structures of the poles – mind and world – of the system, at the same time that the structural alternatives available to the mind-pole are constrained by both the exigencies of the world-pole structure, and the structural characteristics of the mind-world interrelation.  From the foregoing, we may infer that the structure of the mind-world interrelation may serve as a semiologic, informing us as to the character of the relata – mind and world – so mediated.  The fact that there are several perceptual media of exchange (vision, audition, taction, olfaction, and gustation), each with its own particular thresholds, and multiple and various co-ordinations between these modes, complicates but does not obviate this analysis.  In fact, it is by this very method that science proceeds to investigate the world-pole, via analysis and correlation of the perceptions that result from experimentation.  However, our focus will be upon the investigation of the mind-pole.

   Now the question arises as to how one might go about investigating the structure of this interrelation.  Henri Bergson (An Introduction to Metaphysics, 1903, pp. 21-49) distinguishes two ways.  He states that one may study something perspectivally and externally, by means of symbols, or nonperspectivally and internally, without symbolic mediation.  The first method results, according to Bergson, in relative knowledge, and the second method results in absolute knowledge.  He goes on to assert that the only possible object of study by means of the second method is the enduring self.  I agree with Bergson that there are these two ways.  I do not, however, agree that the mind may only be studied by means of the second method.  Perhaps the world can only be directly studied perspectivally, and the mind can only be directly studied via introspectively.  Bergson contends that the results of such introspections are inexpressible symbolically, in any event.  However, here it is proposed that the mind may be studied indirectly, by means of an investigation into the structure of the mind/world interrelation, and a deduction of what the discovered parameters of this interrelation’s structure might entail concerning the structure of the mind.  The structure of the mind-world interrelation may be investigated from both the internal perspective, by means of the structures of perception, and externally, by means of the structures of action (including communication).  The first method is the way of phenomenology, the way of Gurwitsch, and the second method is the way of genetic epistemology, the way of Piaget.  Neither way offers absolute knowledge, in the sense of complete, nor do they offer it together.  The first way offers knowledge of an apodictic, or self-evident character; the second way offers data of a statistical nature, from which may be induced probabilistically likely consequences.

   Nevertheless, taken together, they can provide more evidence than either can alone.  For instance, phenomenology cannot offer apodictic knowledge concerning the genesis and evolution of mind’s reflection upon the structure of the mind/world interrelation, because it is by means of and on the basis of this very reflection that phenomenology proceeds.  It may begin only when one may reflect upon the structures of perception, abstract invariants, and to some extent represent them in a common symbol system.  In other words, the phenomenologist must be at the Piagetian level of formal operations in order to philosophize.  Genetic epistemology, on the other hand, can offer us likelihoods concerning this genesis and evolution, which is more than phenomenology can offer us about it, not it cannot offer the apodictic certainty which phenomenology can in the cases of reflective descriptions of self-, soma, world and society.  The contributions of these two methods of investigation demonstrate a kind of complementarity; phenomenology is a synchronic and symbolic description of the invariant structures perceptible to the reflective mind, and genetic epistemology is a diachronic induction, from observed action, of the evolution of mind to reflective and symbolic capacity.  Gurwitsch himself subscribed to this view (The Field of Consciousness, 1964, pp. 39-40).

   First, we shall consider the contributions of phenomenology, and then those of genetic epistemology.
   
The Contributions of Phenomenology

   Phenomenology, of course, does not begin with Gurwitsch.  He built upon the foundations provided by the Gestaltists, the early Piaget, Husserl, and Merleau-Ponty.

   The main contribution that the Gestaltists made to Gurwitsch’s phenomenology was the concept of context-dependence.  Gurwitsch considered the descriptive work of the Gestaltists to be related to phenomenology, even to the point of having their own epoche’ or phenomenological reduction.  He took Kohler to heart on the issue of stimulus-sensation constancy.  On this point, Kohler criticized naïve introspectionism for failing to recognize the interdependence between each part of a perception and its neighbors, the effect of which is to, among other things, cause the perceived hue of the selfsame object to appear differently, depending upon contiguous hues.  Whereas naïve introspectionists asserted that such differences were learned illusions, Kohler argued that hues, among other perceptions, were context-dependent (Wolfgang Kohler, Gestalt Psychology, 1947, pp. 67-99).  On the basis of this critique, Gurwitsch rejected the constancy hypothesis (ibid, 1964, pp. 161-173), and devoted an entire section of that book to an analysis of the Gestalt concepts of proximity, closure and good continuation, finding each of them to be an example of context-dependence (ibid. 1964, pp. 85-183).  Gurwitsch also saw Bergson’s concept of qualitative multiplicities in this light (ibid. 1964, pp. 140-144).

   The influence the early Piaget had upon Gurwitsch may be seen in his acceptance of assimilation and accommodation in the formation of schemata.  He rejects Piaget’s attempt to organize perception by means of this process, but accepts it as a means by which functional meanings, or uses, are acquired, maintaining, I believe correctly, that organization is an autochthonous feature of experience (ibid. 1964, pp. 30-36).  Let me try to mediate between the two.  Given that the visual field organizes phenomena, and most precisely phenomena in focus, it is nevertheless necessary to learn to focus our eyes and direct our gaze (co-ordinate perception with action), and to co-ordinate vision with our other perceptual modes.

   Husserl’s contributions, of course, are many.  The most seminal of these, however, did not originate with Husserl himself, but with his teacher, Franz Brentano.  These include the characterization of perception as 1) intentional and 2) pre-reflexively self-aware (Franz Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, 1874, pp. 153-189).  These descriptions obtain whether the apperceived object is psychic, somatic, or in the environing world.  Reflection is, according to Brentano, the wresting away of intentionality from its primary object in order to thematize the act itself.  Husserl, building upon Brentano, asserted that all worldly phenomena are grasped from a spatiotemporal perspective (Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, 1913, pp. 101-132).  This entails that all worldly perception is necessarily incomplete, presenting us with visual objects the backs of which we cannot see, sounds whose origins we cannot ascertain, touch which does not completely enfold the tactile object, etc.  In fact, we can never grasp any transcendent object in its entirety, precisely because we cannot behold it from the infinite number of possible perspectives upon it in all modalities of worldly perception, or even in any one of them; it is inexhaustible.  This means that we cannot determine any worldly object absolutely.  The character of worldly perception as contingently determining is the basis for its ambiguity and grounds the possibility of multistable interpretations of its objects.  However, since objects are context-dependent, the co-presence of context further determines the object, partially resolves ambiguity, and numerically decreases multistable possibilities.  Context is part of what is known as outer horizon.

   The object is also grasped more fully by means of a series of perceptions that are positionally or modally distinct.  That this is true indicates that the determinations gained within each act of perception may be retained in memory and reflectively integrated with the determinations made by subsequent perceptual acts.  Furthermore, if the perceptions are modally and serially contiguous, as when I circle around an object while maintaining my gaze upon it, rather than glancing elsewhere and back again as I move or substituting, say, touch for vision, the determinations are not discrete.  Rather, they flow smoothly into each other and imbue me with a synthesis; a perception informed by memory, from which I may imagine, by means of extrapolation, the determinations to be grasped from other perspectives not yet assumed.  Although not necessarily correct, these extrapolated determinations are, in principle, correctable by assuming the positions in question.  Thus each perception is bound simultaneously by an inner horizon, which refers to perspectives upon the object that are not yet or no longer assumed, and an outer horizon, which refers to perceptual fields not yet or no longer assumed, and which may or may not relate to the object as presently perceived, as well as the contextual field which surrounds this object, and from which it emerges (ibid. 1913, pp. 91-95, 124-128, 133-135).  We may distinguish between these two types of outer horizon by calling the first the world horizon, and the second the field horizon.  The world horizon includes all field horizons, and is reflectively approachable but not apprehensible in its totality.

   Husserl’s contributions to Gurwitsch’s thought are by no means limited to those discussed here; these are merely the main themes that Gurwitsch employs (ibid. 1964, 155-305), excepting the phenomenological reduction, which is the bracketing, or placing in abeyance, of the existential belief in the intention-independent reality of the phenomenal world.

   Merleau-Ponty’s main contribution to Gurwitsch is his close correlation between world-perception and body-perception.  To perceive the world is to perceive it by means of one’s body, and hence to perceive one’s body as well.  The existence of the body, and its position relative to the perceived object, are implied in the perception of every extrasomatic object, in its correlation with proprioception (body sense).  Likewise, the presence of the object, and its position relative to the body, are implied in every proprioception, in its correlation with the extrasomatic perception of the object.  In other words, world-perception and body-perception are mutually correlative and mutually grounding (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 1945, pp. 203-206).

   Gurwitsch, in The Field of Consciousness, presents the thesis that there is a structure common to all perception and conception, the theme/thematic field/margin structure (1964, p.56).  Within a perceptual or conceptual field, there is always a theme, or focus of intention, surrounded by a thematic field, or context, which is in turn bounded by a margin, or fringe.  In vision, this structure is primarily spatial; in audition, it is mainly temporal.  If our focus is a concept, its thematic field is comprised of other concepts relative to it.  Since our acts may themselves be made objects of our intention, we may, instead of thematizing a particular object within the somatic or extrasomatic perceptual field, thematize the act of somatic or extrasomatic perception itself.  In Marginal Consciousness, Gurwitsch asserts the omnipresence of three orders of existence in at least marginal form.  These are “(1) a certain segment of the stream of consciousness, (2) our embodied existence, and (3) a certain sector of our perceptual environment” (Aron Gurwitsch, Marginal Consciousness, 1985, p. xlv).  The omnipresence of these three existential orders is said to “constitute an a priori necessary condition of consciousness” and to be the foundation of Husserl’s “natural attitude” which, prior to the phenomenological reduction, assumes an intentionality-independent existing world, for they incessantly provide evidence of the existence of this world to consciousness (ibid. 1985, pp. 56-59).  Alfred Schutz, a longtime friend of Gurwitsch, insisted upon a fourth omnipresent existential order: “intersubjectivity, i.e. our knowledge of others [is] always on the margin” (1952 letter quoted in 1985, pp. xxxvi-xxxvii).  We shall return to Schutz’s objection later.

   Building upon Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, Gurwitsch designates the body as a ‘peculiar, specific, and special object”.  There are two reasons for its privileged status.  First, it is the only object of which we are aware not only through “external” perception, but also through proprioception.  Second, it is the only material object which is always perceived, and which forms the center of reference and orientation from which we externally perceive all worldly objects (ibid. 1985, pp. 59-62).

   As there is a world horizon, such that a sector of the world may be perceived but not the perceptual world at large, so there are also somatic and psychic horizons.  Thus I may become aware of being embodied as the “confused horizon” to which any particular kinesthetic or “vital” feeling (vigor, languor, etc.) refers (ibid. 1985, pp. 34-37), and of my ego as the horizon enclosing a section of my stream of consciousness.  In either case, this horizon mat be reflectively approximated, but never completely grasped (ibid. 1985, pp. 20-23).  We may also lose our bearings in all three horizons.  For instance, I may begin walking due north in a strange town on a cloudy day and, after several curves and turns, suddenly realize that I know neither where I am nor which way I am going.  Likewise, when I first stood on one foot while closing my eyes and attempting to hold my other foot sideways at a forty-five degree angle to the floor, I was quite surprised, when I opened my eyes, by how far I was off.  Finally, I may be working through a problem and completely lose my train of thought.  Practice will improve my ability to maintain my bearings, but perfection is not achievable.

   Richard M. Zaner, a student of Gurwitsch, advanced his teacher’s work in at least two ways.  First, he further develops Gurwitsch’s description of the invariant theme/thematic field/margin macrostructure of perception by delineating a description of the fine-grained system of intrinsic simple, complex, double and multiple self- and cross-references by means of which constituents configure into a Gestalt theme.  There are, in addition, such referencings present between constituents of the theme and constituents of its thematic field, but these theme/field relations do not demonstrate the degree of relevancy present in intra-thematic relations.  A change in focus, however, may change the character of the theme by promoting field constituents to the status of theme constituents, by demoting theme constituents to the status of field constituents, or both, as well as by similar promotions and demotions between field and margin (|Richard M. Zaner, The Context of Self, 1981, pp. 67-91).  Second, Zaner expands the concept of contexture, stating that not only is extrasomatic perception organized into a contexture, but also that somatic perception/action comprises a second contexture, and mental life comprises a third.  He goes on to assert that these distinguishable yet inseparable contextures are related, through the same type of intrinsic referencing system found within each of them, into a larger system that he equates with the self and terms the complexure of life (ibid. 1981, 92-109).  My addition to this is that the complex referencing structure of contexture is, on the level of definition rather than positionality, also the structure of sign/sign relations in sign systems, and that the relations between the relations between these symbolic contexture maps and the territories of the perception/action contextures to which they refer are sign/signified relations.  Consciousness learns, utilizes, and traverses these systems.

The Contributions of Genetic Epistemology

   Unlike Gurwitsch vis-à-vis phenomenology, Piaget himself created and developed the field of genetic epistemology.  He referred to his position as constructivist, reflecting his conviction that structure and function are inseparable in any particular instance (Jean Piaget, Structuralism, 1968, pp. 68-73, The Principles of Genetic Epistemology, 1972, pp. 85-93), and his certainty that the structures which he studied demonstrated an evolving dynamic equilibration which is better described by homeorrhesis than by homeostasis, and which resembles Ilya Prigogine’s dissipative structures (Jean Piaget, The Equilibration of Cognitive Structures, 1985, pp. 3-4)  For Piaget, the evolution, by construction, of more inclusive, differentiated and interconnected structures from simpler, more limited and more isolated ones involves the struggle for wholeness by means of a system of self-regulating transformations (ibid. 1968, pp. 3-16).  The guiding Principle in the continual construction of this system in human development is a dynamic dialectic between assimilation and accommodation.  Assimilation integrates, strives for internal consistency of structure, and generates necessities, while accommodation differentiates, strives for external coherency between the structure and the many situations in the world within which it functions, and generates possibilities.  This evolution of action schemes is recapitulated in the learning of sign systems.  For instance, children learn “cat” and “dog” before they integrate them into “animal” or differentiate them into “Persian”, “Siamese”, “Poodle”, “Terrier”, etc. (Mathilda Holzman, The Language of Children, 1983, pp. 94-97).  The interplay of these two processes is most concisely presented in Piaget’s two postulates, which he makes clear have been derived from experimental results.  They are (1) Every assimilatory scheme tends to incorporate external elements that are compatible with it”, and (2) “Every assimilatory scheme has to be accommodated to the elements it assimilates, but the changes made to adapt it to an object’s peculiarities must be effected without loss of continuity” (ibid. 1975, p. 6).  Assimilation plus accommodation equals equilibration.  Equilibration occurs between “assimilation of objects to schemes of action and accommodation of schemes of action to objects” (a “function of the fundamental interaction between subject and object”), between two subsystems of a system (reciprocal assimilation leading to mutual conservation), and between a system and its subsystems.  Equilibration also involves correspondence between affirmations (yes, this element can be assimilated/accommodated) and negations (no, this element cannot be assimilated/accommodated), or between similarity and disparity in the aspect or aspects salient to a scheme, between two subsystems, or between a system and its subsystems (ibid. 1975, pp.5-10).  Gurwitsch considered dispositions and character traits, or “psychic constants”, to be formed in a like manner, as “systematic unifications of experienced facts rather than these facts themselves (ibid. 1985, pp. 15-16).

   Disequilibria result when a trial produces an error (when the applied scheme fails), or when there is no suitable scheme available to apply; in other words, disequilibria result from perturbations, defined as “anything creating obstacles to assimilation or to achieving a goal” (ibid. 1975, p. 16).  These perturbations motivate “searching”, a “strik[ing] out in new directions”.  Progress results from the accommodation of an existing scheme to the task or from the development of a new scheme that succeeds; in other words, when “disequilibria…give rise to developments that surpass what has previously existed” (ibid. 1975, pp. 10-15).  Obviously, feedback is essential to this process; positive feedback reinforces a scheme, and negative feedback undermines it.  These complementary feedback systems are called regulations, and they react to perturbations by means of compensations.

   Regulations may act to conserve or to modify schemes, or to mediate between them.  They may act by means of automatic compensations, requiring little attention, or by active compensations, requiring a choice to be made or changed.  For Piaget, active regulations “lead to conscious awareness” and thus “lie at the source of the representation or conceptualization of material actions.”  There may be simple regulations, regulations of regulations, etc., hierarchically ordered, up to autoregulations, which make self-organization possible.  The evolving system is open, that is, it continually advances and never reaches completion, for there are always further advance to be made.  This process of equilibration toward ever better equilibrium, i.e. more extensive, precise and interconnected cognitive systems, Piaget calls optimization (ibid. 1975, pp. 16-26).

   According to Piaget, cognizance “proceeds from the periphery to the center[s].”  The periphery is the interface between organism and environment (therefore peripheral to both), and obtains in the relation between proprioceived bodily action and perceived worldly phenomena.  Center (S) is the subject’s operational scheme, and center (O) is the array of intrinsic properties attributed to the object.  Movement from the periphery toward one center is correlational with movement toward the other, thus the “understanding of objects” and the “conceptualization of actions” advance isomorphically (Jean Piaget, The Grasp of Consciousness, 1974, pp. 332-353).

   Extending Piaget’s model of human development, Lewis and Brooks-Gunn have investigated the ontogeny of self-recognition by means of mirror studies of infants.  The area is important, due to the fact that chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orangutans, the only apes that have arguable been able to learn simple (one-to-one sign/signified correspondence) sign systems, although still unable to learn complexly syntactically encoded sign systems, or to create either simple or complex sign systems, also are able to recognize themselves in mirrors; the lesser apes treat their own images as they would treat unfamiliar conspecifics (members of the same species).  Lewis and Brooks-Gunn discovered that infants placed before a mirror reacted differently to their reflections, depending upon age.  As early as one month of age, infants will gaze at their reflections. At 5-8 months of age, they will smile at and touch the mirror (mirror-directed behavior).  At 9-12 months of age, they will move rhythmically as they watch their image also move (play with contingency).  At 15-18 months of age infants will act coy before their reflections.  If rouge is applied to their noses prior to their exposure to a mirror, a few in this age group will touch their own noses (self-directed behavior).  No infants younger than 15 months of age exhibited this behavior; practically all 21-24 month olds did (Michael Lewis and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Social Cognition and the Acquisition of Self, 1979, pp. 212-219).

   Lewis and Brooks-Gunn also exposed infants to videotapes of themselves, thus eliminating the contingent relation between action and image.  They discovered that person-permanence is correlated with mirror-contingent self-recognition and conditioned affective reactions, and that object-permanence, occurring later, is correlated with self-permanence and specific emotional experiences (ibid. 1979, pp. 222-228).  The experimenters concluded, on the basis of their data, that at birth, behavior is a combination of random movements and innate reflexes, which function as a mean to engage the infant with its environment.  These innate reflexes gradually fade, replaced by cognitive structures formed by infant-environment interactions.  These structures increasingly take control of behavior.  By approximately three months of age, reflexes and cognitions exercise roughly equal dominion, after which cognitions progressively dominate (ibid. 1979, pp. 241-245).

Comparisons, Contrasts, Understandings and Advances

   From the foregoing characterizations, it can be seen that phenomenology and genetic epistemology differ in their views on the origin of knowledge.  Phenomenology views perception as the source of knowledge, while for genetic epistemology this source is to be found in action.  Since phenomenology is primarily oriented towards perception, and genetic epistemology towards action, this disagreement is hardly surprising.  However, since each perception is an act and each action is at least marginally perceived to alter one’s perceptual array, this difference is more apparent than real.  They agree upon many things, albeit from the different perspectives of the phenomenological ‘what’ and the genetic epistemological ‘how’.  They both assert that consciousness is recursive; for phenomenology, each intention is self-referential, and for genetic epistemology, regulations compensate in response to feedback, towards better equilibration.  Both of them agree upon the essential contingency of experience, since, for both, the complete grasp of an object is an ideal limit, to be ever more closely approached, but never fully realized (ibid. 1913, pp. 366-367, ibid. 1983, p. 143).  In addition, for phenomenology, the self may never be fully grasped by itself, or self-coincide, and for genetic epistemology, cognitive structures may always be further elaborated.  They both insist that the ability to learn sign systems does not evolve until after the advent of self-consciousness.  For phenomenology, intention, which entails self-awareness, is prior to representation; for genetic epistemology, the sensory-motor level and self-recognition occur prior to speech.  They also agree that semiotic consciousness is not the final stage in human development.  For phenomenology, language may be reflected upon like any other object.  Within the field of genetic epistemology, the semiotic level – that is, the level of concrete operations, where signs have specific referents - is succeeded by the level of formal operations - the level of theory, where symbols may stand for anything in general, as do variables in algebra, and not just a particular referent.  To place language in context, let us peruse the probable evolution from intention to formalization.

   Intention is, primordially, an active grasping of a presentation.  The transition to representation of particulars is accomplished by imitation.  Onomatopoeic words, such as ‘hiss’ for the sound of a snake, are examples of this transitional phase.  In sign systems such as spoken language, signs have specific referents, but are no longer constrained to imitate them.  A second transition is exemplified by syllogisms in Aristotelian logic, in which the still-present referentiality possessed by the signs is subsumed within the relations obtaining between logical structures.  Finally, in, for instance, algebra, the signs have lost any specific referentiality outside the relations contained within the equations, and may stand for any quantity, as long as what is quantified is the same for each variable.

   Another, somewhat related problem was proposed by Lester Embree (Lester Embree, Essays in Memory of Aron Gurwitsch, 1983, p. 403).  He presents two propositions: (1) if perceiving is going on, then thinking is going on, and (2) if thinking is going on, then speaking is going on (at least internally), each of which sounds plausible.  However, when taken together, the implausible (3) if perceiving is going on, then thinking is going on (at least internally) is entailed.  This conundrum is resolvable by asserting that (1) is true to a degree, but the degree of thinking entailed by perception does not necessarily achieve the degree of determination that facilitates symbolic representation.  One may perceptually grasp a presentation without having to cognitively represent it.

   Since phenomenology and genetic epistemology agree that the subject-object interface is primordial, the question arises as to the statuses of memory, knowledge, imagination and cognition.  My position is that memory and knowledge both have their common source in perception, but that knowledge is the more abstract and wider class.  Memory is restricted to the reproduction to some degree of a segment of past perception, complete with a spatiotemporal perspective; memory is thus diachronic and positional.  On the other hand, knowledge of a datum of information would not entail that we be able to produce the experience of learning it; thus knowledge may be considered to be synchronic and apositional. Imagination and cognition, in this view, extrapolate possibilities from the actualities grasped in perception and those preserved in memory and knowledge.  However, imagination is restricted to a generation of possible perceptions from particular spatiotemporal perspectives and is diachronic and positional; cognition, on the other hand, being based upon the abstract information that comprises knowledge, is synchronic and appositional, and does not require either perceptions or memory-accessed shadows of them.  Although, they are all to some degree autonomous with respect to perception – knowledge and cognition more so than memory and imagination – they are all either directly or indirectly grounded in perception, and, as was noted in the section on phenomenology above, recurse to inform it.

   Forgetting needs to be mentioned here also.  If we consider memory to be a text of experience, and subsequent experience to be continually inscribed upon the selfsame synaptic parchment, the minor details and routine experiences would become obliterated first; thus broad outlines and the unusual would be remembered longer.  Finally, the spatiotemporal and positional context would be destroyed, and that which remained would no longer be memory, but knowledge.

   Phenomenology and genetic epistemology agree that space and time are constructed by the subject, but I would add that we construct them out of a manifold that exists independently of our perception of it, as we construct a worldly object that is nevertheless actually there to be constructed by our perception, that we have artificially bifurcated a single perceptual spatiotemporality into the concepts of space and time, and, as the ideal limit of a completely grasped object must noncontradictorally contain all possible perspectives upon it as aspects, so the ideal limit of a spacetime grasped omnipositionally must noncontradictorally contain each possible perspectival apprehension of it.  How can one prove that perceptual spacetime is singular?  By means of thought experiments, in which, Thomas Kuhn asserts, “nature and conceptual apparatus are jointly implicated” (Thomas Kuhn, The Essential Tension, 1979, p. 265).  Our two thought experiments are (a) to try to imagine a spaceless time, and (b) to attempt to imagine a timeless space.

(a) A spaceless time must be infinitesimal; that is, it must lack the three spatial dimensions.  But worldly consciousness, somatic consciousness, and imagination, are perspectival; they observe their objects from positions that are not identical with the positions of their objects.  To perform such an observation is to establish two points, that of observer and that of observed, which delineate a line, which is a spatial dimension.

(b) A timeless space must be instantaneous; that is, it must lack duration.  But the establishment of a spatial perspective requires presence to succeed absence, and the co-presence of observed and observer entails their simultaneity.  Sucession and simultaneity are temporal distinctions.

We have assumed what we wished to disprove, and the necessary consequences of these assumptions have mired us in irretrievable contradictions.  Thus, it is proven that neither ‘space’ not ‘time’ can exist independently, and that spatiotemporality is a single perceptual manifold – not just in actuality, as Einstein theorized, but also in our perceptions.

How did we come to conceptually bifurcate spacetime, when we cannot even imagine the manifold being so bifurcated?  How did Immanuel Kant come to propose such a thing in his Critique of Pure Reason?  The answer is to be sought in the character of our perceptual modalities.  All of them involve “both space and time”, but in vision the spatial aspect is dominant, while in audition, the temporal aspect predominates; they utilize the spacetime manifold in differing ways.  We simply, and naively, and incorrectly, absolutized their respective dominances.  Notice that in both taction (touch) and in proprioception (our kinesthetic, or body sense), our most basic perceptual modes, both aspects of spacetime are equally represented.  Since, according to Gurwitsch, both taction and proprioception are omnipresent to consciousness, the evidence for the validity of my contention has been ‘with’ us all along.

Husserl’s theory of the “Living Present”, found in his unpublished manuscripts by, among others, Tran Duc Thao (Tran Duc Thao, Investigations into the Origin of Language and Consciousness, 1951, pp. 227-231), is a theory of the “primordial Now which is posited as permanent” and which has as a fixed structure the flow of the future through it into the past.  This theory can be generalized to a primordial and permanent Here/Now through which spacetime flows, carrying particular perceptions into and out of conscious awareness while the perceptual structures and horizons Remain-Here-Now.

Next, we must consider how the organism/environment system of infancy evolves, through experience, into the self/soma/world/society system.  According to Lewis and Brooks-Gunn, person-permanence occurs prior to object-permanence, emotional experience, and self-permanence, which themselves occur together.  But this fact does not entail that the infant bestows permanence upon persons as persons.  In fact, until the beginning of object-permanence, the infant lacks the ground from which to make an object–person distinction, and permanence is doubtless bestowed upon persons first because, as Lewis and Brooks-Gunn assert, they are the most insistent and cooperative objects (ibid. 1979, pp. 252-254).  Once object-permanence begins to appear, however, infants learn, through peoples’ exhibition of intentional behaviors such as responsiveness, expression, and imitation, that persons are more similar to them than either are to objects, although all three are corporeal, may be acted upon, etc.  Thus self-permanence and object permanence develop in mutual correlation, for the differences that the infant discovers between persons as persons and persons as objects are also differences that the infant internalizes between itself as person and itself as object.  Emotional experience, which presupposes a self as an experiencer of emotion, and emotional expression, which presupposes responsive others towards whom emotional expression is directed, develop correlatively with self- and object-permanence.  The answer to Schutz’s objection is thus that he is indeed correct, and that there is a fourth, intersubjective horizon.  We are always at least marginally aware that we are expressive and language-bearing beings.  Reflection upon these omnipresent datums leads us to the apprehension of their social character, thus towards an ever-present horizon of intersubjectivity.  Since the apprehension of self as subject requires the grasping of other persons as persons, the presence of this fourth existential order is, like the presence of the other three, an a priori condition for consciousness.

We have discovered that there are indeed some new things that can be said about the structure of the mind, based upon the discoveries of phenomenology and genetic epistemology concerning the structure of the mind/world interrelation.  Mind is a process that relates to the world through and by means of perceptions structured in such a way that they possess centers surrounded by contexts that fade into nonexistence beyond their margins.  The process begins as circular, and matures into a dynamic, multilayered, self-regulating recursivity, with stored and present experience upon which it can reflect, and from which it can abstract fields of possible commonalities and disparities that it may associate with signs, which are systematically related because their referents are, and communicate as a code.  As the mind/world interrelation is a dynamic system, so too is the mind; it is neither a unity nor a duality.

However the mind works, it must do what it does in the brain.  This means that however the brain is organized must allow for the cognitive characteristics we have found.  What do the brain physiologists have to say?

Sperry agrees that the mind is recursive, with both whole-to-part, ‘top-down’, and part-to-whole, ‘bottom-up’, control (Roger Sperry, Science and Moral Priority, 1985, pp. 31-36).  Physiological studies of the human brain have developed three organizational schemes for it, which are all drawn from perusal of its physical configuration.  The longitudinal scheme locates conception anterior to the Sylvan fissure in the frontal lobes, and perception in the temporal, parietal and occipital lobes posterior to it.  The afferent and efferent (sensory and motor) neurons meet at the fissure.  The hemispherical scheme states that the unfamiliar is grasped holistically in the right hemisphere (this is reversed for left-handers) until it is coherent enough to be assigned a definition that can then be transferred to the left hemisphere by the corpus callosum, filed, and analyzed.  The sagital-cortical scheme asserts that the central R-complex controls automatic functions, outside of which is the limbic system, the seat of our emotions, with the cerebral cortex the cowl of consciousness, overlaying all, and interfaced with vertical stacks of neurons reaching from center to periphery.  Each of these schemes is a system, neither bifurcated nor unitary, and delineating natural and complementary dichotomies.  Thus brain physiology, as far as we can tell, is easily compatible with the stance of recursive equilibration, and would even seem to suggest it.