This idea came from my critical thought about Existentialism (Heidegger and Sartre but not as bad as Heidegger) of which produced for my a vision of a Philosophy built upon abstracted grounds. One has to have a measure of Certainty as to where one begins, if one does not begin in the correct place one will endlessly abstract in the wrong direction toward the wrong place. I have developed a re-conception of Hegel’s Sense-Certainty as set out in the first section (after introduction) of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. This shall serve as a critical measure of where to begin in Philosophy althought this work right here is rather new and undeveloped but it will give you an idea of where I am getting to. Please make comments not about the presentation of it which I know to be crude but the value of the idea and how my work can be improved and has suceeded in relation to the idea.
The nature of the mind is complete nothingness for in its objects merely consists of what it experiences, what is conceives, and the reflection of concepts. Every experience is immediately logical and empirical, the empirical merely involves our sensation of it where as the logical contains the fact that it appeared and appeared here. The necessity of the appearence is merely that since it appeared it has to appear or else it would not have. The necessity of its appearing here is that since it appeared here (to my awareness) that it had to appear here or else it wouldn’t. The empirical is wrapped in this necessity and is logically bound to it and this logic of the experience provides the existence of the experience of which is seperate from any other experience simple by where it appears (of whom is aware of it). The empirical portion of the experience which arrives upon our sensation also provides that evey experience has a unique sensation hence in this respect is also different from any other experience. This difference is not a constrast between experience’s but comes from the in-itself of the experience so that we cannot in anyway compare experience’s to each other and consider this in any manner valid not even hypothetically.
Sensations are a measure of intensity in which every experience has a unique intensity and this intensity is the most immediate information presented to us about an experience and thus accordingly we shall simple call it “data”. Nextly, the data manifests itself according to where it appeared which is merely my point of awareness (my consciousness or mind) and the data arranges itself around this point. This however merely gives the one-dimensional data a two-dimensional character (the relationship of the data to me) which gives a location relative to the self. This draws my attention toward it, like when I touch a hot stove I suddenly shift my attention to it, in this event the data now with a position is related back to itself seperate of its position. The data then now with a position relative to us gives a position relative ot itself according to its relativity to us. This is actually perfectly in accordance with Quantum Physics although on a much better and deeper level of understanding.
The intellect now needs to be explained as to where concepts come from. Just to remind you a concept is nothing but a relationship between one experience and another. The experience as we sense it gives to us not only an experience of its three-dimensional form but also a impression which is generated by its intention toward us. Its intention toward us is easily explaiend by the necessity of the experience appearing here (to my awareness). This intention provides for me a knowledge of Sense-Certainity that allows me to relate the impression of the experiece to its sensory data in its one, two, and three dimensional forms. The impression can relate to the experience because when the sensory data gain its second dimension the data is related and made relative to the position that is our awareness and this also leads to a relationship to the impression of the experience. I gain thus a two-dimensional concept of the experience which creates for me thoughts which are immediate and thus sense-certain. The relativity between our position of awareness and the data is maintained of course during the period when the two-dimensional data gains a three-dimensional characteristic so the three-dimensional is related to the impression but the impression now already binded with the two-dimensional data now meets the three-dimensional data with the two-dimensional data already with it. This creates three-dimensional concepts which are also immediate and sense-certain and involve memory of the phenomenon in the data of the three-dimensional concept.
These concepts being the end product of the experience affect the impression of new experiences so that the two-dimensional and three-dimensional data is related to the concepts of former experiences. When this occurs, when experiences become related to other experiences we lose all sense-certainity and we can no longer measure truth by providing empirical evidence or demonstration. Due to this we must develop intellectual abilities gain intellectual certainity but this has not been mastered to a Science unlike Science has mastered empirical evidence and demonstration. Yet, I am on the verge of this but I think I am tired. This took alot out of me.
Welcome to the Phenomenology! A long path of despair awaits! (Believe it or not, this is something to be excited about.)
Your use of experience talks about it as a static thing, which comes to be connected, etc… It is difficult for me to think of this concept of experience mixed in with Hegel’s language, which, at every moment, describes things that change, move, flow into one another, are reflected back into themselves, in short entrenched vocabulary, live in dialectical historicity.
The certainty of sense-certainty is the statement ‘that is there! I can see it right there!’ This is the most basic form of certainty that only requires an organism that has sense surfaces and rudimentary language. This certainty, however, is not truth! The truth of sense-certainty is simply that it is an organism that senses and declares what it senses with certainty. The driving contradiction of this first dialectic, the thing that makes sense-certainty move or change into perception, is one of the most basic dualities that haunt us and cause us despair; the sense-certain spirit senses a particular, but then uses universal language to describe it. In real words, it says that, say, this is a certain color, but when it is challeneged on that it realizes that there’s more going on… it is perceiving this because of the truth of what it is.
In that instant, sense-certainty becomes perception and runs into a whole other set of problems. In other words, through expressing the certainty that arrises from itself as it is at that moment it is forced to look more deeply into itself (although it ‘believes’ that it is looking more deeply into the world) and in doing so it changes…
This sort of thing happens throughout the book, which makes it hard to involve your concept of empirical or logical atomistic experiences that are connected together.
The Spiritual growth in the Phenomenology flows driven by visceral feelings.
I am reconceiving Sense-Certainty in a far different manner than Hegel. I am putting it toward a concept of our immediate experience, as to break down reality to be nothing more than a sequence of experience’s that we through abstraction create connections between. Hegel falls into a fallacy because he dogamatically holds that reality evolves to a greater realness believing it a fault present in Kants thinking. There is no reason to belief it is a fault other than it simple does not make much logical sense but this is no reason to deny that reality gets more unreal as it evolves. There is infact no reason to belief that it evolves at all either from real to unreal or real to unreal. This uncertainty means we must treat experience in a likewise manner and depict every experience as momentary yet in this realitywe must explain how we can conceive these hypothetical connections between experience’s. My version of Sense-Certainty achieves this whereas Hegel’s version is dogmatic supposing that reality is evolutionary and goes from unreal to real in a seeming evolution.
My efforts are to re-examine Hegel’s Phenomenology with Post-Modern Phenomenology and in this manner unveil a new view of subjectivity that neither Hegel nor Husserl has conceived as yet.
I brought in the element of intentionality to Hegel’s sense-certainty realizing another immediate certainty in experience. That not only does experience appear, it appears here, to our awareness, and that their is infact a directedness of experience toward us. This provides a possibility of achieving objective knowledge that Phenomenologists and Existentialists did not think was possible before. This intentionality of experience leads to impressions which constitute the basis of Phenomenology however the impressions one is studying is not immediate but is corrupted with our experiences and is blended with objectivity making infact a pure subjective study impossible.
This understanding puts an end to Phenomenology. The intentionality of the experience creates an immediate impression and an unfolding of the content around ourself which is inherited by this impression. The impression is our mental sense which is followed by a physical sense formed in relation to the mental sense and then the appearance of the phenomenon around the physical sense in relation to the mental sense.
The formation of the physical sense creates an alteration of the mental sense or impression and according the phenomenon that appears changes the physical sense and causes a indirect alteration in the mental sense or impression. There is Sense-Certainty however it is not valuable in achieving truth and Phenomenology being utterly dependent on what is immediately sense-certain, aware of it or not, becomes a failure.
Phenomenology creates its characteristic soft-logic with its travelling through the flows of consciousness by the fact that it cannot find an avid means to sort between mental senses, physical senses, and phenomenon. We have to find a better means and I have developed a valid means to do so of which we can actively and objectively plot the stages of consciousness. We look to Schelling for the insight into the proper means of achieving this evolution beyond Phenomenology.