Well, why not?
Oprah Winfrey. Copyright 2009: Knut Skjærven.
Well, why not?
You probably didn’t think I had a picture of Oprah Winfrey. True, this morning I didn’t, but now I do. Just to remind you that absence can be turned into precence if you work on it. Please read this post and stay alert for more 
.
As I told you, Oprah Winfrey is in Copenhagen for the last push for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Chicago. Here leaving the lunch at the Royal Palace Amalienborg in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Yes, the Danish Queen was there too. In pink.
Go here for more images moving into precence .
Phenomenology: The Larger Picture.
Presence and Absence. Copyright 2009: Knut Skjærven
Following this blog you will agree with me that it stills needs a more practical approach to phenomenology. We need some tools that can be applied when doing, understanding and analyzing pieces of communication. Being it text or pictures or other.
Aspects of gestalt psychology have been pretty well covered in a number of posts. So have certain practical aspects of semiology. And there are plenty of useful information on both advertising efficiency and human behaviour, for readers that seek that kind information. (To be linked later).
The next series of posts will deal with a more practical approach to phenomenology. This is important since we have stated several times, already, that phenomenology takes up a special position within the barebones universe being both the basic of reflection as well as a particular area of investigation. Normally you refer to phenomenology as the method of phenomenology. The phenomenological method has been randomly covered by a series of posts taking it offset in the big book on phenomenology by late philosopher Herbert Spiegelberg. The big book being his The Phenomenological Movement. This however is by far not enough. Spiegelberg’s steps of phenomenology may be good, but not very practical.
Making the whole area more practical shall be very interesting since a similar effort had never been done before. Correct me if I am wrong here, but in my humble opinion this is the case. I am pretty sure that this effort have never been tried in anything that resembles a communication theory. So, it will be interesting to see what develops in the course of the future posts on barebones.
It is all in the photograph above. I call it Presence and Absence. There may be some presence, but there are certainly more absence. Let’s see, then, if we can get more absence present.
Please take a note that this post is written the day before President Obama arrives for the IOC conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. Michelle Obama arrived early yesterday and so did the Spanish King, The Brazilian President, and Oprah Winfrey. And many more celebrities doing a warm up of for the 2016 Olympics. Chicago Tribune calls it The Big Push. Friday all will be settled since the voter’s votes will have been cast. And all the presidents will leave.
What this last information has to do will phenomenology? Well, the facts are certainly there, aren’t they? And the celebrity information around IOC’s meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, is likewise missing from the picture above, right? That is precisely why this information belong to the photograph.
Confused? Just wait till you read the next post on phenomenology. That post will deal with presence and absence and everything will become clear to you .
Have a good morning.
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Barebones Pitstop Puzzle
Pitstop Puzzle. Copyright 2009: Knut Skjærven.
I just did you a favour.
From time to time I have posts that simply consist of a quote. Often an image added. These posts are all tagged “pitstop”, but unless you go for that tag in the tag cloud, you will never find them in one go.
I have collected them all for you. Linked from the same blog post. This one. If you visit the blog page pitstop puzzle you will find the same linked there. I will update that page whenever I publish a new pitstop post.
The idea with the pistop posts is simply to give you a break. Read them, or leave them.
Each pistop is a breath of fresh air. They all stand on their own and can be read in isolation. However there is an intention with these pitstop posts. Not expressive written down, or instructed. They are pieces of the same puzzle. They are pieces of the same picture. The are pieces of barebones.
Take a closer look at the photograph above. It is one single shot. Not a compilation of many. By viewing them all together you get a picture that is different from viewing each “piece” in isolation. You get THE picture.
Your turn now. Here are the collected pistop posts. Collected for you. You must make the picture by piecing them together.
Here you go: The Barebones Pistop Puzzle.
And Nobody Can Do Anything About It.
The Unsurpassed Elegance of a Stork.
No Substitute For Original Thinking.
Good luck with it. I never told you it would be easy.
The good news, however, is that these pitstop posts do not only fit into one particular picture. They fit many. Could even be yours. There are stuff in there that will last you a lifetime. You need to fill out the blanks.
For once, I have listed things in a chronological order. Bottom up.
phenomenology: what is intentionality?
The central notion in phenomenology is “intentionality”.
Intentionality suggest that whenever there is consciousness, then consciousness is always consciousness of something. In other words, there is always something there for consciousness. Consciousness can not be empty.
This something can have different shapes and forms. Could be a physical, as well as a mental, object. Could be a logical, or could be emotional, object. There will always be something there for consciousness.
Take a look at the picture below: Consciousness is conscious of the picture, when you engage in it. Zoom in on the book in the background of the picture, and the book is that something for consciousness. Engage the person in the frame, or the pocket watch sharp in the foreground, then the frame, the person or the clock is that something for consciousness.
These are very simple examples, but there are much more to intentionality than this. Pick up the next posts, in this new barebones theme, and you will learn more about intentionality along the way. Just let me mention one important implication already in this post. I am sure you are aware of the dualism that Western thought have been locked up in for last several hundred years? The dualism saying that there basically are two worlds. the mental world, and the rest of it. But since the mental world is something going on inside people’s heads, the main question for many centuries has been: how does the human mind ever get outside a persons head to pick up objects of different kinds? (Ridiculous set-up, I know).
Phenomenology deals with this problem in an elegant way through intentionality. Since consciousness is always consciousness of something, the outer and the inner world are bound together from the very start. The question of how the mind get out into the world, should never have been posed. It is not a real issue. The mind, and the outer world are one coherent unit. They can’t be taken apart.
One more thing: Be clear that you understand “intentionality” right from the very start. You already know the word intention from everyday life. You intend something. You intend for, instance, to go to the movies tomorrow, to grab a bite to eat later, or you intend to go on holiday next summer. This “intentionality”, if you chose to call it that, is not the same as the intentionality used and intended in phenomenology.
In phenomenology you don’t have to be deliberate about your intent as you normally are in situations from everyday life. Intentionality understood within phenomenology is already there for you. You can’t avoid it.
So the pledge here is only this: don’t mix the two contents of intentionality.
My Grandfather's Clock. Copyright Knut Skjærven.
What’s in it?
What’s in it? Knowing about intentionality, what use could it have for communicators? If will try to state a few lines about that every time, that I post in this theme. But I will limit the scope of this tailing. I will bullet only 3 things, even if there are many more, that could be said. Easy for me, and good for you. So, here we go:
1. You need to know that consciousness is always consciousness of something. If you don’t know, you will not be able to act on it.
2. Even if you write a text, make a drawing, speak out load, take a photograph, but keep all of it in your drawer, these acts of communication will not, phenomenologically speaking, exist for others. The range of communication will be limited.
3. The character, and the content, of the potential response from people, with other minds that your own, will act and react on the message, or the none message, based on the totality of their former, present, and future intentionalities.
Pretty banal, I know, but it will be more precise as this theme unfolds.
phenomenology and photography
I have to admit that I had no clear idea of this from the beginning.
I have thousands of pictures and I have hundreds of books. So, my idea was initially to use both sources in combination on this blog.I started using pictures, because I thought they would brighten, and breaking up the blog a bit, and maybe, in some cases, make good illustrations for the points made in the individual posts. Particularly in illustrating some of the gestalt factors the pictures came in handy, since some of them seemed to have been shot for the particular blog post.
Not so. The pictures you find on the blog are in some cases many years before a blog on barebones communication came to my mind about a year ago. My favourite post, in this respect, is the one on gestalt direction. Go look it up. The post “Wertheimer would have loved”. This post, by the way, is one of the posts with the most hits. So, I must have done something right.
As I am the photographer of all the pictures posted, so far, I don’t have to worry about copyrights, since I hold copyrights to all the pictures. It makes life much easier that way, since I am allowed to quote from texts, but I am not allowed to quote from visual material in the same way. I can’t just post somebody else’s pictures.
However, lately, the thought grew on me that maybe my pictures had another role to play, as well. You are probably aware that, for instance, Roland Barthes have written with passion about photography. I am referring to his last book: La Chambre Claire, first published in France in 1980, the year of his untimely death.
I will return to that book in later post, since I fully agree with those stating that this book is one of the most important statements ever made on photography.
But what is more, it constitutes a cross section between semiology and phenomenology (Barthes explicitly refers to Edmund Hussels. Barthes states on page 20 in my copy of the English translation: Camera Lucida, that “In this investigation of Photography, I borrowed something from phenomenology’s project and something from its language”.
Barthes is talking about Edmund Husserl as his inpiration.
There is, however, even a much more important issue at stake here. You know that the phenomenological method includes a “freezing”, a “bracketing” of the natural attitude to be able to describe, and to study it more closely. Maybe you also are aware that one of the key methodological notions within phenomenology is the notion “perspective”.
Question: What is it I do, what is it that every photographer does, when taking or shooting pictures? Answer: Could be phrased this way: I/they/we, as photographers, freeze parts of the world from a certain perspective. That is the very nature of photography.
So, the cross over from photography to phenomenology, is rather obvious to make.
As the blog progressed, it slowly dawned on me, that here is a story that never has been told. I will try to tell it, bit by bit, as the blog unfolds. That was the general idea, anyway.
Think about this idea, and take a look at the picture submitted below: A moment, frozen in time, from a certain perspective. Phenomenological investigation illustrated. Photography on phenomenology. Feel free to re-read the posts on the phenomenological method already posted.
Gassin, France, 2002.
All the best to you as well
For more on the books mentioned, please go here: Library Thing: Roland Barthes: La Chambre Claire, and Library Thing: Roland Barthes: Camera Lucida (translated by Richard Howard).
For more posts on Barthes on this blog, go here, or use the tag cloud for navigation.
Meditations on a Mac: The Natural Attitude (1).
So, let’s look at the phenomenological method in more detail. Not to tell you what it is, but to show you what is it. At least the way I see it.
Where does phenomenological investigation start? It starts right here. At this and any given moment. At this and any any given time. At this and at any given place.
My present starting point is in front of my PC that, in fact, is not a PC, but a Mac. A beautifully designed iMac. Large one too.
Let me share with you of some of the things that I observe. I observe my Mac first and foremost. This precise moment I have my attention on these very words as they emerge on the screen while I hit the letters on the keyboard. My eyes, and my head, tilt up and down as I shift attention between the screen and the keyboard.
In the corner of my eye I note other objects placed on my desk. Without really looking I sense the two small loudspeakers that are connected to the Mac. They are black and bear the logo Altec Lansing. In need to look at them to see this. I know that they are connected to the sub woofer that is placed under table. I can touch is with my feet. But I don’t touch it.
I sense more objects. A stack of books pile up to the left of the screen. A black fixed phone at the same side. At the right hand side I sense the external hard drives, and I recall that one of them is connected directly to back side the Mac, the other two are connected to the to USB hub that I acquired not so long ago. I have got 1,5 TB there in addition to the 320 MB that comes with the Mac. I need a lot a capacity for picture backups. So that’s the reason.
I am impressed by the new Mac feature, Time Machine, that comes with OS Leopard, the version latest Mac operating system. In fact I have seen nothing like it.
Even more objects are spread all around me. The desk, the chair, the lamp. More books and an empty cup of coffee. Even more object as a turn my head.
My eyes still have their attention at the screen and the keyboard as I move my head slightly up and down to see the keys and to control the spelling as the words become visible on the screen. A couple of places words are underlined with a red colour to suggest that I have misspelled. I have to delete and write it all over to make the underlining disappear. I let the word “colour” stay with the red mark underneath since that is how I spell it. The European way. If I had written “color” it would go away. The American style.
The keyboard, by the way, is connected to the back of the big screen in one of the USB ports that are there for the same reason. There are three of them. I know that without having to look and to count. Now and again I hit the “save and continue editing” marker to make sure that what I write is saved. I write directly in WordPress. WordPress is the name of the blog universe that I use. And I am happy with it. Most of the time.
I also sense the large window behind the machine, and the evening light that still shines through it. I don’t have to light my desk lamp yet, but in half an hour I probably will.
Following Sokolowski’s terminology in “Introduction to Phenomenology”, what I attend to at any given moment in time is the profile of the objects in front of me. Each individual profile is a concretization of an aspect of the object of interest. If I asked someone else to take the seat where I am sitting right now, they will get access to the same aspect of the Mac, but not the same profile of it. The profiles are individual. Aspects are not.
In addition to profiles and aspects the Mac has sides: a front side and a back side are the two most obvious.
Let me tell you a little more about the Mac. The screen is rather big. The keyboard however is much smaller than those I am used to from my former PC universe. It is white and silver and on each side there are cables connecting different devises. On the right hand side is the USB connection that connects the keyboard to the computer. On the left hand side is an USB connection that I use for my film scanner. I know all this since it was I, who plugged in the connections. Or should I say that I assume that I know this, and thereby also assuming that no one in my family have changed the connections mentioned.
I save again, get up from the chair and leave the Mac for a moment to get a cup of coffee and the book by Sokolowski, which I know is places on a glass table in the living room. I know that since I just left it there. Now I get up.
A few moment later I am back. I did not pick up the book, but only took a glance at it. I made a cup of coffee that I bring back with me. Back in position to view the same aspect of the Mac, but with a new profile. It is bit more dim now, because the daylight fades rapidly. I am in Copenhagen, Denmark. The Mac tells me that the time is 18.24 and I recall the date is March 11, 2008. Still wintertime here and low light at this hour of the day. It strikes me that maybe I should attend to some other task, since this blogpost now is underway, and I always find it easier to continue a blogpost than starting one from scratch. Particularly a long one like this.
These things go through my mind. I know this world of everyday activity. I live in it most of the time. Maybe I know it too well since I spend a lot of time in this position in front of the Mac. Hour after hour, day after day, week after week. Should I say year after year? Almost every day, when I come home from “my real work” that is behind another machine in another room in another building in another street in another part of the town. Apart from the fact that back hurts a bit from sitting down too much, there are no big surprises here. No big deal really.
Maybe I should to some physical exercise in stead of this stale desk work? No, I’ll leave that to another day.
I save again and get up turning the lamp light on as I leave for the second time now. I have another zip of coffee before I get up from my chair.
Back again after a couple of minutes.
One of my specialties is wandering around. Do better thinking that way. That’s my theory, anyway. I could hit “publish” now, and say that was it. Another blogpost to the barebones project, but I will not do that. First of all I need to read thought what have I just written. Sometimes I do the reading and correction after I have posted, but in general that is not a good idéa. To many mistakes for other people to see. Not that I mind mistakes, but misunderstandings are likely to occur as well. And that is worse. Mostly, however, I post drafts, but try to limit the catastrophies.
I need to tail the post now. Some kind of conclusion. This is, then, the first meditation on a Mac. I started where every first meditation must always start. From a present position in what phenomenologists calls the natural attitude.
There started Hussels and Heidegger. There started Sokolowski and Riceour. There started I. And that is where you will start, as well. The natural attitude is the frame of mind in which all of us live most of our lives. It is the first beginning of any phenomenological investigation. Or meditation. Even on a Mac.
What’s in it for communication?
What’s in this for communication? The natural attitude has no specific relevance for communication, but please read this right. No specific relevance means that is has every relevance. The natural attitude constitutes the situations in which every piece of living communication takes place. It is the very platform, and the very framework of communication. Any communication.
You will have a better understanding of what is meant by this when you read the next meditations on my Mac, so please stay tuned. Coming up soon.
Cheers.
phenomenological-methodPhenomenological Method: 7. Interpreting Concealed Meanings.
Nevertheless, the influence of Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology, its modified application by Sartre and Merleau-Ponty and the increase of emphasis on hermeneutics by Gadamer and Ricoeur make it important to spell out as far as possible what a hermeneutic phenomenology may mean and what it might add to the preceding steps. Needless to say, Heidegger himself did not conceive of it as such an additional step, especially since he did not even mention the preceding steps explicitly; he implied that they are dispensable, if not downright misleading, as was, in his eyes, Husserl’s phenomenological reduction.
Hermeneutics is an attempt to interpret the “sense” of certain phenomena. To be sure, even pre-hermeneutic or “descriptive” phenomenology has not been unconcerned about meaning. In fact, the whole study of intentional structures consists largely in an interpretative analysis and description of the meanings of our conscious acts. For not only our purposive behaviour but our whole cognitive and emotional life, as phenomenology sees it, is shot through with meaning and meaningful intentions. No description can leave them out, even though it may refrain from accepting them at face value. Thus hermeneutic phenomenology must aim at something different and more ambitious: its goal is the discovery of meanings which are not immediately manifest to our intuiting, analyzing and describing. Hence the interpreter has to go beyond what is directly given. In attempting this, he has to use the given as a clue for meanings which are not given, or at least not explicitly given. One might suspect that such an enterprise amounts to the kind of explanatory hypothesis which descriptive phenomenology has set out to abolish, and that it therefore implies a complete abandonment of phenomenological principles. In order to defend its phenomenological right one would have to maintain that hermeneutic interpretation is a matter not of mere constructive inference but of an unveiling of hidden meanings, or at most of an intuitive verification of anticipations about the less accessible layers of the phenomena, layers which can be uncovered, although they are not immediately manifest”.
the phenomenological movement. a historical introduction by herbert spiegelberg, essentials of the method, page 712-713. martinus nijhoff publishers 1984, the hague/boston/lancaster.
Phenomenological Method: 6. Suspending Belief in Existence.
“Husserl himself associated the original and basic meaning of the reduction with the mathematical operation of bracketing (Einklammerung). The underlying idea of this metaphor is that we are to detach the phenomena of our everyday experience from the context of our naive or natural living, while preserving their content as fully and as purely as possible. The actual procedure of this detachment consists in suspending judgment as to the existence or non-existence of this content. This by no means implies that we deny or even doubt its existence to the extent of writing it off, as Descartes had done …… To this negative or “bracketing” aspect of the reduction corresponds as its positive complement the possibility of concentrating exclusively on the non-existential or essential content, the “what”, of the phenomena. It is in connection with its positive aspect that Husserl expected the phenomenological reduction to open up entirely new dimensions for phenomenological research”.
the phenomenological movement. a historical introduction by herbert spiegelberg, essentials of the method, page 709. martinus nijhoff publishers 1984, the hague/boston/lancaster.
Phenomenological Method: 5. Exploring the Constitution of Phenomena in Consciousness.
“”Constitution” is one of the key terms in Husserl’s phenomenology, particularly in its developed phase. But as we have seen, its meaning has remained fluid. It became a basic concept for his transcendental idealism with its idea that the objects of our consciousness were the “achievements” of constituting act. For the present purpose I shall interpret the term in a less demanding sense and confine myself to the reflexive use of the verb according to which objects “constitute themselves” in our consciousness. Such a conception does not involve an epistemological commitment. Thus constitutional exploration consists for us merely in determining the way in which a phenomenon establishes itself and takes shape in our consciousness. Tracing the stages of such a “crystallization” does not mean, however, a psychological, and especially not a factual, case study of what actually happens to concrete individuals. The purpose of such a study is the determination of the typical structure of a constitution in consciousness by means of an analysis of the essential sequence of its steps”.
the phenomenological movement. a historical introduction by herbert spiegelberg, essentials of the method, page 706. martinus nijhoff publishers 1984, the hague/boston/lancaster.
Phenomenological Method: 4. Watching Modes of Appearing.
“Phenomenology is the systematic exploration of the phenomena not only in the sense of what appears, whether particulars or general essences, but also of the way in which things appear. To be sure, not all phenomenologists have paid equal attention to this aspect of phenomenological research. But is has been prominent in Husserl’s phenomenological work, beginning with the Logische Untersuchungen. Here the studies of intentional acts laid particular emphasis on the ways of appearance (Erscheinungsweisen) of the intentional objects. Obviously the contrast between the appearance and what appears, as implied in this connection, is not that between appearance and a reality which may actually be an unknowable thing-in-itself. What is involved is merely the way in which an object which is by no means beyond our range of knowledge present itself to us. These ways of appearing are usually overlooked in our preoccupation with what appears”.
the phenomenological movement. a historical introduction by herbert spiegelberg, essentials of the method, page 703-704. martinus nijhoff publishers 1984, the hague/boston/lancaster.
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