Random Thoughts - Part 1 and 2

These are my random thoughts. They are mainly metaphysical in nature and therefore perhaps  very distant from  our daily concerns particularly with counselling  and what not . But nevertheless  I want to publish them mainly because I am concerned here with the MIND and hence the matters reflected upon  are of some relevance for all those who are interested in Depth Psychology and without which Counselling as such is impossible (in my view). 

If these thoughts stimulate you along novel lines, I am happy.

Random Thoughts 1

Intersubjective verification, evidences and phenomenology

A passage from ' Phenomenology and Sociology" by Thomas Luckmann (Ed) ( Pp8&9)

" Phenomenology describes the constitution of our experiences by recourse

to the most direct evidence available. Its criteria of 

verification differ, however, from those used to good purpose in social

sciences. In contrast to the epistemologically naive 

observations and 'measurements' of more or less public events that we

practice  in the social sciences when we look for 'data', 

the 'data' of phenomenology are of a more elementary nature. We find them

by inspection of our experiences. By using the 

methods of phenomenological 'reduction' we proceed step by step from

historically, biographically, socially and culturally 

concrete features of everyday experience to its elementary structures. This

is a procedure that differs from the 'inductive' 

generalizations of empirical sciences. Evidently, the result of inspection

and 'reduction' can be communicated in a further step 

to fellow-men. By recourse to evidence of the same kind on their part, they

can be inter subjectively verified."

This notion "intersubjective verification", communicating and seeking confirmation(?) from fellow-men about the phenomenologically reduced elements of MY experience,  creates problems for phenomenology as a science.  For the notion of others, fellow-men just as true and SAME in some ways as myself, exceeds phenomenological reduction unless we invoke the notion of  PARALLELISM which in turn presupposes the being-there of others just  the same as myself. Also how does the notion of "EVIDENCE" that Husserl mentions in his writings on Phenomenology has applications or meaning in the context of the meaning of verification here?  

I see the problem in this way. 

The self, exercising phenomenological reduction or what Husserl called 'eidetic' reduction', does not require evidence for itself for in the perception of elementary structures of its consciousness,  the 'elementariness' of them is enough for self to be certain. The evidences   are required NOT FOR SELF but in the context of communicating to OTHERS  who may disagree with them.  Here again we come across the being-there of others just like myself as a PRESUPPOSITION of phenomenology. The notion of eidetic reduction and seeking inter subjective verification, the THEY also perceiving elementary structures in THEIR own experiences remains a PRESUPPOSITION that remains irreducible.  The Other can protest, combat, disagree , ridicule, comes to blow with me etc. I CANNOT reduce away such behaviours phenomenologically  to elementary structures of my OWN experiences without denying the OTHERNESS of others. If I try to do that, then I become an idealist like the Indian Vedanties, where everything become kaRpitham, my mental construct without any substantial reality or simply REFLECTIONS of one Brahman through different contextualising factors that they call upathies.

In Pedagogic Hermeneutics (or Hermeneutic Science, in the way I have articulated) we overcome this problem by accepting as a TRUTH the plurality of individuals jointly concerned with UNDERSTANDING the  world, existence etc. and who MAY GO WRONG in their seeking. This possibility of being wrong, making mistakes etc. is AVOIDED by seeking continuously AGREEMENT with others.  The act of communicating is actually an act on INSTRUCTING. I learn through my hermeneutic interpretative movements, and UNDERSTANDING that I have gained becomes that which I communicate to an OTHER who MAY NOT agree. But when there is LEARNING that which I communicate and because of which  there is agreement, then it becomes possible that  I am NOT MISTAKEN, that what I have understood and bold enough to communicate is a TRUTH. Between me and those who agree with  me there is SAMENESS of UNDERSTANDING. The possibility of this SAMENESS of understanding  between individuals absolutely different and autonomous also makes that which is communicated OBJECTIVELY true, a stuff of the world  out there and NOT a fiction of my mind.

Random Thoughts 2

Disconstruction and Personal Development.

Through the empirical  studies of many  TEXTS including the non-verbal drawings in my ACCESS TEST , I rediscovered what Tolkaapiyar more than two thousand years ago discovered as an important structural element in every TEXT viz. sequential organization that he called  Athikara MuRaimai, an organization quite distinct  from the Whole-Part relationship, the pakuthi-thokuthi that has played a central role in Western Hermeneutics.  It is this which enabled me to see EPISODIZATION as something that is done by every author , including young children,  who would execute a coherent TEXT that is COMPLETED and hence a  WHOLE in some sense. But of course this is done UNCONSCIOUSLY but it is there in the TEXTS he brings forth for everybody to see only if they have the eyes to see.

But what is this episodization, the verbalized form of 'episode'?

When X is episodized there is simultaneously the allowing to emerge a Y which is distinct from X and because of which episodization is terminating-initiating, the antam-aati of Meykandar , and hence DISCONSTRUCTION as distinct from Heidegger's destruction and Derrida's deconstruction. And to do this, X has to be seen as a WHOLE for otherwise its LACK cannot be seen and articulated.  That which is episodized, the X,  has to be seen as TOTALITY in order to see what is still  wanting in it, what deficiency lurks within but still remains unnoticed. To episodize is to HIGHLIGHT this LACK and hence to push it down to the PAST, now as something that belongs to HISTORY and allow , in virtue of that, a Y to occupy the presence, be the CURRENT, the Ongoing concern.  Hence episodization is 'depresencing', the dethroning the current, the ongoing , the presence as NO MORE so and replace it something NEW. Episodization is inherently revolutionary.

Thus what is episodized is pushed DOWN in the ladder of progress, of development and growth.  But it is NOT vaporized , allowed to disappear into a NOTHINGNESS. It is retained in the current, the ongoing etc. as that which has been ASSIMILATED, understood and already incorporated into the ongoing  positively or negatively or as the Tamil   Philosophers would say, as Akam or PuRam, as within the ongoing or exterior to  it.  Or as Parapakkam or Supakkam  in the style AruNandi Sivacariyar, a famous Tamil Philosopher of the 13th cent.A.D. To episodize then, is to allow the presence of another WHOLE, a Gestalt more comprehensive and inclusive than that  which has been episodized and pushed down now as belonging to the past. 

The UNDERSTANDING that remains unepisodizable in this sense is SUPAKKAM, the TRUTH.

This competence to episodize  remains a FUNDAMENTAL competence of self, the individual psyche, as its essence as  observed  by Meykandar who notes this by saying that the psyche in essence is the ainthezuththu, the si-va-ya-na-ma, the cognitive demons that enables a psyche to episodize, consciously or unconsciously.

Now because episodization is SEQUENTIAL  where the deficiencies in the earlier are made good in the latter, we can note an ABSOLUTE END, the MUKTI as a situation where further episodizations are IMPOSSIBLE.  When we arrive psychically at this way of Being, it informs us that that's the END , the CLOSURE, towards which we have been moving all along.  But now finally it has ARRIVED, it has come HOME, the Viidu  where the episodizing tendency is put to rest, NOT allowed to show itself from within.

Thus there is STRUCTURE and GENESIS in the Pedagogic Hermeneutics that centres on episodization as the FUNDAMENTAL activity that all psychic entities practice, consciously or unconsciously.  There is Global Structure  and Local Structure of that which is episodized.  The Global Structure puts it as belonging to History , to Tradition a part of the grand world History. The Local Structure discloses the individual concerns, that with which  a finite mind is concerned with.  In the Historical, there is SEQUENTIAL structure  which can be a progress or the converse. Where the deficiencies of that which is episodized , the X, is understood and because of which a Y that does not have that deficiency is allowed to be the PRESENCE, there is sequentiality along with PROGRESS or DEVELOPMENT.  Here there is also a GENESIS: Y is generated from an X by the act of episodization. The genetic does not exist within the Local Structure, between X as a whole and its constituent structures., within Whole- Part relationships or as the Tamil philosophers would put it  between avayavi and avayavam, the organismic whole and its organs. The Genesis and Development or its converse is noted only within Sequential Organization, the Athikara MuRaimai of Tolkaapiyar. The static structuralism does disclose the movement that allows us to recognise Progress and Development or the ABSENCE of it.

And here we see what distinguishes Hermeneutic Counselling from others. In Hermeneutic Counselling we allow, encourage, work for the confused and bewildered individual to EFFECT EPISODIZATION on his OWN UNDERSTANDING on his OWN so that the present understanding that's the source of  worries, pains, mental sickness etc. is episodized and in its place a new understanding, a Y , comes to prevail and along with it mental health and better clarity.  It is NOT a total breakaway from the past but rather a disconstruction, the assimilating what can be into the present and discarding what cannot or should not be  and this evaluated on the basis of TRUTH. It is actually a reconstituting self with less of the negative and more of the positive and auspicious.

This applies not only to Depth Psychology but  also to the whole gamut of

Human Sciences.

Loganathan @ Ullaganar

19-2-1998

( editing and re-paragraphing by his student )


( pic taken from https://www.shutterstock.com with thanks )