Lecture of Friday September 30, 1994
By Gian-Carlo Rota
Transcript by Greg Hudson, Arnold Vance, and Malgosia Askanas

What we are engaged in is descriptions of certain phenomena which can
be viewed at two levels: what we would call the radical
phenomenological level and the modern phenomological level.

At the modern phenomological level, we consider that we are giving a
description of the structure of acting, of acting a part, projecting,
being, [cough obscures some words], a description of what it means for
us to deal with the world, with objects in the world and later with
other people in the world, what the world is made of if we view the
world as a world made up of our actions, of our projects, of our
purposes.  If we view the world from that point of view, then the
physical structure of the world is of distinctly secondary importance,
and what comes to the fore are concepts like the ones we have been
developing, primarily the concept of function and of functionality:
the idea that when you view an object projected from the point of view
of being engaged in a project (or "being situated in a context") then
that object, that which you view as an object in the natural attitude,
is, when you suspend the natural attitude, disclosed to be a function
in your project, a function in the context you are acting.  And we
have just begun, we have barely begun, the description of the world
from this point of view, the point of view of what really matters when
we act in a project.

So from the modern phenomological point of view, we get a description
of action, a description of the conditions of possibility of all
actions, what it means to act (to act in a very general sense, for
example, "to suffer" would be to act), and what kind of universal
notions you are all but forced to introduce when you give such a
description, universal in the philosophical sense, in the sense of
conditions of possibility.  In this way we were led to notions like
the notion of function.  So as I said, the modern phenomological point
of view says, "this is all okay if you want a description of action,
and it's extremely valuble in many contexts, for example in
understanding how to deal with other people, with teaching, and such."
Again, in so doing, the physical, scientific properties of matter are
distinctly secondary because they are irrelevant to the description
you are giving.  They are irrelevant, as we already said a couple of
times, except in breakdown situations where you are forced to change
your focus and focus on factiticies.

So much for the modern phenomological point of view, which to some
extent was Husserl's point of view.  For Husserl, there was Science
and then there was Phenomenology and they were related in a complex
way: Phenomenology took care of certain features of the world, and
Science took care of other features.  And they are complementary; they
have different methods; the methods are very respectable, the
Phenemological method is less respectable because it is not fully
developed and we have to develop it; the scientific method is more
developed.  For Husserl, who was a very conservative type, this was
the view of the world.  Eventually Phenomenology will have to even
understand the foundations of science, as we said in the first
lecture, because these methods eventually work upon the factical
structure of the world.  So much for the modern view.

The radical phenomological point of view, represented first and
foremost by Heidegger, is that this description of our being in the
world that we have initiated not only makes the factical, physical
structure of the world irrelevant, but it makes it totally
unnecessary, to the point that even when you focus on the factical,
material, physical structure of the world, then, you will be engaged
in a project of explaining the world from a scientific point of view,
and thus, you are engaged in another project which is structurally
similar.  The conclusion from the radical phenomenologists' claim is
that it's not true that, as Husserl claimed, there is a description of
our being in the world in phenomological terms and this description
describes a world which sits on top of a physical world.  This is what
we tend to believe, that somehow there is a physical world, that is a
world of action that we are describing, and of course it's related to
psychological phenomena and to physical phenomena and so forth.  Now
the radical point of view is that this "sitting" throws us back into a
situation which is unexplainable--because as philosophers we have to
be totally radical and take a point of view that avoids mysteries such
as "sitting upon."  Therefore, in the radical phenomenological view,
which we will also develop to some extent, there is no bottom.  It is
true that every project has a factical component, but when you
thematize (or "focus on") this factical component, this factical
component will itself be disclosed as being made up not of
physicalities but of functions which in turn will have factical
components, and this never ends.  To put it in slightly infantile
terms, the radical phenomological position of Heidegger and of other
related philosophers is, "there is no bottom."  Whereas the modern
phenomological position is that there is a bottom represented as
physical science.

Which of these two positions you or I take is a quasi-religious
question.  In other words, it depends on your most intimate
makeup--that is, it is a pre-rational or non-rational choice; I cannot
convince you one way or the other.  It doesn't matter which one we
take.  The descriptions will always be the same; whether there is a
bottom or there is no bottom, we will still be forced to give
non-reductionist descriptions of these phenomena, and we cannot use
physical matter as a copout for giving these descriptions.  So,
whereas there are these views and whereas there have been extremely
heated discussions on whether the conclusion of Phenomenology is that
there is no bottom, that there is just this relationship of facticity
to function, which we will deal with further, and that's the ultimate
constitution of the world, or whether there is a basic "matter" is an
interesting question but it is irrelevant to the descriptions we are
giving.  In both cases you still have to give non-reductionist
descriptions.  In both cases you still have to suspend the natural
attitude and bracket the situation to disclose the primordial notions
in terms of which you describe the structure of action, or if you
wish, the structure of projects, or if you wish, the structure of
being situated in a context, or if you wish, "being in the world,"
which is the term that Heidegger uses.

What bothers the radical Phenomenologist is the idea that this is just
something like psychology, which is useful, but not to be taken
seriously when all is said and done: what matters is "F equals MA."
On the other hand, even if eventually all that matters is "F equals
MA," you can't deduce the rules of the game of bridge from "F equals
MA."  You have to give the rules of the game of bridge and describe
the structure of the game of bridge in terms of functionalities, which
rules are not deducible in any way whatsoever from the laws of
physics.  We are in a different world, we are dealing with a
completely different description when we try to describe the rules of
the game of bridge or behavior of any kind, from the philosophical
point of view.  So, who cares whether these are reducible to the laws
of physics?  It won't help.  It won't get us out of it; we'll still
have to do it.  So, what the Radical Phenomenologist will say is that
in the past, people used the existence of the material world as a
cop-out for these descriptions, as a way of avoiding facing up to
giving these Phenomenological descriptions, and the answer is yes,
that's absolutely true--in the past, people used this as an excuse, an
excuse for not giving descriptions at a non-reductionist level, and
the term that Phenomenology chooses to describe this attitude which is
pervasive of our civilization is the term "reductionist anxiety".

Reductionist anxiety is the anxiety which we all feel when we are
given a description which can not be reduced to something that is
predictable.  You can stare all your life at this object but you will
never conclude that it is a tape recorder unless you appeal to
unthematically copresent features.  In and by itself, this is nothing
unless you bring unthematically copresent features into play.  It is
only in the light of all sorts of fringe phenomena, which is
unthematized, that I can view this as a tape recorder, whereas the
reductionist point of view is that I look at this and a I see the tape
recorder.  Nonsense!  Total nonsense!  From the physical fact of
seeing and its laws there is no way of inferring the tape recorder, no
way whatsoever, unless you bring into play non-factical, functional
phenomena which are unthematically copresent, which are, strictly
speaking, not there.  And this goes for the description of any tool.
And it's from this realization, from the realization that you cannot
understand or really grasp the sense of any object unless you bring
into play unthematically copresent features that reductionist anxiety
arises, because when you understand that, all of a sudden you
understand the complete non-determinacy of what you see.  You've
suddenly realized that when we take the natural attitude, namely, take
the tape recorder for granted, when we suspend the natural attitude
and bracket the phenomenon of seeing the tape recorder, see it as a
viewing of the tape recorder, then it's not at all granted that what
you see is a tape recorder unless certain societal background or
conditions are met, which are not thematized, which in the natural
attitude we take as if it were fact.  What you realize is that the
seeing of everything is indeterminate.

And this is one of the situations which gives rise to reductionist
anxiety, because you realize that the massive world in which we want
to live, the world of steady things which we need in our lives, does
not consist of anything steady, consists of functions which are
context-dependent (though not arbitrary, as we saw last time), and
which may vary contextually.  Not my fault!  It's the way it is!  It's
very bad, maybe, but I don't think it's bad to tell the truth.  You're
taking a philosophy course, you have to tell the truth.  This is an
eternal moment of philosophical discussion--you point out some
unpleasant truth, in this case the contigency of all that we see (to
use the technical term), the fact that all that we see is contigent
upon certain data that are unthematically copresent, but without which
you cannot see as.  When you point out this contigency then the idea
of the world as a massive world of objects, the infantile idea with
which we live day by day, the natural attitude, then reveals itself to
be an illusion, an illusion that we need in order to live.  I couldn't
step out of this room without that illusion, thinking that the door is
a door, I pull the door and it opens--if I start thematizing all that,
saying it's not really a door unless I'm trained to see doors, then
I'll go crazy.

So this continuous struggle, on the one hand, of the philosopher
pointing out the contigency of all seeing, which we will have to
deepen and develop a better language for, the instability, the
lightness of being, and on the other hand the need for something
steady that we all have--we crave for something steady.  And
phenomenology if nothing else has the nerve that when confronted with
a situation like this, will not try to dismiss it, it will say, "this
is interesting in itself, it's the conflict itself that interests us,
that we will focus upon.  Why is this an ever-recurring situation in
our civilization and in our own lives?  How can that be?  What are the
conditions of possibility for that to happen?"  At a more historical
level, the Radical Phenomologist will argue that we are coming to the
end of a certain view of nature, that that view of nature will have to
be taken over by a less marble-dependent view of nature (our view of
nature despite quantum mechanics, despite quantum field theory,
despite field theory, is still a nature made up of little marbles),
and phenomenology takes issue with that view.  Nature is made up of a
complex referential structure of functions, and that is what comes
first, says the radical phenomenologist.  When all is said and done,
as we said last time or maybe two meetings ago, all philosophers are
concerned with what comes first, and for phenomenology, especially
radical phenomenology, what comes first, upon which everything else is
built, is not matter but the referential structure of functionalities
that makes up the world.  That's not psychological, and it's not
physical, it is what the world is made of.  Who says the world is made
of physical or psychological?  By the way, using the term
"psychological" is another form of reductionist anxiety, saying,
"that's just psychology" is a way of taking it out of your mind so
you don't have to worry about it.  Most of the time when you dismiss
something as being psychology it's because if you took it seriously
you would have to face some unpleasant situation.

Now, what we want to discuss today is two more concepts that arise in
the Phenomenological description of the world.  One is the idea of
layers, and the other is the notion of eidetic variations.

So to anticipate, again, in the circular way we are proceeding: it's
true that the constitution of the world is a world of objects in the
natural attitude is disclosed, when the natural attitude is suspended,
as a world of functions, namely tools.  But these functions come in
layers--there are layers of functionality.  Look at, for example,
mathematics.  I can take the number pi and view the number pi at
various levels of functionality.  I can view the number pi as the
number I need to compute a computation and perform it, I can view the
number pi as the sum of an infinite series, or I can view the number
pi as "the only transcendental number having such and such
properties," or I can view the number pi from the point of view of the
history of mathematics in general, how it influenced the development
of mathematics, etc..  I can view the number pi in several layers.

Or, if you take any mathematical theorem, it can function in a certain
way, but if this theory is in turn subsumed into a larger theory, then
it will function in a different way.  For example, you can view the
theory of elementary geometry as functioning within the theory of
elementary geometry, but then you can rise one layer above it, viewing
elementary geometry as the theory of invariance under the group of
rigid motions, and then you see that just as an instance of the theory
of invariance on the various groups, and you can rise even one step
further and say, "well, this is a homogeneous space relative to a
group," and then you rise one more level and say, "well, why do you
use a group?  Why not something more general?" and so forth and the
advancement of mathematics is the successive rising of levels.

So, there is no denial that there are layers, and we would like to
understand what we are to mean by the idea of layers.  Let's take
what's possibly one of the simplest cases--that is, the use of a tool.
I will use the same example that Heidegger uses over and over again: a
hammer.  A hammer is a tool--I can imagine that in a certain context,
I use the hammer as a hammer, to pound in a nail; so, I use the hammer
specifically because I need it for my carpentry work, in essence.  But
as I use the hammer, what's unthematically copresent is the hammer as
a tool in general.  I use the hammer in my carpentry because I
unthematically understand hammers in general as tools.  So there are
two functions going on here--the actual function, the actual use to
which I put the hammer now in my carpentry work, and the function of
hammers in general.  These are "related," that wonderful word,
"related," so it's up to us to understand how they are "related."
This is not a Fundierung relationship, because I don't see a facticity
or--it's a relationship between two functions; if you wish, one is the
immediate use of the hammer, the other is that the immediate use is
made possible by my unthematized familiarity with the use of hammers
in general and my knowledge that hammers are tools.  This is the
situation we wish to explain.  There are of course, situations where I
miss, [can't make out phrase], and I am forced to thematize the
facticities of the hammer--instead of focusing on the hammer as a
tool, for some reason or another, I have to focus on the fact that
it's partly made of wood and partly made of steel, say; it's an object
made of wood and steel, and there are situations where I abstract, I
am forgetting the hammer; for example, the hammer breaks.  When the
hammer breaks, then I temporarily forget I am dealing with a hammer; I
am only focusing on the fact that I have to put together the handle
with whatever means I can.  Therefore, I focus on the facticity.  As
we already said several times, if you don't know the function of a
hammer in general, you can stare at the hammer, and not view this as a
hammer, view this simply an object, possibly used by certain people as
a tool, but whose function you do not know.  And the function you mean
here is completely general.  When you do this, then you are engaged in
a project of discovering what kind of function you are dealing
with--in other words you have this object which probably is a
function, in general, and you have, among certain people, carpenters,
and so you are engaged in a project of discovery which is quite
different from what we do ordinarily when we are "familiar" with the
object.

From a mere staring at the object when you don't know the function,
there is no way of telling what it is for unless you already have
guessed what it is for.  This is what we mean by the unthematized
copresence of features--without the unthematized copresence of the
possible uses of the hammer, you cannot see it as.  So seeing this as
a hammer is not ordinary seeing (that's why we call it, "viewing"), we
view it as a hammer because we are not physically seeing it, we are
viewing it [can't make out].  You cannot reconstruct from a pure
camera look at the shape of the hammer what exactly it is for.  There
has to be an input that's unthematically copresent, something that
you're familiar with, something that's not there.

I have two good examples of reductionism.  In the case of the hammer,
what would happen if I insist that this here is not a hammer but an
object of wood and steel.  One possibility is that I am lying--I know
it's a hammer, but I fake it and I say, "I only see an object of wood
and steel."  But you may imagine someone who's never seen a hammer,
really sees an object of wood and steel.  Then, what kind of project
of discovery would that be?  That person takes a reductionist view of
the hammer.  I should tell you that I was going to start the lecture
this way, through these examples of reductionism, and trying to
pretend that you can tell the function from the facticity, that you
see this and say, "no way, this is objectively a tape recorder, there
is no question about it."  True!  But you see it as a tape recorder
only in virtue of certain other features.

Here are the examples: the first is the famous example of the
so-called Cargo people of New Guinea.  In the mountains of New Guinea,
you have some of the strangest airstrips in the world.  The natives of
New Guinea saw airstrips being built in World War Two, and then they
started build their own airstrips!  The airstrips are the work of
natives who stand with one foot in the primitive past, and they are
looking at the world of technology and build these airstrips.  They
built exact replicas of what they saw in the airports, and they
pretended that if they build exactly what they saw, then the planes
have to arrive!  By night, they start building bonfires to illuminate
the runways, and they go into Radio Shack and start giving instruction
to tin-can microphones saying, "Do you read me?  Roger and out," and
they expect the planes to appear!  They're exactly the same; these
people built and the planes appeared; they have to appear again!

Don't just dismiss this--this is an example of reductionism, glaring.
What's wrong?  They are missing the sense of the airstrip; what they
don't have is the unthematically copresent features that go with
airports, and they pretend that the airport is nothing but the
airstrip.

Second example: suppose I get a visitor from Russia, or some Central
Asian repulic, who says, "I want to understand the structure of the
federal government."  And so, I say, "well, that's easy.  I take you
to Washington," and I show him all the departments of the federal
government, one by one, all the rooms that people work in, he can
inspect what various secretaries are doing, what they are saying,
everything.  It's the Federal Government!  And at the end the guy will
say, "Yes, I've seen it all, but somehow I'm missing something.  I
just can't be able to reconstruct the structure of the Federal
Government from all you've shown me."  And I say, "I have shown you
everything, you must understand it!"

So what's going on?  In this case, the guy would possibly understand
the structure of the federal government as a project of discovery;
it's like deciphering the Mayan language--same situation.  Same
situation.  Here you see secretaries working in offices, eventually
you have to decipher what they are doing.  But deciphering what they
are doing is trying out various unthematically copresent features that
go with the situation you are viewing and seeing whether they fit to
explain the sense of the situation you see. That's the project of
discovery. In the case of the Mayan language, you try out baby, bottle
until it fits somehow, but you always presuppose that there is a
copresent but something that's not quite there--i say copresent but
maybe i should say absent.  There are absent features which are the
sense-making features of what i say.  The two examples we have seen
are examples of reductionism because in both I clipped off the sense!
In the case of the natives, they clipped off the sense of planes and
in the Federal Government you would have to start explaining the
structure of the Government at an entirely different layer in order to
understand the offices and people running in and out of offices.  You
shouldn't have to go the other way around--you're trying to describe
the Federal Government the hard way.  Because you're letting the other
person guess the sense of the Federal Government. I hope I'm making
myself clear.
 
These examples are mickey-mouse and everybody knows that, but let's
switch to another one: the brain and the game of poker.  It's the same
situation!  You're playing a game of poker--I open up your brain and
put electrodes in your brain and I try to understand the game of poker
by putting electrodes in your brain.  And I'm registering everything,
I have everything that goes on in your brain registered.  I should be
able to infer the game of poker.  No!  I think it's logically
impossible or unless you already know the game of poker.  Then you
say, "Ah, yes, this is the Ace of Spades and that means he has a royal
flush"--because you already know the game of poker.  And you are
"identifying" the various moves and the various actions which are
relevant to the game of poek.  But there is a presupposition there:
that you know the game.  What you cannot do is look at his brain and
infer the rules of the game of poker.  If you don't believe this, I
cannot explain it.  This is the limit of explanation.  It's
impossible, no matter how clever you are, without any of the game of
poker of course, to infer.
 
And yet, that's what classical empirical reductionist tries to do.
It's a cop-out.  Tries to avoid the explanation of the game of poker
or more generally of human behavior by pretending that this behavior
can be inferred, which of course is ridiculous. They made the same
reductionist error in a more sophisticated situation.  Phenomenology
says this reductionist error is extremely common, and we take out
these very simple examples.  But there are extremely subtle instances
of these same errors that go on.
 
So the reductionist error is to be able to focus on the facticities
and try to infer the function.  In most cases, this reductionist error
occurs in virtue of an error which we call the presupposition
error, and which we will come back to again and again.
 
We are trying to explain some human phenomenon like the game of poker
and at some point you silently slip in the assumption that you already
know what the game of poker is.  You're not really explaining the game
of poker in terms of neuro-physiological functions because you already
know the rules. Someone along the line has to know how to play the
game. This is the presupposition argument. You pre-suppose what you
are already thinking by physical reductionism.
 
Something similar happens in the theory of perception that was popular
several years ago, in the Twenties or so, that said, "Well, there must
be elementary perceptions, and all our perceptions are made up of
these elementary perceptions.  It's got to be that way."  It's a very
attractive theory.  I perceive this tape recorder: first I perceive
certain things, then I perceive certain other things, and somehow I
piece them together in the mind, and -click- there is a tape recorder.
What's the phenomenological critique of this theory, attractive as it
is?  It is that you presuppose you already know what a tape recorder
is.  There is no way that the little pieces will piece themselves
together into a perception of a tape recorder unless they guided
somehow; and this guiding amounts to presupposing that you already
perceive the tape recorder.  That's the presupposition argument.
There's no way of telling how our elementary optical perception would
be the perception of the tape recorder unless someone along the line
recognizes a tape recorder.  Suppose that I look at a tape recorder
and want to see whether I perceive a tape recorder in my mind.  Well,
we compare the movements of my brain with what goes on when someone
perceives a tape recorder.  But in so doing, you have already done
experiments with someone who is perceiving a tape recorder vs. someone
who's not perceiving a tape recorder.
 
So you have presupposed that you know what a tape recorder is. This is
deeper then it sounds, and i'm not doing it full justice just right
now, this presupposition argument.

In any case, in both cases, we are seeing the absurdity of the
conception of viewing as staring at.  There is no "what" that we are
staring at, and also the absurdity of the idea of inferring from data.
When I see this directly as a tape recorder, I do not infer this from
data; there may be complex phenomena going on in my brain, but those
are factical and irrelevant to the description I am giving.

Now, let's work from the notion of eidetic variation.  I really
haven't started today's lecture yet.  What did we do when we looked at
the two examples?  The New Guinea example and the Federal government
example.  Well, we saw both as examples of the same phenomenon, the
phenomenon of reductionism.  So, we didn't bring in the example at
random; we brought in the examples with an ulterior motive.  And the
examples were meant from the beginning to be examples of; they were
not episodes brought in at random, they were meant to be examples
_of_.

In the case of the hammer, similarly, when you use this hammer, you
have the unthematically co-present understanding of hammers in
general.  So we have in both cases an example of layers: the layer
between the example we gave, and what it is an example of, and the
layer between the actual usage and the kind of tool you're dealing
with.  Let's take another example: a street sign.  If you take a
street sign -- say a stop sign -- let's analyze the phenomenological
decription of a stop sign.  The stop sign is something very simple --
it's a round piece of metal painted red and white, with a stripe
painted at -45 degrees crossing it.  It has a red ring.  No? 
[Discussion on stop-sign facticities.]  So when you see this as you
drive, as a stop sign -- but I might see it as a mysterious circle
with a red ring.  I might say: Strange, circles on the road.  So how
come you see it as a stop sign?  You're seeing it as a stop sign or as
a mysterious construction.  Potentially, that's what you see.  But
that's not the whole story, because you see it as an indication to
stop while you're driving at this particular moment, in virtue of your
unthematically co-present understanding of Stop Sign in general.  So
there are two layers.  Or else you see it as a mysterious sign, in
virtue of your unthematically co-present understanding that, in
general, there are road-signs, but you don't know what they mean -- or
as decorations.  Or, anticipating somewhat, I see in front of the sign
a piece of glass; and I say: what does this mean?  I sell stop signs,
the shopkeeper says.  What do I make of this?  I see things in virtue
of their context.  The point that we want to get to is that there is a
relationship between the specific driving, the specific stop sign I
see, and Stop Sign.  There is a relation of instance.  In each of
these pictures there is a relation.  This is the example, and this is
the unknown function.

In each of these cases, we could say we have a relation of instance.
That is, the specific stop sign I see is an instance of Stop Sign in
general.  If you want one more example, there is of course the prime
example.  I see a picture drawn on the blackboard that includes 
mathematical figures.  I then stare at it, and eventually it hits me
that it is an example of the Pythagorean theorem.  Or I keep doodling
with examples until I realize the Pythagorean theorem is true in
general.  Again we have an instance of instantiation.  Now notice the
difference between the two: you can destroy a specific sign, but you
cannot destroy the function Stop Sign.  If you destroy all the stop
signs in the world, you will not have done anything to the Stop Sign as a
function.  Or you can destroy all possible hammers in the world, and
as long as we know what hammers are for and are free, we will
re-construct the hammer.

So, this relationship is not a relationship of Fundierung, it's a
relationship of instances. And my behavior towards those relationships
of instances is completely different in two situations. In the 1st
situation, when I know the meaning of the function of which I see an
instance, and in the 2nd case is when I don't know the meaning, but I
see an instance of an unknown function.

When I see a specific stop sign & I know everything about stop signs
because I've passed my driving test or whatever, I see this as a stop
sign--there is no question about it. Now when I see an instance but I
don't know the function stop sign, or when I see a drawing on the
blackboard , and I don't know what it's trying to say, then I will try
to engage in deciphering what it means. How do I do that? I do it by
performing eidetic variations. That means the following: I vary some
features of the facticities that I see, trying to see that something
else remains constant. For example, if the stop sign were made of wood,
it'll be the same ---- stop sign. It doesn't matter if it's made of
metal, it's still a stop sign.

In the case of math. results, I draw a triangle, then I start
drawing right triangles, and i see that something seems to be the same
for right triangles but doesn't change for other triangles. I perform
EVs. By these EVs, eventually, if i'm lucky, you will see what the
unknown function is. So EVs are variations of factical features which I
perform in a project of discovering an unknown function.  Even in case
of a completely new function that I discover a case of a completely
new mathematical theorem.  EV, according to phenomenology, is one of
the basic processes of thinking.  What do we do when we think?  Don't
give me the nonsense about the neurons, because it's completely
factical -- it's irrelevant to thinking.  What we do when we think is,
not just performing EVs, but is mainly performing EVs to discover
something that we are tryint to understand.  And when we are trying to
understand something, we keep varying until we get it.  Even when I
focus on this object and I don't know what object it is, then I
perform EVs in a way that I change the angle from which I see the
object.  Or turn the object upside down in the project of discovery of
what is the function of the object.  So, it's these variations of
facticities trying to discover what remains constant that we call EV.
I hope that is clear enough.  We don't do that when we are familiar
with something.

Another situation where we have to perform EVs is the situation of
teaching.  I mentioned last time in the Q&A period the child who can
see a dog after seeing two dogs.  As we said last time: is the child a
genius?  No!  All thinking is like that!  Always!  You don't tell a
dog after seeing 2000 dogs, you tell after seeing two.  Why?  Because
what the child is expected to see is Dogs, not specific dogs.  Like
when you see a stop sign, you do not see a specific stop sign, you see
the general notion of a stop sign, when you're familiar with it.  So
when the child sees a dog, the child, being a human being, sees dogs
in general theoretically; does not infer a dog because of this, that,
and the other, doesn't matter if it is black or white or whatever.
The child sees the dog directly.  This is another feature where
phenomenological argument differs markedly from classical empirical
arguments.  The classical empirical argument is that there is, in some
sense, a notion of inference from the particular to the general.  The
phenomonological thesis is that there is no such thing as an inferred
perception.  There is EV that eventually leads you to dogs and from
that point on you will see dogs, like you see stop signs as functions,
not as a specific stop sign.  You see the function Stop Sign beyond
the specific stop signs.  And so with all learning: after 1 or 2
examples you understand what it is!  Maybe five.  And isn't that
amazing?  Why don't you need all the examples in order to understand
it?  And deduce it by this phony inductive logic (which is the
phoniest thing there is)?  It doesn't happen that way.  You understand
derivatives after seeing how to do it.  This is a miracle of miracles!
Only divine intervention can do this!  Or else you can say, "Maybe
there isn't divine intervention but it's not a miracle of miracles
because all thinking, all perception is like that."

You see it as extraordinary because you have a prejudice as to what
perception is doing.  But if you give up that prejudice and look me
honestly in the face, then realize that whenever you see after two
events is to receive it generally, theoretically, there is no problem.
It's always like that.  It's only that we have prejudices about
inference and what not that this is a miracle.  Once again, I don't
think that we should refuse to face reality -- and this in fact was
one of Husserl's big discussions throughout his life against the
people who claimed, in his time, "it's impossible to see generalities
directly.  We must infer.  We must be psychological."  There might be
techniques to be found.  The brain works, sure.  But in order to see
how the brain works in order to see a dog, you must understand the
phenomenological phenomenon of seeing a dog, first.  Only by comparing
with the phenomenological phenomenon of seeing a dog will you be able
to see the response that is in the brain.

There are no dogs in the brain!  That's basically the error of the
empiricist tradition, which of course I reduce to a strawman for the
purpose of lecturing.

So, seeing a dog is a primitive thing.  Like seeing a person, chair,
anything.  I don't see that as an object made of metal with a plastic
cover.  NO!  I see a chair!  Directly!  When I'm familiar with it.
When I'm not familiar with it, then I perform EV to try to get to the
point where I see something directly.  So that I can forget the
facticities.  Because all seeing is seeing _as_ something.  There is
no seeing period.  In the world of people, there is only seeing as.
And we are talking about a world of people and natural perception.  If
you cross out the "as", all the seeing is [gone].  So, from the point
of view of phenomenology, the big problem is how there can be pure
seeing of the eye.  Of course phenomenology would completely
restructure the problem of vision as they are dealt with today.  In
terms of what comes first.  What comes first is the seeing as; you
just don't the registering of nonsense -- it's a contextual thing
already that you have to explain.  You cannot take away the
contextuality of seeing and pretend to explain seeing.  The
contextuality is essential to our seeing because what we see is
meanings, always, or unknown meanings.  We don't see objects, we see
functions which are not thematized and which we pretend are objects
because otherwise we would go crazy--if we thematize all the time that
they are functions. So there you are. Husserl had to contend most of
his life with people that claimed it was impossible to directly
perceive a circle, and yes, you can only see imperfect images of
circles drawn on a blackboard which is not true. I can now focus on a
circle in general directly or of the number 3, and start studying the
properties of circles or the number 3.  I don't need to draw specific
circles.  One of the greater advances of mankind occurred during the
middle ages when people realized that in order to read, they didn't
have to move their lips.  This may seem absurd to you, but there was a
time, which has been confirmed, before which everybody believed you
could not read unless you moved your lips, and after which, they said,
"you don't have to move your lips, you can read anyway."

Similarly, I find myself at odds when someone tells me "how can you
visualize seven-dimensional blah-blah-blah?" and the answer is "I do!"
I focus on the 7-dim sphere as I can focus on that chair. There are
degrees of familiarity with the 7-dim sphere like there are degrees of
familiarity with that chair. Seeing is seeing w/ various degrees of
familiarity. Never denied that.

I see directly the 7-dim sphere. I don't reconstruct it, or rather,
the 1st time that i try to visualize it, i have to reconstruct it and
use various crutches. Eventually, I can shed the crutches & see
directly. And so w/ all mathematical seeing, and so w/ all seeing
whatsoever.  Strictly speaking, it's very rare to see something that
happens only individually... I didn't say never, but let's limit
ourselves to our seeing of objects.  It's very rare to see a "one of a
kind". Very rare. I can't even think of an instance--maybe you can.

What you see is always one instance of something. The condition of
possibility of viewing---i should have said "viewing" all along--is
viewing as an instance of something, in the case of objects. In the
case of people there is only 1 you, but that's a different problem
which we'll have to deal with later. But chairs, tape recorders,
tools, any tools--there is no such thing as seeing just this. Even
when you see a gem, you see a well-cut gem that un-thematizes what is
behind the other gems that you see: why is this better than the other
gems, all of this is sort of hovering over your seeing the beautiful
stone, cut stone.

So that Husserl was right: not only do you see generalities directly,
you always see nothing but generalities; _and_ directly: this is the 
thesis of phenomenology.  You have to make an effort to see something
as this particular stop sign, and not as _any_ stop sign.  You have to
really bracket the phenomenon of seeing a stop sign, to see it as this
particular stop sign.

So in its time, this was an extremely revolutionary thesis: that most
seeing is the seeing of general things.

So we have discussed this phenomenon of seeing an instance of.  What
we view is _this_: we view it most of the time in a situation of
familiarity -- _this_ factically through _this_.  In an unfamiliarity
situation, we view this as something we don't quite know; we perform
eidetic variations to try to get to the point where we see _that_; you
see?  And that's what seeing's about; I didn't invent it -- this is
the way it is.  Believe me, I didn't make it up.  I just try to
describe it as realistically as possible, without any reductionist
assumptions.  No assumptions that I can see or make. 

So engaging in EVs is not something rare, it is something that we do
extremely frequently in situations of lack of familiarity.

This is also an example of layers, and this sort of proves that the
world that we see is a world where the objects of the world, using the
word "objects" in a very loose sense, are made up of layers.  Layers
of functions and of specific instances, but there are further layers
-- if you start looking at other examples you see layers all over the
place.  And you discover that you can thematize one layer or another 
if you focus from one layer to another and then your sense of what you
see changes.

So the conclusion that we want to draw from this is: all seeing is
seeing-as.  If a lawyer were here, he would see each of us as a
possible case.  As a teacher I see you as students, with various
features that students have -- and so on and so forth.   And this
concludes our preliminary discussion of being-in-the-world.

Next, let's now shade or adumbrate the next chapter that we'll develop
next.  We will start today and then go back to it.  As we said before,
phenomenological explanation -- using the image of the great poet of
the past -- proceeds as a spiral, back and forth, but you go _up_.  So
we have to keep going back and forth to understand.  The next topic
that arises from this is the notion of identity in phenomenology.
This is probably the deepest contribution of Husserl.  What do we mean
by identity?  Well, we already mentioned a few cases: the stop sign is
the same irrespective of its instances.  There is an identity of the
function "stop sign" which is (I hate to use the word) "independent"
of its specific instances.

Thus there is an identity to the function "stop sign", which seems to
be totally "independent" (sorry!) of time and space.  "Stop sign"
remains the same no matter what we do to it.  There is an identity, of
course, to every object of mathematics -- the number 3, pi,
7-dimensional sphere -- no matter what we do to it.  It's not up to
_us_ to prescribe the properties of the 7-dimensional sphere.  There
are people discovering _fantastic_ properties of the 7-dim sphere,
that we haven't imagined, that the 3-dim sphere doesn't have.  These
properties are not _imagined_, and they are properties of the _same_
7-dim sphere, of which there is only one.  Isn't that strange?
Extraordinary!  There is one and only one sphere of radius 1.  There
are several imperfect instances, of course, which you can make up,
that you present _as_ instances of a sphere -- not of a football, not
of a ball, not of a snowball, but of a sphere.  The seer must engage
in EVs to understand that you've presented him with an instance of a
three-dimensional sphere.  So in the case of the relationship of a
function and the specific usage of the function to the user (example:
a theorem).  There's this extremely strange phenomenon of the fact
that there is one and only one of that function: there is an identity
of the function.  The identity of the stop sign, the identity of a
mathematical object, the identity even of the hammer.  There are
different shapes of hammers, but the hammer, we all know what the
hammer is in general.  There may be marginal hammers, a club or a
broom -- I use it _as_ a hammer -- marginal.  But there is an identity
of the notion of "hammer", which in certain cases can undergo
variations, in others is not subject to any variation -- like in
mathematics: no variation whatsoever; in the case of stop signs,
minimal variation.  And we can make a list (phenomenologists love to
make lists) to see if I can classify things according to the amount of
variation that identity can have.  So we are faced with the problem of
explaining the conditions of possibility of identity, without
reduction, without saying: Why do you like that explanation?  Or: I
don't like this explanation, it doesn't help me at all.  To understand
the notion of identity what you want is an explanation like you
explain a mathematical concept -- you want that kind of description,
you want the phenomenological description that does not appeal to
things like the brain.  You want the _sense_ of identity.

That's something _extremely difficult_.  That is what we should be
taking up next time.  But let me make a couple of remarks.  First: in
the case of identity, there is no question of the identity.  In other
words, there is very seldom a question of whether there are two
spheres of radius 1.  If I come in saying there are two different 
spheres of radius 1, either I have a new theory of geometry or I am
crazy.  Or if I tell you there are two number 3s, you'll say I'm
crazy.  You can say that there are two instances of the number 3, but
not the number 3.

So notice that we know that it is crazy to question the identity:
identity is evident.  And we are thrown back on the problem of what is
"evidence".  At what stage do we take something to be evident?  Like
the statement that there is only one number 3, to me is pretty
evident.  If you deny & you honestly deny, rather than dishonestlky
deny it, then there is something wrong with you. So, the question of
identity brings us to the question of what is evidence. How are we led
to this absolute evidence that there's only 1 #3? And when does this
occur? This phenomenon of absolute evidence. Which you cannot explain;
if you don't see it, I cannot explain it to you. I can push you by EVs
or spanking, but I cannot make you see it. And if you do see it, it's
forever. It's like understanding math., there is a discontinuity
between seeing it as a mystery and as a triviality of the obvious. So
we are thrown into this notion of evidence and we have to perform a
ph. desc. of evidence. We have to take the ph. of evidence and
understand it as a COP. Sorry, we have to understand the COP of
evidence. What must the world be like for being evidence in it for
giving this sentence?
 
The world must be very strange if there is something in it as absolute
evidence. And either there are situations where the evidence is far
from absolute. If I tell you that there's a sweater under this shirt,
it would be tough, there's no evidence for it. Most physical
situations, the evidence is not absolute, but let me mention that the
laws of physics for the discoverers are viewed as absolute
evidence. When Einstein discovered the special theory of rel., 20
years later there was an experiment that flatly contradicted it.
Einstein said "it's impossible. My theory has to be true." And they
said, "but look at this experiment." And Einstein answers--kept to his
guns. Later it was discovered there was an error in the
experiment. So, for Einstein, the the. of rel. was abs. evidence,
because it was trivial for him--it had to be so. If you see the
meaning of every idea involved, there's only 1 way it can make sense.
 
And that happens w/ the discoveries of math. theories as well as
sci. ones.  It's only one way it can be so. It may be proven wrong
later, but for them, it's abs. evidence.