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International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Series | Book | Chapter

147620

Reference to something identical in its present givenness

the notion of "implicit consciousness"

Eduard Marbach(University of Bern)

pp. 105-123

Abstract

Looking back to the explanations of the manner of establishing reference to some x, one opposition in particular is worth noting once again and calling for a further development. Whereas an activity of presenting x, as achieved in PER x, does not in itself and alone fully bring about reference to the x as identical and objective, it does, however, establish actual, direct, contact with x itself in its surroundings (see chapter 2). Activities of purely mentally representing like IMA x and REM x, in contrast, do achieve reference to the x as identical and objective, but they do so at the price of not actually, directly, being in contact with x (see chapter 3). The very achievement of reference to something identical and truly objective was claimed to involve that the object quasi-appears in correlation with one's perceiving in the mode of non-actuality. The question can be raised whether this involvement does not just appear to be the case because we have only been studying ways of referring to x as being absent. According to our discussion, in these cases the non-actual (or quasi-) appearing of the object (thing, event etc.) made sense, indeed, and its occurrence led us to define the ways of referring to x in its being absent to be ways of quasi-direct reference to x (see 3.4, in particular).

Publication details

Published in:

Marbach Eduard (1993) Mental representation and consciousness: towards a phenomenological theory of representation and reference. Dordrecht, Kluwer.

Pages: 105-123

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-2239-1_5

Full citation:

Marbach Eduard (1993) Reference to something identical in its present givenness: the notion of "implicit consciousness", In: Mental representation and consciousness, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 105–123.