Experiential Presence

In this project, I wish to develop an understanding of consciousness based on the concept of presence rather than qualia. Today, the debate about the ontological status of consciousness is mostly centered on the question of whether experiences and their specific phenomenal features (the so-called qualia) might be identical with physical, publicly observable events, or whether they are purely "inner" phenomena inaccessible to any external (third- person) observation and hence an exclusively mental reality. This approach, however, tends to obscure the basic problem: Consciousness is not primarily something that "consists of" only subjectively given contents in contrast to the publicly accessible phenomena that physics deals with. Rather, it should be conceived of as the taking place of givenness itself - regardless of whether it is "subjective" or "objective" phenomena that are given. Hence, in this view, the problem of consciousness is less one of the alleged existence of objects that are only privately given, but rather that anything is given at all. Consciousness is nothing other than precisely this event of givenness (presence- of). The aim of this project is to systematically elaborate this notion of presence and to discuss its relevance to various central topics of the philosophy of mind. This should be carried out in three major parts: The first part will generally unfold the concept of presence and discuss its implications for the materialism/dualism debate and for the understanding of intentionality. The main thesis here is that the usual materialistic strategies (either to deny the existence of qualia in the sense of irreducibly subjective experiential qualities or to declare their specific mode of ("first-personal") givenness to be an only epistemological matter without any ontological bearing) miss the fundamental point since they tacitly presuppose the taking-place of givenness, which is precisely the core- dimension of consciousness. From this perspective, the non-materialistic insistence on the existence of consciousness in the sense of "epiphenomenal qualia" which irreducibly accompany the cognitive-intentional processes of our mind also appears to be inadequate, as consciousness has its very being in intentionality (as consciousness/presence-of) and is hence not something that merely accompanies intentional states - just as original, non-derived intentionality only exists, in the view of this project, as consciousness. Intentionality in this original sense, however, should be understood in terms of "thereness" (presence) rather than in terms of "aboutness" (representationality). In the second part I will suggest that this presence ought to be conceived of as dimension, insofar as it is the co- presence of manifold experiential contents whose togetherness is irreducible to any relations between them (being rather the precondition of any such relations). An important question in this regard will be the nature of the temporal abiding of this presence-dimension throughout the permanent change of experiential contents. These considerations will be deployed to gain a better understanding of the diachronic identity of the "self". The third part will discuss the bearing of the notion of consciousness as presence-dimension on an understanding of certain spiritual practices of "self-realization" as a mode of becoming explicitly aware of presence as such. In this context I plan to enter a dialogue with the understanding of consciousness in Eastern, especially Indian, traditions of thought.

The aim of this project was to develop an understanding of consciousness based on the concept of presence. While in current philosophy of mind it is quite common to understand consciousness as consisting of only subjectively accessible contents (e.g. "qualia"), the guiding idea of this project is that it rather consists in the presence of contents. So it is in no way a realm of "inner" (subjective) in contrast to "outer" (objective) phenomena, but the taking-place of the very givenness of phenomena, be they "inner" or "outer". This shift in perspective has consequences for several central topics in philosophy of mind: Firstly, it undermines some quite common materialist replies to anti-materialist arguments: namely either that the difference between experiences and physical brain-events is merely a difference between the modes of givenness of one and the same und therefore a purely epistemological matter with no ontological consequences; or (as the "representationalist" account of consciousness claims) that in experiencing, no intrinsic and essentially subjective qualities of experience itself are given, but exclusively objective qualities of represented objects. Both replies overlook the fact that the true problem of consciousness lies not so much the nature of the contents that are present to us in experiencing, but in the nature of their being-present, which proves to be irreducible both to any objectively present contents and to naturalistically understood "representation". Secondly, the conception of consciousness as presence-of binds consciousness and intentionality (the "of-ness" of mental states) together from the outset, which in today`s philosophy of mind in contrast to the phenomenological tradition are mostly seen as separate aspects of the mind. In this view, the intentionality of consciousness proves to be (contrary to the claims of naturalistic accounts of intentionality) just as unnaturalisable as its "phenomenal- qualitative" character. Thirdly, the perspective on the question of the identity of the "self" changes: If consciousness is conceived of as consisting of phenomenal contents, the synchronic and diachronic unity of consciousness (if one rejects the assumption of a separately-existing Cartesian ego-substance) obviously has to consist in relations between these contents, which amounts to a reductionist view of personal identity. In contrast to this, the project suggests that no relations between contents present in consciousness can ever account for their being-present-in-one-consciousness; rather, the latter is presupposed for any relations into which they can ever enter. So the unity of consciousness is not constituted by the interrelations of its contents but rather is the dimension namely the dimension of experiential presence in which these contents, together with all their interrelations, have their being-experienced and therefore their very being in the first place. In this view, the synchronic and diachronic unity of subjectivity proves to be irreducible to anything else.