CHAPTER SEVEN

THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL FIELD

by Hugh M. Lewis

There is a presupposition of an a priori continuous subjective field of experience, though the actual continuity of the phenomenological flow of experience is somewhat questionable, as it appears to change, stop and undulate many times in the course of a person's day or lifetime. Actually, the discontinuities of the stream of consciousness are more interesting, as they allow us insight into the mind and the mental functioning of the brain. These discontinuities represent actual gaps and junctures of the phenomenological field of experience which it becomes the challenge of the brain to actively reconfigure and fill in, albeit in a manner which is variable in form in form and quality.

Limited acquaintance with an activity, an idea, or a thing, be it a novice at some job or sport, or a child's first experiences with the world, or a person traveling abroad for the first time, or a student's first semester in a new program, leads to the formation of rudimentary percepts and erroneous precepts about the object of perception. Limited experience results in the one dimensional mental representation of only one or a few facets of an otherwise multi-faceted phenomena. Increasing experience with an object will lead to a fund of conceptual facets and to a more detailed understanding of the means in which these facets are integrated--the mind builds up a composite representation of the object which it can then cognitively summarize by a linguistic representation of the object. Eventually, a relatively independent (independent from the point of view of perceptual basis) objective conceptualization is constructed which symbolically stands for and helps to classify the related experiences. This objective symbolic representation can be referred to as the "thing in itself" that stands above and incorporates the many mechanical facets of experience that comprise it.

Mental representations appear to be fundamentally non-exclusive in the sense that they may more or less overlap and share elements from alternative representations. Such mental representations also do not appear to occur only in one location of the mind, but the information which composes such representations seem to occur distributed in a number of different locales.

The relative quality of these representations may rest upon a number of determinants, and may at the same time be quite variable. It is this qualitative differential of symbolic representation of experience which can be measured upon etic grids of analysis and which can be utilized in the analysis of relative mental integration/emic organization. In general, we can say that higher grade representations have a more articulated, organic and objectivity of design, and come across as clear, active gestalts. Low grade representations appear to be stereotypical, primitive, mechanical and unarticulated, linear versus composite and evoke responses which are indecisive and cartoonish in character.

Percepts, concepts and mental representations thus embody and summarize a great deal of meaningful information that is symbolically drawn from everyday experience--and form the substrate upon which we configure our conscious and ratiocinative comprehension of the world.

The phenomenological field is not a completely objective, disembodied flow of perceptual stimuli that is essentially extraneous of our own processes of perceptual and conceptual integration of this experience. We cannot in this sense speak of an empirically pure percept or sensory experience that does not have already the mark of the influence of being a subjectively embodied experience--perceptually, affectively, behaviorally and conceptually.

The increasing differentiation of the phenomenal field must be seen as the growing degree and extent of integration of psychic experience at several levels of informational processing. All experience is configured and gains its basic meaning in relation to this background phenomenological field. This process has been found to proceed in stages from rudimentary to more sophisticated forms of symbolic functioning.

Language is important to the organization and articulation of this field--it helps to carve it up and defines the boundaries of the phenomenological continuum. At the same time, it renders areas of that continuum more or less available to our conscious awareness of them. Indeed, so intrinsic a function has language to the symbolic organization of our minds and awareness, that we cannot imagine a human mental functioning that is entirely without or inaccessible to some form of linguistic expression and manipulation.

The phenomenological field is relatively integrated, and the form of perception in which it is rooted is referred to as physiognomic in quality. It is fundamentally a priori to and underlies conscious functioning of the mind. This substratum of subjective experience forms the material upon which consciousness configures itself and becomes shaped. Conscious experience has symbolic reference to this embodied substratum of phenomenological experience at least as much as it has behavioral reference to external stimuli and symbolizations in the outside world. Ego-consciousness is in this sense the by-product of the processes of mediation between the external world and the internalized world of embodied experience. Things which exist in the world gain symbolic significances in as much as they are isomorphic with or relatively consonant with our internalized representations of the "thing in itself." Our responses to external stimuli are symbolic to the extent that we are responding to these internalized resonances of meaning. As such, things enter into a complicated world of internal significances and meanings, much of which remains implicit and out of conscious awareness.

Social experience in this regard has a special quality which is distinct from the objective experience of an otherwise impersonal material world. The processes of personfication and projective identification which may or may not occur in relation to material objects, are integral to the experience of other people--experience which is by definition non-objective, primitive and physiognomic in character. Thus social experience is by definition much more complex and basic than is the relatively objectivated experience of the material non-human environment. We may say that social experience is inherently, by definition reflexive in character. It also appears to be the case that a great deal of social experience, as with primary care-takers, appears as necessary to the developmental ontogenesis of the human personality. People mediate our worlds in an important way--affectively, conceptually and even perceptually, our experiences within our effective environment. It is this mediation (and to some extent "modeling") process which social interaction provides that defines human beings as basically social beings. People are then not only symbolic mirrors of our own internal subjectivities and possibilities of being, but they are more importantly the principal vehicles of the symbolic transmission of information about our world.

Thus our experiences of our world becomes shaped at a very basic level at a very early age by the presence and symbolic mediation of other people within our world. This shaping experience is the foundation of psycho-cultural patterning which we seek.

A critical event can lead to a crises of identity--upsetting the normal representation of things in the mind, or the status quo of relations between these things. Further experience will result in the modification of these symbolic representations. Schemas of pattern and order are constructed of these symbolic representations of experience and these schemas represent the ordering of the differentiated phenomenological field. Schemas or implicit models of experience define our expectations and normal reactions to an anticipated set of events in the world. If our expectations become violated, or prove inconsistent with experience, there results conflicting sources of information that it becomes the dilemma of ego-awareness to successfully resolve. Anthropologically, in the fieldwork experience, these are referred to as schematic breakdowns of internalized experience which becomes at odds on multiple levels with a new set of signals within a new environmental-social context. This results in a crises of conflicting or incompatible symbolic realities that it then is necessary to resolve. Human learning, especially in small infants and children, who hold largely simplistic and undifferentiated, inexperienced views of the world, is characterized by just such a cyclical series of schematic constructions, conflicts, breakdowns and reformulation. More formal modes of learning which largely occur in adult life are, are superimposed upon this basic level of experience, largely alienated from it as these types of reactions are largely suppressed, controlled or repressed by the adult ego--and represent a different quality of experience and type of learning that that achieved through first-hand involvement. The extent to which this type of learning may become internalized in a similar way as primary learning experiences is somewhat of an open and unanswered question.

Memory and unconscious or preconscious mental functioning and imaginative processes are vital to the symbolic representation of experience. Memory in this sense is an ordered repository of experiences and symbolic representations of experience. Words serve an indexical function in these processes in that they serve to unlock and make available the mental representations of experience.

It is also the case that these symbolic conceptualizations which summarize and represent the embodiment of experience do not exist in isolation, but rather are part of a complex mental landscape in which these mental representations are situated within a contextual interrelationships with other mental representations. Thus the object does not take on completely independent formal qualities, but is critically conditioned by its positioning within this mental field. For the most part the background quality of these relationships remain unconscious and "pre-logical" in our experience. Furthermore, this landscape appears to exist at more than one level, and at the same time appears to be dynamic. It changes with the incorporation of new experience.

It is also the case that the relationships between composite mental representations of experience are regulated and ordered in at least an implicit manner. This rule-like organization of basic percepts and concepts represents yet another "meta-level" of human consciousness, directing rationalizations, modes of ego-defense and behavioral reactions to the external world. This level of directive, conscious organizing behavior is rooted only indirectly in experience, but represents the symbolic configuration and interpretation of this experience--interpretation that follows certain purposes in the attainment of basic needs of being, identity, status, security, etc.

To some unknown and probably variable extent, the phenomenological organization of the mind is both psychologically and culturally relative. We can only hypothesize the a priori existence of genetic universal structures of mental organization. Beyond the stratification and symbol-linguistic organization of the mind itself, which have been presupposed, we know most of discrete functional centers of the brain through neuro-physiological experiments with aphasics.

There is also a basic paradox when the most subjective phenomenological basis of experience, is also regarded as the most objective ground of empirical science as well. What distinguishes scientific from normally subjective observation most is the controlled and rigorous employment of instruments of measurement which introduce a certain consistency and reliability to the observation, upon which measurements the observation can be repeated upon multiple trials and by independent observers. It is this fact of measurement that science gains its etic objectivity, and it is by the design and extension of means of measurement of response patterns that scientific insight can be gained into the patterning and structure of symbolic and cultural phenomena.