Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 10

[Soupie]

@Soupie I'm unclear who/what is the I/me in this paragraph. I'll assume this is—what I would call—the phenomenal self.

What is confusing about "I/me"? Hopefully you use "I/me" every day ... or do you say to your co-workers: "How is the phenomenal self today?"

@Soupie So the phenomenal self—the I/me—is presented with something as something. And that this is then followed by phenomenological relflection.

No, just - I am presented with something.

as far as the direct phenomenological reflection of this presentation is concerned, there is no need to assume that this requires any ‘internal’ representation which mediates the presentation to me."

@Soupie The claim is there is no internal, cognitive mediation.

Why do you keep adding words? "... there is no need to assume that this requires any 'internal' representation which mediates the presentation to me"

@Soupie Based on things I've picked up from @Constance in the past, I think there is a school of thought in cognitive Phil of mind that all consciousness involves cognition/thought??? Including perception?

I'll let @Constance respond - but I don't think so ... again why do you add "cognitive" "cognitive Philosophy of Mind" - just say "philosophy of mind" ...


@Soupie So, I think the author is distinguishing this "presentational" view from a "representational" view that says perception always involves "cognitive" mediation???

I may be wrong - but it seems you are making it "cognitively" more difficult ... ;-) just look at the two words:

presentation - direct perception
re-presentation - presented again

the Wikipedia articles talks about the problems with both views ... but what may be helpful in this instance is that "re-presentation" could lead to an infinite regress or at least a finite one.

"The reason this should not be presupposed is that the kind of presentation that Husserl invokes may be (and in the most interesting cases, is) direct: it may proceed, that is, without requiring the mediation or existence of any kind of symbolic, internal, or cognitive re-presentation."

I don't think this is about direct Realism, but more to do with, as @Constance uses the terms, prereflective and reflective consciousness.

There are distinct schools of thought about Phil of mind, and cognitive neuroscience approaches consciousness computationally, which phenomenology and neurophenomenology do not.

As far as the "I/me" it is relevant and not as simple as you suggest. When I–the body self—am walking along, I don't say "here, I have been presented with a tree."

The whole notion of presentation is perplexing to non-continental thinking. Who or what is doing the presenting? The brain? Presenting to who? The phenomenal self? The body self?

Is the presentation physical or phenomenal!? Is the real tree (something) presented as a phenomenal tree (something)? Or are they both physical? Or both phenomenal?

I understand that phenomenology doesn't deal with substance dualism, so it's a monism.

I'm lost haha.

 

[smcder]

page 8 and I think we are getting near the heart of Livingston's argument

@Soupie - now you can see why he talks about "presentation" in the specific way that he does early in the paper

When this content is available to me on the basis of my current perceptual state, not only is it not necessary that I should be able to state in objective, third-person and propositional terms a rule or finite expression determining that function, but it may actually be impossible to do so in general. To see why, it is helpful to consider the problem of trans-world individuation from another direction. In “Individuation by Acquaintance and by Stipulation,” David Lewis discusses individuation by acquaintance, within the framework of his own counterpart theory of cross-world identification. In two possible worlds, W1 and W2, two otherwise similar entities, Y (in W1) and X (in W2) may both be objects of acquaintance (e.g., of perception), respectively, for subjects Z (in W1) and U (in W2). Are X and Y then counterparts by acquaintance for the subject Z? The answer, Lewis notes, depends on whether U is Z (or, on Lewis’s framework, which does not allow for actual cross-world identities but only counterpart relations, whether Z is U’s closest counterpart in W2).23 In order, then, to describe how something is cross-identified by acquaintance for a certain subject, we must apparently first cross-identify the subject; and how are we to do this, in general and objective terms?

As Lewis argues, there is in fact no way to do so.

 

[smcder]

"The reason this should not be presupposed is that the kind of presentation that Husserl invokes may be (and in the most interesting cases, is) direct: it may proceed, that is, without requiring the mediation or existence of any kind of symbolic, internal, or cognitive re-presentation."

I don't think this is about direct Realism, but more to do with, as @Constance uses the terms, prereflective and reflective consciousness.

There are distinct schools of thought about Phil of mind, and cognitive neuroscience approaches consciousness computationally, which phenomenology and neurophenomenology do not.

As far as the "I/me" it is relevant and not as simple as you suggest. When I–the body self—am walking along, I don't say "here, I have been presented with a tree."

The whole notion of presentation is perplexing to non-continental thinking. Who or what is doing the presenting? The brain? Presenting to who? The phenomenal self? The body self?

Is the presentation physical or phenomenal!? Is the real tree (something) presented as a phenomenal tree (something)? Or are they both physical? Or both phenomenal?

I understand that phenomenology doesn't deal with substance dualism, so it's a monism.

I'm lost haha.

Yes, it looks like you are.

 

[smcder]

And here, starting bottom p. 9

On the other hand, if individuation by acquaintance really is possible, it is possible for me genuinely to identify a “perceptual object” (in the sense described above) by means of my current perception, and this includes identifying which object it is in each of my perceptually possible worlds. For me to do this, it is not necessary for me to first identify myself – by means of description, self-acquaintance, or in any other way – in each of these worlds; all that I need to do is identify the relevant object, from a perspective (my own) that I presuppose. It is only if I abstract from this perspective that Lewis’s question of the individuation of the subject arises; but then, as he argues, that question is unanswerable. If this is right in general, it then remains possible to preserve the phenomenon of individuation by acquaintance – and with it, the distinctive presentational content of consciousness itself – only by preserving as irreducible the “for-me” or first-person perspective from which this phenomenon is itself given.

@Soupie this is why understanding what he means by "presentational" is so important - (also go back to the beginning of the paper: This option vindicates the irreducibility of consciousness (in one sense of “irreducible”) to description or explanation in terms only of physical facts, and clarifies this irreducibility as resulting ultimately from broadly modal/semantic features of the presentation and individuation of entities across possible worlds.)

If, then, one considers the ontological question of consciousness as the question of “what there is” from such an objective perspective, it is clear that the availability of the consciously intentional modes of presentation introduces a decisive kind of internal complication into this question. While, on the one hand, there is no reason to invoke peculiar objects (of the sense-data or ‘proposition’ type), the very possibility of conscious presentation “from a point of view” itself means that a global ontology that does not allow for this possibility is in a certain way incomplete. This incompleteness plausibly corresponds to the exclusion of the phenomenon of conscious intentionality itself; and if this is correct, then only an analysis that accounts for the relevant modalities of presentation itself will allow for a realist ontology of consciousness. The possibility of such an ontology will turn on that of the availability of facts characterizing the “modes of presentation” by which entities are presented to us, in perception and other conscious modalities, not only as facts or states of affairs within particular worlds, but also (and crucially) as facts characterizing cross-world identities and comparisons of the sort to which Hintikka’s analysis points.

 

[Constance]

[quoting Livingston] "While, on the one hand, there is no reason to invoke peculiar objects (of the sense-data or ‘proposition’ type), the very possibility of conscious presentation “from a point of view” itself means that a global ontology that does not allow for this possibility is in a certain way incomplete.

Livingston is not always clear, and the phrase "conscious presentation 'from a point of view'" is an example and is misleading. What embodied consciousness receives from experienced phenomenal encounters with things and gestalts seen, heard, and otherwise sensed in the world is not a characteristic of itself as consciousness [or something consciousness 'presents to itelf'] but is rather that which is provided to conscious beings through the affordances of embodied sensual/perceptive access to the environing world. Any individual consciousness necessarily encounters only parts and aspects of things and other beings in its sensible/perceivable mileau, and necessarily from situated 'points of view'/perspectives that can be added to by moving around encountered things, approaching encountered beings, touching them, listening to them, and so forth. As MP wrote, we learn about the physical world we exist in by "multiplying" our perspectives on it, both individually and with others of our species, especially by collectively applying interdisciplinary research methods and approaches.

 

[Constance]

@Soupie Based on things I've picked up from @Constance in the past, I think there is a school of thought in cognitive Phil of mind that all consciousness involves cognition/thought??? Including perception?

I'll let @Constance respond - but I don't think so ... again why do you add "cognitive" "cognitive Philosophy of Mind" - just say "philosophy of mind" ...

I think that @Soupie was there distinguishing between analytical and
phenomenological philosophies of mind as developed in the last century. From reading the interview with Livingston and his brief bio at academia.edu I gather that his main goal is to write a history of both of these schools of modern Western philosophy of mind that will reveal some common threads in their differing approaches, questions, and methods, and perhaps help to integrate them.

Re this statement and question posed by @Soupie above -- ". . . I think there is a school of thought in cognitive Phil of mind that all consciousness involves cognition/thought??? Including perception? -- I think it's fair to say that analytical philosophy of mind in general is premised on cognitivist presuppositions and that, like early cognitive neuroscience, it has been reductive in its approaches to consciousness and to perception. As Livingston, like many others, observes, analytical philosophers of mind in recent decades have tended also to be overly impressed with informational/computational theories of mind that similarly fall short of comprehensively investigating the nature and spectrum of human experience in the world as the ground of what we can think. {but that's, of course, a phenomenologist talking}

 

[Constance]

see ch 7 of The Embodied Mind, beginning on pg. 133, entitled "The Cartesian Anxiety," for clarification of the problems of representationalism and traditional cognitivism, at the link below:

https://ia801301.us.archive.org/32/...nce and Human Experience-MIT Press (1993).pdf

 

[smcder]

"The reason this should not be presupposed is that the kind of presentation that Husserl invokes may be (and in the most interesting cases, is) direct: it may proceed, that is, without requiring the mediation or existence of any kind of symbolic, internal, or cognitive re-presentation."

I don't think this is about direct Realism, but more to do with, as @Constance uses the terms, prereflective and reflective consciousness.

There are distinct schools of thought about Phil of mind, and cognitive neuroscience approaches consciousness computationally, which phenomenology and neurophenomenology do not.

As far as the "I/me" it is relevant and not as simple as you suggest. When I–the body self—am walking along, I don't say "here, I have been presented with a tree."

The whole notion of presentation is perplexing to non-continental thinking. Who or what is doing the presenting? The brain? Presenting to who? The phenomenal self? The body self?

Is thnow? resentation physical or phenomenal!? Is the real tree (something) presented as a phenomenal tree (something)? Or are they both physical? Or both phenomenal?

I understand that phenomenology doesn't deal with substance dualism, so it's a monism.

I'm lost haha.

Do you follow the argument now? The modal logic?

And why he says:

in one sense of “irreducible"

?

 

[smcder]

"The reason this should not be presupposed is that the kind of presentation that Husserl invokes may be (and in the most interesting cases, is) direct: it may proceed, that is, without requiring the mediation or existence of any kind of symbolic, internal, or cognitive re-presentation."

I don't think this is about direct Realism, but more to do with, as @Constance uses the terms, prereflective and reflective consciousness.

There are distinct schools of thought about Phil of mind, and cognitive neuroscience approaches consciousness computationally, which phenomenology and neurophenomenology do not.

As far as the "I/me" it is relevant and not as simple as you suggest. When I–the body self—am walking along, I don't say "here, I have been presented with a tree."

The whole notion of presentation is perplexing to non-continental thinking. Who or what is doing the presenting? The brain? Presenting to who? The phenomenal self? The body self?

Is the presentation physical or phenomenal!? Is the real tree (something) presented as a phenomenal tree (something)? Or are they both physical? Or both phenomenal?

I understand that phenomenology doesn't deal with substance dualism, so it's a monism.

I'm lost haha.

@Constance do you see the same confusions that I see in @Soupie's comments?

 

[Soupie]

Do you follow the argument now? The modal logic?

And why he says:

in one sense of “irreducible"

?

I'm not sure. I'm still stuck in what it means to say that consciousness is presentational.

On the one hand, I think the author wants to get away from the "Cartesian theater" but I don't understand how conceiving of consciousness/perception as presentation accomplishes this.

What I take the "not irreducible in one sense" to mean, is that while consciousness cannot be reduced to physical/stuctural terms, it does not follow that there is a dualism between consciousness and the physical.

 

[smcder]

I'm not sure. I'm still stuck in what it means to say that consciousness is presentational.

On the one hand, I think the author wants to get away from the "Cartesian theater" but I don't understand how conceiving of consciousness/perception as presentation accomplishes this.

What I take the "not irreducible in one sense" to mean, is that while consciousness cannot be reduced to physical/stuctural terms, it does not follow that there is a dualism between consciousness and the physical.

Throw all that away. The modal argument is very important - starting around page four, I think - that's when the symbols show up ...

Use the first paragraph as a guide as you read the paper:

"As I shall discuss it in this paper,

maintaining this idea involves, minimally,

(maintaining that (at least some) conscious states present something as something, or “give” or make available some particular thing as being some way.)

>>In addition to its basic importance for phenomenology, this idea (maintaining that (at least some) conscious states present something as something ... etc.) also

played an important role in motivating earlier accounts of mind and experience in the analytic tradition, underlying, for instance,

• Russell’s conception of acquaintance and Schlick and Carnap’s understanding of “protocol sentences.”

Additionally (as I shall argue), it can be seen as bearing a close connection to

• Frege’s own favored metaphor for the sense of a singular term, that of a “mode of presentation” or “way of being given” [Art des Gegebensein].

Although

• recent analytic discussions of the ontology and metaphysics of phenomenal consciousness have not always considered its presentational character as centrally,

I shall argue that it (its presentational character) bears deep and important implications for these discussions.

In particular, if considered in the context of recent modal and two-dimensional arguments for the falsity or limitations of physicalism,

consideration of the presentational character consciousness motivates a *novel kind of ontological option for its placement in the world.

VERY IMPORTANT

1) This option vindicates the irreducibility of consciousness (*in one sense of “irreducible”) to description or explanation in terms only of physical facts, and clarifies this irreducibility as resulting ultimately from broadly modal/semantic features of the presentation and individuation of entities across possible worlds.

2) At the same time, it does not thereby require or invite anything like a substance or property dualism, since the features of consciousness that make for its irreducibility can also (as I shall argue) be accounted for by means of a global monism of substances and properties.

....

make some kind of outline of the overall argument - once you see the structure, knowing the mechanics of the argument will help you fill in the parts you don't understand.

 

[Michael Allen]

As always, the caveat that the meaning I take from your writing is likely not the meaning you mean it to mean. In any case, the apparent fundamental inability of the questioner to ask relevant questions regarding the nature of its ability to question is not unlike, I think, the problem I've been articulating of the perceiver attempting to accurately perceive the nature of its perceptual apparatus.

I'd still like you to attempt to articulate why you insist that misunderstanding is a necessary condition of being and/or consciousness. I have my own ideas of why this might be, but they're likely worlds away from your conception. I think of it in terms of singularity versus differentiation.

Interesting that--in your rephrasing--you state exactly what I meant and yet disown me as a source. This is an incredibly awesome reply, as it illustrates a corollary to my proposition--i.e. that such propositions could only exist in relations brought about by the framework of beings that thrive and dwell relationally with the very artifacts that are disowned (embedded 'singularities' of 'being' in worldliness). Unfortunately our language moves up to the very threshold and stops (misses one element) short of full self-world-self-in-world understanding. To "under-stand" is to find the ground under the stance made by the apparent anomalies of self and its fundamental relations. But these "relations" are merely a construct between that which has the same ability to construct being from questioning and manipulating. The answer to the grand question is to ask the origin and meaning of the questioner--but this requires a structure that both forms and supercedes the very construct that has the ability to articulate being. Articulation of "existence" requires terms outside the very structure that convinces Dasein of its own ability to articulate. Dasein, is a part of the "world" that sees the greater "World" -- via a reality that supercedes all comprehension. For if the framework of worldly comprehension was in itself comprehended, the world would cease to be divided in a way for "comprehension" to exist.

Our words betray us at every turn...therefore everything I have said above is bullshit--because what I am trying to explain (in a way that is convincing) requires a framework that surpasses our mechanisms that suddenly bring us to stop questioning.

What is the difference between a dasein that stop questioning due to death or due to boredome, or due to lack of everyday utility? If you find such a difference, will it be due to the world or to yourself? And does any of this really matter?


Disclaimer:

4 glasses of Wine
3 scotch
2 waters
1 Melatonin ( to help me stop questioning)

Start by categorizing the elements of your world (experiences) that cause you to end all questioning.

 

[Constance]

Steve wrote, quoting the Livingston paper:

"(starting bottom p. 9) ...'On the other hand, if individuation by acquaintance really is possible, it is possible for me genuinely to identify a “perceptual object” (in the sense described above) by means of my current perception, and this includes identifying which object it is in each of my perceptually possible worlds. For me to do this, it is not necessary for me to first identify myself – by means of description, self-acquaintance, or in any other way – in each of these worlds; all that I need to do is identify the relevant object, from a perspective (my own) that I presuppose. It is only if I abstract from this perspective that Lewis’s question of the individuation of the subject arises; but then, as he argues, that question is unanswerable. If this is right in general, it then remains possible to preserve the phenomenon of individuation by acquaintance – and with it, the distinctive presentational content of consciousness itself – only by preserving as irreducible the “for-me” or first-person perspective from which this phenomenon is itself given.

@Soupie this is why understanding what he means by "presentational" is so important - (also go back to the beginning of the paper: This option vindicates the irreducibility of consciousness (in one sense of “irreducible”) to description or explanation in terms only of physical facts, and clarifies this irreducibility as resulting ultimately from broadly modal/semantic features of the presentation and individuation of entities across possible worlds.)

'If, then, one considers the ontological question of consciousness as the question of “what there is” from such an objective perspective, it is clear that the availability of the consciously intentional modes of presentation introduces a decisive kind of internal complication into this question. While, on the one hand, there is no reason to invoke peculiar objects (of the sense-data or ‘proposition’ type), the very possibility of conscious presentation “from a point of view” itself means that a global ontology that does not allow for this possibility is in a certain way incomplete. This incompleteness plausibly corresponds to the exclusion of the phenomenon of conscious intentionality itself; and if this is correct, then only an analysis that accounts for the relevant modalities of presentation itself will allow for a realist ontology of consciousness. The possibility of such an ontology will turn on that of the availability of facts characterizing the “modes of presentation” by which entities are presented to us, in perception and other conscious modalities, not only as facts or states of affairs within particular worlds, but also (and crucially) as facts characterizing cross-world identities and comparisons of the sort to which Hintikka’s analysis points.'"

I'm going to have to reread the early part of Livingston's paper concerning 'modal logic' and 'possible worlds' theory to understand the full weight of these methods and ideas for an adequate ontology of consciousness. I appreciate your other current post highlighting lines from this portion of L's paper. This is extremely difficult material, from areas of philosophy I have not studied before, but I am beginning to sense its significance for the developing effort to understand what consciousness is, thanks to your commentaries.

 

[Constance]

This Solitude of Cataracts

He never felt twice the same about the flecked river,
Which kept flowing and never the same way twice, flowing

Through many places, as if it stood still in one,
Fixed like a lake on which the wild ducks fluttered,

Ruffling its common reflections, thought-like Monadnocks.
There seemed to be an apostrophe that was not spoken.

There was so much that was real that was not real at all.
He wanted to feel the same way over and over.

He wanted the river to go on flowing the same way,
To keep on flowing. He wanted to walk beside it,

Under the buttonwoods, beneath a moon nailed fast.
He wanted his heart to stop beating and his mind to rest

In a permanent realization, without any wild ducks
Or mountains that were not mountains, just to know how it would be,

Just to know how it would feel, released from destruction,
To be a bronze man breathing under archaic lapis,

Without the oscillations of planetary pass-pass,
Breathing his bronzen breath at the azury center of time.

--Wallace Stevens

 

[Constance]

Modal metaphysics:

Modal Metaphysics | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

 

[Constance]

Is there modal logic without possible worlds?

Is there modal logic without possible worlds?

 

[Constance]

Possible World Semantics - Bibliography - PhilPapers

 

[Soupie]

Throw all that away. The modal argument is very important - starting around page four, I think - that's when the symbols show up ...

Use the first paragraph as a guide as you read the paper:

"As I shall discuss it in this paper,

maintaining this idea involves, minimally,

(maintaining that (at least some) conscious states present something as something, or “give” or make available some particular thing as being some way.)

>>In addition to its basic importance for phenomenology, this idea (maintaining that (at least some) conscious states present something as something ... etc.) also

played an important role in motivating earlier accounts of mind and experience in the analytic tradition, underlying, for instance,

• Russell’s conception of acquaintance and Schlick and Carnap’s understanding of “protocol sentences.”

Additionally (as I shall argue), it can be seen as bearing a close connection to

• Frege’s own favored metaphor for the sense of a singular term, that of a “mode of presentation” or “way of being given” [Art des Gegebensein].

Although

• recent analytic discussions of the ontology and metaphysics of phenomenal consciousness have not always considered its presentational character as centrally,

I shall argue that it (its presentational character) bears deep and important implications for these discussions.

In particular, if considered in the context of recent modal and two-dimensional arguments for the falsity or limitations of physicalism,

consideration of the presentational character consciousness motivates a *novel kind of ontological option for its placement in the world.

VERY IMPORTANT

1) This option vindicates the irreducibility of consciousness (*in one sense of “irreducible”) to description or explanation in terms only of physical facts, and clarifies this irreducibility as resulting ultimately from broadly modal/semantic features of the presentation and individuation of entities across possible worlds.

2) At the same time, it does not thereby require or invite anything like a substance or property dualism, since the features of consciousness that make for its irreducibility can also (as I shall argue) be accounted for by means of a global monism of substances and properties.

....

make some kind of outline of the overall argument - once you see the structure, knowing the mechanics of the argument will help you fill in the parts you don't understand.

I appreciate your effort here, but I dont have my bearings at all. I havwnt read past the presentation—representation part of the paper yet.

Im also not seeing that your final points #1 and #2 are different then the last paragraph of my last post.

 

[smcder]

I appreciate your effort here, but I dont have my bearings at all. I havwnt read past the presentation—representation part of the paper yet.

Im also not seeing that your final points #1 and #2 are different then the last paragraph of my last post.

What I take the "not irreducible in one sense" to mean, is that while consciousness cannot be reduced to physical/stuctural terms, it does not follow that there is a dualism between consciousness and the physical.

It differs in the details - "not irreducible in one sense" turns on the modal argument presented in the paper. What is meant by presentation becomes more clear as you read through the paper.

 

[smcder]

I appreciate your effort here, but I dont have my bearings at all. I havwnt read past the presentation—representation part of the paper yet.

Im also not seeing that your final points #1 and #2 are different then the last paragraph of my last post.

What is meant by presentation becomes more clear as you read through the paper:

"As Husserl often explains, phenomenology’s central method is to explicate and describe the content and structure of what is directly presented or given in consciousness. In his 1913 statement of the phenomenological “principle of all principles” in Ideas 1, Husserl invokes the methodological priority of what is directly presented in this sense as the basis for all phenomenological research:

No conceivable theory can make us err with respect to the principle of all principles: that every originary presentive intuition is a legitimizing source of cognition, that everything originarily (so to speak, in its ‘personal’ actuality) offered to us in ‘intuition’ is to be accepted simply as what it is presented as being, but also only within the limits in which it is presented there. (Husserl 1913[1983]: 43-44).

What this means is that the basis of all phenomenological reflection and analysis – the basic “material” for all its results, including those that bear on ontological and metaphysical issues -- is what is directly there” or present in consciousness. This does not mean that one must begin with specialized “inner” objects or representations, such as (as it might be) sense-data, ‘inner’ impressions, or empiricist “ideas”. Rather, the beginning point is the presentation of entities and phenomena in general, just as these are.presented: as having, that is, the determinate characteristics and attributes that they are presented as having."

... the basis of all phenomenological reflection and analysis is what is directly there or present in consciousness - the beginning point is the presentation of entities and phenomena in general, just as these are presented: as having, that is, the determinate characteristics and attributes that they are presented as having ...

-------------------------------------
Presentation and representation have different etymologies, per www.etymonline.com:

presentation (n.)
late 14c., "act of presenting," from Old French presentacion (13c.), from Latin praesentationem (nominative praesentatio) "a placing before," noun of action from past participle stem of praesentare (see present (v.)). Meaning "that which is offered or presented" is mid-15c.; that of "a theatrical or other representation" is recorded from c. 1600. Related: Presentational.

representation (n.)
c. 1400, "image, likeness," from Old French representacion (14c.) and directly from Latin representationem (nominative representatio), noun of action from past participle stem of repraesentare (see represent). Meaning "statement made in regard to some matter" is from 1670s. Legislative sense first attested 1769.

"a placing before" vs. "image, likeness"
--------------------------------------
continuing ...

"In further considering the implications of this kind of view of presentation for contemporary discussions, it is important to bear in mind two qualifications that distinguish it from others in the vicinity. The first is that this view of presentation should not be taken as implying representationalism, or the view that (as it is standardly put) all conscious states are or involve ‘internal’ representations. The reason this should not be presupposed is that the kind of presentation that Husserl invokes may be (and in the most interesting cases, is) direct: it may proceed, that is, without requiring the mediation or existence of any kind of symbolic, internal, or cognitive re-presentation. My current perception may simply involve that I am presented with a flowering tree before me; as far as the direct phenomenological reflection of this presentation is concerned, there is no need to assume that this requires any ‘internal’ representation which mediates the presentation to me. Second, it is not necessary, in order to hold the view to be explored and defended here, to maintain either that all or only conscious states have a presentational or intentional content. Nothing about the view to be defended should be taken as excluding the possibility of conscious states that do not present anything, or at least that do not present anything other than themselves. At the same time, there is nothing about the view to be defended here that requires that presentation, in the relevant sense, be exhibited only or even “primarily” by conscious states as opposed to other kinds of intentional entities (such as spoken or written words or sentences, signs, pictures, etc.) Indeed, it is an important feature of the way that the current view characterizes the basic structure of presentation that it can plausibly be generalized to these other cases, and thereby seen as essentially neutral with respect to the medium (whether conscious, linguistic, pictorial or whatever) of the presentation itself."