Pre Reflective Experience

Reflective experience

Consciousness turned back upon itself. When we notice, name, or evaluate what was already given in pre-reflective awareness. It abstracts a focal element from the experiential field and treats it as an object of thought

G.A Tawney 1908's Definition of Pre-reflective experience

not deliberate (spontaneous/effortless/automatic), No distinction between subject and object, Objectivity and validity are irrelevant, Facts and values are the same

definition of pre-reflective experience: not deliberate

pre-reflective consciousness is spontaneous/effortless/Automatic

when you open your eyes you can automatically experience what is around you

definition of pre reflective experience: no distinction between subject and object

In purely pre-reflective states (flow states) things just are and there is no explicit representation of my relation to them or their relation to each other

No 'me' vs 'it'

In reflective states: I am picking up this can, my thought captures my relation to it. pre-reflective doesn't think in I.

definition of pre reflective experience: objectivity and validity are irrelevant

We are not considering the truth value of things. They simply are. (illusions)

we don't care if something is true, we are just in the moment.

definition of pre-reflective experience: facts and values are the same

If I am pre-reflectively drawn to something, it is valuable, but not in a way that makes me actively/reflectively consider it.

Certain things draw you to them, and those are facts in the world just like everything else is facts in the world

what did Sartre say in the transcendence of the ego? 1957

There is no I on the pre-reflective level.

there is no I when I run after a car, there is consciousness that includes the streetcar. objects constitute the unity of my consciousness. they present attractive and repellant qualities but nothing to do with me.

the temporal character of experience

• William James says pre-reflective consciousness is the stream that is flowing by, continuous and undivided

• Reflective consciousness is like taking a bucket of water out of the stream for inspection

  • “The attempt at introspective analysis in these cases is in fact, like seizing a spinning top to catch its motion”

what metaphor did William James use to explain pre-reflective consciousness?

a flowing stream that is continuous and undivided. stream of consciousness

in regards to the metaphor, reflective consciousness is like

taking a bucket of water out of the stream for inspection

the flux of the pre-reflective is made up of 2 parts

substantiative and transitive parts

the substantive parts

resting places: The things that sit still and stay longer in our experience are easier to reflect on. for example, looking at a picture we remember the picture more than the environment around us.

transitive parts

Places of flight: The things in our experience that flutter in and out of existence and are easy to overlook and hard to reflect on

what is an example of a transitive part of thought and reflection.

When looking at a picture, random thoughts or feelings arise for small moments

-Feeling impatient

- Does this remind me of a movie line?

- Reminds me of a memory

- anxiety

Easy to miss because they come and go and do not sit still

what did William James say about attempting introspective analysis?

that it is like seizing a spinning top to catch its motion

Busy train station example

• Imagine you're in an incredibly busy train station, and everything is just going past you in a blur except for one thing, this hanging sign

• It's easy for us to focus on the substantive parts, or those that don't move a lot/stay fixed, and hard for us to focus on the moving/transient parts, or emotional.

  • At any moment in time, you might be focusing or reflecting on something in your mind, but other things are whizzing by. For example, you might be trying to focus on your math homework, but anxieties about something are swirling by in your mind

what do we do with things that aren't easy to focus on?

we ignore them.

the act of trying to reflect on our pre-reflective thoughts that flutter in the transitive parts of the flux does what?

the attempt at reflecting on the pre-reflective thoughts changes those thoughts because it is transforming the pre-reflective thought into a fundamentally different state of reflection.

Sartre says that "Unreflected thought undergoes a radical modification in

becoming reflected"

why is the bucket of water from the stream of consciousness no longer constitute water from the stream?

The water in the stream is in motion, the water in bucket is still

Not analyzing the stream of consciousness,

analyzing something that you've already transformed is not analyzing the original source

Reflection alters the very thing it is trying to reflect on

what are some examples of reflective thought altering pre-reflective thought?

Showing someone else a song

You scrutinize a song in your head, stressful to show someone something you like

affect labeling

putting feelings into words

where does the pre-reflective response of emotions appear in the brain?

emotional arousal in the amygdala

how does affect labeling alter pre-reflective consciousness?

instead of getting a pre-reflective response in the amygdala, you get a prefrontal response.

when you identify a feeling, it can alter those feelings by strength or intensity.

the more prefrontal activity you get in affective labeling,

the less activity you get in the amygdala (pre-reflective)

Reflective processing allows us to

convert the stream of consciousness into a more orderly set of objects and concepts

reflective consciousness is more binary and fixed than

continuous and messy

once we categorize an object in reflective processing,

we can apply logical rules to everything within a concept category

how has education (Socrates, plato, galileo) ruined our relationship with the flux?

it teaches how to take anything we experience and apply reflective thinking to it,

how to understand life by its concepts is to arrest its movement

what is the fringe by william james?

Vague associations that float by that you aren't able to grab to reflect about

ex. Feelings of anxiety or memory that comes up from an image

• The fringe provides a cognitive and affective context that gives whatever is in the focus of attention its effortlessly felt meaning and significance

in the fringe, you feel feelings of

rightness/coherence OR wrongness/ incoherence

familiarity

causal connection

mineness

explain rightness/coherence OR wrongness/incoherence in the fringe

There is no visual marker of coherence; it is a vague summary assessment of what's going on. You don't have to stop and think: was that a coherent experience of the flow of events?

explain causal connection in the fringe

An intuitive sense of causality: for example, ball movement in the game of pool.

Turns out we are intuitively made out to see that way but it is not anything objectively/intrinsically visible

explain mineness in the fringe

an understanding of objects related to you vs others.

my backpack, water, phone. If I see a random person's phone that looks like mine, doesn't mean I have a sense of mineness for it.

what are bruce mangan's 5 characteristics of the fringe?

Peripheral

Translucent

Low resolution

Elusive

Less intense

Peripheral, in the periphery of experience:

nonsensory experiences are relatively more evident in the periphery of experience than at the attentive focus of experience

think of fuzzy peripheral vision compared to clear high resolution focus.

Translucent

The fringe has no sensory content of its own. Like clear glass, they let sensations pass through their substance without leaving a sensory trace of their own

Low resolution

They have a fuzzy, slurred, cloud-like character in contrast to the fine-grained detail and texture of typical focal sensory experience

elusive

Easier to learn about these through various contrasts: Familiarity with my computer, but its no different than any other computer Apple made. nothing drives the moment of familiarity with another computer thats similar to yours, but its a comparison to another experience with the same sensory input.

less intense

Less forceful than focal sensory experience. Adds to their unobtrusive quality

what is consciousness of?

has to do with intentionality

• Reflective consciousness is always conscious of

Pre-reflective experience constitutes the world, but it isn't about the world

A movie is projected on a screen. What is on the screen isn't intrinsically about another world. It is another world that we are in we can have thoughts about that world, but the screen and by analogy, our pre-reflective experience is that world until reflected upon

What is Husserl and Bentana famous claim in phenomenology?

All consciousness is about something (consciousness of - intentionality- about)

Rocks just are, they aren't about anything

Reflective consciousness is always

consciousness of something

reflective consciousness is always a thought about something else.

Thought about a thought, experience, memory

"I am thinking about, and therefore conscious of,

that rock"

Most pre-reflective experience is not well characterized by the idea

of intentionality and aboutness.

saying all consciousness is consciousness of something is

misguided

Consciousness of view- Alex Byrne

When one sees a cat, the experience is about the cat this is the representational or intentional component of the experience

Consciousness Of view- william james critique on Byrne 1

William James says that Alex Byrne's view of consciousness of talks about the statement of reflecting and seeing a cat, but not about the immediate experience. byrne's consciousness of refers to describing the experience because there is a reflective aspect of thinking I see a cat.

When my cat sits in my lap while I read a book, my experience isn't about the cat, rather

the cat is simply part of the experience that is occurring

When i stop and think about it, then my thought is about the cat. however,

this reflective act is not the same as the initial experience

We confuse the 'thought of something pre-reflective' with

'being pre-reflective itself'

Consciousness 'as' constituted unity

I think of my pre-reflective consciousness as the world we are immersed in prior to thinking about it.

my initial experience isnt me thinking about the world, it simply is my experience in it. living in the moment without reflecting.

VR experience

• The VR experience IS reality for her. Her conscious experience is constituting the world

• Her thoughts can be about how this isn't real, but that cant compete with the pre-reflective giveness of the experience

When i reflect on the world constituting my experience, then aboutness is present and I have consciousness of the elements that until then were

fused together in a single immersive whole

Consciousness as units that come together to make up your experience--similar to a

bottom up process

The world as presented in pre-reflective experience is what constitutes your __________________________. Your initial experience is not _____________ the world but is the world. Pre-reflectively, there is no distinction between _________________________________

conscious experience, "about", the world and my experience

Our pre reflective experience is constituted as

the world itself. as reality. no experienced separation between consciousness and the world

• The non-changing parts are easier to capture and put into words

• Because thinking is reflective, we are biased towards thinking about the parts that can be put into words and ignoring the parts that cant

• Reflecting on the experience can alter/distort the experience

  • Lose the motion (of the spinning top) and the context (that the fixed parts were embedded in)

reflective experience is

about something and is separated from the world