Third of six parts to the article as it steps to completion.
4 The self as a part of a construct
Our experience is determined “what” in context, “what’s what” ahead of our front-facing line-up through the “apparatus for having an experience”. Beyond this focus of knowing, what we determine breaks down or pixelates into uncertainty and unknowing. At the subjective end of the “apparatus for having an experience” we sit on the “self referencing conundrum”, where we cannot experience or determine our self.
We do need a different approach for our conscious self. Otherwise we remain concealed behind this front-facing lined-up with what we experience.
However, I do not think categorising our subjective aspects as fundamental is necessary or helpful.
We already have phenomenology (branch of philosophy that considers our reality of conscious experience and self as phenomena) which offers us the “thing-in-itself”, the state before we judge (phenomenological term) or determine “what” things experience are in their context. Phenomenology speaks of the conscious “being conscious of” and calls it intentionality. This recognition of the nature of consciousness proves reaching the conscious beyond experiencing or being conscious of, There is also in phenomenology our deeper being, dasein which translates from German to “being there” (title of Peter Seller’s movie 1980) or “presence” and refers to our existence within our reality.
While subjective aspects of our reality are indeterminable and cannot directly be experienced phenomenology addresses this “impasse” (phenomenological term) or conundrum (self-referencing) by stalling the “apparatus for having an experience” from determining or judging, and delivers (for our recognition) the self, experience and the conscious, in-them-selves. To these I add the witness, by which we are aware of those aspects delivered in the phenomenological approach.
The witness is the most hidden part of our reality. It may be though of as the displaced part to the manifestant (phenomenal) parts of our subjective aspects i.e, the conscious, self and experience, and sensed as the vacuous disassociation behind the self having an experience.
We may be aware of what the witness witnesses. Being self aware and self conscious points to the displacement of the witness and of the conscious from self. However, the witness seems independent of our sense of time and change.
While we identify in our self and with experience and determine what it is, the world is there in our periphery and background to our focus, as witnessed. The sense of the world being there whether we notice it or not, adds strongly to “one’s” notion and sense an objective world and our being in a “real” world; we can take it for granted.
With the inclusion of the witness by which we are aware of our reality as phenomenon, I proclaim “constructology” as the study of our reality as a construct of parts projected by our whole being. Beyond the phenomena and phenomenology of our conscious self and experience, our reality is made or constructed of parts necessary for experience that include the witness.
We can understand our reality as part, of our individual whole self next to other wholes in Reality. It means every part that constructs our reality is a part of our whole, including our self, conscious, witness, and what we experience, both the subjects and objects of experiencing. Not a product of the CNS, but of our whole; projected through, and not by, the CNS.
realityhc 