focaling

 focaling .. a discussion for July 31, 2015

CHAPTER IV: THE BODY AND TIME CHAPTER IV-A:   A DIFFERENT CONCEPT OF THE BODY, NOT A  MACHINE (p. 18-59) 

Many “purposes” and many possible actions are focaled into one. Only one action occurs next. Our concept of “focaling” develops from this relation of many into one. It develops from this function at this juncture in the model, and from many experiential instances. For example:

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f) Focaling

In my story about tuning the radio, the direction was given in advance by my desire for the loudest, so that I could receive distant stations. The purpose of a machine (or anything we make) remains in the designer. But how does it arise in the designer? If it must be brought to the designer by still another designer, how could they ever arise? So we need to ask: How does purpose and direction arise from within a process? For lack of this question today, everything is treated as if it were a machine, and moreover a machine that had no designer. Our purposes are left unthinkable within our science (which is nevertheless influenced by many purposes).

In re-tuning each IF can, the differences became smaller and smaller and reached a stable result. But without a purpose or direction, how can the eveving arrive at a result?

In our model the occurring brings and changes its own implying of the next occurring. The body’s own implying is the focaling of the many processes, the many parts and differences into one implying. Purpose and direction are aspects of the process. The purpose is not something added on. For example, in human events what we call “purpose” already inheres in what a given action is. Or, as Dilthey put it, “every experiencing is already inherently also an understanding.” The plant doesn’t need a separate purpose to turn to the sun. To render purpose as a separate, added thing is artificial. It is usually artificial to say what “the” purpose is.

Many “purposes” and many possible actions are focaled into one. Only one action occurs next. Our concept of “focaling” develops from this relation of many into one. It develops from this function at this juncture in the model, and from many experiential instances. For example:

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CHAPTER IV: THE BODY AND TIME CHAPTER IV-A:   A DIFFERENT CONCEPT OF THE BODY, NOT A  MACHINE (p. 18-59)  [47]

if they are the same, and sad if they are different. What do we wish? Obviously we are looking for a more intricate relation, something like more developed, more complex, differentiated, realistic, from a deeper human level, more understanding ….. — something like that. In other words we hope that your values continued to play their role in how you lived, but that they developed by playing this role.

When an artist draws an exactly right line in an unfinished drawing, no aim exists in advance to determine the line. The artist feels and says that the unfinished drawing “needs something.” Not the drawing alone, but the drawing and the human body together imply something more. But of course the artist has no finished drawing already in mind. The aim and the direction develop from the process.7

The artist does not try out and then reject all possible wrong lines, and does not “select” the right one. In geometry one can say that a plane contains an infinite number of lines, but those lines do not exist, nor does the line that will eventually be drawn. That line does not exist on a blank sheet. The already drawn lines (and much more) participates in the formation (the eveving) of the “needed” line. When it comes, it changes the interrelations of all the lines so as to carry this one implying forward. Neither the aim nor the line exist in advance. The artist’s one implying is an eveving of the relationships of all the lines to each other. The artist focals the right line.

Another example: A new theory can expand science in a way that does not follow logically from any earlier theory. When you think forward, you can observe the focaling process at work. You pursue unclear but possibly rich edges. You sense more than you can as yet think clearly. Once you devise a new theory, you can specify what has changed. In advance you cannot. (What dialectical logic can do is similar; Hegel could arrange the history of thought behind him in a neat dialectical progression, but this could not generate even one step forward.)

The direction and result of focaling comes from implying. Eveving (each already affected by its effect on the others) is focaling; it arrives at one implying of a next step.

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