A Finger Pointing at the Moon

September 28th, 2007 Fred McVittie

‘Suppose a lecturer points his finger at an object, and tells the audience: “Look at this!” The audience will follow the pointing finger and look at the object….This directive, or vectorial way of attending to the pointing finger , I shall call our subsidiary awareness of the finger…A meaningful relation of the subsidiary to the focal is formed by the action of a person who integrates one to the other, and the relation persists by the fact that the person keeps up this integration. …[In] general terms, the triad of tacit knowing consists of subsidiary things (B) bearing on a focus (C) by virtue of an integration pereformed by a person (A). …we attend from one or more subsidiaries to a focus on which the subsidiaries are to bear.’(Polanyi, M. 1969 pp. 181/182)

Polanyi M. Sense-giving and sense-reading. In: Grene M, ed. Knowing and Being, Essays by Michael Polanyi. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969.

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This Side of the Light

October 2nd, 2007 Fred McVittie

The space in front of us is (usually) saturated with light and is the place of vision. It is also where we meet the gaze of others and triangulate the objects of the world in this shared vision of objectivity. Furthermore, it is also the place we feel we are moving forward into, as well as the time we are moving into. As Polanyi suggests, the space in front of us is the location of the ‘to’ within the binary of the ‘from-to’ that characterises perception. In looking permanently forward into the light we leave our selves behind in the dark. The intentionality of vision, the dominant sense, proceeds from where we are to where we will be, and we, that is our selves, are left behind in this onrush. The appearance of the brightly-lit world of objects in front of us is at the cost of the disappearance of the body.

This disappearance of the body, or more accurately of the sensate or exstatic body, is not total however. When we look down we see our own bodies falling away beneath us, we routinely see our hands projecting into the visible space before us. There is a sense then in which parts of our bodies precede other parts into the illuminated future. Our extremities are at the vanguard of this forward march, reaching and stepping constantly out of the dazzling dark of the recent past. Our arms and hands seem to be following the from-to line of intentionality to stretch toward the objects of the world, and in stretching, become objects themselves. Our touch is that of Midas in reverse and everything we touch objectifies us. Looking down, our feet and legs extend to touch the object of the Earth, the pedestal on which we stand and the future into which we perpetually fall. Again, we may feel intentionality streaming Earthwards catching and objectifying those legs and feet in the hard light that is always in front of our eyes.

And what about these eyes? They are the last to go, if indeed they ever go at all. We may detect the shadows of eye-sockets or nose, the rapid grey blur of a cheek at the boundary of our vision, maybe the frame of our glasses if we wear them. These are liminal, partly formed objects of uncertain status that we are, perhaps, not fully qualified to quantify objectively. Do these glasses suit me? Should I pluck my eyebrows? Do these coloured contact lenses (that I cannot see) match my jacket (that I can)?

The source of the intentional gaze that grazes these uncertain framing entities is absent. It has disappeared from objective surveillance by its being located behind the apparent transparent lens. Wherever we are, it is on this side of the light and a moment behind a present into which we are always appearing.

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Objectivity (Buber and Polanyi)

November 3rd, 2007 Fred McVittie

The traditions of objectivity place the material of that objectivity in a shared interpersonal space in front of each and all possible viewers. The (arte)facts of such objectivity are rendered as knowledge objects in this imaginal conceptual space. There is a fact that both you and I can agree upon, and if put in the right light is self-evident to everyone else also, (the Earth is round, parallel lines never meet, all things must pass). The fact is an objective fact and has the same status as any other object.

The question then becomes, what is an appropriate relationship for me to have with that object? What is your relationship? Is yours the same as mine? A number of options are possible; if we are fresh from reading Martin Buber we might have a choice of striking up a relation of I-it, in which we preserve the object’s inanimate sovereignty, but at the cost of rendering ourselves similarly lifeless and regally removed from the situation. Or we might try to establish an I-Thou relationship in which both the object and ourselves are mutually potentiated by contact.

Alternatively, we may have come to the question after reading Polanyi, and recognise in our apprehension of the object a certain direction, a kind of vectorial aspect to our relationship. We may feel that the object over these in shared conceptual space lies at the end of a line of intentionality that begins at the source of our own self. We may sense the ‘from-to’ nature of this intentionality; here I am and there is the object, and what I know of it is the result of the pouring of perception from here to there, an outpouring which oddly leaves my own body in its wake so that I feel myself not located entirely at the source but eccentrically and ecstatically projected forward toward the object. In the from-to relationship this projection is welcomed and a sense of rapport, compassion, empathy, and fellow-feeling may be invoked. The from-to light does not simply stop at the surface of the object but penetrates, connects, warms, and co-illuminates. It has a place to go to and it feels like home. Or, to stay with Polanyi, our relationship of projected intention may be less ‘from-to’ and more ‘from-at’, in which the object is given no power to receive our transmissions, and while the gaze may originate here, with the self, there is no end to the journey of our perception. The view into the shared space does not resolve onto an object of (comm)union but is interrupted by an object of the imperial empirical state.

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