I don’t know when I had the idea to start this blog. It was probably in June of this year. But I really don’t know. In July I was inspired by a quote I read by a philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who says “If I stand in front of my desk and lean on it with both hands, only my hands are stressed and the whole of my body trails behind them like the tail of a comet. It is not that I am unaware of the whereabouts of my shoulders or back, but these are simply swallowed up in the position of my hands.” Unfortunately the metaphor a comet has been used by others in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical discipline, so although I think this quote describes very precisely the act (sensation? feeling?) of leaning on a desk, the quote also speaks to the great human tendency to assemble various concepts and phrases, copied from some other piece of writing, and string them together as an original thought. I sometimes feel this tendency when writing, especially late at night; it is a tendency to push together words and phrases and punctuation, to write something that sounds proper but lacks meaning. 

 

The description of leaning on the desk does have meaning, I think, it’s a first-personal statement, a take on the action from the person doing the action. It is very hard to describe being a person in a specific moment, very hard to describe the qualitative substance of a feeling. But with the “tail of a comet” metaphor, the French scholar shows it can be done, while leaning on a desk.

 

Most things that can be done improve with practice. Does this apply to describing episodes of experience? Possibly. Many days over the next year I will write a short description of a feeling or moment in the day. Some snippets will focus on the sensation, others will include more context. 

 

The idea is that we are a perspective, a point of view from “somewhere.” We have some reflective capacities. So in any moment I can ask: “What is the nature of this feeling?” “What state am I in?” “How does this perception seem to work?” Whether these statements have any value is up for debate. 

 

I have sat here writing for several minutes without noticing the lovely patter of rain on my roof but hearing it now I can keep hearing it while writing and looking at a purple binder. What is there to notice about how the attention wanders, how perception occurs, and where it makes mistakes?

 

Earlier in this piece I used the phrase “push together words and phrases.” The process of writing without making sense, the process in which words come through my hands onto the computer screen until I read over and see nothing behind the words, this process I understand as an act of “pushing.” As I might push a shopping cart, or push a folder away from me. I understand a mental action through a bodily metaphor.

 

Like the nature of attention, perception, feeling, I also notice rarely (although more and more) that I am a body. 

 

When I put on sunglasses the world initially turns orange, but my predictive machinery adjusts and the world goes back to normal. Wearing the glasses, I rarely notice them. If we are points of view, first person perspective, embodied, living in a society, the nature of this first person view, the way it is, must surely be as elusive as the orange tint in my sunglasses. This elusiveness is why we must look in special places, like the use of the word “push,” to notice what we really are. 

 

This blog is an attempt to look for what we really are, the orange tint, in daily life. In this project, of course, there is inevitably delusion and fantasy. But I think there’s value, perhaps truth, in a deluded view of a feeling or situation. The fact of the delusion tells something about the mind that experienced it. Perhaps a “true” first-personal view would lack any substance other than its existence. It is unclear to me whether the act of being, whether being itself, is or can be knowledge. 

 

There are certainly many philosophical viewpoints behind the project I am undertaking, but I hope it can stand on its own no matter what the scientists and the philosophers tell us about the “first-person perspective,” and consciousness, in the next thousand years. (I’ve avoided using “consciousness” because I’m tired of hearing the word and the idea makes me a bit queasy. I am interested in the idea, though, but I think this interest is perhaps pathological.)

 

I think the blog has value regardless of what the neuroscientists will tell us because to some extent I am what I think I am, and writing about what think I am might reveal what I think I am and therefore what I am. Also I love the feeling of reading in a book about a sensation I know I’ve felt,  say Ivan Illyich’s pain that is only noticed after an annoyance. Chalk it up to common humanity. I hope readers will have these moments reading this blog. 

 

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June 23rd, 2019. Boston, Ma.