That's just it. I simply take experience as experience, as 'real.' It's you (in my view) who are simply deciding to ignore this or that aspect of experience. — plaque flag

Okay. Your a realist. I seem unable to persuade you to examine the facts of philosophy so there's no way I;m going to be able to change your mind. . .

I agree that we don't have to be a great thinker in the sense of obtaining a great breakthrough that'll get us in the canon.

If you don't understand metaphysics then you don;t know whether one would have to be a great thinker to do so.
— plaque flag

I agree that facts are important, but we also have to think (reason carefully from or on the facts.)

This is the issue on which I've been trying and failing to convince you. You seem to prefer to chat about opinions and conjectures. . .

All is הֶבֶלl . — plaque flag

You clearly don't believe this, given your views on experience. . .

This source [ Theodore Kiesel ] places Heidegger's primary breakthrough at the lecture KNS 1919: THE IDEA OF PHILOSOPHY AND THE PROBLEM OF WORLDVIEWS. — plaque flag

I'm not sure what this post is for.

I think we should bring our discussion to a close,. but I'll reply to your other posts first.

Just so you know, that's not an innovation on his part. It's standard axiomatic set theory. — plaque flag

Yes, but the approach is different. .

I agree in the sense that it can clearly be seen that metaphysical questions are undecidable, and in that sense, it is a realization rather than a view. On the other hand, like any proposition, it is open to being negated, so someone can always hold the (erroneous or myopic) view that metaphysical questions are decidable. — Janus

Clearly seen by you and me perhaps, and Kant and most philosophers, but apparently it's not obvious to everyone.

I suppose someone can believe that two plus two equals five if they want to do so, but they cannot expect to understand mathematics. .

I realise I made a careless mistake earlier. It is not consciousness that begins with distinctions but mind. For the advaita view neither mind not distinctions would be fundamental. .

Despite the occasional lip service, I don't think you understand the spirit of science, or that you are able or willing to get your story straight. Some people are more sensitive to rational norms, more bothered by contradictions or indeterminateness in the story they tell. Others think they have a thought to share, when it's only a Feeling associated with a cloud of unorganized references. Do you not tell me, without irony, that everything is literally nothing ? And yet you don't even bother to clarify for yourself or others what kind of trope must be involved to avoid the obvious absurdity involved. I quote Qoheleth for you, and we seem to gel on that, but then you insist on dogmatically pontificating, squandering the investment of a charitable listener -- implying if not saying that I'm missing the Insight --- which however cannot be articulated.

As I see it, it's fine to not justify or argue for Spiritual Things, but I suggest you and others who prefer that mode just drop the pretense of rationality altogether. Avoid attacking worthy philosophers you haven't read [ closely ? at all, really? ] for not being irrationalist metaphorical paradoxical mystics in just the way you are.

Again I quote Nietzsche's sketch of Jesus, because I think it gets 'mysticism' right. And it gets my mysticism right, if I bother to call it that. But one doesn't argue about such things.

...he regarded only subjective realities as realities, as “truths” ... he saw everything else, everything natural, temporal, spatial and historical, merely as signs, as materials for parables...
...
The “kingdom of heaven” is a state of the heart—not something to come “beyond the world” or “after death.” .. The “kingdom of God” is not something that men wait for: it had no yesterday and no day after tomorrow, it is not going to come at a “millennium”—it is an experience of the heart, it is everywhere and it is nowhere....
...
This faith does not formulate itself—it simply lives, and so guards itself against formulae. ...It is only on the theory that no word is to be taken literally that this anti-realist is able to speak at all. Set down among Hindus he would have made use of the concepts of Sankhya, and among Chinese he would have employed those of Lao-tse—and in neither case would it have made any difference to him.—With a little freedom in the use of words, one might actually call Jesus a “free spirit”—he cares nothing for what is established: the word killeth, whatever is established killeth. The idea of “life” as an experience, as he alone conceives it, stands opposed to his mind to every sort of word, formula, law, belief and dogma. — Nietzsche

I see I made the right decision. You have not understood my approach at all and I doubt I can change this. I see no evidence that you want to understand philosophy as opposed to fight for your opinions on the basis of your current inability to do so, but it;is a common approach. It's more fun to have opinions than do the sums.

Never mind. See you around.

I got wind that Schlick was a neutral monist (I suspected that circle would be so to some degree, given W's proximity), and I found this.

Schlick ( [Wende] p.8 ) interprets Wittgenstein's position as follows: philosophy "is that activity by which the meaning of propositions is established or discovered"; it is a question of "what the propositions actually mean. The content, soul, and spirit of science naturally consist in what is ultimately meant by its sentences; the philosophical activity of rendering significant is thus the alpha and omega of all scientific knowledge"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moritz_Schlick

I feel you, Schlick.

The 'soft' indirect realism of Hobbes and Locke does indeed make senes when applied to the worldly ego. Mach discusses this kind of functional relationship between stones and eyes, ice cream cones and brains. So the stumblingblock to understanding neutral monism (nonduality) is seeing around this still-worldly ego to the 'pure witness' which is confusingly still typically presented as if subjective.

Contrary to the mystically inclined, I take a positivistic, verificationist approach to this issue. I find/offer no cure for life here but only the pleasure of untying an old conceptual knot --- untying it again, grasping an old solution to an old 'problem' which is merely a theoretical tangle, and not a practical problem.

I agree tho with Sartre that 'the spirit of seriousness' (see Existential Psychoanalysis ) will probably make untangling such a knot seem not only impractical but even offensive. Utopians and proselytes will always ignore/resent the metaphor (now we are 'spiritual') that all is הֶבֶל. Such a metaphor manifests an offensive, post-pessimistic 'transcendence.'

If you were to summarize your position in one sentence that was comprehensible to almost anyone, and was not being cheeky, poetic, or obtuse, what would you put forth?

If you were to summarize your position in one sentence that was comprehensible to almost anyone, and was not being cheeky, poetic, or obtuse, what would you put forth? — schopenhauer1

It's hard to beat what Witt did in the TLP, but he is so terse that he didn't get himself understood.

Simple analogy: Multiplayer GoldenEye on the N64. Split-screen first-person shooter. The world (the basement level) exists only on those 'first-person screens' and those 'first-person screens' show only the world, including the empirical egos (the players' hands and guns). We concept mongering humans can 'recurse' and ponder symbols like this within our own little stream, so it gets very weird. But I primarily ask to be understood, not at all minding criticism that can steelman the position.


*****gravy if needed/wanted******

What is called the stream of 'experience' is better thought of as a neutral streaming, for the experiencer (the worldly ego, Brandom's discursive subject, etc.) is part of the 'experience' --- in the stream of the 'experience.' So 'experience' is a misleading word, for it implies that one is still inside somehow, that the world is 'out there' and mediated somehow. Sartre basically says the same thing [quoted below.]

Is this a 'solipsistic' streaming ? No. What is 'experienced' (what just is 'perspectively') is the usual world-in-common. I see the cat from this side of the room, and you from that. We both intend that worldly cat, and the sociality of rationality in general is what glues the cubist painting together.

*******

Sartre devotes a great deal of effort to establishing the impersonal (or “pre-personal”) character of consciousness, which stems from its non-egological structure and results directly from the absence of the I in the transcendental field. According to him, intentional (positional) consciousness typically involves an anonymous and “impersonal” relation to a transcendent object:

When I run after a streetcar, when I look at the time, when I am absorbed in contemplating a portrait, there is no I. […] In fact I am plunged in the world of objects; it is they which constitute the unity of my consciousness; […] but me, I have disappeared; I have annihilated myself. There is no place for me on this level. (Sartre 1936a [1957: 49; 2004: 8])

The tram appears to me in a specific way (as “having-to-be-overtaken”, in this case) that is experienced as its own mode of phenomenalization, and not as a mere relational aspect of its appearing to me. The object presents itself as carrying a set of objective properties that are strictly independent from one’s personal relation to it. The streetcar is experienced as a transcendent object, in a way that obliterates and overrides, so to speak, the subjective features of conscious experience; its “having-to-be-overtaken-ness” does not belong to my subjective experience of the world but to the objective description of the way the world is (see also Sartre 1936a [1957: 56; 2004: 10–11]). When I run after the streetcar, my consciousness is absorbed in the relation to its intentional object, “the streetcar-having-to-be-overtaken”, and there is no trace of the “I” in such lived-experience.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sartre/#TranEgoDiscInte

I believe you have not achieved what I have asked. If anything, that is more obfuscatory. In one sentence, summarize, in laymen's terms, your idea. If I do it for you, I will get it wrong I am sure.

I believe you have not achieved what I have asked. If anything, that is more obfuscatory. In one sentence, summarize, in laymen's terms, your idea. If I do it for you, I will get it wrong I am sure. — schopenhauer1

First person consciousness is the [only] being of the world given perspectively.

So solipsism basically? There is no world outside an experiencer?

I realise I made a careless mistake earlier. It is not consciousness that begins with distinctions but mind. For the advaita view neither mind not distinctions would be fundamental. . — FrancisRay

Is this a response to my having said that distinctions begin with consciousness? You have expressed it here in reverse; that mind (not consciousness) begins with distinctions, and I think that works too since we can say they are co-arising. So, I take it that for you mind is intentional consciousness, and by 'consciousness" you mean satchitananda?

So solipsism basically? — schopenhauer1

No solipsism. Even the opposite in some sense (pure/direct realism). But related to why Wittgenstein cared about solipsism, the problem of 'my' pain and so on.

It's more important to keep the world here than the subject. Does that help ? The 'deep' subject is pure world, but world-from-'perspective.' Note that empirical subjects are in this world, not its very being.

There is no world outside an experiencer? — schopenhauer1

There is no experiencer. Not fundamentally. The one Eiffel tower appears in many beingstreams (worldstreams, interpenetrating becomingstreams...) My own body appears in many beingstreams. But what some of us want to say with 'first person consciousness' (hard problem stuff) is simply the streaming world itself --- but 'gathered around' this or that sentient flesh. Look around the room you are in. That's the world. Not dream but stream. Your face in the mirror. Your thoughts. My thoughts. All worldly entities. Nothing but world. But many streams of this same world . Each stream 'happens to' gather around a body which is itself an entity in the streams of course.

So solipsism basically? There is no world outside an experiencer? — schopenhauer1

I think the nondual view passes through indirect realism (like Kant's). Mach read Kant intensely when young. Wittgenstein studied Schopenhauer. James studied Kant and all kinds of things (highly recommend his famous psychology book if you haven't read it already.)

To me this reads as a word salad comprised of assertions which don't actually assert anything coherent, or an attempt at prose poetry. I guess you must have some sense of what you mean—if only you could explain it clearly.

There is no experiencer. Not fundamentally. The one Eiffel tower appears in many beingstreams (worldstreams, interpenetrating becomingstreams...) My own body appears in many beingstreams. But what some of us want to say with 'first person consciousness' (hard problem stuff) is simply the streaming world itself --- but 'gathered around' this or that sentient flesh. Look around the room you are in. That's the world. Not dream but stream. Your face in the mirror. Your thoughts. My thoughts. All worldly entities. Nothing but world. But many streams of this same world . Each stream 'happens to' gather around a body which is itself an entity in the streams of course. — plaque flag

I'd have to agree with this:

To me this reads as a word salad comprised of assertions which don't actually assert anything coherent or an attempt at prose poetry. I guess you must have some sense of what you mean—if only you could explain it clearly. — Janus

From what I can gather from it is you are advocating for some kind of process philosophy. But I believe you would deny that.

.

From my POV you are just being stupid and/or lazy and/or petty. Any dunce can cry 'word salad.' Boring. — plaque flag

Well to be fair, I was echoing @Janus:wink:.

I like to build from simples (lazy and dunce-like) and go from there. But I enjoy your word salad. As I said, and Janus implied, it is poetic and sometimes poetry is the only way to get at something profound.

I go on sketching a position for others who might be able to follow. While this is my current position, I may of course change my mind, but I'll present it bluntly.

The subject/object distinction should not be taken as ontologically fundamental. Sartre and Heidegger both say something that is at least similar. Existence is [ fundamentally ] being-there becoming-here, not a subject 'processing' an environment, and not the inside of this subject ( e.g. the processed environment). Functional relationships between sensations and sandpaper are not being denied here. The tricky part is differentiating between the empirical ego and what thinkers tend to call the transcendental ego or witness.

The Transcendental Ego (or its equivalent under various other formulations) refers to the self that must underlie all human thought and perception, even though nothing more can be said about it than the fact that it must be there.
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Transcendental_ego

I'm claiming that 'nothing more can be said about it' because it's a [often confused ] synonym for being itself which is not an entity, though the concept of being is.

In Hindu philosophy, Sakshi (Sanskrit: साक्षी), also Sākṣī, "witness," refers to the 'pure awareness' that witnesses the world but does not get affected or involved. Sakshi is beyond time, space and the triad of experiencer, experiencing and experienced; sakshi witnesses all thoughts, words and deeds without interfering with them or being affected by them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakshi_(witness)

Despite the 'witness' metaphor, we see that this witness is beyond time, space and the triad of experiencer, experiencing and experienced. I read this as being, pure and simple. Radically pure and simple. Indeed, empty. The vanishing witness does not witness the world. It is the world. There is no witness.

But the 'witness' metaphor is not crazy talk, for the 'neutral stream' is structured like a motivated subject. One has to climb the ladder of indirect realism until the experiencer is grasped as a mere piece of the experience. But then 'experience' is seen to be a term prejudiced on the side of the subject, one that clings to a hidden Ego, just as a certain kind of Kantian clings to some hidden Matter.

While I primarily approach this in a dry and conceptual way, I expect that people who believe in or at least hope for the immortality of the personal soul will not find this view congenial. Mach is useful here.

In this investigation we must not allow ourselves to be impeded by such abridgments and delimitations as body, ego, matter, spirit, etc., which have been formed for special, practical purposes and with wholly provisional and limited ends in view. On the contrary, the fittest forms of thought must be created in and by that research itself, just as is done in every special science. In place of the traditional, instinctive ways of thought, a freer, fresher view, conforming to developed experience, and reaching out beyond the requirements of practical life, must be substituted throughout.
...
The ego must be given up. It is partly the perception of this fact, partly the fear of it, that has given rise to the many extravagances of pessimism and optimism, and to numerous religious, ascetic, and philosophical absurdities. In the long run we shall not be able to close our eyes to this simple truth, which is the immediate outcome of psychological analysis. We shall then no longer place so high a value upon the ego, which even during the individual life greatly changes, and which, in sleep or during absorption in some idea, just in our very happiest moments, may be partially or wholly absent. We shall then be willing to renounce individual immortality,' and not place more value upon the subsidiary elements than upon the principal ones. In this way we shall arrive at a freer and more enlightened view of life, which will preclude the disregard of other egos and the overestimation of our own. The ethical ideal founded on this view of life will be equally far removed from the ideal of the ascetic, which is not biologically tenable for whoever practises it, and vanishes at once with his disappearance, and from the ideal of an overweening Nietzschean "superman," who cannot, and I hope will not be tolerated by his fellow-men.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/mach.htm

The Transcendental Ego (or its equivalent under various other formulations) refers to the self that must underlie all human thought and perception, even though nothing more can be said about it than the fact that it must be there. — plaque flag

So, what's the difference between saying that about the transcendental subject and saying that the transcendental object must also underlie all perception, even though nothing more can be said about it than the fact it must be there. It would help if you could explain your position clearly in plain words and leave the salad for dessert. So far, it's mud to me, and that is not on account of my laziness or stupidity.

In the previous post, I claimed that the neutral stream (a perspectival perpetual becoming) was structured like a subject. But (crucially) it is not the inside of the subject. It is not even the world for a subject, those this is a rung on the ladder. The only subject to be found it there in the world with everything else. Heidegger is helpful here.

As Dasein, I ineluctably find myself in a world that matters to me in some way or another. This is what Heidegger calls thrownness (Geworfenheit), a having-been-thrown into the world. ‘Disposedness’ is Kisiel's (2002) translation of Befindlichkeit, a term rendered somewhat infelicitously by Macquarrie and Robinson as ‘state-of-mind’. Disposedness is the receptiveness (the just finding things mattering to one) of Dasein, which explains why Richardson (1963) renders Befindlichkeit as ‘already-having-found-oneself-there-ness’.
...
As one might expect, Heidegger argues that moods are not inner subjective colourings laid over an objectively given world (which at root is why ‘state-of-mind’ is a potentially misleading translation of Befindlichkeit, given that this term names the underlying a priori condition for moods). For Heidegger, moods (and disposedness) are aspects of what it means to be in a world at all, not subjective additions to that in-ness. Here it is worth noting that some aspects of our ordinary linguistic usage reflect this anti-subjectivist reading. Thus we talk of being in a mood rather than a mood being in us, and we have no problem making sense of the idea of public moods (e.g., the mood of a crowd). In noting these features of moods we must be careful, however. It would be a mistake to conclude from them that moods are external, rather than internal, states. A mood “comes neither from ‘outside’ nor from ‘inside’, but arises out of Being-in-the-world, as a way of such being” (Being and Time 29: 176).

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/#Car
I think it's worth placing Sartre in this context:

Sartre devotes a great deal of effort to establishing the impersonal (or “pre-personal”) character of consciousness, which stems from its non-egological structure and results directly from the absence of the I in the transcendental field. According to him, intentional (positional) consciousness typically involves an anonymous and “impersonal” relation to a transcendent object:

When I run after a streetcar, when I look at the time, when I am absorbed in contemplating a portrait, there is no I. […] In fact I am plunged in the world of objects; it is they which constitute the unity of my consciousness; […] but me, I have disappeared; I have annihilated myself. There is no place for me on this level. (Sartre 1936a [1957: 49; 2004: 8])

The tram appears to me in a specific way (as “having-to-be-overtaken”, in this case) that is experienced as its own mode of phenomenalization, and not as a mere relational aspect of its appearing to me. The object presents itself as carrying a set of objective properties that are strictly independent from one’s personal relation to it. The streetcar is experienced as a transcendent object, in a way that obliterates and overrides, so to speak, the subjective features of conscious experience; its “having-to-be-overtaken-ness” does not belong to my subjective experience of the world but to the objective description of the way the world is (see also Sartre 1936a [1957: 56; 2004: 10–11]). When I run after the streetcar, my consciousness is absorbed in the relation to its intentional object, “the streetcar-having-to-be-overtaken”, and there is no trace of the “I” in such lived-experience. I do not need to be aware of my intention to take the streetcar, since the object itself appears as having-to-be-overtaken, and the subjective properties of my experience disappear in the intentional relation to the object. They are lived-through without any reference to the experiencing subject (or to the fact that this experience has to be experienced by someone).

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sartre/

When I run after the streetcar, my consciousness is absorbed in the relation to its intentional object, “the streetcar-having-to-be-overtaken”, and there is no trace of the “I” in such lived-experience.

I think Sartre has no choice here but to talk in the usual way to make an unusual point. 'Pure' consciousness is just exactly (for instance) the streetcar-having-to-be-overtaken. As Heidegger puts it in an early lecture, 'it values.' The value 'shines' in the object. In that which is genuinely given, the pretheoretical lifeworld, there is that-beautiful-face-again or the-creepy-guy-from-class.

From I get from it, especially this:

Despite the 'witness' metaphor, we see that this witness is beyond time, space and the triad of experiencer, experiencing and experienced. It's being, pure and simple. Radically pure and simple. Indeed, empty. The vanishing witness does not witness the world. It is the world. There is no witness. — plaque flag

You very much echo Schopenhauer's notion of Will. And if so, I don't see how this is "direct realism", especially if you think there is a "transcendental ego". The minute you indicate that there is some sort of "pure" version of ego (witness), you are indicating that there is a reality that is (truer) beyond what is directly observed. A variation of the Cave, but rather than Forms, it is "true perspective" or something like this.

Now I'll touch on the perspectivism which can't be left out, though my influences usually neglect this aspect. Ontology assumes a shared world/ language and adopts an ethic. Disconnected [ solitary ] streamings therefore make no sense. I'm a discursive subject, an entity in our world, trying to tell a coherent story about it, that gets the old mind-matter thing right or less wrong finally. Or really to simply understand what looks like an old solution, which is easily forgotten and hard to remember in any case.

In short, we all stream the same world from/as different 'places' in it. We 'are' ( as 'witnesses' or 'metaphysical' subjects) the same world, but streamed perspectively. As embodied discursive selves, we live together, discussing the objects that surround us. I see my neighbor take the trash out. I believe that my neighbor is not just flesh but the site of another streaming of the world. The 'witness' (so far as common experience would indicate) is always associated with a sentient organism. To be clear, the witness is 'really' just a perspectival worldstreaming. So the stream includes objects seen from this side of the room or that side, as a function of the associated body. The metaphor 'witness' loses all value beyond this correlation in the stream between the body at the origin of a moving coordinate system and that which surrounds it.

I think part of what we mean by 'sentient' is exactly the existence of such a worldstreaming associated with an organism, 'tied' to it as described above. We 'know' that our friends are 'conscious' (have the world) without being able to be their stream.

Note that there are no 'deep' subjects at all here. There is only one world and various empirical subjects that are somehow 'sites' for the streaming that gives this world all of its being.

Leibniz rubs up against this idea in his work on monads :

And as the same town, looked at from various sides, appears quite different and becomes as it were numerous in aspects [perspectivement]; even so, as a result of the infinite number of simple substances, it is as if there were so many different universes, which, nevertheless are nothing but aspects [perspectives] of a single universe, according to the special point of view of each Monad.

Taking off from Leibniz toward a full-strength perspectivism, we can say that town exists only 'in' or 'for' (or as) such perspectives. There is no town-in-itself, for this would be a story written in no language at all. Yet it's always the same town (our one shared world) which is as if given by a shattered mirror. Is Indra's net helpful here ?

Indra's net (also called Indra's jewels or Indra's pearls, Sanskrit Indrajāla, Chinese: 因陀羅網) is a metaphor used to illustrate the concepts of Śūnyatā (emptiness),[1] pratītyasamutpāda (dependent origination),[2] and interpenetration[3] in Buddhist philosophy.
In East Asian Buddhism, Indra's net is considered as having a multifaceted jewel at each vertex, with each jewel being reflected in all of the other jewels.[4] In the Huayan school of Chinese Buddhism, which follows the Buddhāvataṃsaka Sūtra, the image of "Indra's net" is used to describe the interconnectedness or "perfect interfusion" (yuánróng, 圓融) of all phenomena in the universe.
....
The metaphor of Indra's net of jewels plays an essential role in the metaphysics of the Chinese Buddhist Huayan school,[10] where it is used to describe the interpenetration or "perfect interfusion" (Chinese: yuánróng, 圓融) of microcosmos and macrocosmos, as well as the interfusion of all dharmas (phenomena) in the entire universe.[5] According to Bryan Van Norden, in the Huayan tradition, Indra's net is "adopted as a metaphor for the manner in which each thing that exists is dependent for both its existence and its identity upon every other thing that exists."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indra%27s_net
...
The other is most radically another stream, not [only] 'in' the world but [more of ] the very being of the world. Flesh is the avatar not of soul but somehow the moving center of a world-becoming.

I'm adding some stuff from James that goes with the stream metaphor. Note his emphasis on the radical separation of streams. This separation is what makes the idea of ESP or mindmelding so interesting, for that'd be the dissolution of individuality in a stronger sense than is typical in the assimilation of culture.

I can only define 'continuous' as that which is without breach, crack, or division. I have already said that the breach from one mind to another is perhaps the greatest breach in nature. The only breaches that can well be conceived to occur within the limits of a single mind would either be interruptions, time-gaps during which the consciousness went out altogether to come into existence again at a later moment; or they would be breaks in the quality, or content, of the thought, so abrupt that the segment that followed had no connection whatever with the one that went before. The proposition that within each personal consciousness thought feels continuous, means two things:

1. That even where there is a time-gap the consciousness after it feels as if it belonged together with the consciousness before it, as another part of the same self;

2. That the changes from one moment to another in the quality of the consciousness are never absolutely abrupt.
...
Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as 'chain' or 'train' do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life.
...
The traditional psychology talks like one who should say a river consists of nothing but pailsful, spoonsful, quartpotsful, barrelsful, and other moulded forms of water. Even were the pails and the pots all actually standing in the stream, still between them the free water would continue to flow. It is just this free water of consciousness that psychologists resolutely overlook. Every definite image in the mind is steeped and dyed in the free water that flows round it. With it goes the sense of its relations, near and remote, the dying echo of whence it came to us, the dawning sense of whither it is to lead. The significance, the value, of the image is all in this halo or penumbra that surrounds and escorts it,—or rather that is fused into one with it and has become bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh; leaving it, it is true, an image of the same thing it was before, but making it an image of that thing newly taken and freshly understood. — James

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/57628/57628-h/57628-h.htm#Page_6