CHAPTER II

Feeling-Awarenesses

and the World as Important

Feelings, as I pointed out in the introduction to Part 1, are concretely experienced as sensuous feelings (feeling-sensations and feeling-tonalities) conjoined with feeling-awarenesses of importances. In this chapter, the feeling-awarenesses and importances are considered by themselves, with a view to understanding their general nature and their principal mundane types. In the following chapter, the major types of global feeling-awarenesses and importances are examined.

My general aim in the first three sections (II. 11-13) is to show that every awareness is a feeling-awareness, and that every feeling-awareness is an awareness of an importance. The intention is to establish the falsity of the traditional dichotomization of humans into feeling/nonfeeling aspects, and the world into important/neutral aspects.

In the fourth and final section (11.14), I will uncover the origin of the feeling/nonfeeling and importance/neutral dichotomies in a degeneration of concentrating feelings. At the basis of these dichotomies is the degenerated feelings’ misinterpretation of themselves as disinterested acts of reasoning, and misinterpretation of the world as a whole of causal and teleological reasons and consequences.

The outcome of these four sections shall be that the nature of human beings is appreciation, not reason, and that the world is a whole of importances, not of causal and teleological reasons and consequences.

II. 11. The Feeling-Awarenesses of Importances, and Their Distinction from the “Feeling of Values”

My descriptions in the last section of Chapter 1 enable me to offer a preliminary characterization of the feeling-awareness of importance. Every sensuous feeling is accompanied by a feeling-awareness, and the feeling-awareness is an awareness of an importance that is the source of the sensuous feeling. The importance is directly the source of the tonal feeling-flow, and thus indirectly of the sensational feeling-flow, which is flowingly connected with the tonal-flow. Briefly put, then, a feeling-awareness of an importance is an awareness of a source of a sensuous feeling-flow.

However, an importance is not the feature that something has of being a source of a feeling-flow. Rather, an importance is apprehended to be the concrete something that has this feature. For example, a child is not felt to be important in that he is the source of an affectionate and caring feeling-flow; instead, he is the source of such an affectionate feeling- flow as a result of his importance, his importance as a child.

An importance, then, can be provisionally characterized as whatever has the feature of being a feeling-flow source.[1] But each and every thing of which we are aware is the source of a feeling-flow, and thus every thing that appears to us appears as an importance. There is nothing that appears to us as being absolutely unimportant and neutral. This can best be shown through examining only the cases in which we would normally say that we feel “indifferent” to something, or that something is “unimportant” and “neutral.”

I feel “indifferent” to a particular thing if I apprehend it as lacking some kind of importance that “makes a difference” to me. Inasmuch as the thing lacks this kind of importance, it is unimportant. But it is not absolutely unimportant, only relatively so. It is relatively unimportant in that it lacks the kind of importance that “makes a difference” to me, but it has some other kind of importance. For example, it has at least the importance of being noteworthy, of being worthy of notice and attention. For if it were not noteworthy, I would not even bother to direct my attention towards it or to engage in grasping what it is that is thrust before my awareness. I find it to be noteworthy in that it is worthy of being apprehended and examined to see if it has a further kind of importance that “makes a difference” to me.

If the word “noteworthy” is used in a suitably broad sense, then it can be said that everything we apprehend is noteworthy; the noteworthiness of something is that whereby it attracts and holds our attention.

It is within the framework of this basic noteworthiness that things can appear relatively unimportant and neutral. The feeling of indifference that is experienced in regard to these relatively unimportant things is a feeling of relative indifference; the thing is felt to “not make a difference” to me in respect of its nonpossession of a certain kind of importance, but it is felt to “make a difference” in that it is worthy of being noticed and examined in respect of its possession or nonpossession of the kind of importance that especially concerns me Such relatively unimportant things then, are at least a source of a type of interested feeling-flow, wherein I feel attentionally attracted to the thing. It is true, however, that this feeling of attracted interest is often very weak and is accompanied by a

stronger feeling of indifference to the thing in respect of its nonpossession of the kind of importance for which I am looking.

Similar considerations arise in regard to the global feelings which we may express by such phrases as “everything is devoid of importance” and “nothing matters at all.” In a feeling of profound boredom and world- weariness, I may be tempted to articulate what I feel with the phrases: “The world matters to me not one whit. All that happens within it is without any importance whatsoever. The world is a monotonous and undifferentiated mass of existences that is incapable of inspiring me to act or respond in any way.” However, I am not aware of the world as absolutely neutral; rather, I feel its global monotonousness and dullness to be the way in which the world is important to me. The world is felt to have a negative and dislikeable importance in that it is monotonous and undifferentiated. My boredom is a feeling of appreciating, or better, of “depreciating,” the world for having this negative importance.

A metaphysician of rational meaninglessness may express a feeling of global despair in the following words: “There is no knowable God or absolute goodness; therefore, nothing can be really important. It is all but a play of meaningless events.” However, an interpretation of these phrases as signifying that the world is absolutely unimportant would be incompatible with what intuitively appears in the despairing affect. This despair is an intuitive feeling that everything is really pointless, empty, and worthy of despair, and it is this global importance of pointlessness and emptiness that is apprehended as the source of the despairing feeling-flow. From this global pointlessness there emanates a hopelessly-sunken-to-the- bottom tonal-flow that permeates everything.

It is possible to distinguish a feeling of global indifference from that of boredom, the former being truly “indifferent” and lacking even the negativist and depreciatory attitude of boredom. In global indifference, I feel indifferent to the world as a whole in that it does not have the kind of importance that “makes a difference” to me. I already pointed out that this feeling is accompanied by a feeling of minimal interest in that towards which I am indifferent; the world is felt to be at least noteworthy with regard to its lack of the kind of importance that “makes a difference.” But the feeling of indifference itself involves a feeling-flow that has a source in an importance of the world, viz., the privative importance of lacking the kind of importance that makes a difference. The world’s privative character is the source of a basically directionless feeling-flow that is static, lifeless and inert, but that has a slight downward orientation; it hangs down from things lifelessly. It is manifest that this global privation of what “makes a difference” is an importance, for otherwise I would not respond to the world by feeling this inertial indifference towards it. I would not respond at all—the world would not even provoke a feeling of indifference.

In the above, I have considered the mundane feeling of indifference and three global feelings that may be expressed by phrases that seem to, but do not really, imply that the world is absolutely unimportant. All of these feelings are focal and attentional feeling-awarenesses. What of our horizonal and marginal awarenesses, and of the things that appear to us in these awarenesses? Are not these things, which are not even worthy of attention, absolutely unimportant?

First of all, it should be observed that although these things are not attentionally noteworthy, they are nevertheless marginally noteworthy. I would not apprehend them and tacitly “pick them out” on the fringe of my awareness if they were absolutely devoid of noteworthiness.

Horizonaily apprehended things, moreover, are felt to have importances above and beyond their marginal noteworthiness. In moods, there is a horizonal awareness of everything as being important in some way; in an anxious mood, for instance, there is a horizonal and diffused aware ness of everything as being vaguely ominous and threatening.

Even in affective reactions, when my attention is riveted on one thing, there is a background awareness of other things as being important. In fearing a dangerous drunk who is advancing towards me with a knife, I horizonally apprehend other things as having the importance of being the setting or scene of the dangerous event; the ground is important as the- ground-over-which-the-dangerous-drunk-is-advancing-towards-me, the sky is important as the-sky-under-which-the-danger-is-occurring, etc.

The above descriptions of some of the ways in which things appear to be important serve to illustrate the thesis that each thing of which we are aware is apprehended in a feeling-awareness as being important. This thesis can be interpreted in a weak or strong sense. Interpreted in the weak sense, it would mean: “Each appearing thing is important in that, among its various appearing features, there is at least one feature that constitutes the way in which the thing is important.” In a strong sense, it would mean: “Each appearing thing is important in that each and every one of its appearing features is a way in which the thing is important.”

An examination of how things appear to us shows that the correct interpretation is the strong one. Consider that I would not notice any feature of a thing unless that feature represented some respect in which the thing was noteworthy. The pencil with which I am writing is note worthy in respect of its features that are pertinent to my usage of it; it is easy to hold and manipulate, it is able to trace letters clearly, etc.

But noteworthy features of things are not the only ways in which things appear to be important. In a mood of irritability, to take another instance, each thing in respect of each of its appearing features is felt to be annoying, oppressive, and to grate on my nerves. Things appear to be annoying in that they are in my way or out of my way, in that they are too talkative or too untalkative, too bright or too dim, uncomfortably hard or uncomfortably soft, etc.

In a loving affective response to another person, the loveworthy per son is not felt to have some important features and other neutral features; rather, each feature of the person I apprehend in my loving-awareness appears to be a way in which the person is loveworthy, e.g., the person’s kind behavior, intelligent remarks, the sensitive look in her eyes, her win some smile, etc. And the features of other things I horizonally apprehend are felt to be ways in which these things contribute to the setting or situation of the loveworthy person, and to be important in this respect; e.g., the bright light of the room is a way in which this room is important as her situation in that it illuminates her beautiful face.

Other examples could be given of the ways in which appearing features of things are importances,[2] but further understanding of the strong interpretation of my thesis can best be achieved by contrasting it with another theory, the theory of the “feeling of values” that was developed by the philosophers in the twentieth-century British school of ethical intuitionism (Moore, Prichard, Ross, Raphael, Broad, Ewing, Laird, et al.), and by the thinkers in the twentieth-century Geman-Austrian school of ethical intuitionism (Meinong, Scheler, Husserl, Hartmann, Hessen, Reiner, Von Hildebrand, et al. — a school, however, that was founded in the nineteenth century by Brentano). The “feeling of values” was conceived in different ways by the thinkers in these two schools, and accordingly I shall contrast their conceptions separately with my concept of the feeling-awareness of importances.

G. E. Moore and Scheler are considered to be the leading represen tatives of the British and Geman-Austrian schools of ethical intuitionism. Moore’s conception of the “feeling of values” was developed in his Principia Ethica (1903), Ethics (1912), and in several articles.[3] He argues that certain things, primarily people’s emotional attitudes towards natural and artistic objects, and towards other people, are bearers of a nonnatural and nonsensible property of being good or evil. A person’s attitude toward something is good in the sense that his attitude ought to exist, and his attitude is evil in the sense that it ought not to exist.[4] These value-properties of people’s attitudes are intuited in feelings of approval or disapproval; when “we approve of a thing” we are “feeling that it has a certain predicate—the predicate, namely, which defines the peculiar sphere of Ethics [this predicate being the predicate good].”[5]

I believe Moore is in some sense right in belie that we experience feelings in which we approve or disapprove of something as being good or evil, although the specifics of his ethical theory need not be accepted. The notions of good and evil will be examined more fully in Section 14 of this chapter; here I wish to point out that the connection between the feelings of approving/disapproving of good/evil things and the feeling awarenesses of importances is that the former are one type of the latter. Being good or evil are features of things which represent some of the ways in which some things are important. The feeling-of-importance has a far wider range than the feelings of what ought to be or ought not to be. For example, I can feel the world as a whole to be important in that it is mysterious, but it is not the case that the world-whole ought or ought not to be mysterious. And I can fearfully apprehend a threatening hur ricane, without feeling the hurricane to be morally evil in that it is threatening me. And a person can be admired for being talented or noble of birth without it being the case that he ought to be talented or noble of birth. The good and the evil relate to persons, and do not include the ways in which nonpersonal things are important or the ways in which people are nonethically important.

The theory of the “feeling of values” developed by Scheler is considerably different than Moore’s. In his The Essence and Forms of Sympathy, Ressentiment, Formalism in Ethics and the Material Ethics of Value, “Ordo Amoris,” On the Eternal in Man, and other works written in his middle period (1912-2 1), Scheler developed the theory of an emotional intuition of value-facts (Werttatsachen).[6] These value-facts, unlike Moore’s positive and negative values (the good and the evil), are not properties that constitute the “ought to exist” or “ought not to exist” of something, but are facts, like physical, psychological, or mathematical facts. Just as a star, a red color, or an act of willing are facts, so the beautiful, the noble, the holy, and the just are facts.[7] Propositions about values are ontological propositions that assert what is the case, not normative propositions that assert what ought to be the case.[8] Value-facts, however, are facts of a unique sort; they are notthingly properties of things, but value-properties of things of value (Wertdinge) and complexes (Sachen).[9] Moreover, they bear a distinctive connection to the ought-to-be and the ought-not-to-be: positive values ought-to-be and negative values ought-not-to-be, and a higher positive value ought to be preferred to a lower positive value, and other normative relations such as the foregoing hold.[10] These value-facts are intuited in feeling-functions, in acts of preferring (Vorziehen) and placing-after after (Nachsetzen), and in acts of love and hate.[11]

Can we say that these emotional intuitions of value-facts are one type of the feeling-awarenesses of importances, as we said in regard to Moore’s feelings of approving and disapproving? The answer must be negative; I believe there are no such phenomena as value-facts or the emotional in tuitions in which they appear. I shall argue this in regard to two examples.

According to Scheler, if I am enchanted with a sunset, this is because I am intuiting the value-fact of “beauty” that belongs to the sunset. This value-fact is a nonsensuous property of the sunset, something distinct from its sensuous colors. But is this really what I am intuiting? Is the beauty that enchants me really an unseen property of the sunset? Am I not en chanted with the visually seen colors, the brilliant stripes and patterns of red, orange, and yellow that extend throughout the blue sky? I am en chanted with something I am looking at and seeing through my eyes, not something I am nonsensuously intuiting. The beauty at which I am looking is not something different from the glowing colors of the sunset that extend through the blue sky. Rather, it is they. There is no distinction here between neutral and sensuous features of the sunset (its colors) and a nonsensuous value-property of beauty. If we are to speak of a nonsensuous beauty in connection with the sunset, we must refer to the universal concept of “Beauty” of which the sunset is an instance. The colorful sunset is a beauty, an instance of the universal, “Beauty,” but whereas the universal is nonsensuous, this instance is something visually sensed. Other instances of “Beauty,” e.g., the intellectual beauty of formally correct and symmetrical mathematical equations, may be nonsensuous and be apprehended in a nonsensuous awareness, but the present instance of beauty is a sensuous instance. The beauty, then, in the present instance, is not one feature of the sunset among many other neutrally appearing features; rather, all the features I visually apprehend are constituents of this beauty.

In the case of other kinds of supposed value-facts, such as the moral value-fact of cruelty, the analysis is different. For Scheler, in being out raged at a person’s cruel action, I am intuiting a value-fact of cruelty that attaches to the person’s action. This value-fact of cruelty is neither the action itself nor a normative phenomenon comprising the ought-not-to be-done of the action; it is a third thing, distinct from the action and the it is an indefinable and simple value-quality that appears in the outraged intuition.

However, I believe that no such value-fact of cruelty appears. In my outraged intuition, I am intuitively apprehending two distinguishable aspects, the person’s action and the action’s attribute or feature of ought- not-to-be-done. The action or behavior of the person is to be understood in the wide sense as the complex consisting of the person’s deliberate, needless, and enjoyable infliction of pain upon another person; in apprehending this complex, I intuitively realize that it ought not to be done. This action qua ought-not-to-be-done is the concrete phenomenon of cruelty. There is no third phenomenal aspect here, a simple and indefinable value-quality of “cruelty” that is distinguishable from both the action and its feature of ought-not-be-done It is not as if there were several neutral aspects or features appearing to me and one value-fact of cruelty; all the features of the person’s behavior that are apprehended in my outraged intuition are constitutive aspects of an importance of cruelty, viz., all the features of his action including the ought-not-to of this action.

Despite the differences between Scheler’s and Moore’s theories of the “feeling of values,” they share a common presupposition to the effect that the world is divided into value components and neutral components, and that it belongs to the “feeling of values” to apprehend the value components of the world and to the other modes of awareness, such as sense-perception or thinking, to apprehend the neutral components. This dichotomizing of the world into value/neutral components and of human beings into feeling/nonfeeling aspects belongs to the traditional rationalistic assumption that human nature divides into a higher rational faculty and lower irrational faculties, one of which is feeling, whose function is to serve reason. This presupposition is only partly overcome if, with Scheler, one reverses the traditional evaluation of reason as the highest faculty and feeling as a lower faculty, and asserts that feeling is really the superior or predominant element in man. To say with Scheler that feeling or love is the primary aspect of man, so that man “is an ens amans before he is an ens cogitans or an ens volens,”[12] is still to remain within this dichotomization. One must, rather, overcome this dichotomization altogether and recognize that all of our modes of awareness are feeling-awarenesses and that everything we apprehend in the world is an importance.

An elucidation of this unitary nature of man and the world will be further developed in the ensuing sections, but first I would like to state how my usage of the word “importance” differs from the technical usage of it by two other philosophers, Alfred N. Whitehead and Von Hildebrand. These two thinkers use the word “importance” in a dichotomizing man- net that is somewhat similar to Moore’s and Scheler’s usuage of the term “value.”

In chapter 1 of Modes of Thought (1938), Whitehead argues that the concrete world consists of factual phenomena of nature, which are studied by the physical sciences, and the importances of these facts, these importances being grouped under the headings of “morality, logic, religion, art.”[13] In contrast to this usage of the word “importance,” I use it to refer to every phenomenon in the world, those of physical nature as well as the phenomena of morality, logic, art, etc.

Von Hildebrand’s usage of this word is similarly dichotomizing. Although Von Hildebrand’s ethics was influenced by Scheler’s, he did not adopt Scheler’s conception of values as value-facts, but conceived values, the importances-in-themselves, to be properties of things which characterized them as things that ought to be. In chapter 3 of his Ethics he writes:

…let us suppose that we witness a generous action, a man’s forgiveness of a grave injury. This again strikes us as distinguishable from the neutral activity of a man dressing himself or lighting a cigarette. Indeed, the act of generous forgiveness shines forth with the mark of importance, with the mark of something noble and precious. It moves us and engenders our admiration. We are not only aware that this act occurs, but that it is better that it occurs, better that the man acted in this way rather than in another. We are conscious that this act is something which ought to be, something important.[14]

I can agree with Von Hildebrand that an act which ought to be is something important, but I must allow (as I did with Moore) that it is only one of the numerous ways in which things can be important. For example, if a man is observed to be lighting a cigarette—to take Von Hildebrand’s own example—he appears to me to be important at least in that he is engaging in a noteworthy action. It is true that Von Hildebrand distinguishes two other types of importance, the subjectively satisfying and the objective good for a person, and he asserts that every being has a property of being important, but he nevertheless distinguishes these importance- properties of things from their neutral properties. He states, for instance, that material things have a dignity qua material things, but like Whitehead he distinguishes such properties from the supposedly neutral properties of weight and extension.[15]

By way of concluding this section, I shall briefly indicate that some form of the feeling/nonfeeling and importance/neutral dichotomies is retained even by the existentialists, despite their rejection of many of the traditional dichotomies. For example, they appear in Heidegger’s idea that ways of “mattering” are only some of the determinations that can be possessed by beings within the world—to be distinguished, for instance, from such present-at-hand determinations as extension—and in his distinction of moods or Befindlichkeit from understanding and discourse. Sartre distinguishes the magical categories revealed in emotional consciousness from the rational-instrumental categories disclosed in rational consciousness. Nevertheless, Sartre and especially Heidegger should be credited with the express recognition that felt meanings, magical categories and ways of “mattering,” are not essentially ethical or axiological phenomena.[16]

II. 12. The Language of Importances

In the last section I elucidated in a general way the thesis that all awarenesses are feeling-awarenesses and that all apparent things in respect of all their apparent features are importances. This thesis can be substantiated in a more specific way if the particular types of awarenesses and things ordinarily distinguished from feeling-awarenesses and felt things, e.g., perceiving and perceived things, thinkings and thought-about things, are shown to be types of feeling-awarenesses and felt things. But it is not possible to comprehend how these phenomena can be described as feelings and importances unless one has achieved an appropriate understanding of the language that is used in these descriptions. These descriptions must be preceded by an elucidation of language in its nature as a language of felt importances.

Words are not neutral entities, but importances, and their way of being important is to elicit appreciations of importances other than themselves. The importance of words is appreciated when this importance elicits a feeling-awareness of the important state of affairs for which the words are words. The sentence, “the sun is shining,” is appreciated in its linguistic importance when it elicits an appreciation of the important state of affairs of the sun’s shining. This is the signifying importance of words, although they also possess importances relative to their sonority and rhythms, which are especially appreciated in poetry reading.

There is one facet of this signifying importance of words that is especially pertinent to the words I shall be using in describing the specific types of feeling-awarenesses and apprehended importances in the following sections. Words can be used to elicit importance-appreciations in a manner that varies between the two extremes of evocativeness, suggestiveness, and intimativeness on the one hand, and exactness and explicitness on the other. This distinction was touched upon in the fifth section of the Introduction in connection with the appreciative levels of metaphysical knowing, but it can be discussed in a more general way here. It can be noted that some words are typically or frequently used to elicit importance- appreciations in a predominantly evocative and suggestive manner, and other words are typically used to elicit importance-appreciations in a manner that is more exact and explicit. Many words used in metaphorical ways, as well as words used literally, such as “bad,” “beautiful,” “dangerous,” “astounding,” “immense,” “mysterious,” etc., are often used in an evocative manner, whereas words in their literal employment like “blue,” “1,000 feet long,” “elliptical,” “predicate,” “subtract,” “saucer,” “two-legged,” etc., are usually used to elicit importance-appreciations that are more precise and explicit.

Now the point I wish to make about these two roughly distinguish able classes of words is that their members can be and often are used to elicit appreciations of the very same things, but are used to do so with different degrees of evocativeness and exactness. In these cases, evocative words are not used to refer to different features of these things than the exact words are used to refer to, but are used to refer in a more vague and evocative way to the same features. Three examples will illustrate these complementary manners of eliciting importance-appreciations.

While standing in an open doorway, I can exclaim, “It is a beautiful day today!” The linguistic importance this sentence is intended to have in this particular situation and context, and through being uttered in an enthusiastic and enchanted tone of voice, is to evocatively make manifest to the listeners the important state of affairs, the beautiful day, as it appears to my enchanted intuitive feeling. Another person may agree with me that the day is beautiful, and articulate this important state of affairs in a more explicit and exact way: “Yes, you are right! The sun is shining in a cloudless blue sky, and a warm breeze is blowing.” In this situation and context, the sentences “It is a beautiful day today!” and “The sun is shining, etc.,” are not understood as referring to different things or to different features of the same thing. They are both understood as refer ring to the day, and to the same features of the day. The term, “beautiful,” is not used to refer to some value-property of the day that is different and other than the day’s neutral and factual properties of being warm, breezy, cloudless, and sunny. Rather, the day’s being “beautiful” is here understood to mean that the day has the features of being warm, sunny, etc. But it is understood to mean these features in an evocative and suggestive way, and to elicit an appreciation of these features as they appear in a holistic and vague way to an enchanted intuitive feeling. The second sentence, “The sun is shining, etc.,” is understood to be different than the first in that it is intended to elicit an appreciation of these features as they appear in a manner that is more precisely and explicitly differentiating. The difference lies not in the things and features referred to, but in the way of referring to them.

This can be illustrated by another example. In a certain situation, I can say, “Compared with distances between places on the earth, the distance of the earth to the moon is immense!” Here I intend to evoke in the listener an appreciation of this distance as it appears in a relatively vague but awestruck awareness. I may continue and describe this distance in a more exact and less evocative manner: “The distance from the earth to the moon is not like that between New York and Paris, but is more than fifty times such distances.” In the present context, the second sentence is not meant to describe a different distance than the first sentence, but the very same distance. The second sentence differs from the first in that it describes more exactly the nature of the distance (“it is more than fifty times…“) instead of indefinitely and evocatively suggesting it (“it is immense”).

For our final example, we can observe that in a certain context the sentence, “The nation is still in chains,” may be used as a suggestive and evocative way of saying what can be said more precisely and explicitly in the sentence beginning with “The nation is still being despotically ruled by a dictator, who is oppressing the citizens in the following ways... “In chains” is here intended to be a metaphorical evocation of the same state of affairs the latter sentence describes in a literal and detailed manner.

In certain cases, the same words that are used in an evocative way in one context can be used in an exact way in another context, arid vice versa. A word like “downcast” when used to describe a person is frequently used inexactly and suggestively, e.g., it suggests that a person has depressed feelings, a bowed head, is morose and sullen, has certain pessimistic beliefs, etc. But when used to describe the feeling-flow of sadness, it is used to describe exactly a direction in which the sad feeling-sensation and feeling- tonality flows.

The example of feeling-flows also manifests the fact that metaphors in some cases can function as exact linguistic articulations of things, and are not always replaceable by more exact literal articulations. Indeed, in regard to feeling-flows there are no literal articulations; there are only more or less exact metaphorical articulations.

Exact and explicit articulations of some phenomena often seem vague and inexact relative to the exact and explicit articulations of other phenomena. This is due to some phenomena having a less complex, structurally articulated, and exactly determinate nature than other phenomena. Exact descriptions of feeling-flows seem vague relative to exact descriptions of automobiles, for feeling-flows have but a manner and direction of flowing, whereas automobiles have a manifold of parts each of which is classifiable, its size and shape determinable, its function specifiable, etc.

This discussion of the exact and evocative ways of linguistically articulating importances enables the provisional characterization of importances offered in the last section to be expanded upon. I there said that an importance is whatever is a source of a feeling-flow. To this characteristic there can be added the second characteristic of being evocatively and exactly describable. Something is an importance if it is a source of a feeling- flow and if there are possible evocative and exact descriptions of it. Since I am maintaining that every phenomenon is an importance, this means that every phenomenon is describable in both evocative and exact ways.

It is pertinent at this juncture to raise some questions concerning the linguistic coherency and informativeness of my claim that “every phenomenon is an importance” and has the two characteristics of being a flow-source and being evocatively and exactly describable. For does not this claim (and the associated claim that every awareness is a “feeling” in the sense of a feeling-awareness) involve using the words “importance” and “feeling” in ways that violate ordinary usage? Words like “importance” and “feeling” are normally used in a restricted sense, to refer to only some phenomena and some awarenesses. In being used in an extra-ordinary and unrestricted way, do not these words lose whatever sense they ordinarily have, and thereby become senseless? And if they are able to be given any sense at all, must not this be through making them synonyms of words that are ordinarily used in a similarly unrestricted sense, words like “phenomenon” and “awareness”? And in this case, would not my thesis that “every phenomenon is an importance” and “every awareness a feeling” become an uninformative tautology that does no more than pointlessly require us to learn new uses of “importance” and “feeling”?

Two things need to be considered here: the first is whether violation of ordinary usage leads to nonsensical verbiage, and the second is whether the only possible sense I can give to “importance” and “feeling” in my extra-ordinary usage of them makes the thesis I am propounding uninformative and pointless.

The usage of words in any given culture is in large part an expression of the underlying spiritual-historical attitudes of that culture. Most cultures hitherto and at present are dominated by the spiritual-historical attitudes characteristic of the epochs of rational meaning or meaningless ness. The usage of words in our culture in particular is largely an expression of rational-spiritual attitudes.

If this is the case, then it cannot be, as some ordinary language philosophers claim, that metaphysical problems and attitudes arise only if language is used in an extra-ordinary way. To assume that the only coherent attitude to the world is the one embodied in the ordinary language of some culture is not to eschew metaphysics but to promote one kind of metaphysics, usually a rational metaphysics. This assumption can be shown to be false by actually using words in an extra-ordinary way (particularly in a way not expressive of a rational-spiritual attitude) and by finding in such usage that the words do make sense and are capable of making manifest the world. A precondition of finding that words used in this way do make sense is that there be an understandable transition from the ordinary usage to the extra-ordinary usage. This transition can be of several types, one of which I will illustrate in the following in regard to the extra-ordinary usage of the word “importance.”

In saying that something important is a source of sensuous feeling and is describable in evocative language, I am keeping within the limits of the ordinary usage of this term. I am departing from ordinary usage in two respects, one of them being in the range of application I give to this term, extending it from some phenomena to all phenomena. The transition from the application of it to some phenomena to the application of it to all phenomena is made by showing that the relevant characteristics which belong to the phenomena in the restricted range—the characteristics of being a source of sensuous feeling and of being evocatively describable—also belong to all other phenomena. This “showing” is achieved by actually describing the phenomena in the unrestricted range in evocative language and by linguistically articulating them as sources of sensuous feelings. Through finding that these linguistic articulations do in fact refer to discoverable characteristics of these phenomena, we learn that the extended usage of the term “importance” does make sense and is justified in that it conveys a knowledge of the world that is otherwise unconveyable.

The second departure from ordinary usage lies in extending the connection between “importances” and “exact describability.” In ordinary usage, some but not all “importances” (in the sense of evocatively describable sources of sensuous feeling) are regarded as exactly describable, and some but not all exact descriptions are regarded as ways of making explicit “importances.”[17] My extended use of “importance” to refer to whatever is exactly describable is justifiable through showing that all evocatively describable sources of sensuous feeling are also exactly describable, and that exact descriptions of all kinds are ways of making explicit evocatively describable sources of sensuous feeling. This “showing” is accomplished by exactly describing each evocatively describable source of sensuous feeling, by describing evocatively and as a source of sensuous feeling each thing that is exactly describable, and through discovering that there are referents of these descriptions.

That every awareness is a “feeling” in the sense of a feeling-awareness can be shown correlatively, by describing each awareness as an awareness of “importances” in the above sense.

By extending the usage of the words “importance” and “feeling” in these ways, I am not making them synonyms of words that in ordinary language have a similarly unrestricted range of application, viz., “phenomenon” and “awareness.” For “phenomenon” is used (at least in one of its ordinary senses)[18] to refer to an appearance or something that appears, and “importance” in my extended usage means something more than this, that an appearance or something that appears also is a source of a feeling-flow and is describable in evocative and exact language. “Feeling” in the sense of feeling-awareness correspondingly means something more than “awareness,” for it adds to the latter notion the idea that the awareness is of something that is a source of a feeling-flow and is evocatively and exactly describable. Thus the alteration in the usage of these terms is an informative alteration; it enables us to understand that certain things possess certain characteristics that on the basis of our ordinary linguistic habits we do not assume them to possess.

The above remarks imply that the ordinary usage of these terms to refer to a restricted range of phenomena and awarenesses embodies an erroneous world-view, the view that some phenomena are not importances and that some awarenesses are not feeling-awarenesses. It will be demonstrated in Section 14 of this chapter that this erroneous dichotomization of the world into important/neutral phenomena, and of human nature into feeling-awarenesses and other kinds, has its roots in a rational-spiritual perspective on reality.

In the first section of this chapter I endeavored to justify my extended usage of the term “importance” and “feeling” by veridically describing as importances and feeling-awarenesses selected examples of things that are ordinarily not called “importances” and “feelings.” In the following section, I will justify this usage in a more systematic way, by veridically describing as importances and feeling-awarenesses some of the major types of things that are customarily distinguished from importances and feeling awarenesses. The discussion of the evocative and exact “language of importances” in the present section has prepared us for this task, for we shall find that the types of things customarily distinguished from importances and feeling-awarenesses are importances and feeling-awarenesses that have been mistakenly identified with their nature as it is describable solely in an exact and explicit language.

II. 13. Perceiving and Thinking as Feeling-Awarenesses, and Perceived and Thought-About Things as Importances

Human beings can be evocatively described as appreciative world-parts, and the world as a whole of importances. More exactly described, humans are world-parts that are appreciative in different modes of appreciation; they perceive, think, imagine, will, etc. And the world is more exactly described as a whole composed of importances that are perceptible, thinkable, imaginable, etc. It is in this fashion that feeling (appreciation) and importance can be said to constitute the nature of humans and the world.

This view conflicts with the traditional view that feeling and felt phenomena constitute only a part of man and the world, and that the above-mentioned phenomena of perception, thought, imagination, etc., are not phenomena of feeling. In this section I will illustrate the manner in which this traditional view can be shown to be false by a description of the phenomena of perception and thought as feeling-awarenesses and importances.

II. 13. i. Perceiving as a Feeling-Awareness, and Perceived Things as Importances

Taken in its broadest scope, what we apprehend through our senses is a holistic and unitary impression of our surrounding environment, an impression describable in such phrases as “It is a beautiful day,” “The forest is gloomy,” and “This room is filthy.” These phenomena of beautifulness, gloominess, filthiness, etc., can be called panoramic hues of our environment; they are the ways in which our surroundings perceptually appear to be important as a whole. These vague and unitary impressions of the environment appear articulated into this and that hued region and into this and that hued thing within a region. Within the filthy room there appears the cluttered floor, the smudgy walls, and on the cluttered floor I see a greasy plate, a crumpled rag, and a broken and dusty bottle. The greasy plate is implicitly seen to be round in shape, to be white in color with brown streaks on it, and to be about ten inches in diameter.

It is only the last-mentioned phenomena, the shape, color, and size of the plate, that would be described as perceived phenomena in the traditional theories of perception, and the various hues, filthiness, clutteredness, and greasiness, would be ignored or not recognized. However, what we perceive are in the first instance hued phenomena, and the colors, shapes, and sizes implicitly appear as the exactly determinable forms of these hues. “Being white with four brown streaks across it” is an exact way of describing an aspect of the plate’s hue of greasiness.

Consider in addition the experience of hearing. Is this a sensing of neutral sense-qualities, or an apprehending of a neutral material thing that emits these sense-qualities? In no case is it such; rather, I hear the eerie creaking of the gate, the lovely singing of the birds, the mournful droning of the foghorn. I hear important things, and their emitted sounds are the ways in which they appear to be important. The auditory hue of eeriness can be exactly analysed into a certain pitch, timbre, and intensity, but these exactly determinable characteristics are not what explicitly appear to me and what I notice when I hear the gate. Implicit in this eeriness are these precisely determinable structural articulations, but what is explicitly manifest is the unitary and holistic impression of eeriness that is formed by these different structural aspects.

When I am trying on a new pair of tight-fitting shoes, I feel the shoes to be uncomfortable; I do not feel a certain degree of pressure and hardness located at such and such places on my feet, although these phenomena implicitly appear as the exact structural constitution of the tactile hue of uncomfortableness.

And so it is with the other modes of perceiving and perceived things. The problem with the traditional theories of perception is that they describe perceptual phenomena only in an exact and explicit language, and thereby neglect the primary perceptual phenomena that are describable in a more evocative and suggestive language. The language of hues (drab, eerie, un comfortable) aims to evoke and suggest perceived phenomena as they focally appear in a holistic and unitary way, whereas the traditional language of sense-qualities (red, green, pitch, timbre, round, ten inches) aims to make explicit the exactly determinable constitution of these hues, a constitution that appears in a more marginal and tacit way. Both languages must be used to describe what we perceive, for both are necessary to describe what focally and unfocally appears in our perceivings.

It is not to be thought that the implicitly perceived sense-qualities are in themselves neutral phenomena. It belongs to their nature to be aspects of perceived importances (hues), and as such they are essentially nonneutral phenomena. That they are nonneutral phenomena can also be explicitly confirmed, for it is possible in exceptional cases to focus on these aspects and allow them to become the primary phenomena of perception. In perceiving a nobly and magnificently hued building, I can adopt the somewhat unnatural attitude of trying to focus solely on the building’s white color, which is one of the exactly specifiable aspects of the building’s noble and magnificent hue. This color is not apprehended as something that in itself is a neutral sense-quality; not only is it perceptually noteworthy, but it is a kind of color-importance in and by itself. Whiteness as a color-importance is describable in such terms as “pure, undefiled, noble, etc.”; as such a color-importance, it contributes to the building’s overall hue of being noble and magnificent. Other colors are color-importances of a different kind; red is violent and disturbing, green is restful, dark gray is somber, and so on. These colors when focally appreciated are sources of feeling-flows of corresponding types.

Examples such as these reveal that colors (and other exactly determinable aspects of hues) are not only aspects of hues but are themselves hues. Their apparent nature is only incompletely captured in the exact sense-quality language, and must also be described in an evocative hue language (pure, violent, restful, etc.).

The above descriptions of perceived importances remain incomplete, for hues are only one of the two basic types of perceived importances. Hues are features of the concrete things we perceive. These concrete things are not themselves hues but configured importances. A hue is usually appreciated as an important display of the whole or part of a configured importance, such that in most cases of perceptual appreciation there is an appreciation of a hue importance and a configured importance. For in stance, the configured importance of the suspiciously opening gate displays itself to be eerily creaking, and it is to the suspiciously opening gate as manifested by this auditory hue that I affectively respond by fearfully cringing backward.

Hues are display-features of configured importances, specifically, relational display features, for configured importances have display-features only insofar as they are relational terms of perceptually appreciating aware nesses. Display-features are in their essential nature displays to an appreciative world-part.

The nature of these configured importances and their display-features can be made explicit through describing a particular case of perceptual appreciation. I am sitting across from the magnificently hued building, gazing upon its colored surface as the sun sets. The noble white color-hue of the building’s stately surface gradually vanishes and is gradually replaced by a color-hue of distinguished gray, which in its turn is replaced by a somber dark gray. As I appreciate the progressive succession of color-hues, I do not intuitively feel that the building is successively acquiring new surfaces, but that the same surface of the building is displaying itself to me as being differently hued, first displaying itself to me as nobly white, subsequently as a distinguished gray, and finally a somber gray. And this is precisely how I affectively respond to the stately surface: I feel a quiet admiration of the stately surface for displaying itself to me as being nobly white, distinguished gray, and somber gray.[19] The stately surface that displays itself to be so hued is a part of the whole configured importance, the grand building.

The same stately surface of the grand building can display itself as being analogously hued to several different percepients, but the converse can also occur. The surface can display itself to several people as being a noble white, but to one person (who has jaundice or who has taken santonin) as being a refined yellow. This is a sign of the fact that the stately surface is not identical with any one of the hues it displays itself as being, but rather possesses these hues as relational features it acquires in relation to this or that appreciator. In relation to me, the stately surface “is” nobly white (i.e., is-displaying-itself-to-be nobly white), but to the person who has taken santonin, the stately surface “is” a refined yellow (i.e., is-displaying-itself-to-be a refined yellow).

Other examples of configured-importance features besides stately and sturdy surfaces are grotesquely angular shapes, gently curving shapes, gigantic sizes, dwarfed sizes, jerky motions, graceful motions, etc. Each type of configured-importance feature displays itself to be hued in a distinctive fashion. I have already indicated, for instance, that surfaces of con figured importances visually display themselves to be color-hued. Another example is that shapes of configured importances display themselves to be shapely hued; e.g., harmonious round shapes of configured importances display themselves to be harmoniously roundly hued when visually appreciated from above, and display themselves to be inharmoniously elliptically hued when visually appreciated obliquely, from one side. In regard to the shapes and sizes of configured importarices, we usually take account, on the basis of past appreciations, of the perspectival nature of their displays, and thus appreciatively recognize (for instance) that a shape of a configured importance which displays itself as being inharmoniously elliptically hued when viewed from the side is not an inharmonious elliptical shape but a harmonious round shape.

At the basis of some perceptual illusions is the fact that a configured importance displays itself as being hued in a fashion analogous to the fashion in which other configured importances display themselves to be hued. A weirdly shaped tree at dusk may display itself to be hued in a fashion analogous to that in which a motionless body of a person would display itself to be hued, and this may result in the hue displayed by the weirdly shaped tree being “misappreciated” as a hue displayed by a motionless human body. Further appreciations can allow the weirdly shaped tree to display itself as hued in a recognizably distinct fashion; these hue- displays will occur when I approach the tree more closely or touch it.

Configured importances that display themselves are parts of the whole of a surrounding configured importance. A surrounding configured importance is what displays itself to be panoramically hued; it is a city block and sky that display themselves to be a drab panorama or a lake and sky that display themselves to be a calm and serene panorama. Any given con figured importance within the surrounding one is appreciated at least tacitly as a part of the whole surrounding importance. Just as hues are articulated into panoramic hues, regional hues, thing hues and sense-quality hues, so the configured importances that display themselves to be hued in these fashions are correspondingly articulated into surrounding configured importances, regional configured importances, thingly configured importances, and configured-importance features.

Some thingly parts of this surrounding configured importance uniquely stand out in that they embody flowing importances; it is as flowing importances that other egos that feel are encountered in the felt world. Whereas clouds and stones flow only extrinsically in that their flowings are not felt by them but only by somebody who is perceptually appreciating them and thereby animating them with tonal-flows, other egos that feel also flow intrinsically in that they have and experience their own flowings, flowings that are different from and nondependent upon the tonal-flows with which their appreciators animate them. I encounter other feeling egos as importances that intrinsically flow against me in a violently attacking manner, or that flow towards me in a gently binding manner, or that flow backwards and away from me in a fearfully cringing manner, or alternatively, do not flow towards or away from me but towards or away from somebody or something else they find to be more important than myself. When they flow towards or away from me, and I towards or away from them, a reciprocal and mutually adjusted flowing is instituted, even if this “mutual adjustment” takes the form of two violently attacking flows that clash head on.[20]

Configured importances, whether they embody flowing importances or not, are some of the felt realities that have been ignored or denuded in the usual rationalist world-views. Whereas hues have traditionally been neglected or misconceived as neutral and exactly determinate sense qualities, configured importances and their features have been ignored or misrepresented as neutral and exactly determinate “extended substances” or “material things” and their “primary qualities.” Precisely how configured importances have been maligned by being pictured as “material things with their primary qualities” can be exposed if we examine the most frequent way in which rationalist systems have distinguished between sense- qualities and material things with their primary qualities. Although this distinction is as old as Democritus[21] and Aristotle[22], its peculiarly modern form did not arise until the seventeenth century.

The modern theory is sometimes thought to arise in John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, in the discussion of “primary qualities,” “secondary qualities,” and “ideas” in the mind,[23] but Locke’s theory at bottom is no more than a modification and terminological transposition of the theory that can be found in the works of Descartes[24] and Thomas Hobbes.[25] But it is not Descartes or Hobbes who first stated the modern theory of this distinction: rather, both adopted this distinction from the writings of Galileo, specifically, from Galileo’s The Assayer (1623). Galileo’s theory of “physical objects” and their distinction from “sensations” embodies two main misinterpretations which decisively influenced the course of subsequent phi1os and scientific thinking.

The first of Galileo’s misinterpretations is that the whole composed of all configured importances, the whole that Galileo calls “the universe,” is mathematical in nature:

Philosophy [La filosofia] is written in this grand book which is continually open to our gaze (I am talking of the universe), but the book cannot be comprehended unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics [Egli è scritto in lingua matematica], and its letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which it is impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one wanders about in a dark labyrinth [un obscura laberinto].[26]

The second misinterpretation is that hue-features in terms of which con figured importances display themselves are not features of configured importances, but of our perceiving:

I think that tastes, ordors, colors, etc., are nothing more than mere names [puri nomi] so far as the object in which we place them is concerned, and that they reside only in our perceiving.[27]

Galileo’s theory amounts to the postulate that configured importances are not in fact “importances” at all but neutral objects whose only features are precisely determinable mathematical features. But the concept of such “objects” is in truth a theoretical construct that has no knowable referents. In order to establish that a concept signifies something, rather than is empty and referenceless, the thing putatively signified by the concept must be discovered. The relevant avenue of discovery for Galileo’s conceived “material objects” is perception. But what is discoverable through perception possesses the opposite features to those possessed by Galileo’s “objects.” To begin with, the configured importances we perceptually appreciate do not have mathematical features. Consider for example that the geometrical features Galileo mentions, triangularity, circularity, etc., do not inhere in configured importances. A circle geometrically conceived (in Euclidian geometry) is 360°, such that the ratio of its circumference to its diameter is π, the area is πr², and so on. Anything deviating from this definition of a circle by definition is not a circle. Now no configured importance of which we know possesses this geometrical circularity. The concepts of geometry (Euclidian or non-Euclidian) are inapplicable to the realities discoverable in the world.

However, such words as “circular,” “elliptical,” and “straight,” can be used in a nonmathematical sense to refer to configured-importance features, Used in this way, these terms, like yellow, hot, or drab, are de finable in an ostensive way only, and are not mathematically definable. The configured-importance sense of “circular” can be defined by pointing to such configured-importance features as the harmonious circularity of a piece of pottery. This harmonious circularity is not a “circularity” in the geometrical sense, for it does not have an area whose measurement is π or a ratio of circumference to diameter of π. An attempt to measure its area will discover an area that is slightly more or less than πr² it may approximate πr² but it will not be πr² Now something whose area is not πr² is not a “circle” in the geometrical sense; that is an analytic truth. It is a “circle” in some other sense, the nongeometrical, configured-importance sense. “Circles” in this sense are discovered within the world.

Every configured-importance feature that is in fact discovered is not an exact geometrical circle, sphere, or straight line. But could we discover such geometrical features to belong to innerworldly things? Note that some thing which has a ratio of diameter to circumference of π is in principle undiscoverable, for its discovery would require the impossible task of completing an infinite series of measurements. Pi is an irrational number, 3.14159265358979332384626433832795028841971… ad infinitum, and as such no innerworldly thing could ever be measured as having this number.[28] This shows that we not only do not know geometrical concepts to have instances, but cannot know if they do.

The “gap” between the mathematical conception of things in the sciences and the intrinsically nonmathematical nature of discoverable reality does not prevent scientists from believing in the referentiality of their conceptions. This is due to the fact that scientific theories are constructed through using terms like “circularity” or “straightness” in their mathematical and neutral senses, but they are verified through substituting the non mathematical and important senses of these terms. The perceptual appreciation of the harmonious circularity or inharmonious ellipticity of configured importances is allowed to “verify” a scientific theory that represents the said configured importances as neutral and mathematically determined objects that are “circular” or “elliptical” in a mathematical sense. For ex ample the second law of motion as stated in Book 1 of Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy reads, “The change of motion is proportional to the motive force impressed and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impressed.” This law is verified by substituting the configured-importance sense of “right line” for the geometrical sense.

It is through making this substitution that we can say that the sciences are “true” and do refer to the discoverable world. However, if it is forgot ten that the sciences are verified by means of such conceptual substitutions, or if the matter is not sufficiently reflected upon, the mistaken belief could well arise that things really are neutral and geometrically exact because they are represented as such in the sciences. More about this will be said in the next subsection.

The second major misinterpretation of configured importances that Galileo handed down to modern thought is that hues are not features of configured importances but of the perceivings of these importances. Galileo had in mind specifically the exactly analysable hues that are relative to one type of sense perception (colors, tastes, odors, etc.), but his misinterpretation of them was later extended (by Descartes, Locke, et al.) to the exactly analysable hues that are common to more than one type of sense perception, the “common sensibles” (shape-hues, size-hues, etc.). Of the former kind of exactly analysable hues, Galileo wrote, “they reside only in our perceiving.” Such a belief, however, is falsified by what is disclosed in our perceptual appreciations of configured importances. My perceiving of the building is not nobly white; rather, the building is nobly white. The hue of noble whiteness inheres in the building, not in my ego or awareness. The real state of affairs that Galileo had in mind but misinterpreted is that hues are relational features of configured importances, specifically, relational features that configured importances have insofar as they are being perceptually appreciated. Hues are display-features of configured importances: configured importances display themselves to perceptual appreciators as being hued.

Galileo presupposed that configured importances are able to exist without displaying themselves to perceptual appreciators. Whether and how this is really possible Galileo did not demonstrate. In order to demonstrate this, it must be shown first of all that the world is independent in some sense of its appreciative parts. This can be made manifest only if the importances of existence and appearance are first clarified, and indicated to be such that the importance of existence is independent of the importance of appearance. This task is reserved for the three chapters of Part 2, and I will refrain from discussing this complex issue until then.

At this point, the results of the explications in this subsection can be summarized and some conclusions may be drawn. The aim has been to show that perceived things are evocatively and exactly describable sources of feeling-flows, and that perceiving awarenesses consequently are feeling awarenesses-i.e., awarenesses-of-importances. This thesis must not be con fused with another theory propounded by many, viz., that every act of perception is accompanied by a feeling-awareness, and that every perceived object has besides its perceived features an affective feature, an affective meaning that is the object of this feeling-awareness. To generalize this by saying that every act of presentation (Vorstellung) serves as a foundation for or is conjoined with a feeling-act, or that every concrete act of consciousness includes an affective awareness, or that every understanding has its mood, or something of this sort, is to propound precisely the view against which my descriptions are directed, the view that feeling awarenesses are not identical with every awareness but coexist with non-feeling-awarenesses. The thesis I am developing is that there are no nonfeeling-awarenesses with which feeling-awarenesses do or do not co exist, and that there are no features that phenomena possess besides their felt features. There are only feeling-awarenesses and felt features.

But this does not mean I am claiming that there exist only “feeling acts,” “emotional consciousnesses,” or “moods” in the sense conceived by one of these philosophers—a claim that is palpably false. Rather, I am claiming that there exist only “feeling-awarenesses” in the sense of aware nesses of exactly and evocatively describable sources of feeling-tonalities that flow in a certain direction and manner.

Moreover, I am not asserting that there exist only “felt features” in the sense understood by these philosophers, as values, affective meanings, ways of “mattering,” magical categories, or whatever; instead, I am pro posing that there exist only “felt features” in the above specified sense of important features.

II. 13. ii. Thinking as a Feeling-Awareness, and Thought-About Things as Importances

Thinking is another type of awareness customarily distinguished from feeling, and that is supposedly an awareness of neutral phenomena. However, a description of what appears in thinking-awarenesses will show that in every case thinking is an awareness of one of two basic types of thought-about importances. The first type is signified importances, the configured importances, flowing importances, global importances, etc., that my thoughts signify. Two of the principal ways of thinking about these importances are aftergiowing thinking, in which I think about a global or mundane importance as it has explicitly appeared in a prior intuitive feeling, and concentrative thinking, wherein I think about the implicitly intuited content of these importances. Since both aftergiowing and concentrative thinking are awarenesses of signified importances, they are feelings, thinking-feelings, and have the typological range of feelings. Aftergiowing thinkings are feelings of the same type as the intuitive feel ings of which they are the aftergiows; they are enchantments, sadnesses, dreads, and the like. Concentrative feelings, on the other hand, are of one type, concentrative interest. This difference in the typological range of the aftergiowing and concentrative feelings is due to the difference in the direction of their attentional appreciation; the aftergiowing thinkings respond to the important features of a thing as they explicitly appeared in the intuitions, wherein they appeared as the thing’s beautifulness, gloominess or ominousness; concentrative thinkings, on the other hand, respond to the fascinatingly interesting content of the features that had been implicitly intuited. This content is the exact and detailed nature of the features, the features as they exactly are. The features of a thing as they exactly are ways in which the thing is interesting-to-be-made-explicit-in-concentrative-thinking, and when these ways explicitly appear, they are the source of a concentrated feeling-flow.

The kinds of signified importance appreciated in these afterglowing and concentrative thinkings can also be appreciated in analogous types of thinking. The evocative descriptions developed in somebody else’s aftergiowing thinking and communicated to me orally or in writing can evoke in me an appreciative and glowing awareness of the described importance; such an awareness may be called (to retain the metaphorical association with afterglowing thinking) an ignited thinking. Likewise, another author’s or speaker’s exact descriptions of a fascinating implicit content can elicit in me a feeling of concentrative interest in that content, although this concentrative interest will not be an original explication of that content, but a nonoriginative explicit awareness of it—a “learning” about this content as it was originally made explicit by another.

Thinking-feelings are not only appreciations of signffied importances, but also of important significations, important thoughts. These are the second basic kind of thought-about importances. Significations are “thought-about phenomena” in a derivative sense of this phrase; in the natural sense of the phrase, what I think about are not thoughts but what these thoughts are of, the signified phenomena. But inasmuch as thinking about these phenomena involves having thoughts of them, the thoughts may be called (in a derivative sense) “thought-about phenomena.”[29] Significations are important in that they are illuminatingly true or misleadingly false, strikingly original or monotonously repetitious, agreeably easy or dismayingly difficult to comprehend, and so on. These features of significations are not usually attentionally appreciated, for usually my attention is directed upon the phenomena they purportedly signify, but in exceptional cases I can turn my attention back to the significations and attentionally appreciate one or more of their important features.

Note that the illuminatingly true is only one of the ways in which thoughts are important. This suggests that the view that truth is what moves us to think and keep thinking in each case is false. It is not truth but some member of the class of thought-about importances, the class of important significations and signified importances, that inspires us to think in each case, although undeniably in some cases truth is the member of this class that inspires the thinking. That it is some thought-about importance and not specifically truth that always incites and sustains thinking is evinced by instances wherein we continue to thoughtfully linger over something profoundly interesting long after its truth has been determined and there is no expectation of arriving at further truths, and by instances wherein we deliberately think of false thoughts in order to appreciate their nobility and sublimity (perhaps a philosopher of empiricist persuasions may read Plotinus or Spinoza or Schelling in this spirit).

If it is the case that thinkings in each case are awarenesses of impor tances, is it also the case that they are importances themselves? That they are is made evident by the fact that in each case in which a thinking appears, whether attentionally in reflexion or marginally in unreflexive experience, the thinking is a source of a new feeling-flow or at least of a slight alteration in the feeling-flow already experienced. In fact, all feeling awarenesses and sensuous feelings are importances, for they do not appear without occasioning at least a peripheral modification in the feeling-flow being experienced. Since feeling-flows are aspects of the sensuous feelings, this means that sensuous feelings simply by virtue of being felt are at least slightly restructured or retinged—a sign that what a person is feeling is indeed important to that person.

If each and every thinking is an appreciation of importance, whether this importance be a signification or something signified, this suggests that the description and results of the thinking practiced by the philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians in the epochs of rational meaning and mean inglessness are seriously problematic in that they are based on a denial of the real nature of thinking and thought-about phenomena. This denial as it is expressed in philosophical thinking shall be discussed in the following section, where the origin of this denial in an epistemically unsound rational perspective on the world will be the theme of my investigations. At present I shall confine myself to saying a few words about this denial as it appears in mathematics and the sciences.

Significations formed in afterglowing and concentrative thinking- feelings are significatioris of explicitly or implicitly felt importances. Significations formed in afterglowing and concentrative mathematical thinking-feelings signify mathematical importances that originally and holistically appear in intuitive ideative feelings.[30] An example of such an ideative feeling is the astonished insight that the set of all algebraic numbers has the paradoxical feature of containing as many members as its subset of all rational integers. This feature is paradoxical by virtue of being contrary to the nature of finite sets with which we are ordinarily acquainted, finite sets being such that they necessarily contain more members than any one of their proper subsets. The paradoxically important feature of the set of all algebraic numbers appears originally in a holistic way in the astonished insight, and is subsequently explicated in afterglowing and concentrative thinking-feelings. It is in the concentrative thinking-feelings that the mathematical formulas are developed which explicate in detail the paradoxical importance.

This exemplifies the concrete nature of mathematical thinking- feelings and theory formation. But this nature is denied in the conceptual expression of mathematical theories in treatises on the subject. The mathematicians abstract from the intuitively felt holistic importance of the mathematical states of affairs, eliminate all evocative descriptions of these states of affairs, and identify the states of affairs with their exactly analyzed nature. The intuitively felt holistic nature of the importance as (for instance) “the paradoxical” is eliminated, and the importance is identified with its implicit content as this implicit content has been made fully explicit in the concentrative feelings. But this denial extends even further: the numbers, equations, and principles are tacitly conceived as phenomena that are neutral in themselves, unrelated to feeling, so that even the fascinatingly interesting nature of their implicit content is denied expression.

This means that in the strict sense the theoretical expressions in mathematical treatises are not expressions of mathematical states of affairs as they really are. This is not because the mathematical computations are erroneous but because no numbers or equations are discernable in intuition or thought that are just as they are purported to be in the mathematical treatises. Mathematical states of affairs are discoverable only as paradoxical, etc., holistic importances whose implicit nature is interesting-to-be-made-explicit.

The problems are more complicated in the sciences, especially the physical sciences, where neutral mathematical formulae are used to putatively “refer” to features of configured importances. The problem with this mathematical conception of configured importances was discussed in the last subsection; here the scientific “neutralization” of configured importances can be discussed.

Configured importances, whether they be superclusters of galaxies or hadrons and leptons (to use their “scientific” names), are conceived in the physical sciences as neutral things possessing exactly determinate features. But this theoretical representation of things in the scientific treatises is not in accordance with the “data” the scientists rely upon to confirm these theoretical representations. For the “data” are perceptually appreciated configured importances. Usually the things the theories are purportedly about do not directly display themselves in the confirming perceiving-feelings, but do so indirectly. For example, photographs of galactic clusters, and of atomic particle interactions in cloud chambers or particle accelerators, are indirect ways in which the clusters or interactions display themselves. It is in perceptually appreciating that which indirectly displays itself in these photographs that we obtain the decisive element of the “empirical evidence” that the relevant scientific concepts signify something and are not mere conceptual constructions. What appears in these confirming appreciations are configured importances possessing such important features and relations as being immensely distant from us, being majestically spirally shaped, or being tremendously small and terrifically swift. In these indirect self-displays, the configured importances reveal their holistic nature, which is describable in evocative terms. For instance, a cluster of galaxies displays itself as a gargantuan configured importance which is at an exceedingly immense distance from us. Such a holistic importance is purely appreciated in an awestruck perceiving-feeling. The immensely distant and gargantuan importance, as indirectly displayed in the photograph, emanates an awesome tonal-flow that towers up and over me from within the sensuously felt interior of the photograph and trans fixes me so that I shudder back from it in awestruck appreciation. This immensely distant gargantuan importance is explicated in evocative significations in the afterglow of the awestruck perceiving-feeling. In these significations, the “empirical evidence” is described just as it was explicitly intuitively felt in the confirming appreciation. But in astronomical theory, this important holistic nature of the cluster of galaxies is abstracted from, and the “empirical evidence” is conceptually reconstructed in terms of supposedly neutral mathematical determinations. Not only are the evocative explications eliminated, but the exact explications of the holistic importance in terms of configured-importance sizes, shapes, and distance relations are neglected in favor of mathematical and neutralizing conceptual substitutes. In its pursuit of perfect conceptual exactitude, astronomical theory loses its reference to the empirically discoverable realm of imperfectly exact and holistic configured importances.

In order to avoid some of the possible misunderstandings to which the above analysis of scientific thinking is subject, the following clarification is in order. My analysis is not to be understood as espousing one of the “philosophies of science” that have been developed in this and the last century, phenomenalism, operationalism, and scientific realism.

The first philosopher to develop thematically a phenomenalist or operationalist theory of science is Ernst Mach;[31] subsequent thinkers who expounded one or the other of these two philosophies of science include Henri Poincaré, Pierre Duhem, Russell (in his phenomenalist period from 1914 to 1924), Percy Williams Bridgman, Carnap (in 1928), Herbert Dingle, Gustav Bergmann, Karl Pearson, and Stephen Toulmin. The difference between my account of science and these phenomenalist and operationalist theories appears in my affirmation that there exist configured importances that are gargantuan and immensely distant from us, or that are tremendously small and terrifically swift. These importances indirectly display themselves to us in photographs (for example). They are neither “neutral constructions out of neutral sense data” nor “neutral constructions out of directly observed neutral material objects.” Nor are they even important constructions out of hues or directly displayed configured importances. They are not constructions (theoretical fictions, mere explanatory devices) at all, but existing innerworldly importances that we discover upon the occasion of their indirectly displaying themselves in our perceiving- feelings. My discussion of the manner in which configured importances exist in VI.38 will make it more clear how my conceptions of these importances differ from any phenomenalism or operationalism.[32]

It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that since I am not a phenomenalist or operationalist I am therefore a “scientific realist.” It is arguable that scientific realism as an expressly formulated philosophy of science first appeared in the preface to Christian Huygens’s Treatise on Light (1690); contemporary versions of this philosophy have been formulated by Karl Popper, Hempel, Wilfred Sellars, Russell (in his later period), William Kneale, Lewis White Beck, and Grover Maxwell. My ac count of science differs from theirs in that I hold that scientific concepts as scientific concepts do not refer. It is the conceptions-of-importances in to which the scientific concepts are translatable that refer. This does not mean that I believe there to be no difference between a “substantiated” scientific theory and an “unsubstantiated” one. It is true that both substantiated and unsubstantiated scientific theories are referenceless, but they differ in that the decisive conceptual constituents of the substantiated theories are translatable into conceptions-of-importances that are referential, whereas the decisive concepts of the unsubstantiated theories are not so translatable. It is not probable that the conceptions-of-importances in to which Georg Ernest Stahl’s conception of “phlogiston” is translatable refer, but it is probable that the conceptions-of-importances into which current atomic theories of combustion are translatable refer.

The above remarks are not sufficient to constitute a “philosophy of science”—as certainly many problematic issues have been left undiscussed—but they are sufficient for my purposes of establishing that the important nature of reality is not taken into account in scientific thinking. This may seem like an innocuous and conventionally acceptable statement until one remembers that in this chapter I am presenting evidence that reality has no other nature than its important one.

My analysis of mathematics and science has aimed to show that the conception of thought-about phenomena that is operative in these disciplines exemplifies at bottom the same problem we found in the usual theories of perceptual phenomena, namely the tendency to conceive phenomena as neutral things that are apprehended in awarenesses different in kind than feeling-awarenesses. The importance/neutral dichotomy, with the attendant belief that the world “as it really is” is neutral and is apprehended in nonfeeling awarenesses, is characteristic of most contemporary outlooks upon the world.

We can begin to understand the epistemological origin of this view of reality if we have recourse to the distinction between evocative and ex act descriptions made in the previous section, “The Language of Importances.” Each phenomenon is both evocatively and exactly describable, such that it can concretely and completely be made manifest only if both of these descriptions are used. However, due to certain spiritual-theoretical motivations (to be discussed in the following section), one may be led to divorce these two ways of describing phenomena and to identify a selected group of phenomena with their nature as it is exactly and explicitly describable. In such a case, the exact conceptions of these phenomena are not understood to be ways of analyzing and making precise the evocatively and holistically describable nature of the phenomena, but are interpreted as complete conceptions of phenomena that concretely exist with a nature that is solely exactly analyzable. These phenomena that are solely exactly analyzable are then conceived as phenomena that in themselves are neutral and unrelated to feeling.

In several areas, a further step away from reality is taken. The exact conceptions derived from the phenomena themselves are found not to be “exact” enough, and this leads to the construction of perfectly exact concepts that can function in place of the former conceptions. Perfectly exact concepts, generated in a priori thinking (e.g., in a priori mathematical thinking), are substituted for the “merely” empirically exact concepts. But in this substitution, the substituted perfectly exact concepts were believed to possess an empirical reference, to refer to concrete things that really exist. In this way, the world is “reconstructed,” as it were, to accord with the concepts of a priori thinking. But in truth what occurs is that thinkers find themselves faced with an exact-neutral world picture that refers to nothing at all.[33]

What motivated thinkers to believe in the referentiality of these theoretical constructions? This belief is an expression of rationalist spirituality, and is based upon the spiritual presuppositions that guided the epochs of rational meaning and meaninglessness. It is the rational-spiritual perspective that lies at the origin of the importance! neutral dichotomy and that leads to the belief in the referentiality of the exact-neutral reconstruction of reality. This perspective is explicitly developed and expressed in rationalist philosophy, and it is to this philosophy in its ultimate roots that we must turn if the importance! neutral dichotomy is to be traced to its origin.[34]

II. 14. The Origin of the Importance/Neutral Dichotomy in the Degeneration of Feeling to Reasoning

The dichotomization of the world into neutral and important aspects expressly originates in philosophical thinking as an essential element of its construction of a rational-metaphysical theory of the world. It is the task of this section to show how this dichotomy, and the attendant rational perspective on the world, result from certain feelings “degenerating” by withdrawing from reality and denying the basic conditions of truth.

The analysis of this degeneration is motivated by the following questions. If humans in essence are appreciative and extrarational beings, then how could the exact-neutral and rationalist view of the world ever have come about? How is it that feelings themselves (for all human awarenesses are feeling-awarenesses) could denigrate feelings and importances, and construct a view of man as the “rational animal” and a view of the world as a solely exactly determinable network of causal and teleological reasons and consequences? How is it that the world as a whole of importances is disregarded and is instead “reconstructed” in a priori thinking as a series of causes and effects and means and ends that are effects of an uncaused cause and are means to an ultimate end?

The nature and invalidity of this rational-metaphysical world-view was discussed in a historical context in the Introduction. In this section, I am going to trace the epistemological rather than historical genealogy of this rationalist metaphysics. This means analyzing the epistemic degeneration of certain feelings, their “fall” from their proper and sound epistemic functioning to an improper and unsound one. This analysis will be regressive; given the fact that these feelings have epistemically degenerated, what are the origins, motives, and stages of this degeneration?

This regressive analysis has two assumptions that I am endeavoring to substantiate in this treatise: (1) humans are appreciative beings, and the world is a whole of importances; and (2) the metaphysics of reason is untenable. If these two assumptions are true, then how can we epistemologically account for the emergence of a rationalist spirituality?

Due to the unfamiliarity of the terrain to be traversed in the following analysis, the sense and direction of the analysis will appear somewhat obscure at first, but shall gradually become clear as the analysis is brought to a conclusion.

The feelings that degenerate and originate the rational-metaphysical perspective are philosophically concentrative feelings. In their nondegenerate nature, these concentrative thinkings are second-order reappreciations of the intuitively felt world. While the first-order reappreciations, the afterglows, form evocative significations that capture the intuitively felt importances as they explicitly and holistically appeared, the concentrative feelings form exact significations that capture the precisely analyzable content of these importances that implicitly appeared. In this way, the concentrative thinking-feelings exist in harmony with the intuitive feelings and the aftergiowing thinking-feelings; all three cooperate in a methodological sense in making manifest the truth about the world. The concentrative feelings, however, are not fastened unfreely and without alter natives to this cooperation. Concentrative feeling possesses a freedom and creative power, and is able if it wishes to deny its dependency upon the two lower levels of methodological feeling and attempt to become, to the degree that it can, an independent and self-sufficient source of truth about the world. The desire for such independency is an everpresent possibility inherent in concentrative thinking; this thinking can become “infatuated” with itself and its explications, and through this infatuation can be led to believe that only “exact thinking” and “exact significations” are capable of making manifest the truth about the world. With this conviction, concentrative thinking is moved to “purify” its conceptual contents from the contributions of evocative thinking; the vague and evocative significations that capture the holistic importance of intuitively felt phenomena are eliminated, and only exact significations are retained. The conviction is developed that the world as it really is, is solely exactly determinate in nature and that significations are untrue and inadequate to the extent that they are “inexact.”

It is in this conceptual “reconstruction” of the world as solely exactly determinate that the importance / neutral dichotomy first arises. Two senses of this dichotomy are developed, one being based upon the other.

In the first and more fundamental sense of the dichotomy, the nature of things as it is holistically manifest in intuitive feeling and is evocatively described in afterglowing thinking is dichotomized from the nature of things as it is exactly manifest in concentrative thinking, such that the nature as it holistically appears is interpreted as unreal, as a “mere semblance,” and the nature as it appears in an exactly analyzed way in concentrative thinking is interpreted as the sole and complete “reality” of things. Intuitive feelings are interpreted to be “confused apprehensions” of the exactly determinate nature of things, such that what is explicitly felt in intuitive feeling, the nature as it holistically appears, is degraded to the status of a confused and misleading appearance of what is implicitly felt in the intuitive feeling, the nature as it is exactly analyzable.

In this sense of the dichotomy, importance has the sense of the nature of things as it is explicitly intuitively felt and is evocatively describable, and “neutral” has the sense of the nature of things as it is implicitly intuitively felt and as it is explicitly and exactly knowable in concentrative thinking.

This sense of the dichotomy sets the stage for the development of a second sense of the dichotomy, which is conceived to obtain within one half of the first dichotomy, the exactly determinable half. The exactly determinate features of things are divided into factual features (such as size and mass) and valuable features (the good and the evil). This neutral/importance dichotomy in the sense of a fact/value dichotomy originates in a further degeneration of the concentrative feelings beyond the point described above. This further degeneration is the decline into the full-blown “rationalist perspective” on the world, and can be outlined in some of its main stages as follows.

The step of identifying realities with the exactly determinable con tents that are implicitly manifest in intuitive feeling is not sufficient to satisfy the degenerated thinking-feeling’s desire for maximum autonomy and self-sufficiency. For this identification entails that the degenerated thinking-feelings are still dependent in an essential way upon the intuitive feelings for their knowledge of realities. This dependency consists in the fact that the significations formed by the degenerated concentrative feelings are still understood to be significations of something that is manifest in intuitive feeling, namely the exactly determinate nature of things that is implicitly but not explicitly felt in intuitive feelings. The degenerated concentrative feelings desire to be able to formulate true significations that do not depend for their truth upon being related to something that is manifest in intuitive feelings, significations whose truth can be established by “pure thinking” alone.

The condition for this desire to emerge is that the degenerated feelings become blind to the criterion of the truth of the significations they form. This criterion is implied in the nature of the truth of significations. The nature of significational truth is signifying something; that is, a signification is true in that it signifies something. This implies that the criterion of the truth of a signification is the discovery of the thing purportedly signified by the signification. A signification is verified as true if the thing it purportedly signifies is discovered. In order to discover the signified something, one must go beyond a mere concentration upon the signification itself, for in such concentration one can only discover that there exists a signification being concentrated upon. To find the signified, one must leave the realm of concentrated-upon significations and have recourse to what is manifest in intuitive feeling, where one will find (if the signification is true) that which the signification signifies.

The becoming blind of the degenerated concentrative feelings to this criterion of truth is a result of their “infatuation” with the exact significations they form; these feelings close themselves off from intuitive and afterglowing feelings, and endeavor to shut themselves up in a “passionless” realm of pure thought. We find here the opposite state of affairs than that traditionally held responsible for a blindness to the truth. For it is not through succumbing to “passion” (taken here to mean intuitive feelings and their afterglows) that blinds one to the truth, but through succumbing to “passionlessness.”

Through succumbing to “passionlessness,” the degenerated concentrative thinkings come to believe that significations can be formed whose truth is verifiable by pure thinking. It is believed that such significations can be formed if some principles can be constructed that putatively sanction such formations. These principles would seemingly justify a thinking that, although beginning with a reference to intuitive feeling, is able to continue independently of this reference; specifically, these principles would seem to justify an inference from a true signification of an intuitively felt reality to a true signification of an unintuited reality. This inference would be justifiable if it could be “known a priori” that each intuitively felt reality is a term of certain kinds of relations to other realities, such that if these other realities are not themselves given in intuitive feeling, their existence can nevertheless be inferred from the existence of the intuitively felt reality.

These supposedly “a priori” principles are constructed from materials that are originally manifest in intuitive feeling. These intuitional materials are kinds of intuitively felt relations susceptible to being conceptually fashioned as relations which can be “known a priori” to connect intuitively felt realities with other putative realities that are not intuitively felt. There are two basic kinds of felt relations that meet these conditions.

Relations of the first kind are explicitly manifest in intuitive feeling as relations of enhancement and detraction between importances. One intuited phenomenon is felt to enhance or detract from the importance of some other phenomenon. A man cutting a limb from a beautifully blossoming tree, or a flash of lightning doing the same, is felt to detract from the beautiful tree’s importance. A blazing fire that heats up a portion of mutton is felt to enhance the mutton’s importance in that it adds to the mutton the positively important feature of being cooked to a tasty and nutritious state. And again, the bountiful sun is intuitively felt to enhance the importance of a stone by generously bestowing upon it an agreeable warmth.

These are some of the examples of enhancing and detracting relations that are intuitively felt to obtain among importances. “Enhancing” and “detracting” are evocative significations that capture these relations as they explicitly and holistically appear in intuitive feeling. The degenerated concentrative feelings do not build upon but eliminate these evocative significations, replacing them with exact significations that ex plicate the precisely determinable nature of these relations that is implicitly manifest in intuitive feeling. The precisely determinable nature of the intuitively felt relations is regarded as the sole and complete nature of the relations, and is given the name “causal relations.” The concept of “cause,”