Reference to something identical in its present givenness

the notion of "implicit consciousness"

pp. 105-123

in: Eduard Marbach, Mental representation and consciousness, Deventer, Kluwer, 1993

Abstract

Looking back to the explanations of the manner of establishing reference to some x, one opposition in particular is worth noting once again and calling for a further development. Whereas an activity of presenting x, as achieved in PER x, does not in itself and alone fully bring about reference to the x as identical and objective, it does, however, establish actual, direct, contact with x itself in its surroundings (see chapter 2). Activities of purely mentally representing like IMA x and REM x, in contrast, do achieve reference to the x as identical and objective, but they do so at the price of not actually, directly, being in contact with x (see chapter 3). The very achievement of reference to something identical and truly objective was claimed to involve that the object quasi-appears in correlation with one's perceiving in the mode of non-actuality. The question can be raised whether this involvement does not just appear to be the case because we have only been studying ways of referring to x as being absent. According to our discussion, in these cases the non-actual (or quasi-) appearing of the object (thing, event etc.) made sense, indeed, and its occurrence led us to define the ways of referring to x in its being absent to be ways of quasi-direct reference to x (see 3.4, in particular).