Not only the product but also the process: contribution of Gendlin’s philosophy to “reflexivity”

In my previous post, “What does Gendlin's ‘reflexivity’ not mean?” I argued that the term “reflexive,” which comes from Latin, does not fully express what Gendlin means. However, it gives the impression that Gendlin had no complaints about Aristotle, who did not use this term. Therefore, in this post, I would like to discuss the originality and novelty of Gendlin’s practical philosophy compared to that of Aristotle and other previous philosophers.

Dissatisfaction with traditional reflexive philosophy

In his later years, Gendlin expressed his approval of Aristotle and other’s development of their theory based on the “reflexive turn.” Still, he also expressed his dissatisfaction with the fact that they only presented the results of their theory and did not discuss the process of its development in their remaining writings:

Some philosophers do speak about a “reflexive turn,” but they only tell a conceptual story about it. (Aristotle's “grasping” [thigganein] and “thinking about thinking” is more than just a concept, but he stops right there.) Those who spoke of a reflexive turn didn't present their doing it so that we could find it. (Gendlin, fair copy, p. 30; 2016, p. 83; bold added)

Philosophers have always repositioned the main words, used them in new ways with new concepts and distinctions, but have not avowed how they obtained these. They have not explained how acquiring new meaning is even possible for words. They presented only results, not how the results actually came, and why they can come. (Gendlin, fair copy, p. 29; 2016, p. 83; bold added)

What I took from the statements above would be Gendlin’s pride in being the philosopher who not only speaks of such a reflexive turn but also have avowed how they obtained these. In particular, he did not just discuss words as products but also emphasized discussing the ongoing process of creating them:

The words have always done the producing of what they tell about, but this present process was not directly employed. The process of thinking and speaking was discussed only in terms of concepts that were not the ongoing process but rather only the products of that process. (Gendlin, fair copy, p. 29; 2016, p. 83; bold added)

So, let's examine his discussion of “how the results actually came” or “the ongoing process” in his previous works.

Discussing through Wittgenstein and Richards

In “Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning” (ECM), Gendlin discussed reflexivity while referring to Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, and Spinoza. Meanwhile, later in his career, he also addressed the topic in his works discussing Wittgenstein (*1). Let's take a look at his paper, “What happens when Wittgenstein asks “What happens when ...?” (Gendlin, 1997c), which was published in the 1990s:

Once a few words say their use, the further words we use to speak about them can also be taken as saying something from and about their own use. Instead of falsifying the use of words by saying something else about it, we let the words say (some aspect of) the use which is happening just then. In this way all words about the use of words can say something that their ongoing use instances, not only the few Wittgensteinian words with which we began. (Gendlin, 1997c, p. 278; 2018, p. 247;bold added)

However, the idea of “letting the words say the use which is happening just then” did not begin at that time. What he tried to say through Wittgenstein in the 1990s, he had already discussed through I. A. Richards at the time of ECM:

The problem posed by Richards' discussion is to analyze comprehension but to do it comprehensively, that is, with attention to the terms, concepts, respects in which comprehension is occurring as it analyzes itself. Looking at these tools of comprehension at work (in such an analysis of comprehension) is likely to tell us more about comprehension than if we were to pay attention only to the results of the use of these tools. Richards' "shriek marks" therefore are this method in action. With the marks a concept in use calls attention to its use... (Gendlin, 1962/1997, p. 290; bold added)

“Looking at these tools of comprehension at work” corresponds to “letting the words say the use which is happening just then.” Richards is listed as an example of one of the thinkers of reflexivity in the “Appendix to Chapter I” at the end of ECM, as follows:

Richards notes a reflexivity due to the fact that the meaning and use of concepts, respects of comparison, and distinctions are all themselves dependent on the use of such "respects," and so on. Richards thus calls attention to a reflexivity inherent in all discourse: whatever conceptions are employed, whatever distinctions are made, these employments are themselves relative to their own creation and to the presuppositions implied in it. (Gendlin, 1962/1997, pp. 289–90; bold added)

So, which section in Chapter V of ECM corresponds to the reflexivity referred to here? My view is that it corresponds to the discussion in “8. REFLEXIVITY”:

Therefore, styled magnificently, “iofi” is the principle of all we have asserted as well as of our procedure in asserting all we have asserted. Let us apply the term “reflexivity” to this identity between what is asserted and one’s procedure in asserting it. (Gendlin, 1962/1997, p. 201; bold added)

The main significance of our reflexivity is that, since we refer to experiencing directly both in assertions and in our method of reaching these assertions, naturally then, what we assert of experience must apply also to experience as we have been employing it to reach these assertions. (Gendlin, 1962/1997, p. 201; bold added)

Verb usage: “instancing”

In the “Preface to the paper edition” (Gendlin, 1997b) that was added when ECM was reprinted in later years, he discusses Chapter V as follows:

Chapter V … shows that one can go on from any point not only from what is being said, but also from the process of saying it. The chapter is self-instancing. (Gendlin, 1997b, p. xx; bold added)

In the text of ECM, published in 1962, we only see the noun usage of “instance.” So, let's see how he came to discuss reflexivity while using the verb usage of “instancing.”

First, “self-instancing” is discussed in his Derrida theory, “Nonlogical moves and nature metaphors” (Gendlin, 1985), which was published in the 1980s:

...all the words can mean as they work, not only the one word being talked about. Letting a word mean as it works can retrieve it from its old concepts. The word need not remain surrendered to the old distinctions, so that we can only end in limbo, using-and-denying the old distinction. I call this way "self-instancing." Philosophers have long known that there cannot be self-instancing truth in the sense in which that term used to be understood: the saying always instances more and differently, it is never just an instance of what is said definably in clean concepts. But "self-instancing" works here in the opposite order: What is said can instance the saying, the move, not the definable concept. Then words mean—their saying. (Gendlin, 1985, p. 388; bold added)

Let words mean how they work! Let how they work also say how words work and mean. Let "meaning" mean how that word moves here, not as a fixed, preexisting package separate from the word. ... Let "meaning" mean what the word does. So, for example, "does" means here what "does" does. That very metaphor does this doing. (Gendlin, 1985, p. 398; bold added)

“Words mean—their saying” is also discussed in Heidegger's theory, which was published around the same time, also using the verb usage of “instancing”:

Language itself is a poetizing, he [Heidegger] says, thereby using the word "language" beyond its use to designate the extant language-forms, and instancing what he says. If we study how this is done we will understand much better what is said, but also we become able to make many "new" distinctions and we can make sense in many "new" ways. (Gendlin, 1988, p. 142; bold added)

For example, we can examine how the old forms "work" in these new ways. We can see that they work in two different ways: They can work in their old ways, as they were designed to do, each excluding the others, contradicting each other. Or, they can "work" "together" in further fresh sense-making, in calling for thought. Of course they are not supposed to work that way: They are supposed to be logical structures that have necessary implications and contradict other such structures and their implications, the old logical kind of "follow", and "implicit." But in examining thinking that dwells we can study another sort of "follow", another way the made forms can and do "work", in a different sort of together than contradiction. From examining how such steps "follow", if we use this sort of "following" itself, what we say can instance itself, as the examples I drew from Heidegger do. The newly made/found use of the words lets them "open" to their use just now, as they instance what they say. Such saying is more open also to further steps of the same sort... (Gendlin, 1988, pp. 146–7; bold added)

In the 1990s, similar arguments were discussed in more detail as a preparation for a certain methodology, also using the word “instancing” in papers such as “Thinking beyond patterns” (Gendlin, 1991), “How philosophy cannot appeal to experience, and how it can” (Gendlin, 1997a), and the previous Wittgenstein paper (1997c):

We let words be defined by how they worked in an instance. If a word made new sense, we let that be the meaning of the word. ... we can let a word change in the instance. Then we can see if it makes new sense — there. We can keep this (or another) instance with us. Then its intricacy continues to function in our thinking and saying. (Gendlin, 1991, p. 59–60; bold added)

... when a word works to say how it works, it redefines itself from the instance of its own working. Then it is self-instancing. Then they open the way for other words to say how they did. (Gendlin, 1991, p. 60; bold added)

If the usual concepts about cognition, speaking, and the body were right, the instances in my stories would be impossible. Since they happen, they are possible. What changes in the usual concepts do they instance? The word "instance" changes; instead of instantiating a preexisting concept, an experience (any .....) can become a first instance of new concepts to which it can lead (see "IOFI" in ECM, chap. 5). Such new concepts do not replace-they require-the implicit functions that happen in them. (Gendlin, 1997a, p. 22; bold added)

Imagine a language in which what words say about the meaning of words could always be something their use also instances. What characteristics would such a language need? Words about words would need to involve two uses, so that one could instance the other. For this to be possible, we would need a language in which what words say depends on how they are used, so that what words say about the meaning of words would involve two uses. (Gendlin, 1997c, pp. 278–9; 2018, p. 248; bold added)

And, entering the 21st century, in “A changed ground for precise cognition” (Gendlin, 2016), which discusses Aristotle's reflexive turn, “our ongoing thinking and speaking” and “instance” are discussed as follows:

If we think-from our ongoing thinking and speaking (not only from how we already think about them), we discover that thinking and speaking are very different from what is usually said about them. In how they actually occur we find a different kind of pattern, new concepts about thinking and speaking. (Gendlin, fair copy, p. 29; 2016, p. 82; bold added)

In philosophy we discuss concepts and language, so anything we say is just then also a sample of the ongoing process of thinking and speaking about thinking and speaking. Of course what we say about it instances the process. But also on any topic, whatever we think or say is an actually experienced sample or instance of thinking and saying that kind of thing... (Gendlin, fair copy, p. 29; 2016, pp. 82–3; bold added)

TAE as a “practice” that goes back and forth

With such theoretical backgrounds, “Thinking at the Edge” (TAE) was proposed as a practical method of constructing a theory that shows not only the results but also how the words come about:

Gene:
...mostly until now you only got the concepts, the results, the conclusion, the words, the conceptions, the structures. How they came, they didn't show us. Now we can go back and forth between the constructions and where they came. You want. both. Without the constructions, you cannot make the world arid without where it comes, it's all empty. When you have both, there is a way in which every TAE theory is an instance of that TAE process. You can take your own theory even very beginning and you can say how does this theory describe the TAE process? (Gendlin & Lou, 2004/2006, p. 46; bold added)

...Each theory is reflexive of the process. Each theory is not only the process but also about the process. ... Every TAE theory is an instance of the process of thinking from there. Every TAE theory is a pirouette. (Gendlin & Lou, 2004/2006, pp. 46–7; bold added)

By presenting a practical methodology for “going back and forth between the constructions and where they came,” he added a new page to the conventional history of the reflexive turn, “they didn't show us how the results came” since Aristotle.

Note

*1) The philosophers I have raised as pioneers of his reflexivity in this post do not belong to the reflexive principle in McKeon’s philosophical semantics. Specifically, Heidegger and Wittgenstein belong to the comprehensive principles, while I. A. Richards belongs to the actional principles (McKeon, 1965/2016, p. 366). In this way, Gendlin's discussions on reflexivity are discussed without necessarily being bound by McKeon’s classification.

References

Gendlin, E.T. (1962/1997). Experiencing and the creation of meaning: a philosophical and psychological approach to the subjective (Paper ed.). Northwestern University Press.

Gendlin, E.T. (1985). Nonlogical moves and nature metaphors. In A-T. Tymieniecka (Ed.), Poetics of the elements in the human condition: the sea (Analecta Husserliana. Vol. XIX, pp. 383–400). Reidel.

Gendlin, E.T. (1988). Dwelling. In H.J. Silverman, A. Mickunas, T. Kisiel, & A. Lingis (Eds.). The horizons of continental philosophy: Essays on Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty (pp. 133-52). Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Gendlin, E. T. (1991). Thinking beyond patterns: body, language and situations. In B. den Ouden, & M. Moen (Eds.), The Presence of Feeling in Thought (pp. 21–151). Peter Lang.

Gendlin, E.T. (1997). How philosophy cannot appeal to experience, and how it can. In D.M. Levin (Ed.), Language beyond postmodernism: saying and thinking in Gendlin’s philosophy (pp. 3–41 & 343). Northwestern University Press.

Gendlin, E.T. (1997). Preface to the paper edition. In Experiencing and the creation of meaning: a philosophical and psychological approach to the subjective (Paper ed.) (pp. xi-xxiii).Northwestern University Press.

Gendlin, E.T. (1997). What happens when Wittgenstein asks "What happens when ...?" The Philosophical Forum, 28(3), 268–81.

Gendlin, E.T. (2016). A changed ground for precise cognition. In D. Schoeller & V. Saller (Eds.), Thinking thinking (pp. 50–91). Verlag Karl Alber.

Gendlin, E.T. (2018). Saying what we mean (edited by E.S. Casey & D.M. Schoeller). Northwestern University Press.

Gendlin, E.T. & Lou, N. (2004/2006). Thinking freshly from experiencing: how Gendlin’s philosophy of the implicit helps you, Video/DVD Transcript. Nada Lou Focusing in Focus.

McKeon, R.P. (1965/2016). Semantic profiles of selected Western thinkers. In On knowing: the social sciences (compiled and edited by D.B. Owen and J.K. Olson, pp. 360–84). University of Chicago Press.