Awareness of Variation

An explanation of how Awareness of Variation is achieved is a classic Philosophical problem, often presented under the rubrics 'Perception of Change', 'Consciousness of Motion', etc. Zeno's 'Paradox' attempts to dismiss the question, by concluding from the difficulties entailed in trying to solve it, that Motion, Change, Variation, etc. are all illusory to begin with. Hume argues that we never directly experience Variation. For, for example, we might hear an A note, and then a B, but that the latter is a variation on the former requires a side-by-side comparison, impossible after the A has been replaced by the B, and possible only in abstract analysis. Kant replies that the A is reproduced and retained upon the arrival of the B, and that some C that persists through the transition is a necessary point of reference for B to be cognized as different from A. Kant's discussion is unclear as to whether he means that the comparison occurs only in abstraction from the live experience of the notes, or that all these elements are integrated into one live experience. But even if the latter, it still stands susceptible to an challenge from Santayana, that when the B arrives, the A is no longer actually there, in which case, variation is still not an immediate object of awareness. On the other hand, Santayana's scepticism regarding Change does not seem to address Bergson's objection that Consciousness is not, as all these others positions seem to presume, instantaneous. Rather, it is in flux, with the, for example, distinction between A and B itself the product of an arbitrary abstraction. Instead, we possess Intuition, which directly perceives Motion. Now, while this objection to the instantaneity of awareness is sound, his notion of Intuition seems to overshoot the mark. For, while it explains how we directly perceive the transition from A to B, it seems to lack an account of how we perceive A or B themselves. Furthermore, if Intuition is itself in flux, then the Intuition of Motion cannot distinguish between the flux of Intuition and the flux of the intuited Motion. One thing shared by all these theories of Awareness is that it is fundamentally receptive information-processing. On the hand, if it is fundamentally homeostatic, then it is easier to grasp that it functions fundamentally as a complement to new bodily movement, which it is fundamentally structured to accommodate. In other words, it structures its object as a new movement, which means that that its object is a variation on a previous condition is intrinsic to the awareness. For example, my current awareness that I am writing these words entails that my writing of these words is a variation on my previously not having been writing these words. Even if my awareness is of my STILL writing these words, entailed is that I am doing more of what I had been doing, which is another type of variation on the latter. So, rather than the immediate Awareness of Variation being either impossible to experience or difficult to explain, it is, quite to the contrary, tautological, because the object of awareness is always a variation.