Motility and Philosophical Method

Philosophical investigations often begin with an immediately given feature of experience, typically either the 'I' or some sense-datum. The standard criticism of such methodology is that the presumed 'immediately given' is the product of a prior arbitrary abstraction. A further under-appreciated problem with the method is not that it is abstractive, but that it falsifies the evidence. For example, at the outset of the Meditations, Descartes cites his sitting in a chair observing the room around him as his immediate experience. However, he is plainly actually seated at a desk and writing about what can only be some experience other than the writing of the moment, if not a piece of experimental fiction. Likewise for rival accounts, and analogously for oral presentations. So, since writing and speaking are modes of Motility, the latter dimension of Experience is usually precluded from theories that nevetheless purport to be grounded in immediate experience.