Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Heteronomy, Autonomy, Sense-Experience, Motor-Experience

More significant in Kant's system than the Theory-Practice distinction, and perhaps underlying it, is that of Heteronomy and Autonomy.  Insofar as Theoretical Reason consists in the processing of received Sense-Data, it is fundamentally Heteronomous.  So, with the establishment of the primacy of Autonomy in the Critique of Practical Reason, a revision of what is essentially a Heteronomous concept of Experience that the Critique of Pure Reason presents is called for, but not offered by Kant.  Now, as has been previously discussed, the Utilitarian concept of Experience, i. e. in which a Perception-Object is conceived as primarily a Use-Object, proposed by Bergson and Heidegger, presents a concept of Experience as fundamentally Practical.  However, it is not necessarily that of an Autonomous Experience.  Instead, a concept of Autonomous Experience must include a revision of one of the staples of Modern Epistemology--a revision of the acceptance of Sensation as the foundation of Sense-Experience, an apparently irreducibly Heteronomous moment.  But, Sensation is itself the product of an abstraction--from a possibly Autonomous process, i. e. from an act of Sensing.  For, Sight, Sound, Odor, Flavor, and Texture, are each abstractions--from Looking, Listening, Smelling, Tasting, and Touching, all, in fact, motor activities.  So, the more thorough revision implied by the Critique of Practical Reason of the concept of Experience presented in the preceding Critique is one that includes a replacement of Sense-Experience by the Motor-Experience which is its ground.

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