Information Flow and Hermeneutic Play in Perception and Dialogue

Abstract

This article elucidates a fundamental and preliminary distinction required for information flow as well as the to-and-fro play of information defined in relation to such distinctions. Viewing both perception and language under the inspiration of the hermeneutic phenomenologies of Heidegger and Gadamer, we show how perception and language are grounded in the aforementioned distinction. This is done through analyses of perceptual-motor examples and the mid-20th-century debate in the philosophy of science between Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn. Preliminary distinctions and the to-and-fro play that surrounds them constitute a fundamental framework for much psychological analysis.The relativity of our perception of motion, with which we become conversant as children when traveling by ship or by train, corresponds to common-place experiences on the reciprocal character of the perception of touch. One need only remember here the sensation, often cited by psychologists, which every one has experienced when attempting to orient himself in a dark room with a stick. When the stick is held loosely, it appears to the sense of touch to be an object. When, however, it is held firmly, we lose the sensation that it is a foreign body, and the impression of touch becomes immediately localized at the point where the stick is touching the body under investigation. 255As the quotation from Bohr (1934) indicates, information is communicated in the context of a certain combination of variance and invariance. A cane moving across objects in a dark room communicates information to the observer only when the relation between the cane and the hand holding it is relatively invariant-that is, when the cane is held firmly so that little information about the cane is communicated to the observer. Alternatively, a loosened grip on the cane makes information about the cane available, but it reduces the availability of information about the objects in the room. Bohr's (1934) point is that the availability of information about the objects and about the cane is roughly complementary in Heisenberg's sense. These simple facts reveal principles of information flow that are at the heart of this article. Beginning from them, we show how information flow occurs in the context of a basic distinction. We call this the preliminary distinction. Insofar as information is fundamental to consciousness and self-consciousness, such preliminary distinctions and the toand-fro play of information that surrounds them are fundamental to the structure of both consciousness and self-consciousness.In the following, the preliminary distinction is described through two quite diverse examples-the first perceptual, the second linguistic. We begin with a gedanken experiment concerning the realm of perceptual-motor phenomena: the movement of the block back and forth between a child's hands. Second, we approach the preliminary distinction in relation to language by showing its relevance to an important conversation drawn from mid-20th-century philosophy of science, the Popper-Kuhn ...

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