The Background and the Morphological Content
Matjaž Potrč, University of Ljubljana
The background is presented, and then the morphological content. Applications of morphological content in several areas are briefly discussed. Some differences and vicinities between concepts of background and morphological content are pointed out. It is argued that vicinities prevail and so that the morphological content can be treated as the background.
A. Background.
Background is the landscape of holistic past experience that supports an agent’s performance. Metaphysics provides one way to reach the background: through the being-in-the-world. The rich background is fully compatible with the being–in-the-world of a brain in a vat. Background is thus presented in several steps of increasingly wider environments: starting with local, then moving to global, and then embracing the transglobal ones.
1. Local background environment.
Background provides testimony about holistic and rich past encounters of cognizer with the world, it is the world’s echo or supportive trace in cognizer’s experience. Background mode of giveness is non-occurrent and dispositional. Metaphysics offers one way to enter into the topics of the background which transgresses its local conception.
What is the background? Here is one example that may come to mind. If you compete for a job, people will be eager to find out about your background and check it out. If you wish to employ yourself as a medical doctor, they will look for your past experiences of dealing with patients, and for you expertise in some specific area that employers would like you to work in. One of the most important things at issue will be your background: from your school and scholarly accomplishments (Where did you study? What were your school grades and marks? What were your eventual achievements in research related to the area?), to your past employments (Did you already work in a similarly specialized environment? How similar was that environment to the one you would work in now? For how long did you work there?), and finally including your reputation (What do people say about your accomplishments? How do they judge your reliability? Were there any complaints? The opinion of referees in their recommendation letters is important at this point.). Finding out what your background is in a certain area extends through several dimensions according to which your expertise and past experiences are valued. One passes a judgment about someone’s expertise or background in a specific area. But also the experts’ own expertise in a certain area consists in his falling of appropriate judgments, in his ability or disposition to do so.
Checking someone’s background in a certain area is not a simple matter. It succeeds through several dimensions of involvement. These dimensions point out the background’s lack of transparency. Background cannot be determined by some prescribed set of rules in an exceptionless and algorithmically ordered manner. It is just too wide and rich for that. Rather, the judgment of background expertise is a more typical way of how to approach it. On many occasions, an expert will not be able to spell out in an explicit and systematic manner the background that allows him to act as an expert. Many times, he will use narrative form in order to convey the idea. But he will certainly know how to do things. An expert’s skill is on the side of knowing-how and not so much necessarily on the side of knowing-that. Sometimes, an expert will judge somebody’s background by small things that disclose the relation to a larger landscape. The way I clumsily hold things in my hand will tell a mechanic at a glance that I am not one of his peers, that the background in that area is practically nonexistent for my case. A cook will recognize by my small inappropriate gestures that I am not really an expert in the area. And I will myself immediately recognize that the mentioned cook is not a philosopher: his tiny remark following my question suffices me to know that.
Experts are thus judged in respect to their background. Despite that this background gives the basis for an immediate recognition in most cases, there are no rules really that would determine in an exceptionless manner what the background really is or how to systematically and flawlessly evaluate it. But despite the absence of such a kind of systematizing the background proves to be very effective as the guide for us how to accomplish things.
The background that was considered up till now is related to the expertise. One becomes an expert through one’s engagement into a specific field, so it seems, and this succeeds by the restriction posed upon trying to be efficient in all possible directions. If one is a real good medical doctor, one can be perhaps a good cook as well, but a range of further areas where the expertise is required will be probably closed for him at some point. There is a comparatively low limit to the number of fields in one’s expertise. In this sense we talk about local background where local environments are involved, such as environments related to the medical practice or to cooking.
There is the testimony of local backgrounds in an expert’s practice. One does not become an excellent cook in a day or two. Of course, some people are born with lucky disposition to succeed in a certain area. But usually, a long and repeated period of practical engagement is nevertheless and additionally needed for someone to become a good cook. There may have been several trials and errors in the past, and this now practically prevents further errors to happen at all. A long period of experience has settled into someone’s cognitive system. And this has led to the presence of dispositional knowledge by the usage of which one is able to react momentarily and appropriately to a given situation. She cooks so skillfully and effortlessly. But this would be impossible without the well settled traces of her past experience supporting her present activities.
A good cook, though, is many times not just characterized by her local knowledge. She is so good because she really considers her activity to be important for her life: her cooking engagement is actually her whole world, so to speak. And indeed, a professional will be so skilled in her environment also because in perfecting her job she uses experiences from other areas, in a practical inductive manner. The local environment really does function, so it seems, because of the global environment in which it happens and in respect to which the agent is not immune at all. A good background in an area provides the testimony of cognizer’s rich and holistic encounters not just with this restricted area, but in a wider sense with the whole world.
Background is not explicitly there in the occurrent experience, but it certainly supports the occurrent experience, in an unmistaken dispositional manner. From a wider perspective the background is an echo or trace of cognizer’s experience with the world.
A look at the background leads us from the local areas of expertise to the global areas of the whole world figuring as the real thing that actually provides support. But if the world is involved, we must be dealing with the metaphysical entrance into the topics of the background.
2. Global background environment
The rich metaphysical background is that of the being-in-the-world. Such a background enables intentional relations, among other things. Global background environment has priority over local background environment.
It seems appropriate to call the world the global background environment, as opposed to the local background environment in some area. It turns out that local background is embedded into global environment.
The expertise of cooking cannot succeed without an agent collecting over certain stretch of time background skills and dispositional knowledge that helps her exercising quite a complex job in an effortless and natural manner. But that specific background backing up the cooking expertise is actually only functioning if it is sustained by the entire experience of an agent, if there is the support of her whole experiential world. A small thought experiment may be helpful here, a form of which will continue to be used in what follows. Try to imagine that you have an excellent background as a cook, but that this restricted area is the only background support of your experiences that is in your power. There is a good chance that you cannot even imagine then how such a restricted local background as that of cooking would be possible or even effective without the wider background. This is perhaps a sufficient preliminary proof that helps to realize how the entire and global experience is actually a precondition for more restricted experiences and for their backgrounds to get off the ground.
This is also the way in which the rich metaphysical global environment supported background is recognized: as the holistic situation of being-in-the-world. An agent is effective because of her engagement into the entire world that she inhabits. Notice that the concept of being-in-the-world tends itself to be introduced by the area of expertise: one is a skilful cook, and one is recognized as such in her community – normative element – that finally leads to one’s appropriating the background of the world she is in. (Heidegger 1927, Potrč 1993, Dreyfus 1991, Haugeland 1985). Background as being-in-the-world is also recognized as the very precondition of intentional relations (Searle 1983). Here is one way how to understand this. Imagine that you have a thought directed at the cat, and thus you have an intentional act. Well, your cat directed intentional thought certainly is different from your dog directed intentional act. But you cannot really have any of those unless you have many other thoughts and experiences, and so unless you possess holistic experience of being in the world. This holistic background of worldly experience does really give you the very possibility of thinking about the cat. Because you cannot even imagine having your cat thought without the experiential background of the whole world, this seems to be another proof that global environment is the precondition of local environment, and that therefore local background depends upon the global background.
It is not hard to see that there is priority of the global background of being-in-the-world in respect to just local background proper to some specific area of expertise. Global background is then the precondition of local backgrounds. Whereas being-in-the-world really supports and finally enables expertise, the local environment of expertise can in many ways fail to lead to the full blooded being-in-the-world. Consider a recent pun: iPhone has many specialized areas to tap on, but where is the touch screen that gets you a life, or, in our terminology, the background of the world?
It seems to be established by now that being-in-the-world is the environment of the ultimate background. Local background depends upon it, but it is far from sure that the opposite direction works as well, according to which global background would constitutively depend upon a local background or upon a sum of local backgrounds. We came to the point where global worldly background overrides local background. We seem to have reached the ultimate destination thereby. For what could be larger than the world, indeed? The next section will argue against such conclusion, and it will claim that there is something that is larger then the world.
3. Transglobal background environment
The rich background is fully compatible with being-in-the-world of a brain in a vat. Compare rich and dynamical perceptual experiences. Transglobal background environment has priority over global background environment. For the real experiential background an appropriate functioning of transglobal environment is required. Richness of the background does not lead away from determinacy of occurrent experiences. To the contrary, it enables such determinacy. A thought experiment: imagine that contents occur without the background. This is hard and even impossible to do, and it is in power for you and as well for your brain in a vat duplicate. The real effective background encompasses transglobal environment.
We start with the question that concluded the last section: What could be more encompassing than the world? This seems to be a question without an easy answer, if there should be an answer to it at all. And yet there is a positive answer that may be derived from the earlier introduced environment proper to being-in-the- world. Being-in- the-world is actually an experiential category, although it is also a metaphysical category. But experience is more far reaching than the metaphysical actuality. So one may try with the thought that the experiential or perhaps evidential world is larger that the actual metaphysical world, where the actual metaphysical world is understood in externalist terms. For the experiential world encompasses the actual metaphysical world, as well as several other possibilities besides to it.
Now, experiential world is compatible with the world of the brain in a vat. Both I and my envatted replica share the same intentional and qualitative experiences, and thereby we share the whole experiential world. So, more encompassing than the whole actual world is the experiential world that I share with my brain in a vat duplicate. In fact, brain in a vat does have the whole rich world. In respect to the actual metaphysical world understood in externalist terms, brain in a vat has the environment that is additional to what may be for us an actual world. And as this was already mentioned, the very expression being-in-the-world has an experiential basis, for being-in-the-world is the overall situation involving an experiencer, the Dasein if you will.