Terminological Junctions for Landing Sites - David Kolb

You are invited to contribute to this landing site(s) discussion. In the opinion of the discussants, the achieving of a linking up of landing site(s) thinking with Eugene Gendlin's notion of a ""felt sense"", that is, a securing of a place for ""felt sense"" within a landing site(s) terminological junction, for which this discussion was begun, will still require considerably more time and effort.

Email: comments@reversibledestiny.org

FIRST VOLLEY – From: David Kolb       To: Arakawa and Madeline Gins
February 22, 2008

Here is a first volley or contribution to stimulate dialogue. It's short, as you suggested:
We always live in place, in a surround that has bodily, individual, and social meanings. We are "in" place by "a coordinating into place of as many scales of action as possible." Some of those scales are determined by others, but even then we can coordinate our interpretations and reactions. Some landing sites are made socially prominent and we are trained to structure places in terms of them. But there is always also "the atmospheric component of the architectural body" that is not only a collection of other actual and potential landing sites, but also an atmospheric felt meaning that helps guide the creation and the re-creation of place, bringing the chance of novelty and refusing to be completely programmed. Our "ongoingly organized and redistributing gatherings" are not fully formed, and neither are landing sites little atoms that can be combined in arbitrary ways. There are felt appropriatenesses, felt openings and closures, lacks and superfluities. We can have "focal areas of attention or landing sites" but not all of awareness is focal. Both social and bodily meaning goes beyond the focal, and to our surprise so does the individual. "The organism that persons articulates, or gives various articulations to, that which surrounds her," but we must be careful not to envision that articulation as a pure creation imposed on a neutral continuum. In truth, the blank is full of suggestion and intimation, not of a single definite articulation to come, but of comings and goings that can redefine and reposition us.  (All the quoted phrases are from the Biotopology section)

Get out your surgical gloves.  The patient, the text of perfect length you emailed us, is on the operating table.

We have numbered your paragraph’s sentences, desiring to treat them one by one.

1. We always live in place, in a surround that has bodily, individual, and social meanings.
Your beginning this exchange of ideas with this sentence suggests to us that you want to know whether we believe an architectural surround has bodily, individual, and social meanings.

Yes.

These are intermixed – inseparable one from the other (?).

2. We are "in" place by "a coordinating into place of as many scales of action as possible."
Our re-write: An organism that persons, in conjunction with bioscleave, coordinates itself to be “in” place on all the many scales of action that turn out to be necessary for her/his constituting (read: co-constituting) of herself/himself.

3.  Some of those scales are determined by others, but even then we can coordinate our interpretations and reactions.
All scales of action are determined by this other or that.  Interpretations and reactions are fall-outs from (and thus part of) of an organism that persons’ coordinating/ configuring of landing sites.

4. Some landing sites are made socially prominent, and we are trained to structure places in terms of them.
Would you list some of the socially prominent landing sites you have in mind?

5. But  there is always also "the atmospheric component of the architectural  body" that is not only a collection of other actual and potential  landing sites, but also a atmospheric felt meaning that helps guide the creation and the re-creation of place, bringing the chance of  novelty and refusing to be completely programmed.

AN ORGANISM THAT PERSONS’ LANDING-SITE CONFIGURATION OF THE MOMENT = ATMOSPHERIC COMPONENT OF THE BODY PLUS BODY/ORGANISM THAT PERSONS.   If everything for an organism that persons has to do with landing sites, then “atmospheric felt meaning” should be taken either as a subclass of landing-site configuration or as in itself a small-scale landing-site configuration.  Landing sites have been defined as existing simultaneously on many scales of action at once and abounding within one another.  A landing-site configuration can, following this definition of landing site(s), also simply be classed a landing site.  To zero in on: the small scale landing-site configuration named atmospheric felt meaning – that helps guide the creation and the re-creation of place, bringing the chance of  novelty and refusing to be completely programmed.

6. Our "ongoingly organized and redistributing gatherings" are not fully formed, and neither are landing sites little atoms that can be combined in arbitrary ways.

Ongoingly organized and redistributing gatherings and the landing sites on all scales of action that constitute these gatherings – not fully, formed but fully forming.

7.  There are felt appropriatenesses, felt openings and closures, lacks and superfluities.
We read: There are felt appropriatenesses, felt openings and felt closures, felt lacks and felt superfluities.

FELT APPROPRIATENESS = LANDING SITE            FELT OPENING =LANDING SITE
FELT CLOSURE= LANDING SITE                     FELT LACK = LANDING SITE                             
FELT SUPERFLUITY = LANDING SITE

Link each and all of these to “atmospheric felt meaning.” To zero in on: What is going on as what within atmospheric felt meaning?

8. We can have "focal areas of attention or landing sites" but not all of awareness is focal.
Not all (types of) landing sites are focal.  IMAGINING LANDING SITE = NON-FOCAL AWARENESS.

9.  Both social and bodily meaning goes beyond the focal, and to our surprise so does the individual.
SOCIAL MEANING/SELF-CONSTRUAL IS COMPOSED OF PRIMARILY IMAGING LANDING SITES
BODILY MEANING IS IN GOOD PART COMPOSED OF IMAGING LANDING SITES
INDIVIDUAL MEANING IS LARGELY COMPOSED OF IMAGING LANDING SITES – Where is the surprise in this?

10. "The organism that persons articulates, or gives various articulations to, that which surrounds her," but we must be careful not to envision that articulation as a pure creation imposed on a neutral continuum.  

11.  In truth, the blank is full of suggestion and intimation, not of a single definite articulation to come, but of comings and goings that can redefine and reposition us.   

BLANK = LANDING-SITE CONFIGURATION = ATMOSPHERIC FELT MEANING (?) = LANDING SITE.

You said:

AN ORGANISM THAT PERSONS’ LANDING-SITE CONFIGURATION OF THE MOMENT = ATMOSPHERIC COMPONENT OF THE BODY PLUS BODY/ORGANISM THAT PERSONS

FELT APPROPRIATENESS = LANDING SITE               
FELT OPENING =LANDING SITE
FELT CLOSURE = LANDING SITE                                       
FELT LACK = LANDING SITE
FELT SUPERFLUITY = LANDING SITE   
IMAGINING LANDING SITE = NON-FOCAL AWARENESS.
SOCIAL MEANING/SELF-CONSTRUAL IS COMPOSED OF PRIMARILY IMAGING LANDING SITES
BODILY MEANING IS IN GOOD PART COMPOSED OF IMAGING LANDING SITES
INDIVIDUAL MEANING IS LARGELY COMPOSED OF IMAGING LANDING SITES

BLANK = LANDING-SITE CONFIGURATION = ATMOSPHERIC FELT MEANING (?)   = LANDING SITE.

I was puzzled by this response. It seems to me that you are so generalizing the notion of "landing sites" that it is in danger of becoming too indefinite. If objects of perception and atmospheric felt meanings and dimly sensed lacks and possibilities are all "landing sites" then there is a danger that either you have reduced experience to an assemblage of positive data, which I don't think you intend, or you have elided the distinction between the particular and the horizon—but the horizon is not just a set of other particulars. The possible as possible always surrounds and gives meaning to the actual and definite; I thought you were emphasizing the bodily dimension of all this but now I am unsure. "Landing sites" seems to have cannibalized all other terms.

"We are "in" place by "a coordinating into place of as many scales of action as possible."
Our re-write: An organism that persons, in conjunction with bioscleave, coordinates itself to be “in”  place on all the many scales of  action that turn out to be necessary for  her/his constituting (read: co- constituting) of herself/himself.

The above seems a fair rewrite to me.

4. Some landing sites are made socially prominent, and we are trained to structure places in terms of them.

Would you list some of the socially prominent landing sites you have in mind?
Some are from evolution such as visually favoring edges and corners. 
Some are from a combination of felt gravity and feeling, such as tall central buildings over a cluster of low ones being felt as important and meaningful. Some are from specific practices, such as picking out the traffic light out of a busy corner's visual mixture.

a). What we put forward certainly is puzzling, and we fully expected you to be puzzled.  What is not a landing site we want to say, and yet, as you put it so well, how can all that happens, particulars and horizons alike, be taken up as landing site(s)? Here is how: think of a landing site as a simple noting of any x, a straightforward “hmm, that is going on.”  (Re-visit Architectural Body - Chapter 2, Landing Sites.)  Landing sites occur as horizons or unfold horizon-like.  Through these horizons or horizon-like unfoldings particulars get taken up, surface.   Landing site is the working term that led us to “architectural body” and “architectural procedures.” If it is perfectly fine to speak of whatever comes someone’s way as (being an instance of), massenergy, then why cannot whatever comes someone’s way equally well be spoken of as (being an instance of) (a) landing site.  

b). The landing site-configuration of the moment consists of all the horizons or horizon-like unfoldings and tentativenesses put forth by an organism that persons, within and around the organism she is.  Particularly within the organism herself, a landing site-configuration of the moment exists both as many multiple horizons/horizon-like unfoldings/tentativenesses going forth and as an agglomerating of all or many of these into a landing site (composed of course, by definition, of many landing sites on many different scales of action).

We hold this way of speaking of “atmospheric felt meaning” to be highly promising.

c). The possible as possible always surrounds and gives meaning to the actual and definite.
Our re-write: Bioscleave always surrounds, intermixes with and gives meaning/possibility to discernable and organized segments of bioscleave. 

d). We are comfortable with your list of socially prominent landing sites and will get back to you on them later. 

Think of a landing site as a simple noting of any x, a straightforward “hmm, that is going on.”
My worry is that any noting occurs against a horizon of other possibilities. Meaning comes through contrast. To label something "that" means it is not various other things. Without the presence of those unchosen contrasts (as a horizon, as it were) you don't have meaning, though you might have a kind of pure Buddhist "suchness."

Landing sites occur as horizons or unfold horizon-like.  Through these horizons or horizon-like unfoldings particulars get taken up, surface. From what I said above I'm not sure what it means to say they occur "as horizons" – I tend to think things noted as standing out against a background of nonexplicit things. The metaphor of "horizon" is to suggest that things we note directly are given meaning by the things we don't but could.

If it is perfectly fine to speak of whatever comes someone’s way as  (being an instance of), massenergy, then why cannot whatever comes someone’s way equally well be spoken of as (being an instance of) (a) landing site. Massenergy is their stuff. A thing is an instance of massenergy by being made of it. But a landing site is not stuff; it's a way stuff enters experience?

 b). The landing site-configuration of the moment  consists of all the horizons or horizon-like unfoldings and tentativenesses put  forth by an organism  that persons,  within and around the organism she is.  Particularly within the organism herself, a landing site-configuration of the moment exists both as many multiple horizons/horizon-like unfoldings/tentativenesses going forth and as an agglomerating of all or many of these into a landing site (composed of course, by definition, of many landing sites on many different scales of action).  I think this could be worked out well as a kind of internal world and perception, but I'd still want to make the qualifications I tried to make above and below to the notion of horizon.

c). The possible as possible always surrounds and gives meaning to the actual and definite. Our re-write: Bioscleave always surrounds, intermixes with and gives meaning/possibility to discernable and organized segments of bioscleave.
Your rewrite seems fine but I think "gives possibility" needs to be expanded. There are possible paths through the woods and there is my experience of my actual path as in contrast with those other possible ways I could have been going. What concerns me is the awareness of the possible as possible. The surrounding bioscleave offers ways of walking through the trees, but there being those paths is not the same as an organism perceiving them as possibles haunting the actual and giving it meaning.

I find this back and forth with you very exciting and so do I. 

We want to remind you we began this conversation with you for the purpose of scoping out “felt meaning” or “atmospheric felt meaning” by means of landing sites. 

You are right, there first needs to be a clearing of the air or a putting of all different types of landing sites in their place. 

We live it this way. 
The landing site-configuration of the moment consists of all the horizons or horizon-like unfoldings and tentativenesses put forth ;by an organism that persons, within and around the organism she is.  Particularly within the organism herself, a landing site-configuration of the moment exists both as many multiple horizons/horizon-like unfoldings/tentativenesses going forth and as an agglomerating of all or many of these into a landing site (composed of course, by definition, of many landing sites on many different scales of action).  I think this could be worked out well as a kind of internal world and perception, but I'd still want to make the qualifications I tried to make above and below to the notion of horizon.

Every type of landing site is a focalizing/focalized horizon-like trajectory of sorts.  Perceptual landing sites are more tightly focalized horizon-like trajectories than imaging ones.  We might note that we had early on posited that all landing sites grow out of imaging ones.  In any event, imaging landing sites “sketch in” indefiniteness, vagueness, the world of possibilities.  Each type of landing site operates as a different degree of horizon/horizoning.   We have currently begun to look far more closely at what is meant by imaging.  The selected and the background to what is selected – different types of landing sites.

If it is perfectly fine to speak of whatever comes someone’s way as  (being an instance of), massenergy, then why cannot whatever comes someone’s way equally well be spoken of as (being an instance of) (a) landing site.
Massenergy is their stuff. A thing is an instance of massenergy by being made of it. But a landing site is not stuff; it's a way stuff enters experience?

A landing site is a neutral place marker, yes, of a discerning; but we have also purposely left it only half-defined so that when our species comes to know more about human interactions with bioscleave, the physical nature and dynamics of a landing site might then be determined and fruitfully named.  In any event, landing sites at certain scales of action stand as neutral place markers for exactly that “stuff” of which they (and everything) consist(s) – massenergy.  Using you way of putting things, all experiencing consists of stuff.

Ten years ago, we identified indefinite and definite perceptual and imaging landing sites on the landing-site charts we were toying with.  Today, after giving some thought to your remarks, it occurs to us that we would be better served were we to name a subclass of imaging landing sites possible landing site(s) or possibility-reserving landing site(s).

Another volley!

//mercury

The landing-site configuration of the moment consists of all the horizons or horizon-like unfoldings and tentativenesses put forth by an organism that persons within and around the organism she is.

Is "put forth" the best phrase to use? It doesn't quite express the mutuality of organism and surround in offering/reaching landing sites.

Particularly within the organism herself, a landing site-configuration of the moment exists both as many multiple horizons/horizon-like unfoldings/tentativenesses going forth and as an agglomerating of all or many of these into a landing site.

Is that "many" within some further background unified horizon, or is the farthest back horizon "behind" it all composed by the overlappings- intersections of the many unfoldings? That is, is there a further and prior lived "space" in which all this happens or is the lived space an assemblage of the smaller horizons? In the philosophic tradition there would be thinkers on both sides of this issue. Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger, for instance, on the unity side, and Deleuze, Whitehead, and empiricists generally on the assemblage side.

Every type of landing site is a focalizing/focalized horizon-like trajectory of sorts.  Perceptual landing sites are more tightly focalized horizon-like trajectories than imaging ones.

The distinction between perceptual and imaging gets very interesting.  In philosophy it reminds me of the debates over the place of imagination. Is it a power opposed to the clarity of conceptual thought, or is it somehow fundamental. Heidegger thought that Kant saw how imagination was basic but recoiled from the idea in the second edition of the Critique. Lately Lakoff and Johnson, for example, put imagination and bodily images prior.

We might note that we had early on  posited that all landing sites grow out of imaging ones.  In any event, imaging landing sites “sketch in” indefiniteness, vagueness, the world of possibilities.

Does that sketch have a preexisting canvas or does it extend space as it draws? (This is ultimately the same question as above.) And are the "indefiniteness, vagueness, the world of possibilities" parasitic on prior definiteness, precision, actualities, or vice versa, or some mix of the two?

Each type of landing site operates as a different degree of horizon/ horizoning.  We have currently begun to look far more closely at what is meant by imaging.  The selected and the background to what is selected – different types of landing sites.

I keep coming back to the question whether the background is prior, or contemporaneous, presupposed or assembled. In the end it's the abstract issue whether the definite actual is prior, or the less definite opening of possibilities. Does there have to be a decision of priority? If not, if they co-emerge, then:

we would be better served were we to name a subclass of imaging landing sites possible landing site(s) or  possibility-reserving landing site(s).

This sounds very promising. But is there a more complex relation hiding behind the word "subclass"?