All the World’s a Stage: A New Role for the Contemporary Philosopher?

0.  Introduction

	In this short paper, or micro-essay, I have five objectives. First, I would like to briefly sketch how a representationalist theory of reality, as naïvely understood, cannot be held by a reputable philosopher. Second, I would like to indicate how a non-representationalist point of view must alter the way a transcendental phenomenologist should talk about the exercise and practice of their type of project. Third, I would like to list some of the changes in language a contemporary philosopher would need to take on board in the light of the previous two sections. Fourth, I would like to conclude by showing the importance the concept of ‘simulation’, in a special sense, must have for contemporary thought and culture in the light of what has been discussed in this paper. 
A fifth objective will be a parallel paper, or rather a set of observations, embedded in the footnotes which will discuss a number of the same issues present in this paper but from a Buddhist Yogacara point of view. Many of the shifts, or transformations, in current thinking, I believe, have already been thought through, and fought over, for hundreds of years after the start of the current era in the Buddhist Sanskrit world. That an examination of such debates, through the lenses of current scholarship, can, through contrast, illuminate and comment upon the possibilities open for the ‘resolution’ of a number of modern controversies that have concerned themselves with similar issues. 
Footnotes on the paper itself (indicated by superscripted Roman numerals) will be
found as endnotes.

1.  Brief Instructions for the Demolition of the Representationalist Theory of Reality

	A philosopher, what ever their style or lack of it, should, without a doubt, learn to suspend their beliefs; their ontological commitments, their epistemological prejudices and egological convictions, in order to look more closely at what they think they are doing. This simple (version of the transcendental) suspension does not mean that they have to permanently give up such commitments, but, this reflective type of attitude should be exercised if only to see that they are doing what they say they are doing which is always somewhat different to the way they might actually ‘title’ their project or projects. We may not be able to ‘talk about’ and ‘conduct’ our projects in the same breath at least we might try to see ourselves trying to find a closer degree of conformity between ‘what we say we are doing’ and ‘what we might actually be doing.’ 

In this regard the naïve representationalist, and many seemingly more sophisticated proponents of the same type of theory, shoot themselves in the metaphorical foot, or, suffer from this type of metaphorical foot and mouth disease when, by trying to present their views, they ‘literally’ attempt to do the impossible. For example, we are told, more or less, that our ideas and/or images in the mind represent, or copy, objects in the so-called ‘external world.’ These ‘empiricists’ in effect, on their own account, are asking us to ‘see’ something that cannot be seen. Images, or what ever, are seen, but, we do not get to see if these images correspond with things that, by their very definition, cannot be seen. Perhaps we should politely ask “if we can ‘see’ already what is the point of having to see the ‘same thing’ again.” Surely such impossible duplication is evidence of a blind carelessness in this regard!
	
	Then again, we are told that ‘our eyes are like windows.’ They may or may not be ‘windows to the soul’ they are most certainly not just ‘windows upon the world!’ While they may be metaphorically compared to windows, or the lenses of a camera, such similes quickly break down under a more exacting philosophical scrutiny. There is this ‘fallacy of the extended analogy’ at work here - that because the use of metaphors appears to illuminate our research we must, therefore, run with them to the bitter end. Eyes may look like windows but that ‘image’ cannot function without considerable qualification. If our eyes were windows upon the ‘external world’ then who is looking through those eyes would themselves need a pair of eyes to see through the pair we already possess, and so on ad infinitum. Enough! Let us realize, and scope, and reverse our use of metaphorical language in accordance with its inherent limitations!

	Of course, this does not mean, we have to give up our beliefs in the reality of a world of people, objects and whatever other pieces of furniture we might believe are there for us. It is just that we must not let out ontological beliefs, etc, and their metaphorical language, blind us to the nonsense we might perpetrate when we wish to wear the hat of a philosopher. We may hoodwink ourselves in the relative privacy of our own thinking but before the sight of the cognoscenti to share such nonsense with other equally blinkered souls can only stop us from being invited to the very best philosophical parties!

	Is there an alternative to the metaphor of the external world? It is true that the world does appear to be seen ‘out there’ through our own eyes. That other people in turn can say the same sort of thing. But, if we were to suspend such natural thinking, we might find a more natural alternative, namely, a psychic sense of time and space that is shared in a-world-of-others, finding ourselves immersed within the same; always, to some extent, being able to communicate with others and to find them being able to communicate with us. In essence, our realizing a vision of the ‘life-world,’ one world of shared experience wherein we are seen and in turn see the lives of others going about their living-with-us always with some degree of harmony even if, from time to time, that degree of harmony realized in the scope of our present engagement may not be found to be adequate for our current harmonious living-together within that particular relationship.

	In this talk of ‘shared experience’ I am not saying that an individual person cannot have private thoughts known only to themselves. What I am saying is that no person can think a thought without it being (meta-textually) pre-structured by their having lived in a language-community-with-others. To think a thought you have to think of a certain type of thought and all of that is available for us from our prior being a language-participant in a certain language-community. Our actions are pre-structured likewise. With intentionally performed intent we continually adopt and adapt genres of activity already available to us. This does not imply that each thought, and any concomitant action following from that thought, is not unique. Far be it. Nor does it imply that our ‘souls’ are like transparent windows open for all to see what and how we think. We do have some degree of privacy! However, that privacy is not absolute! We are not opaque, rather, more translucent. And even if we might wish to keep our own counsel that desire to keep our own counsel is informed by an intersubjective public concept that drives our current wish to be private in not expressing our current intentions publicly. We might say that in being private or in our being public we orient ourselves in one or other of these directions without becoming either absolutely private or absolutely public. Indeed, as I have said, no thought can be thought without adopting from the public, intersubjective sphere of language those aspects of our-involvement-with-others that involve an already intimate sense of the other. That this aspect of our ‘engagement with others’ is already written into the transcendental constitution of our relationships.

2.  Ramifications for the Transcendental Phenomenologist

	What implications for the transcendental phenomenologist does this acceptance of the absence of an external world have if this philosophical attitude of the life-world is adopted? First, with no external world likewise there can be no internal world! Indeed, can this type of phenomenologist sensibly talk about such ‘unexperienced’ states of affairs? If the person can only experience their ‘representations’ of an external world and not the external world per se why talk about the latter as so-called ‘transcendent things.’ Moreover, obversely, the other side of the coin so to speak, to talk about an internal world of egos is just as much a nonsense! Senses of self yes! But such a transcendent sense of self, beyond the faculties of its own employment, cannot be said to be able to know or experience that type of self. Experience is the province of a respectable phenomenologist not speculation, and, therefore, such talk should cease forthwith! Hence the imputed entities of a so called internal world, like egos, other minds, etc., and, the imputed entities of a so call external world, like objects, bodies-in-themselves, etc., should be relegated to the literary realm of fairy stories and their like!

	With no more such talk of ‘transcendent entities,’ other than their being treated as ‘imagined belief-constructs held by the philosophically-challenged,’ a new sense of the ‘transcendent’ and ‘immanent’ needs to be re-defined for and by the phenomenologist. In this light the exercise of the transcendental suspension (and reduction and reconstitution as discussed by myself on many occasions elsewhere) should be conducted without reference to this prior sense of the transcendent. Indeed, in this light one might like to re-define the ‘natural attitude’ as one ‘contaminated uncritically by metaphorical distortions’ without reference to transcendent (or immanent) entities, whereas, the exercise of the critical transcendental attitude is one in which the phenomenologist exercises a critical treatment of such metaphorical distortions. Moreover, treating the ‘transcendent orientation’ as that which ‘structures’ the relatively ‘immanent’ material being-structured-in-experience and going on to conduct a transcendental suspension, etc., among other things, by a critical, mutual balancing of these ‘structuring’ and ‘being structured’ imports or facets, etc. Certainly without any reference to imputed transcendent worlds and their transcendent entities! But suffice to say that a more precise exposition of this ‘re-alignment,’ this ‘turning around of our thought,’ with have to be conducted elsewhere.

	What implications does this type of critique have for contemporary philosophy? It is my conviction that the language philosophers are going to use in a post-postmodern world will have to undergo a radical shift with certain forms of expression being no longer available, no long being used by the seriously committed philosopher who wishes to work at the cutting edge of contemporary thought. Let me list some of these sea-changes without discussing in this paper in depth their raison d’être. 

3.	Various Headings Under Which this Shift in Language Should be Observed

1.	Acceptance of degrees of reality.
2.	The invocation of simulation as re-presentational.
3.	The acceptance of different senses of self in an overall complex sense of self. 
4.	The recognition of aspectival points of view that are neither absolutely relative nor absolutely absolute.
5.	The acceptance of a one world of life, as the Life-world. 
6.	The acceptance of a theoretical commensurability between all cultural forms of life in the life-world (although individual processes of  commensurability may not be worth our while).
7.	The provisional nature of our critical treatment.
8.	That experience has an intersubjective component, hence reality cannot be completely private (nor completely public).
9.	That freedom is guaranteed, but limited, through our ability to reflect to some degree upon the presuppostional structures of our experience.
10.	That all experience is intentionally structured but not just intentionally structured.
11.	The recognition that all experience is multi-modal in nature and can never be absolutely uni-modal.
12.	That all forms of definition can never be absolutely thematized, only adequately or inadequately.
13.	That neither absolute consistency nor absolute non-consistency can be expected or insisted upon.
14	In experience there can be no pure states of affairs, such as sense data and the like.

	A theoretical underpinning of these 14 theses would demand numerous papers in their own right. However, I have sketched out some of my arguments for these points in the endnotes for those who wish to follow up this type of topic.

4.	The Role of Simulation on the Stage of Contemporary Thought

As we move on from a Postmodern era to a Contemporary era the role of simulation, in a special sense, will, in emphasis, move increasingly forward towards the center-stage. ‘Simulation’ in a special sense meaning ‘simulation of a previous act of simulation’ and not the ‘usual sense of simulation’ as a ‘simulation of that which is not itself simulated.’ In the former special sense ‘simulation’ is seen as a ‘re-production’ or a ‘re-presentation’ and not as a ‘reproduction’ or a ‘representation.’ With this shift in focus upon a sense of simulation as a ‘re-simulation’ this older sense of simulation as ‘simulating that which is not simulated’ must move offstage into the wings where, only occasionally, it will be called upon to speak with a ghostly voice from the past; a specter of the philosophical death, as a warning, that must await those short-sighted souls that seek to re-animate this type of corpse!

	This new sense of simulation is now everywhere with us whether we are aware of this fact or not! We type a text on our computer screen, we print it out, fax it, photocopy it and/or send it by email in the form of an attachment. At no stage can we ‘privilege’ any one of these textual formats over another except historically. We may write it up first on the computer before printing it and then photocopying it. But, be that as it may, we may well wish to ask ‘where is the real text, the original document?’ A string of binary characters in a computer memory hardly ‘represents’ that document even though that use of computer memory can be re-used to ‘re-present’ it in one or other of the above formats.

	Of course, you might say, a photograph is a representation or a simulation of a state of affairs that is not in itself being simulated. But the photograph is the textually intended recording of an image in a camera that has been selected to fall upon photographic paper or some electronic device that stores the information of that image in a digital format. Therefore the photo too is the re-simulation of a simulation and not the direct simulation of a state of affairs that is not being simulated. Now, I am not denying that a photo of some person is not a photo of that person. What is being seriously questioned is the nature of that apparent ‘representation.’ Our access to a ‘text’ is through another text, or series of texts, and not that which is pre-textual to the text itself! And, in turn, our looking at a photo is a continuance of this type of process; the ‘image’ is re-simulated and not merely simulated, etc.

	In the Contemporary era there is an increasing awareness in the textual process itself of this de-representationalist or non-representationalist attitude towards textual production or rather re-production. The distinction between a ‘so-called reality’ and the ‘so-called virtual world’ is one that we find is being increasingly blurred. Furthermore, texts, and the ‘reality’ of the textual characters if present in certain types of texts, take on an increasing self-reflexivity. In the television program of “The Simpson,” e.g., characters opine what it would be like to be cartoon characters as if they were not cartoon characters already. Moreover, texts increasingly seem to assume the presence of a virtual audience as well. In the same television show one of the characters tells us that there is another twenty seconds before the end of the show and the characters undergo one more collective hug to fill up that allotted time. In ‘contemporary’ texts today, at the cutting edge of cultural and aesthetic innovation, these shifts in attitude are very much de rigueur. With these shifts also comes a transformation in the way we see time and space, the world and personal identity. There is also a greater emphasis placed on the sense of a ‘contemporary’ present. In this there is to be found a re-simulation of the existential spontaneity of that ‘current’ moment being re-simulated along with a desire to directly re-present language, if present, as manifested in its appropriate dialect relatively unmediated by literary conventions for the reporting of speech. As a result reality is being textually re-created rather than represented. Hence, for example, among other things, the increasing use of swearing, and other forms of bad language, in television programs although we needn’t despair as this ‘mirroring’ of language is merely a re-simulation of what is already present in culture. You only have to listen to school kids on a bus or a train to realize the truth of this point. Indeed, I would argue that the only influence this type of program would have on its audience is to help children and adults to enlarge their often restricted vocabulary in this respect, and, in the process, hopefully, learn the currently appropriate boundaries for the exercise of such a genre in self-expression. Well, we can live in hope!

	Does this blurring of reality destroy our sense of discrimination as to what is ‘real’ and what is ‘not real?’ Of course not! The sense of the real was never determined with reference to a ‘that which was not simulated.’ In this respect current practice is moving closer to the ‘center’ of the complex phenomenon of how we actually do determine what is to be considered as real. We can now pay greater attention to the existential richness of the presentation in its re-production as a re-presentation. We can examine the number of modes co-operating in our engagement with that presentation; finding that a ‘sense of reality’ is reinforced when a relatively greater number of modalities are being harmoniously engaged in the re-production of that re-presentation. In this regard, between a ‘dream apple’ and an ‘eatable apple,’ that relieves my sense of hunger as an embodied person, we would be more easily inclined to give a greater degree of credence to the latter ‘image’ over the former. In the same light we find the ‘overall coherence,’ ease of ‘cultural accommodation’ and ‘causal efficacy’ of our re-presentations help us to determine which presentations will be incorporated more fully into our shared vision of what is to be seen as more real in our collective vision of the all-embracing spectrum of the life-world.

	In the overthrow of our erstwhile insistence upon a ‘that which is not simulated’ we can now deal with the reality of that reality-that-is-to-hand. And this the text does for us! There is an aspect of experience which, in effect, at that moment, is essentially direct and unmediated. It is as if the text metaphorically ‘calls us to listen’ and then ‘talks to us.’ Although ‘foundered’ upon processes of intentional calculation and manipulation of signs, etc., it, at the same time, untethers itself from such props and ceases to ‘founder upon’ such an intentional territory. For example, even though a novel may be read through a succession of intentional acts of reading our understanding of that novel must in time transcend such a succession of discrete acts to realize an act of understanding that escapes such a calculative process of appreciation. If I were to ask you “did you enjoy the last novel you read?” I am sure your answer would be arrived at without any deliberation. Moreover, if I were to ask you “what was the novel about?” the only deliberation involved would be as to how you were going to go about answering this request. In thematizing your reply you merely re-awake, in a manner of speaking, what you already knew. In the process re(-)storing that knowledge with detail that on reflection allows you to either persist with your previous views or to change them in accordance with this newer light and its consequent re-appreciation of detail realized in and through our interaction with a certain sense of the other brought forward to assist us in this task; regardless of whether this sense of the other as an ‘audience’ is real or virtual in character. Our subsequent actions, hopefully, to some extent, consistently reflecting these prior attitudes and/or changes in attitude in a manner adequate to the nature of that task to hand.

	In this ‘non-textual’ experience of the text, it is my belief, that we meet face to face with the author or authors of that text, as one simulation ‘meeting’ another. In the light of this type of ‘everyday experience’ we realize that there can be no ‘wholly other’ and this has ramifications for the formulation of a possible theology, or philosophy of religious experience, that wishes to deal with this type of facet thought experienced in the life-world, a topic, I might add, that I would like to take up in a future paper. I should also note that both the sense of some ‘other’ and our own ‘sense of self’ equally cannot be absolutely appropriated and the horizons of being that surround our-being-with-others must always loom before us as if a mystery to be forever met in the ongoing unravelment of its future unfoldment and enfoldment. Experience, through re-simulation, both progressively folding over itself and being partially unfolded in our examination of it. In this light we should also realize that the phenomenologist, indeed the philosopher and the layperson too, must experience the ‘appearances’ of reality as ‘phenomena manifested with a profound sense of depth!’ Appearances, thence, can no longer be dismissed as superficial! Or as masks behind whose fine veneer a greater reality is thought to lurk in hiding!

	To conclude let me remark, in no uncertain manner, that the practice and language of the committed philosopher must reflect these current transitions and transformations in culture. A blind, uncritical adherence to the ways of old will no longer serve us. On the other hand to cut ourselves off from the roots of our past will equally be of no service to us! Taking a middle path we must re-transform the insights of the past and re-fashion them anew in the hope that we can therein be of service to others! In effect, seeing through the distortion of our metaphors with the consequent turning around of the rhetoric attendant upon the uncritical acceptance of such tools for simulating the nature of this world of shared experience, this one-world-of-life!
	
	The experience of the life-world is bit like being a fish deep in the midst of a huge ocean. Everywhere, or so it seems, in our passage through this ocean we find water. Everything that is met appears to be constituted in water. Where this metaphor ‘dissolves’ is in the fish finding the bottom of that ocean, or discovering that there is a surface, or meeting the tides that wash the beaches, cliffs, reefs and atolls that surround that great ocean and therein finding that the world is not constituted in water alone, that even a great ocean has boundaries. However, in experience, for the person, there are no real boundaries in the life-world only horizons! In the light of this existential fact I have titled (and subtitled) this paper, using a Shakespearean allusion, “All the World’s a Stage: A New Role for the Contemporary Philosopher.” As I have argued that all experience is constituted through simulations of simulations, as ongoing re-simulations, I have thereby implied that the world is to be treated as a ‘theatre of experience,’ that all experience is to be treated as ‘theatre’ with a subsequent shift in the role of the philosopher. Our treatment of the world in such a light also allows us to approach this simulated world in the appropriate transcendental manner, that is, as under a thorough global suspension (and all that that entails). Indeed, as a simulation qua ‘re-simulation!’ In this attitude the ‘transcendental depth’ of this world of natural appearances can be properly experienced, evaluated, appreciated and appropriately entertained. Like fish we meet each other, and all other things, in this ocean of experience. But unlike fish we find no boundaries, absolute limitations imposed upon our freedom, finding, instead, only infinitely self-extending horizons wherein all rules of engagement are enacted and underwritten as if all the world’s a stage…wherein our passage is scripted in accordance with prevailing genres, all the audience are actors too and the dramatic integrity of all action is met in the manner of the delivery of our lines before the sight of others….  That such is the transcendental nature of our life in ‘this’ world, this one-world-of-life…!

			      Noël Tointon, Leura, Mini-Philosophy Conference II, 12.11.00

PS: I would like to express my thanks to the many authors of a large number of papers quoted in this paper whose publications can be found on the Internet. My special thanks also to the Journal Philosophy East and West for the large number of papers represented on their site (http://www.uhpress,hawaii.edu/journals/pew/). N.

Endnotes