Peripheral Experience and Epistemic Neutrality: Color at the Margins
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Peripheral Experience and Epistemic Neutrality: Color at the Margins Emiliano Diaz1 Accepted: 29 September 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract I argue that Husserl’s account of passive synthesis can be developed into a phenomenology of peripheral experience. Peripheral experiences are not defined by their location in visual space but by their phenomenal and intentional character, by what these experiences are like and how they present things in the world. Further, I argue that peripheral experience is of a piece with our most basic background convictions about the world. As such, the periphery is epistemically neutral, but not therefore empty of meaning. It is meaningful as holding open the possibility of further activity, both practical and intellectual. I explore these ideas by focusing on peripheral color experience. Husserl’s discussions of associative synthesis, affection, and doxic and nondoxic forms of attention prove key to detailing peripheral color experience. I end by arguing that at the periphery, intentional content and phenomenal content come apart.
1 Introduction The periphery of experience is most commonly associated with the visual space beyond the rough edges of the focal point of perception. Soft shapes, indefinite borders, nascent patterns, and a palette of colors occupy this space. Yet, we can also speak of peripheral experience. Relaxing one’s gaze so that the indeterminate, quasiimpressionistic character of the periphery expands to soften the central space of perception is one example. Another example is the use of instruments, such as cars, hockey sticks, and pencils, which, when used competently, recede from the focal point of attention even as they occupy a central portion of visual space. Peripheral experiences are not defined by their location in visual space but by their phenomenal and intentional character, by what these experiences are like and how they present things in the world.
* Emiliano Diaz [email protected] 1
Purchase College, 735 Anderson Hill Rd., Purchase, NY 10577, USA
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Husserl Studies
It also follows that in the phenomenological register the focal point of perception is not a geometric concept, it is not analogous to the center of a circle. I can, for instance, keep the orange chair in the corner at the outer edge of my visual field while attending to the features of the chair as experienced at the edge. Here, the outer edge of experience congeals. It resists full resolution, but affords a definite visual accounting of its indeterminate features. It is thus not a peripheral experience but a distinct form of focal experience. This distinction is drawn from the difference in the phenomenal and intentional character of these two experiences; the peripheral experience of the orange chair as I focus on typing is distinct from the focal experience of the chair as I direct my eyes to the keyboard and attend to the features of the chair as experienced at the edge of my visual field. In focal experiences, things resolve into a gesta
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