Parts and Wholes

I have come across the concept of "Parts and Wholes" for the first time this afternoon, in reading Introduction to Phenomenology by Robert Sokolowski. According to Msgr. Sokolowski, this concept is not unique only to phenomenology, but found first in Aristotle and Plato. I can only assume that I will encounter "Parts and Wholes" further during my study of Ancient Philosophy next semester.

I must admit, however, that I am suprised that this is my first time hearing of the concept, especially considering my study of Epistemology last spring. Perhaps it's just me, but I see a direct correlation between the theory of "Parts and Wholes" to the epistemological questions. In fact, if Msgr. Sokolowski is correct in his assertion (which I will restate here momentarily), then modern philosophers such as Descarte and Locke have no premise on which to build their arguments. This seems huge to me.

Let's begin with the basic concept of "Parts and Wholes", as explained in Solokowski's book, Chapter 3.

A part can be subdivided into two:
Pieces-- parts that can subsist and be presented even apart from the whole. Parts that can become wholes. Also known as Independent parts.
Moments-- parts that cannot subsist or be presented apart from the whole to which they belong; they cannot be detached. Also known as Nonindependent parts.

Examples of pieces are acorns and leaves and branches. They are parts of whole (a tree), but they also maintain an individual identity when separated from the tree.

Examples of moments are the color red, musical pitch, and vision. The color red cannot occur apart from some surface or spacial expanse. A musical pitch cannot exist except blended with sound, and vision without an eye. Moments can be spoken about, thanks to language, without making reference to its dependences, but they cannot exist alone. Once separated by speech or thouht, they become abstract.

Now for the interesting claim made by Sokolowski. He prefaces this claim by explaining how certain philosophical "problems" arise merely from mistaking moments for pieces. He then states:

People often take the mind to be a self-enclosed sphere, that is, a piece that can be separated from the worldly context to which it naturally and essentially belongs. Then they will ask how the mind can ever get outside itself and find out what is going on in the world. But the mind cannot be separated out this way; the mind is a moment to the world and the things in it; the mind is essentially correlated with its objects. There is no "problem of knowledge" or "problem of the external world," there is no problem about how we get to "extramental" reality, because the mind should never be separated from reality from the beginning (Sokolowski 25).

Now, I'm not entirely convinced of his claim that the "mind is a moment to the world" and I would like to see some backing for it, but I will deal with that issue specifically in an upcoming post.

For the present time, I would like to consider the epistemological implications of such a claim.

The idea that the mind is connected to the world, even more so than simply being able to intend with the world, is an interesting concept. That the mind is a part of the world, even a moment of the world... Where does one start with such a claim?

It seems that, if true, this claim proves wrong all relativism and the thinking of most modern philosophers that the only things that we can have knowledge of are those that are in our minds. By such, they say that we cannot know what is in the outside world. But if the mind is a moment of the world, then there is that steady connection-- that real connection between the mind and the world. A connection that Locke holds does not exist.

I wonder, too, what relation this has with the process of intellection or abstraction. Do these two theories go together? Do they compliment one another, or do they contradict?

How does a part interact with its whole?

I'd like to read more on "Parts and Wholes" in general. And I'd also like to find an argument for the claim that Sokolowski makes about the mind being a moment of the world. This is even more interesting than I originally thought it would be. I need to do some more research.