Gendlin’s position against the “idealized observer” and Dewey’s position against the “spectator”: based on their views of old and new physics

Gendlin called the characteristics of living processes common to plants, animals, and humans a “non-Laplacian sequence.” So what exactly is “Laplacian”? He critically examined an assumption implicit in classical physics from Newton to Laplace. This assumption implied determinism that scientists could perfectly predict the future. It also implied that when such scientists, called the “idealized observers,” observed natural phenomena, they pretended to be non-participants, even though they were participants.

Old and new physics

Gendlin wrote a paper on physics with its expert in 1983. In it, the modern quantum theory that has replaced classical physics was briefly described as follows:

In quantum theory ... the basic concept is that of interaction; and, we will argue, it is natural in quantum theories to regard location and time as derivative from interaction, and to distinguish actual interaction from mere comparison. (Gendlin & Lemke, 1983, p. 63)

This view of quantum theory as an interactional idea did not begin with Gendlin. It will be helpful to understand the critical position against the “idealized observer” in his later work if we consider how the philosopher John Dewey, who preceded him, commented on the old and new physics. Dewey criticized the determinism of classical physics from Newton to Laplace, calling it the “spectator theory of knowledge,” and examined how Heisenberg’s quantum theory replaced it:

The future and the past belong to the same completely determinate and fixed scheme. Observations, when correctly conducted, merely register this fixed state of changes according to laws of objects whose essential properties are fixed. The implications of the positions are expressed in Laplace’s well-known saying that were there a knowledge (in mechanical terms) of the state of the universe at any one time its whole future could be predicted—or deduced. It is this philosophy which Heisenberg’s principle has upset, a fact implied in calling it a principle of indetermincy. (Dewey, 1929, pp. 201–2 [LW 4, 161])

Principle of indeterminacy

After this overview of the ideas of classical physics, Dewey briefly reviewed the principle of indeterminacy as an embodiment of the non-spectator’s or interactional idea that the act of observing itself affects the object being observed, as follows:

We should all, I suppose, recognize that when we perceive an object by means of touch, the contact introduces a slight modification in the thing touched. Although in dealing with large bodies this change would be insignificant, it would be considerable if we touched a minute body and one moving at high speed. It might be thought that we could calculate the displacement thus effected, and by making allowances for it determine exactly the position and momentum of the thing touched. But this result would be theoretical, and would have to be confirmed by another observation. (Dewey, 1929, p. 203 [LW 4, 162])

He then concluded as follows:

The principle of indeterminacy thus presents itself as the final step in the dislodgment of the old spectator theory of knowledge. It marks the acknowledgment, within scientific procedure itself, of the fact that knowing is one kind of interaction which goes on within the world. (Dewey, 1929, pp. 204–5 [LW 4, 163–4])

Critical position against the “idealized observer”

Keeping in mind Dewey’s contrast between old and new physics, it will provide some background for Gendlin’s criticism since the ’80s that the “The space-time continuity of the observer in [classical] physics is abstracted from the continuity of living bodies.” (Gendlin et al., 1984, p. 260).

If there is no implying, if all events are only what they already are, then what connects events? It is conceived as a link between time and space provided by an "idealized observer." ... Empty space and empty time are assumed to consist of mere points that must wait for the observer to connect them. (Gendlin, 1991, p. 108)

The usual conceptual model deprives everything of implying and meaning, not just living bodies. It constructs its objects in empty positional space and time, so that everything consists of information at space-time points. The space and the objects are presented before someone—who is not presented in the space. It is rather someone who connects the space and time points. The connections come to the points only externally; they are added by anonymous people called “the idealized observer.” (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 34)

Thus, it can be said that Dewey’s concept of the spectator (*1) was succeeded and critically examined by Gendlin’s concept of the idealized observer.

Concepts to think about what living bodies can do

Dewey and Gendlin’s review of the history of physics can further highlight Gendlin’s idea that to understand the living processes of plants, animals, and humans, we should not pretend that we, as observers, did not exist but that we should also be included in the consideration:

Mind is no longer a spectator beholding the world from without .... From knowing as an outside beholding to knowing as an active participant in the drama of an on-moving world is the historical transition whose record we have been following. (Dewey, 1929, p. 291 [LW 4, 232])

The human sciences study the observer and therefore cannot assume a constant and abstracted observer-continuity. We must see how this observer-continuity is generated. Then we can relate science's space and objects to other kinds of space and objects that also can be generated. (Gendlin et al., 1984, pp. 259–60)

In light of Dewey, we can also say that the roots of the following argument in the later “A Process Model” (APM) become apparent:

The spectator theory of knowing may, humanly speaking, have been inevitable when thought was viewed as an exercise of a “reason” independent of the body, which by means of purely logical operations attained truth. It is an anachronism now that we ... are aware of the role of organic acts in all mental processes. (Dewey, 1929, p. 245 [LW 4, 195])

Shall we now study the observers (ourselves) by positing still another set of observers to connect us in their spectated space and time? Concepts that consist only of external positional relations are too poor to enable us to think about what living bodies can do, even plants and certainly animals, let alone ourselves. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, pp. 34–5)

“Perception” and “nature” from a non-idealized observer’s standpoint

The critical position against the “idealized observer” was discussed in the section “d-2) Some requirements for our further concept formation” in Chapter IV-A of APM as one of the basic ideas of the entire book. Of course, this idea seems to be reflected in the discussions elsewhere in this book. In connection with this idea, I would like to follow the discussions of “perception” in “(c-2) Had space-and-time” in Chapter VI-B and of “nature” in “(g-1) Relevance” in Chapter IV-A.

First, Dewey’s argument against the “spectator theory of knowing” would correspond to Gendlin’s argument against dropping out of the bodily process of perceiving.

... we humans cannot find ourselves within the scientific picture, since it consists of presenteds. We seem to be only the perceivers-of or constructors-of the picture, as if we were outside the universe, the perceiver who does not appear in the percept. (Gendlin, 1992, p. 344)

The space and time of the old model are very limited. They cannot be accepted as an ultimate frame of reality. They are very abstract positional relations of comparison imposed by someone. Who? Obviously a perceiver, and not one who perceives-in-behavior, but rather a perceiver who only perceives and does only comparing, a spectator who has only an external relation to what is perceived. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 99)

The space of locations is a spectator’s space. It is perceived but then the bodily process of perceiving is dropped out, so that only the perceived things seem independently real. If that were so, there would also already be the space between them. But the process of perceiving is what is generating the perceptions! They are wrongly considered to exist by themselves. (Gendlin, fair copy, p. 1; 2013, p. 85; 2018, p. 151)

I think it was one of the essential themes in Gendlin’s philosophy to discuss generating perceptions without dropping out of the bodily process.

Next, the problem of thinking of perception from the standpoint of the idealized observer is also related to how we perceive “nature."

The doctrine that nature is inherently rational was a costly one. It entailed the idea that reason in man is an outside spectator of a rationality already complete in itself. (Dewey, 1929, p. 211)

Why is nature only said to “obey” laws? Why would nature (what we study .....) not be active? Does it not consist also of active interactions, including our activities? (Gendlin, 1997, p. 406; 2018, p. 276)

To read our formulations back as predetermining nature pretends that nature has the sort of order that our formulations have. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 48)

Their underlying idea seems to be that when we perceive nature, we ourselves are active participants in the process of perceiving rather than simply copying the order inherent in nature as something separate from us.

Conclusion

Succeeding Dewey, Gendlin further argued that predictable determinism could not explain the living processes. Furthermore, in light of Dewey, it became clear that unpredictability is not unrelated to our own participation in considering living processes or organic nature. The unpredictability, however, does not necessarily imply a lack of order. I will discuss the posterior order of living bodies in a separate post (Tanaka, 2024, June).

Note

*1) The word “spectator” was used not only by Dewey’s work but also by Gendlin’s APM. For example, this word was used in Chapter I to describe en#1. However, the word “spectator,” used in Chapter I, including “hunter,” and the word “idealized observer,” used in Chapter IV to describe a scientist’s cognition, differ in denotation and do not always seem to refer to the same matters. Dr. Luke Jaaniste has provided valuable suggestions on this point.

References

Dewey, J. (1929). The quest for certainty. Minton, Balch. Reprinted as Dewey, J. (1984). The later works, vol. 4 [Abbreviated as LW 4]. Southern Illinois University Press.

Gendlin, E. T. (1991). Thinking beyond patterns: body, language and situations. In B. den Ouden, & M. Moen (Eds.), The Presence of Feeling in Thought (pp. 21–151). Peter Lang.

Gendlin, E.T. (1992). The primacy of the body, not the primacy of perception. Man and World, 25(3-4), 341-53.

Gendlin, E.T. (1997). The responsive order: a new empiricism. Man and World, 30 (3), 383-411.

Gendlin, E. T. (1997/2018). A process model. Northwestern University Press.

Gendlin, E.T. (2013). The Derivation of Space. In Cruz-Pierre, A. and D.A. Landes (eds.) Exploring the work of Edward S. Casey: giving voice to place, memory, and imagination (pp. 85–95). Bloomsbury Academic.

Gendlin, E.T. (2018). Saying what we mean (edited by E.S. Casey & D.M. Schoeller). Northwestern University Press.

Gendlin, E.T. & J. Lemke (1983). A critique of relativity and localization. Mathematical Modelling, 4, 61-72.

Gendlin, E.T., Grindler, D. & McGuire, M. (1984). Imagery, body, and space in focusing. In A.A. Sheikh (Ed.), Imagination and healing (pp. 259–86). Baywood.

Tanaka, H. (2024, June). Gendlin’s position against the “unit model” or the “content paradigm”: retroactive time in terms of G. H. Mead’s theory of time.