Fraktalność Noezy (Fractality of noesis)

Abstract

Fractality of noesis This paper offers a description of how consciousness appears to itself expressed in terms of concepts from fractal geometry. The phenomenological noesis – here interpreted as the process of consciousness apprehending its own acts – can be considered as fractally paradoxical as it involves the simultaneous expansion of encompassing perspectives (outward in relation to their content: noema) and the recognition of their self-similarity in regard to the horizon of necessarily perpetual and non-total encompassments. The hypothetical perspective from which consciousness could capture its own acts as a finite totality always appears to be equally unreachable. The existential implications of this kind of consciousness-flow condition are elaborated upon by reference to the works of E. Levinas and J.P. Sartre. First, "I" is described as existing in the mode of identifying itself within a diverse stream of contents of consciousness, leaving the absolute alterity (infinity) beyond the scope of its assimilative capacity. Second, being-for-itself – depicted by Sartre as non-self-identical (in contrast to the solid and self-identical being-in-itself) – is shown to reflect some properties of fractals whose fractal-Hausdorff dimension (usually a non-integer value) exceeds their topological dimension. The hermeneutic potential of fractality is argued to follow from its concatenation of three philosophically important categories: difference – corresponding to the continuous transcendence of the current content in noesis; unity – found in the self-resemblance of the encompassing perspectives; and infinity – being a supposed but unreachable state of encompassment of all possible contents (analogous to the hypothetical perception of a fractal as a realized wholeness).

Keywords

• consciousness
• fractality
• noesis
• phenomenology
• existentialism