Page 31 - Contribution To Phenomenology

24 LESTER EMBREE

practical consequences. It might be argued, however, that both the
scientific action and the theoretical endeavor need to be distinguished if
only because what is involved in making an action scientific as well as
how theoretical results are made useful can then be better understood,
evaluated, and accomplished. Contrariwise, if one chose to impede the
responsible application of theoretical science, obscuring this difference
might be useful.
Evaluation or the valuing of beUeved-in possibihties and relations,
especially the pathic constitution of effects with intrinsic values and of
causes with extrinsic values, is central to the motivation of action. Since
it is positive valuing that motivates action that is positive, i.e., creative
and preservative, and negative valuing that motivates action that is
negative, i.e., destructive and preventative, it is possible to confuse these
strata and the objects constituted in them. There is a parallelism between
the end- and the means-characteristics of objects and the intrinsic and
extrinsic values that the same objects also typically have and this can
similarly lead to confusion. Nevertheless, if one looks to whether the
practice is directed at affecting a course of events rather than merely
liking or disliking this or that possible future sequence, the distinction
between the habitual positional strata in the intentive process and the
parallel distinction between the cultural characteristics, the values and
uses, in the objects as they are intended to can be made.
Intentive life can seem more conspicuously involved with somatic or
bodily states and processes in predominantly practical than in predominate-
ly evaluational or predominately cognitive life, for bodily movements are
necessary to affecting a course of events, but it takes only a little
reflection to recognize that bodily movement is also involved in the
sensuous awareness underlying the rest of hfe. The eyes, for example,
need to be open and pointed in a direction for something to be seen.
Even the expressing of a proposition requires movement of lips or
fingers. The danger in investigating the role of movement (and staying
still is, in this signification, a movement, just as non-intervention is a
willing to affect a course of events) may not be to omit the body but
rather to concentrate on somatic movement to the behavioristic disregard
of the willing that makes it action and in relation to which objects are
ends and means.