Page 79 - Contribution To Phenomenology

72 OSBORNE WIGGINS

a pattern that can . . . contribute to the regularity, coherence, and com-
prehensibility of our experience and understanding. To say that a gestalt
is "experientially basic," then, is to say that it constitutes a recurring
level of organized unity for an organism acting in its environment.
Gestalts, in the sense that I am using the term, are not unanalyzable
givens or atomistic structures. They can be "analyzed" since they have
parts and dimensions. But, any such attempted reduction will destroy the
unity (the meaningful organization) that made the structure significant
in the first place (p. 62).

Johnson's position thus includes what I have called above "the phenomen-
al thesis of gestalt organization."
Johnson concedes that propositions exhibit logical structures and even
meanings that go beyond the gestalt structures of preconceptual image
schemata which they presuppose. Propositions, in other words, are
meaningful objectivities of a higher order; they consequently exhibit their
own special patterns, rules of construction and transformation. But what
Johnson is denying is that propositions and linguistic entities in general
are autonomously meaningful or autonomously structured. To some extent
linguistic meanings depend for both their meaningfulness and structure
on prelinguistic image schemata.^
As a simple illustration Johnson describes "out" schemata (pp. 31-37).
Drawing on the work of Susan Lindner, he notes that many verbs are
followed by "out," e.g., take out, spread out, throw out, pick out, leave out,
shout out, draw out, and pass out (p. 32). These verb forms appear in
such sentences as:

John went out of the room.
Pump out the air.
Let out your anger.
Pick out the best theory.
Drown out the music.
Harry weasled out of the contract (p. 32).

^ The claim of dependence here should not be misunderstood as a claim of
reduction. Propositions cannot be reduced to the image schemata on which they
nevertheless depend.