pregiven

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   Existing in the world, as opposed to arising from human apprehension.

   • For example, when a red spot on a sheet of paper strongly stimulates me, the whiteness of the paper as well as the red spot are pregiven and both of them undergo the structurization of “figure-ground.”
   • We therefore arrive at the realization that Aristotle conceived of the truth of a-synthetic wholes as pregiven in the same sense; they, as such, are therefore always actual.
   • The ontological and epistemological commitments are basically twofold: We assume that the world is pregiven, that its features can be specified prior to any cognitive activity.
2. 2

   Naturally occurring, as opposed to being socially constructed.

   • The geographical cohesion of state space is never pregiven but is the product of specific programs and initiatives that directly or indirectly impact state spatial structures and the geographies of state policy.
3. 3

   Provided beforehand

   Provided beforehand; present at the start.

   • For Schmitt, such a conception is contradictory, since he believes that in democracy such a will has to be pregiven at the outset and cannot be the product of discussion.
   • What may just as well have been otherwise is reactualized as the manifestation of a pregiven category.
4. ›+ 1 more definitionshow fewer

   1. 4

      That which is actual, as opposed to our concepts or apprehension of the world.

      • We live and are conscious against a background of the pregiven.
      • In a sense, there is a pregiven before any act of the Ego, but in another sense, there can be no pregiven in absolute, no pregiven an sich.

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