pregiven
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Forms: form: more pregiven
form: most pregiven
Etymology: From pre- + given. The philosophical sense is a calque of the German term Vorgegeben.
Senses: examples: text: 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.”
ref: 2012, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Soul and Body in Husserlian Phenomenology: Man and Nature, page 81:
text: 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.
ref: 2012, Werner Marx, The Meaning of Aristotle’s ‘Ontology’, page 20:
text: 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.
ref: 2017, Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind, page 135:
topics: epistemology
human-sciences
ontology
philosophy
sciences
glosses: Existing in the world, as opposed to arising from human apprehension.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 2004, Neil Brenner, New State Spaces, page 91:
text: The long and slow transition to thinking of society as a human process and product, rather than as a pregiven, divine order, has also given rise to the realization that human beings – both individuals and societies – have specific potential to be other than what they already are.
ref: 2017, Stephan van Erp, Christiane Alpers, Christopher Cimorelli, Salvation in the World: The Crossroads of Public Theology:
text: Some theoretical strategies go so far as to insist that all behavior simply emanates from pregiven structure (as Meyer does in Meyer et al., 1987). Others insist that no behavior at all is pregiven: Because structure in this argument means institutions— pregiven norms, values, beliefs, and practices— it is open-textured, incomplete, cannot guarantee its own applications, therefore, all behavior is action, has agency (Garfinkel 1964; Strauss et al. 1963).
ref: 2018, Morris Zelditch, Status, Power, and Legitimacy, page 65:
glosses: Naturally occurring, as opposed to being socially constructed.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 2002, Radhika Desai, “Fetishizing Phantoms: Carl Schmitt, Chantal Mouffe, and "The Political"”, in Abigail B. Bakan, Eleanor MacDonald, editors, Critical Political Studies: Debates and Dialogues from the Left, page 402:
text: Too often writing—in the broadest sense—is treated as a communicational medium where the subjects of that communication are constituted prior to the writing, where the objects of that communication are also constituted prior to that writing, and where the task of writing is seen as transparently mediating between already pregiven subjects, pregiven objects, and a preconstituted mise en scène.
ref: 2015, “Staging the Politics of Difference: Homi Bhabha's Critical Literacy, Gary A. Olson and Lynn Worsham.”, in Gary A. Olson, Lynn Worsham, Henry A. Giroux, editors, Politics of Possibility: Encountering the Radical Imagination, page 133:
text: What may just as well have been otherwise is reactualized as the manifestation of a pregiven category.
ref: 2022, Wouter Werner, Repetition and International Law:
glosses: Provided beforehand; present at the start.