givenness

English

Etymology

From given +‎ -ness.

Noun

givenness (countable and uncountable, plural givennesses)

1. The fact of being given or posited in an argument, hypothesis etc.
   • 2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin, published 2010, page 803:

     Kant argued like Descartes from the existence of individual consciousness rather than from the givenness of a God found in revelation.

2. The quality of being given; existence.
   • 1995, Anthony J. Steinbock, Home and Beyond: Generative Phenomenology After Husserl, page 83:

     The process of questioning back displaces the emphasis in phenomenology from an inquiry into modes of givenness, which assumes that there can be a simple starting point, to an inquiry into modes of pregivenness.